DIONE  , in the earliest

Greek mythology, the wife of Zeus . As such she is associated with Zeus Nalus (the god of fertilizing moisture) at Dodona (Strabo vii. p . 329), by whose side she sits, adorned with a bridal veil and garland and holding a sceptre . As the oracle declined in importance, her place as the wife of Zeus was taken by Hera . It is probable that in very early times the cult of Dione existed in Athens, where she had an altar before the Erechtheum . After her admission to the general religious system of the Greeks, Dione was variously described . In the Iliad (v . 370) she is the mother by Zeus of Aphrodite, who is herself in later times called Dione (the epithet Dionaeus was given to Julius Caesar as claiming descent from Venus) . In Hesiod (Theog . 353) she is one of the daughters of Oceanus; in Pherecydes (ap. schoI . Iliad, xviii . 486), one of the nymphs of Dodona, the nurses of Dionysus; in Euripides (frag .

177), the mother of Dionysus; in

Hyginus (fab . 9 . 82), the daughter of Atlas, wife of Tantalus and mother of Pelops and Niobe . Others make her a Titanid, the daughter of Uranus and Gaea (Apollodorus i . 1) . Speaking generally, Dione may be regarded as the female embodiment of the attributes of Zeus, to whose name her own is related as Juno ( Jovino) to Jupiter .