Mount Olympus

Olympus is a genuine mountain in Thessaly, the highest in Greece at nearly 2,900 metres, and its summit is in cloud most of the year. That is the whole reason it works as a divine residence: it is visible, it is local, and nobody could confirm what was up there.

Homer's Olympus is a palace complex rather than a peak. Hephaestus built the halls; the Horae, goddesses of the seasons, keep the gate of cloud that opens and closes. There is no weather on the summit itself — no wind, no rain, no snow — only clear air and light, which is a careful distinction from the storms the gods send everywhere else.

Twelve gods hold seats, though the roster shifts by source. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus and Hermes are constant; the twelfth is usually Dionysus or Hestia, and the tradition that Hestia gave up her seat for him is a late addition. Hades has no seat, because he does not live there.

The gods eat ambrosia and drink nectar, which sustain their immortality, and the ichor in their veins is not blood. When Homer wants to convey how far above mortals they are, he does it through those small biological differences rather than through power.

There is a second Olympus in the geography of belief, and the Greeks were relaxed about the difference. Homer sometimes has the gods on the physical peak and sometimes in a heaven above the sky, switching without comment inside the same poem. The mountain is the address; the elevation is the metaphor, and nobody in antiquity seems to have needed them reconciled.