On the nature of the gods
From the Greek and Roman point of view, refusing to believe in the gods was like not believing in gravity while falling from something high – an odd concept, and irrelevant to the central issue. The existence of the gods was independent of belief in them.
For example, everyone will accept that a fertile seed placed in warm moist earth will put out shoots, and, conditions being right, will become a new plant. Today we call this ‘genetic programming’. The Greeks called it Demeter (who was Ceres to the Romans). Belief in either is not essential for the growth of the plant.
Similarly, the seasons of the year change in regular succession whether we believe in them or not. To the Greeks this was but one manifestation of Zeus, the organizing principle. When you tidy your room and arrange the vases and ornaments on the mantelpiece just so – equidistant and showing the same face to the room – that’s also Zeus at work.
Someone waking from a nightmare will tell himself that what seemed so terrible just moments before either does not exist or else is not immediately threatening. Or as the Greeks would say, that person invokes Athena, goddess of rational thought. On the other hand, if someone has abandoned rational thought to fall madly in love, them the ancients would consider that person touched by Aphrodite.
In other words, the forces represented by the gods of Greece and Rome are real. The only question is whether they are self-aware, intelligent and interested in human affairs. (Ancient philosophers wondered about this too.) But before rejecting the idea out of hand, remember that all major religions consider their gods to be self-aware, intelligent and interested in human affairs, so the belief of classical religion is in no way exceptional.
Therefore, Greek and Roman myth must be seen not as a collection of superstitions and comic-book superheroes, but as a genuine belief system deserving the same respect as other human efforts to comprehend and engage with the divine. (We might note that some of the more colourful episodes of – for example – the Old Testament might also seem somewhat odd if considered out of context by a non-believer.)
The problem with myth
So how are we to understand the role in myth of the great gods of Olympus? In classical religion the gods embody the primal forces of the cosmos. It is through them that the sun rises, and the rivers flow. It is the gods who oversee justice and the rational working of all things. Yet, in classical myth the gods seem to be silly, squabbling creatures, fond of playing cruel tricks on each other and on humanity, and pursuing vindictive feuds.
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zeus and semele
Semele was a priestess of Zeus and, as she was ravishingly beautiful, Zeus promptly set about the concomitant ravishing. Naturally, Zeus appeared to Semele in mortal form; and after she had become pregnant by her lover, Semele began belatedly to wonder if she had been taken in by a smooth-talking human with a great chat-up line. She demanded that Zeus show himself to her in his true form. As Zeus was bound by a promise to do as the lady demanded, he reluctantly complied. Exposed to the true radiant glory of the god, Semele was instantly toasted to a crisp.
Dionysus shares a wine goblet with his mother, Semele.
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Resolving the conundrum
In this apparent inconsistency lies an attempt to answer the age-old question of why a just and loving god can allow bad things to happen to good people.
Of course, Greeks and Romans partly answered the question by deciding that their gods were not loving (except in the sense which Zeus applied to his female companions). Furthermore, as we have seen in Chapter 2, they believed that much of what happened to a person was not in the hands of the gods, but tied to an immutable destiny mapped out by the Fates.
However, rather than accept that their lives were dictated by blind, immutable forces, most people in antiquity wanted – demanded – that their gods should every now and then bend the inexorable laws of nature to give some deserving mortal a break.
We have already seen that the gods had aspects, particular facets of their powers that could be viewed separately from the others. Therefore, to deal with humans, each god had a human aspect – and being human, this aspect had its unattractive side, though it was as far from representing the entire nature of a god as Zeus’ human appearance to Semele represented his whole being. (In fact, as will be seen, Semele was anyway fated to perish on seeing the true nature of Zeus, for it was through her death that the thrice-born god Dionysus would come into the world.)
There was much more to the ancient gods than their loves, their jealousies and their minor feuds and favourites. Yet it is these that engage our attention, for being human, we are interested in the human side of the gods – especially as it is on this human aspect that the ancients blamed much of the random nastiness that is a sad but integral part of life. Thus the great gods were very interesting characters. As we shall now see.
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later art and culture:
zeus and semele
Gustave Moreau painted Jupiter and Semele in 1894–95, and Rubens depicted The Death of Semele in 1636. Semele also became an oratorio in three acts by Handel, first performed in London in 1744.
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Aphrodite (Venus), the Irresistible
Parents: Uranus (father) and an adamantine sickle
Spouse: Hephaestus (Vulcan)
Significant lovers: Ares (Mars), Hermes (Mercury), Adonis, Anchises
Children: Aeneas, Harmonia, Deimos, Phobos, Hermaphroditus, Priapus, Beroe
Primary aspect: Goddess of love and sex
Minor aspect(s): Rescuer of sailors, guardian of plants, goddess of marriage and civic harmony, but also of prostitutes
Identified with: Myrtle, the swan, the dove
Temples, oracles and shrines: At Aphrodisias (the city of Aphrodite, in Asia Minor), on the Acropolis of Corinth, the temples in Rome of Venus Genetrix and of Venus and Roma
The power of Aphrodite is irresistible …
She moves through the air, she dwells in the
sea-wave, she plants the seed and brings that
love from which all of us on this earth are born.
euripides hippolytus 445ff
In one sense, Aphrodite is among the elder gods, for she is of the generation before Zeus. In addition, all the gods (with three exceptions, whom we shall come to later) were as subject to her influence as mortals. And, as many mismatched and star-crossed lovers will testify, Aphrodite is perfectly capable of using her powers mischievously, or even maliciously.
The girdle of Aphrodite made its wearers irresistible to whomever they wished to charm, and the hand-mirror of Aphrodite, with its small cross-grip on the bottom, remains even today the symbol for her gender. Her hand is almost omnipresent in the myths of Greece and Rome, and Zeus often attributed his philandering to Aphrodite’s influence (though the Roman Jupiter was somewhat more circumspect in his conduct). By some distance the most famous depiction of Venus/Aphrodite is a damaged 2,000-year-old statue in the Louvre known as the Venus di Milo.
One never has to look far to find Aphrodite even today: for example, in the night sky, since Aphrodite is Venus, the evening star. As Venus – the name Aphrodite took from a minor Roman fertility goddess – the lady is not only a planet, but also a crop of nasty diseases spread by the act of love. As Porne, the incarnation of carnal love, her pictures (porne graphe) have attracted the excited attention of censors over the ages, while foods that are supposed to increase sexual desire (e.g. oysters) are aphrodisiacs. The lady pops up in unexpected places, such as in connection with the blood-red anemone that represents the mortal remains of her beloved, the beautiful boy Adonis who was killed while hunting. Beroe, the daughter of Adonis and Aphrodite, became Beryut – the city known today as Beirut.