This comes from Lucian’s Zeus Rants (2nd century), actually. It was a comedic satire or whatever, but nonetheless quite ancient.
In it, Zeus fears the atheists debating in the agora because it could convince mortals that the gods are meaningless do-nothings that have no affect on the mortal world; and by depriving them of sacrifice, this would seemingly make it true. Zeus calls all the gods together in great fear over the idea, packing the menagerie in together to find a solution. Hera, Athena, and Hermes are his inner circle and the first ones to notice he’s worried snd that he admits his fears to, and they assure him that whatever it is, they can handle it <3
What ails you, Zeus, in lone soliloquy, To pace about all pale and scholar-like? Confide in me, take me to ease your toils: Scorn not the nonsense of a serving-man.
Yea, thou sire of us all, son of Cronus, supreme among rulers, Here at thy knees I beseech it, the grey-eyed Tritogeneia: Speak thy thought, let it not lie hid in thy mind, let us know it. What is the care that consumeth thy heart and thy soul with its gnawing?
[…] Do you suppose we don’t know the reason of your anguish? […] I know that the sum and substance of your troubles is a love-affair; I don’t shriek and scream, though, because I am used to it, as you have already affronted me many a time in this way.
Sidenote thank you Lucian for giving us so much good Hera rep across your writings, I love how chill she is about his lovers here, and how Not Chill she is about people insulting Hephaestus in the Dialogues 💞💞💞 she might be able to look passed cheating on her, but insult her baby and she will NOT let that shit slide
[…] Why, Hera, the circumstances of the gods are as bad as they can be, and as the saying goes, it rests on the edge of a razor whether we are still to be honoured and have our due on earth or are actually to be ignored completely and count for nothing. […] Why, Hera, Timocles the Stoic and Damis the Epicurean had a dispute about Providence yesterday (I don’t know how the discussion began) in the presence of a great many men of high standing, and it was that fact that annoyed me most. Damis asserted that gods did not even exist, to say nothing of overseeing or directing events, whereas Timocles, good soul that he is, tried to take our part. Then a large crowd collected and they did not finish the conversation; they broke up after agreeing to finish the discussion another day, and now everybody is in suspense to see which will get the better of it and appear to have more truth on his side of the argument. You see the danger, don’t you? We are in a tight place, for our interests are staked on a single man, and there are only two things that can happen—we must either be thrust aside in case they conclude that we are nothing but names, or else be honoured as before if Timocles gets the better of it in the argument.
A dreadful situation, in all truth, and it wasn’t uncalled for that you ranted over it, Zeus.
[…] Come now, Hermes and Hera and Athena, what can we do? You too, you know, must do your share of the planning.
It also is the first recorded example, that I’m aware of, of the gods explicitly being made to look like whatever their worshippers viewed them as. Helios was 100 feet tall and had to lean down to listen to Zeus in an assembly bc he was the ever-bronze Colossus of Rhodes (Hermes kicked him out of the front row bc he was taking up all the viewing space). Aphrodite was of parian marble bc of the work of Praxiteles, rather than being “golden” Aphrodite, which was an irony that Hermes noted. Presumably all of the gods looked like their most famous statues and paintings.
Hera was probably the chryselephantine Polyclitus statue, of which it was said he made because he was the only mortal Hera ever sat down in front of to be depicted as she truly was (this was noted in the Greek Anthology). This could also be interpreted as implicitly saying the gods looked exactly as their most famous statues do because they appear before their artists to inspire their depictions. Chicken or the egg type beat.
If someone wants to read Zeus Rants, I recommend Loeb’s copy of it (LUCIAN, The Downward Journey or The Tyrant. Zeus Catechized. Zeus Rants. The Dream or The Cock. Prometheus. Icaromenippus or The Sky-man. Timon or The Misanthrope. Charon or The Inspectors. Philosophies for Sale). There’s a lot of niche references in it (like Zeus quoting lines of his from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the various plays) that’ll get missed in a regular degular translation.
Lucian is an enigmatic figure who is hard to figure out and pin an actual philosophy onto. His works definitely feel, to me, like a modern centrist who “makes fun of everybody equally,” though he’s been identified as a Skeptic by modern classicists. His works were wildly popular in antiquity and we have more from him than almost any other ancient Greek writer, with 80~ complete works of his preserved for us.