iâve been thinking a lot about the the gods lately; being in greece does that to you, because you see the insane landscapes, the monumental ruins, and the wonderful people, and you start to realize that the ancient gods were far more than the stories we have; every time i pass by a church, i see greeks making the cross in passing too, and as i spend my days digging up the athenian agora, through homes of christians and pagans, i am starting to understand just how much religion permeates greek society. it doesnât much matter the name or number of deities, religion is and wasâiâm a terrible prognosticator, so take this with as many grains of salt as neededâand will be a central part of greek society.
all this thinking has made me realize how little i think gods as human characters in myths actually mattered to the ancient greeks. yes, plato complained about bad behavior from the gods, and yes eventually lots of religious symbolism was used by hellenistic kings and then roman emperors as propaganda, as well as legions of poets for dramatic/poetic effect. but in the end, the ancient greek probably behaved much similar to depictions of regular people in the homeric epics or as hesiod.
this really clashes with our modern view of the gods as characters in a world of myths and lore and magic, which has become so mainstream we mock the idea of the gods being worshipped. i mean the entire pjo and hoo series is essentially telling you the ancient greeks were stupid for worshipping such capricious and greedy beings. this is, of course, not developed out of thin airâpagans were systemically removed from greece after the conversion of constantine, and the ârediscoveryâ of âclassicalâ thought didnât lead to a revival of paganism but instead a caricaturing of those gods. christian scholars latched on to depictions of the gods in ovid, or even homeric depictions (taken entirely out of context), in an attempt to remove any sense of wonder or worship-ability from them. the gods were recasted, with copious help from the ancients themselves (though it is conspicuous that much of what remains, transcribed by christian monks, is negative towards the gods), as bit characters in plays: capricious, hedonistic, powerful, greedy, and jealous.
pjo, and the extended riordanverse thatâs sprung up from it, isnât necessarily the âculminationâ of thought on the greek gods over the past half-thousand years, but it is a synthesis. the gods are out-of-touch, horny, opulent, and narrow-minded. they jealously guard their power, ironically at the expense of their power as they refuse to deal with the rising threat of kronos or gaia. their behavior in hoo is even more despicable, as they close themselves off, upset they couldnât win a war on their own.
both kronos and gaia are, in most interpretations of the story i think, the lesser villain. they are the big bad in both series, but thereâs never really a fear that theyâre going to win. i mean, itâs a kids/ya series. there is, however, a feeling that maybe the gods wonât do enough or wonât do enough on time, and a favorite character will die, or something bad will happen, and it will be blamed on the godsâ absence. the gods arenât âvillainsâ per se, but they arenât a source of good. the gods donât fall neatly into the modern american/protestant ideas of manichaean good and evil, a benevolent God and a sadistic Devil. thus they end up leaning towards the devil. they are greedy forces that sap away the pure good of characters like percy or ruin the good of characters like luke with meaningless quests to get âgloryâ (which is a whole other topic; why are we so willing to throw under the bus other societiesâ universal goods? have we just not heard of other societies beyond Western society?). of course, the gods can be good too, like Hestia and maybe Poseidon, and Apollo in that horror story called ToA that I will forever refuse to read. there, they are benevolent parents, or watchful guardians, helping the hero along to defeat the big bad.
the gods in the riordanverse are saddled, then, either with âsemi-evil dickâ or âmournful parentâ (or Hestia). most of the worldâs issues are blamed on them. kronos? zeusâ blindness and the other godsâ aloofness. gaia? zeusâ blindness and the other godsâ complicity. polluted rivers? poseidon isnât doing enough. ww2? the gods got horny. corrupt industries? neroâs fault (and the other ones thatâs about the extent of my ToA knowledge). [iâll return to pan, dw.] itâs not humans at fault, at the end of the day, but the godsâ.
much of this comes from depictions of gods as rulers in the hellenistic and roman periods, specifically apollonios and ovid as well as the most cherry-picked moments from the homeric poems and ovid. most of it, it can seem to any classicist reading pjo, didnât even come from the source material, but from condensed modern versions like edith hamiltonâs, which hammered out the inconsistencies into a semi-coherent story that just didnât exist in antiquity. because of this, much of the source material is taken out of context, stripped from its original society and inserted into 21st century America without a thought about the culture that came up with the original mythology. as a result, characterizations of gods that align with hellenistic rulers or roman emperors moreso than widespread popular beliefs become our modern ideas about those gods, while any thought of diachronic or geo-social differences goes out the window.
none of this is to say rick needed to be a classicist, or that any of us need to be in order to engage with the material. because we donât. this material is free for us to use as we wish. i donât mean to gatekeep at all; one of my guiding principles is that chaos is good, so go buck wild. what i mean to deal with more here is how the gods map onto modern political thought and our own philosophies about how the world works. iâve seen this trend way too much, and itâs gotten⊠tiring as of late.
the gods take their characterization mainly from hellenic rulers and roman emperors/generals. but in rickâs work, they often end up being very similar to politicians, especially zeus, and especially politicians from 2006-09. now, before we get started, this is not to suggest that rickâs work was intended to have these political undertones. i just believe that, as a man who i presume stays up to date on things, rick has preconceived notions about power and power systems that permeate his writing. in the 2000s, conniving politicians led the west into a disastrous war in iraq, more or less blind, lying to the world through their teeth about their true intentions. they cracked down on a disastrous war against drugs and policing systems that led to thousands of black and brown americans dead, incarcerated, and poor. they installed massive surveillance systems that upended travel and the way we go online. they mismanaged a financial crisis that turned out to be the worst in seventy years, one that many people saw coming. and to top it all off, they sat on their hands about climate change. the gods, too, led demigods on pointless quests that led to massive young death tolls, or didnât help them survive even to 12. they listened to every word of demigods for blasphemy and insult, but didnât lift a finger if they were in trouble. they nearly went to war with each other many times over pointless issues. and they refused to look kronos or gaia in the eyes as a real threat, choosing instead to sit on their hands and hope for the best.
with or without intention, rickâs gods are similar to 2000s politicians. because of course they are. once you characterize gods, make them human, then theyâre just really powerful humans. and in our day and age, powerful humans are called politicians (and businessmen). even if this wasnât intended at all, it was still going to happen.
and just like we blame politicians and businessmen for our problems, we blame the gods for percy and cosâ issues. itâs just so much easier blaming the gods or politicians or businessmen than having to look back at ourselves and ask who decided to move to the suburbs and create car culture, who ate the red meat about the iraq war, who voted for george bush again, who still buys from amazon, who sat home for election after election? a lot of this can seem like putting the burden on the individual for societal issues, of course. but it is not. just in the same way the gods are not at fault, nor is any one of us individually. instead, we as a society are at fault, because we as a society are so much more comfortable not dealing with the issue until itâs staring us dead in the face. we go about life like rote machines, consumed with myself rather than us. weâve built a culture around social media, focused on the individual rather than the community; zoned community buildings out of our neighborhoods; fled to the suburbs and pulled money out of public schools; we buy and buy because weâve been conditioned to get just a little bit of relief from material goods. we just constantly want more, and not for us as a community, but for me.
there is no such thing as a wrong interpretation of anything. but i do think âthe gods are badâ is a bad interpretation. it turns the burden of responsibility from the society to the individual, to overly powerful beings who happenâjust like politiciansâto have the same faults as each one of us. which is even more ironic, because the ancient greeks, the pre-platonics, believed so strongly in ideas of hubris and justice, in a deep sense of suffering on earth that was only relieved by the emergence of highly community-oriented political groupings called the polis. and no, not hubris like annabethâs pride and desire to build big. but hubris in the sense of humans reaching too high, breaking the natural order of things, and as a result being punished. not by greedy gods who wished to hoard their power, but by just protectors of the natural orderâthe environment, the legal system, peace. this is not to say the ancient greeks were at all progressive, because they were not. but they would not have been shocked by how we reached for too muchâa unipolar world, all the material goods we could ever want, endless development, the ability to communicate with anyone instantly, heck, even equal rightsâwithout pushback. the natural orderâthe conservative order, one might sayâwould always pushback. we did not foresee the challenges to our hubrisâpeople who donât want to live in the western world, rampant pollution and waste, environmental degradation and climate change, social fragmentation, and illiberalism. this is an issue not so much of mindless buying and giving into consumerism, or of overlooking systemic oppression in society, but also of failing to see that we were losing. perhaps reaching too high is a touchy term, because for many of these things, it is about giving people the rights and justice they deserve. but we did, in many cases, reach out without understanding what would push us back. we failed to realize that progress isnât natural. itâs hard.
greek mythology isnât a story about gods being greedy or capricious. itâs a story about mortals being greedy and not understanding their limits. we can blame gods, we can blame politicians and businessmen all we want for our ills, but until we understand it is a societal issue facing us, we wonât ever truly succeed.
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