The Olympian gods are in the last resort a model for approaching the divine. It
helps in thinking about divine planning to suppose that there is a Zeus acting as he
does for what we would recognize as motives, and influenced by likes, dislikes, and
prayer – otherwise, why would we bother? This leads to wonderful manifestations of
Greek culture – the mythology and its incarnation in the objects of worship and the
de ́cor of cult, and in Greek art and architecture at large. It also helps ordinary
traditional people to channel their genuine piety and find social fulfillment, and at
times release, through vehicles such as prayer, sacrifice, oracles, and even a sort of
pilgrimage to oracles and other notable sites. But the anthropomorphism of the
Olympian gods comes with a health warning that the gods are not like us, are distant
from us, and live elsewhere. We may pray to the skies and talk about Olympus. We
may pray to Zeus, or to our local city god, or to the god whose function it is to
protect us in our present role or circumstances. Each of the gods combines a sense of
power and personality. It is the personality that gives us a handle on them, allows us to
pray to them at all. But it is in the end a cloak for their power.
GUIDE TO FURTHER READINGThe most authoritative book on Greek religion, including the gods, is Burkert 1985; briefer
but remarkably powerful is Bremmer 1994. Susan Deacy is general editor of a new series, Greek
Gods and Heroes, which covers not only the ancient information about the god but also their
tradition into modern times: already available is Dowden 2005 on Zeus, and to appear are
F. Graf on Apollo, S. Deacy on Athena, R. Seaford on Dionysus, and E. Stafford on Heracles.
The facts of mythology are available in Apollodorus’Library of Greek Mythology, translated by
Hard (Hard 1997), and in a wide variety of dictionaries of mythology, e.g. March 1998, Grimal
1987 (important to use the full, Blackwell, edition) and Graves 1962 (provided you do not
believe his poetic fantasies about trees and triple goddesses). For the ways in which mythology
works, see Dowden 1992 and Graf 1993b. On the evidence for the origins of the pantheon of
twelve, see Long 1987. For the synthesis of myth and religion, the most visionary account is
that of Otto 1954, and more specifically 1965. For detailed information on the cults of
particular gods, it is still worth going back to Farnell 1896–1909.
Olympian Gods, Olympian Pantheon 55