Ordinary humans

LegendofJoe

Active Member
It depends on the gods.
For example Odin only concerned himself with nobles, kings and warriors. He did
not care much for farmers.
Thor on the other hand was associated with fertility, and so he was a bit closer to farmers.
In one myth, he has dinner at a humble peasant's hut while on his journey to Utgard.
He did not think it beneath him to do this.

Aphrodite was a goddess that devoted herself to the protection of young lovers. Your background probably did not matter.

However it is true that many stories in mythology seem to deal mostly with the gods interacting mainly with the high born.
Even fairy stories I remember as a kid always seemed to be rather regal. It was always some king this or some princess that; never
much with peasants and serfs. I don't know why that is. It is probably the same mentality that makes us buy People magazine and watch
Access Hollywood. These are the exciting people, not like the rest of us schmoes.
 

fibi ducks

Active Member
Hi Legend of Joe,
I suppose it makes sense that on the whole we don't have a lot to do with them - I mean there are a lot of us, lots more than them. And come to think of it I didn't meet any film stars in the flesh iether.
BUT... it seems there are exceptions! Thanks for your examples.
 

Olsen

Member
In Greek mythology, gods used to interact with humans, indifferent of social status. Hera, Athena and Aphrodite chose Paris, a sheepherder, to settle the dispute of who's the fairest of them all. Zeus impregnated various mortal women, among whom the most famous is the Aetolian princess Leda. There's also stories about Aphrodite having various affairs with humans. She didn't care about whether they were rich or poor; she seemed to care only about looks.
 

LegendofJoe

Active Member
I see your point Olsen, but they seem to be exceptions.
Also, Paris may have been a shepherd, but he was of royal blood, being a son of Priam.
 

fibi ducks

Active Member
I thought of Hesiod himself. I think he was just a shepherd, and the muses came to him and inspired him. So they made him more than an ordinary shmoe, but he wasn't royal. But more generally, I have an idea that
in Homer, talents and special abilities are attributed to someone being loved by a god or goddess. Taken literally, that would mean a lot of divine engagement in our affairs. I guess the opposite would apply too - that someone particularly stupid would be hated by Apollo or Athene, for example. So then, perhaps we are all everday shmoes, only some are loved by the gods, some hated, and some forgotten or not noticed.
 

Nadai

Active Member
Before the Trojan war gods interfered or intervened (depending on how you looked at it) regularly in human affairs, especially Zeus the rapist and Hera the vindictive. They would often times disguise themselves as humans and walk with them, sometimes as wealthy mortals and sometimes as servants. Zeus disguised himself as a poor old man when he visited Lychaon's home. Athena pretended to be an old widow when she went to Arachne.
After Paris' decision to give the golden apple to Helen over the goddesses in the most beautiful woman contest the Trojan war began.
Many of the Greek gods were involved in the war. Athena, Hera and Poseidon helped the Greeks, while Aphrodite and Ares defended the city of Troy. Both sides lost a great deal and many of gods lost some of their most favored heroes. After the Trojan war the gods chose that they would no longer interfere with human affairs and would no longer walk amongst the humans.
I'm pretty sure that they made an oath on the Styx to remain in the heavens while the mortals lived out their days god-less on Earth; once they make an oath on the Styx it can't be broken.
 

fibi ducks

Active Member
but but but WHY did they decide to have nothing more to do with us? Didn't they enjoy the war? I thought they had fun with things like that. I remember when the gods had a punch up in the Illiad Zeus shook with pleasure and laughter.
This story is fascinating. I would like to know more if anyone can add.
By the way, about a year and a half ago I had a dream that i was on top of mount Olympus. it was clear and very calm with a blue sky. And not warm. There was no sign of life up there at all. Only a ruin of a vast hearth that I could see must once have been the chimney in one of the houses of the gods. Zeus' house. By ancient reasoning, would this be a reason to think that they are not there? I think so.
 

Nadai

Active Member
By the way, about a year and a half ago I had a dream that i was on top of mount Olympus. it was clear and very calm with a blue sky. And not warm. There was no sign of life up there at all. Only a ruin of a vast hearth that I could see must once have been the chimney in one of the houses of the gods. Zeus' house. By ancient reasoning, would this be a reason to think that they are not there? I think so.

I remember reading a myth once stating that if the gods had no one to pray to them and worship and sacrifice to them then they lost their god-powers and eventually faded away.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
but but but WHY did they decide to have nothing more to do with us? Didn't they enjoy the war? I thought they had fun with things like that.
Hesiod and Ovid both give us a pietistic reason for this. In his Works & Days, bitterly lamenting that he belongs to the last, most wretched race of men that have lived on the Earth, Hesiod calls ours the Age of Iron, which Ovid confirms in his Metamorphoses, prophesying that one day Astraea, supposedly the same as Dike (Justice), would be the last of the immortals to leave the Earth (Aratus agrees and Hesiod gives us a similar scenario). Ovid's picture has all the gods, great and small, literally fleeing from the Earth at the sight of the atrocious corruption of humankind. I guess that image is somewhat amusing today but back then the idea was that the world would be just about as ghastly a place to live as some sections of the Underworld. And maybe, at least in some places in the world today, he wasn't too far off[?]...
 

Caburus

Active Member
Is that why Ovid's country men started making gods out of the Caesars - the old gods were fleeing away and needed replacing?:)
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Maybe so. With just a few tablespoonfuls of megalomania ;) (Incidentally, Ovid was not Augustus Caesar's favourite person, which we could glean from the fact that the Emperor very personally banished him from Rome.)
 

fibi ducks

Active Member
Hesiod and Ovid both give us a pietistic reason for this. In his Works & Days, bitterly lamenting that he belongs to the last, most wretched race of men that have lived on the Earth, Hesiod calls ours the Age of Iron, which Ovid confirms in his Metamorphoses, prophesying that one day Astraea, supposedly the same as Dike (Justice), would be the last of the immortals to leave the Earth (Aratus agrees and Hesiod gives us a similar scenario). Ovid's picture has all the gods, great and small, literally fleeing from the Earth at the sight of the atrocious corruption of humankind. I guess that image is somewhat amusing today but back then the idea was that the world would be just about as ghastly a place to live as some sections of the Underworld. And maybe, at least in some places in the world today, he wasn't too far off[?]...
then the gods weren't able to keep us humans in order. they had a good scene going on here. i think if they had been able to get us humans to play along they'd have stayed. How do you feel about that?
For me - its good. like the parents decided to leave us alone on the house.
 

Nadai

Active Member
then the gods weren't able to keep us humans in order. they had a good scene going on here. i think if they had been able to get us humans to play along they'd have stayed. How do you feel about that?
For me - its good. like the parents decided to leave us alone on the house.
*;)it's party-time:D*
 

Alejandro

Active Member
then the gods weren't able to keep us humans in order. they had a good scene going on here. i think if they had been able to get us humans to play along they'd have stayed. How do you feel about that? For me - its good. like the parents decided to leave us alone on the house.

Personally I don't see the big moral difference between the way the world worked in the stories told by Hesiod and Ovid and the way the world works today, with the exception of the fact that today humans have considerably more firepower than Hesiod's and Ovid's gods would have been privileged to handle. Thunder and lightning seem that much less impressive when, at the mere push of a button (apparently), one mortal can reduce us all to a cosmic pile of ash. Otherwise it's pretty ironic all the atrocities both writers attribute to their gods, just for the same deities they're writing about to turn around and flee when all the kids are doing it too.
 

dtango

Member
Ovid's picture has all the gods, great and small, literally fleeing from the Earth at the sight of the atrocious corruption of humankind.
I am afraid that this was the excuse given by the representatives of the gods (angels/priests) and that the truth is that the men revolted against the gods and had them expelled from the land (not the earth).
The gods did find refuse for a while in remote places (Mount Olympus / Cedar Forest) and when they moved out of their home land their messengers/angels told the men that the gods ascended to the skies (by climbing a ladder according to the Egyptians).
Personally I don't see the big moral difference between the way the world worked in the stories told by Hesiod and Ovid and the way the world works today,…
You could have a perfect much if instead of the way the world works today you were comparing the world in the stories of the ancients with the European continent during Nazi occupation.
The gods (Nazis) were judging the mortals alive (Jews) and those that were not to their liking they exterminated on the spot. The rest they used as slaves.
In the Egyptian funerary texts the scenes described are no different from those described in the Old Testament (burning down everything in the Sodom-Gomorra area, women and children included) or those known from the Nazi concentration camps, but they supply information as to what was the goal of the gods for committing the crimes they committed.
 
Top