If you read Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus, you'd notice that Zeus is the source of law and cosmic harmony, that Zeus is supreme and has given the moral law to human beings. If you open Hesiod at all, you'll notice that Zeus is all-wise, that true and perfect judgement is of Zeus, that Zeus has sent ten thousand invisible spirits to watch mortals and ensure they behaviour righteously, that Zeus hates corruption and lies, that Zeus is angered by evildoing and punishes the evildoer. Remember that both the Euthyphro dilemma and the riddle of Epicurus were posed by pagan Greeks (assuming Epicurus' riddle is correctly attributed to Epicurus, which itself depends on how much you trust Lactantius), and neither make any sense if you don't believe that the gods are, at their core, righteous. And from that you can conclude certain things about their character, as indeed the Greeks did, and those things included a love of piety, holiness, law, and, yes, being righteous. Order, harmony, all the essential preconditions for human life and flourishing - that's the gods. By far the most important thing to understand about the gods is that they maintain an ordered reality. I assure you, that is not what real ancient Greek pagans believed. It kinds of bugs me that almost all of what people know about the Greek gods in pop culture is the idea that they're arbitrary jerks. Even among the stories, there's a huge gap between, say, Homer (revered, taken seriously) and any given Athenian playwright (yeah, so, anything Euripides tells you is probably Euripides' own subversive reinterpretation, not 'orthodox' belief).
They are not necessarily accurate depictions of what ancient Hellenes believed was the truth about the gods. See, the majority of Greek mythology? Those were stories. This is what happens when your only knowledge of ancient Greek religious practices comes from reading storybooks about mythology. Pindar too talks about the righteous judgements of the gods, and how the road of Zeus, for the pious, leads to eternal blessing.īut no, let's just make silly jokes about adultery and murder. (That translation might sound a little Christian to you, despite the original being three centuries before Christ: here's an alternate.) Oh, hey, Aratus also speaks of Zeus as the one who, in his kindness, creates an ordered reality intelligible to human beings, who is a blessing to all men. If you open Hesiod at all, you'll notice that Zeus is all-wise, that true and perfect judgement is of Zeus, that Zeus has sent ten thousand invisible spirits to watch mortals and ensure they behave righteously, that Zeus hates corruption and lies, that Zeus is angered by evildoing and punishes the evildoer. Zeus is the foremost representative of cosmic order, and that includes moral order. Fire or lightning from heaven is a weapon against the cruel. Zeus hates iniquity and loves justice he rewards the righteous, and strikes down the evil. If you actually sit down and read a lot of what genuine ancient Greek pagans said about Zeus, he is fundamentally righteous. Almost all of what almost everyone believes about Zeus is wrong.
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