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Ancient Greeks: A Vast Pantheon Of Gods For Worship

439 Words2 Pages

‘Ancient Greeks’ of all periods have had a vast pantheon of gods for worship. The need to justify their emotions and to follow a moral code for their behaviour lead to anthropomorphism. While polytheism was created to concentrate each sphere of influence with its own deity. The Greeks experienced love, hate, anger, sadness and happiness among other emotions. To explain them, they used their gods as examples. Aphrodite, the common expression of love, what it’s like to fall for someone you just can’t not be around. With love comes lust, a dangerous emotion that can put its participators in danger like Amphitrite changing Scylla, a lover of Poseidon, into a hideous creature. Opposite to love is hatred, often spawning anger, like the story of Polyphemus striking Acis with the rock out of spite of him laying with Galatea. Apollo showing compassion, Zeus being just and Athena’s wisdom begin to show the basis for the apparent anthropomorphism in the Greek pantheon. …show more content…

It’s the gods’ ways of showing the Greeks the dos and the don’ts. Typically set by Zeus, the upholder of moral values, but any god or goddess can set an example. This could a direct lesson set by Zeus like when he punished Lycaon for breaking the rules of hospitality or Prometheus for trying to outsmart him by first hiding the inedible parts of the sacrifice and then stealing fire from Olympus to give to the humans. It could also be indirect, like a hidden message within a myth. The societal stance against infidelity is an example of this, as it can be seen what the punishments were for Zeus’s many mistresses by

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