Percy Jackson And Ovid's Metamorphoses

2.1 The Greco-Roman Concept of Gods
In both Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Ovid’s Metamorphoses the notion of the ‘gods’ or the ‘supreme beings’ is explained through the metaphor of a ‘living force’ or a ‘fire’, as can be seen from the following extract.

“‘[…] it is a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are a part of it […] The fire started in Greece. Then […] the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps – Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on – but the same forces, the same gods.’”
[The Lightning Thief; Pg 72; Chiron to Percy]

Here, Riordan refers to the Olympians – the Greek gods who reside on Mount Olympus according to mythology – being alight with energy, a “collective consciousness”, that has moved from one place to another depending on the civilization that was most prosperous during their

‘They’re – myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They’re what people believed before there was science.’”
[The Lightning Thief; Pg 67-68; Chiron to Percy]

According to Riordan, however, before up until a few decades ago, whatever could not be explained by science was said to be ‘magic’. Whatever could not be explained by magic was said to be ‘fancy’ and before fancy there were ‘myths’ and ‘legends’. In other words, just because in the modern name of Science the limited things on Earth can be explained does not mean that there is a limit to the things that actually exist. If the term of ‘Science’ did not exist before a particular time, there is no way to prove or disprove the concept of Gods or Ethereal Beings as they were there during the very conception of the Earth and, by relation, time itself.

“High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of