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Negative Burn writes:

"In my opinion, the god characters are fleshed out a little more than
in most myths ... "

Actually, depending on what text you're reading, the gods'
psychological complexity varies enormously. It won't do to say they
are simply tokens for this or that force of nature, or generalized
quality. You may find their treatment in, say, Homer, to be
straightforward and lacking in nuance (others would disagree), but
later writers certainly put much more into them. By the time you get
to Euripides, their complexity and their often chilling "otherness",
are overpowering. And since the religion of ancient Greece exists
nowhere but in some text or other, there's no point in making a
distinction between earlier and later versions. It's impossible to
say where embellishment begins or ends.

As for modern TV versions, my main objection is simply the triteness
of their presentation. The gods have been continually altered and
revised to suit literary and artistic notions down the ages. But
never, it seems to me, have they had so little to say.

Cheers,

Wayne Daniels

Metro Toronto Reference Library
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