Re: CHAT deities (was: Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs)

In a message dated 9/1/04 11:21:28 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
ray.brown@FREEUK.COM writes:

<< What I like about the Greek classics are the human figures. What makes the
 Odyssey for me is Odysseus, and likewise Akhilleus (Achilles) is the
 figure that gives grandeur to the Iliad. They are human figures with the
 failings and frailties we all have but in them the human spirit wins
 through despite all the stupid arbitrariness of the immoral deities. I'm
 sure it was the human element in the Greek classics that appealed to the
 humanists of the Renaissance, not the deities. >>
Then do you like the Troy movie which left out all the gods (except Thetis)?
I liked it,but not for that reason.

On the Greek vs. Roman gods. Frederick Rolfe wrote a fantasy (Weird of the
Wanderer)
in which the Greek gods take revenge on the Roman ones,  capturing back all
their stolen attributes. As to attitudes to the Greek gods, my own impression
is that attitudes to the Greek gods varied considerably among Greeks (as do
attitudes towards the Christian god among modern Americans).  Many Greeks seem to
have taken thegods very seriously. Reading, for example, Diodorus
Siculus,(years ago) I got the impression he took the gods quite seriously. C.S.Lewis made
that point (about Greeks in general) in his (to me beautiful) poem "A Cliche
Comes out of Its Cage."
John Leland