Greater inconsistencies and contradictions in character can scarcely be conceived of. How such confused and contradictory notions could occupy the same mind, may seem inexplicable. The Greek name of their deity, a corporeal being, was used by men having many excellent qualities, to express all they thought of, or felt, toward God, the greatest and best, worthy to be trusted and worshiped, but anthropomorphic still, having human instincts and passions, in the essential elements of his exalted nature, “altogether like unto themselves.” Their ethical conceptions were marred by unconsciously projecting their common humanity into the field of view in which their god was contemplated.
But the name that became sacred also meant the physical heaven, the sky with its clouds and vapor, and all embracing atmosphere; and as the earth by a beautiful metaphor was spoken of as the bride of the sky, which was said to overshadow the earth with his love, in every land causing the birth of all things that live and grow, so this idea of production—its primary application forgotten by a people gross and sensual—transferred to a deity of human form and passions, grew up into strange stories of license, or unlawful love. It is by no means certain that the poets and moralists, or ethical writers accepted the grosser myths as true or expressive of their own conceptions. The probability is against it. For, while Hesiod, following the popular theology describes the descent of the gods, their earthly loves, intrigues and gross immoralities, yet he, at times, turns sharply away from all such things as loathsome, to “thoughts of that pure and holy Zeus (Jupiter), who looks down from heaven to see if men will do justice, love mercy, and seek after God.”
Some regard the conceded goodness of the supreme beings as sufficient reason for misbelieving all the stories that were to their discredit; or if the stories were credited they would disprove their supposed divinity.
Euripides said:
“If the gods do aught unseemly, then they are not gods at all.”
The great poets did not invent the myths, but found them the only embodiment of the crude theology that was current among the masses, perfected them by eliminating some of the grosser parts, and sought to use them in the cause of virtue and civilization.
Even those seeming most irrational, when traced to their primary source and analyzed, were found to have something of truth, and the glimmer of their light was welcomed where without it the darkness had been yet more profound.
Dr. Ziller in his lecture on the development of Monotheism in Greece says: “The great Greek poets were her first thinkers, her sages, as they were afterward called. They sang of Zeus (Jupiter), and exalted him as the defender of righteousness, the representation of moral order.
“Archilocus says that ‘Zeus weighs and measures all the actions of good and evil men, as well as those of animals.’ ‘He is,’ said Terpandros somewhat later, ‘the source and ruler of all things.’ According to Simonides, ‘the principle of all created things rests with him, and he rules the universe by his will.’”