In that same hour Zeus thundered and cast his bolt upon
the ship.
Justly thinking men consider that gods exist, and first of all Homer. For he is always recalling the gods (I. i. 406):—
The blessed gods living a happy life.
For being immortal they have an easy existence and an inexhaustible abundance of life. And they do not need food of which the bodies of mortal men have need (I. v. 341):—
They eat no bread, they drink no ruddy wine,
And bloodless and deathless they become.
But poetry requires gods who are active; that he may bring the notion of them to the intelligence of his readers he gives bodies to the gods. But there is no other form of bodies than man's capable of understanding and reason. Therefore he gives the likeness of each one of the gods the greatest beauty and adornment. He has shown also that images and statues of the gods must be fashioned accurately after the pattern of a man to furnish the suggestion to those less intelligent, that the gods exist.
But the leader and head of all these, the chief god the best philosophers think, is without a body, and is rather comprehensible by the intelligence. Homer seems to assume this; by him Zeus is called (I. iv. 68):—
The Sire of gods and men. O father ours, son of Kronos, chief
of the greater beings.
And Zeus himself says (I. viii. 27):—
As much as I am better than gods and men.