Homer’s Characters that I Struggled with Most

The Olympian Gods, Part One: Did the Greeks Actually Believe in Them?

When I began writing The Full Disclosure Iliad, I was fairly sure I had the Olympians sorted. I’d read the myths. I’d studied the classics. I’d spent the better part of twenty-five years telling these stories to anyone who would sit still long enough. What could possibly trip me up?

A perfectly simple question, as it turns out: Did the ancient Greeks actually believe in their gods?

It’s a trap. And I walked straight into it.

The Belief Trap

Here’s the problem. When we ask whether the Greeks “believed” in Zeus, we usually mean something quite specific: a private, inward conviction. Do you truly, deeply accept that the god exists?

That’s a rather modern way of framing things. Greek religion cared far less about what went on in your head than about what you did with your hands.

Nobody was asking, “Are you absolutely certain Zeus exists?” They were asking, “Did you make your offerings? Keep your oaths? Show up for the festival?” You poured the libation. You sacrificed the appropriate animal. And you took great care not to annoy anyone on Olympus.

Historians call this orthopraxy—“right practice”—as opposed to orthodoxy, “right belief.” It’s a handy distinction, even if the Greeks themselves were never quite so tidy about it. (Few people are. Storytellers least of all.)

So What Did They Think?

Surely, though, the Greeks had opinions about whether the gods were real? Of course they did. Lots of them.

Most Greeks took the gods seriously enough to avoid offending them. Skip a sacrifice, break an oath or insult a god, and you could expect a very bad day—possibly a very bad decade. Odysseus could tell you all about it.

At the same time, there was no single sacred book, no central church and no official rulebook. Different cities told contradictory stories about the same gods, and nobody convened a committee to sort it out.

Philosophers questioned the traditional tales, too—though that wasn’t always a safe hobby. Accusations of impiety could carry very real consequences. Just ask Socrates. (On second thought, don’t. He’ll only answer with another question.)

But doubting that a particular god did a particular thing wasn’t the same as rejecting the gods. The Greeks could argue about the gods without anyone handing out an answer key.

Did Athena Really Deflect That Arrow?

Which brings me to my storyteller’s headache. Homer’s Iliad is positively crawling with divine interventions. When the Trojan Pandarus shoots an arrow at the Greek Menelaus, Athena turns a potentially fatal hit into a comparatively minor wound.

Did the Greeks think these things literally happened?

Some surely did. Others probably heard them more figuratively. And plenty, I suspect, never felt any pressing need to decide.

If that sounds strange, spend an evening in a sports bar at playoff time.

The puck rings off the post in overtime. The room exhales. And somebody shouts, “The hockey gods are with us tonight!”

Now look around. One fan has been quietly praying since the second period—and means every word. Another is wearing the lucky jersey he hasn’t washed since the first round, and wouldn’t dream of changing it. (It isn’t superstition, he’ll tell you. It’s procedure.) A third will explain, very calmly, that the shooter simply missed.

All three are celebrating the same near-miss. Nobody demands a theological ruling. And the fellow in the unwashed jersey will keep up his ritual whether he believes in hockey gods or not. That’s orthopraxy, right there—in a hockey sweater.

Now imagine a Greek hearing that Athena saved Menelaus from Pandarus’ arrow. One listener pictures the goddess literally nudging the arrow aside. Another shrugs and says Menelaus got lucky—and that luck is simply what Athena’s favour looks like from down here. A third quietly pours an extra libation that evening, just to be safe.

The Greeks weren’t always relaxed about religion. But a myth, a ritual and a private explanation didn’t have to line up as neatly as we moderns tend to expect.

Why This Made My Job Harder

You might think all this would make my job easier. You would be wrong. I certainly was.

There was no single, “authentic Greek” view of the gods for me to simply reproduce. The stories were too contradictory and the line between literal and figurative far too slippery.

So I had to stop asking what the Greeks believed and start asking something far more practical—and far more alarming: What, exactly, were the gods going to be in my telling of the Trojan War?

Next Time: The Author’s Dilemma

Should I bring the Olympians onstage as real, flesh-and-ichor characters, as Homer does? Treat them as metaphors for very human impulses? Or quietly show them the door?

In Part Two, I’ll tell you which road I took—and how a terrified Zeus at a wedding party finally made up my mind.