A God Made Me Do It

"He had dared to bring a dead man back to life, so Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt." - pg 59. In the ancient Greek religion, hubris was among the worst laws you can break. To think oneself above a god could very well lead to your demise. As I continued reading "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony" and took notes in class, I often found the gods to be a very selfish bunch. They're prone to fits of jealousy, often killing or transforming the lovers of a rival god, or really anyone that crossed them, such as Arachne did with Athena. They also think nothing of using humans in rather deadly ways to obtain a goal. For example, what started as a beauty contest between three goddesses led to the Trojan War. The theme of literature pertaining to the religion of ancient Greece was that the gods were dangerous whether they loved you or hated you. In fact, the only good thing about them was that if some normal human strife went wrong, there was usually a god to blame.