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 Few subjects capture the imagination as the stories of the Greek gods and the dramas they played out on the stage of the world in the halls of Olympus and in the hearts and minds of every Greek person who believed that there ills and whims controlled the stars and the moon with impunity, and that to anger the gods in event the slightest way was almost more than an assurance of a swift yet agonizing demise. For the Greeks it was not simply enough to believe that the gods existed you had to accept that they were cruel and capricious to the point of sadism. Capable of visiting at the barest glance the fury of Hades on the heads of any who failed to pay them deference and you also had to put up with their persistent in fight which would at times cause earth quakes and the occasional brush with apocalypse if they went unappeased for too long. These gods dominated the minds of the people of the age and they could dictate what the live of the people will be like and how they could cope in a world of suffering and pain that was circular and seemingly never ending as the coped with violence and with disease and wild beast they had no prior knowledge of.

The family group that made up the lives of the Greek gods was meant to exemplify many of the family dynamics of the Greek world and how people within the Greek community and what it meant for them to be successful in those roles and what I mean to utterly fail at their efforts to be a successful Greek individual the represented the best that the society had to offer and the best way to promote these core Greek values. The relationship between the initial heads of the Olympian family tree are perfect examples of how this works, after the battle with the Titans, the first family of the Greek universe it was Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Hades, and Chiron as the core family unit that was meant to be the template for the Greek family no matter how difficult and problematic things might have gotten between them. In fact in most cases when things went wrong it was often attributed to the fact that the family was in disarray and that member of the celestial royal family were behaving in ways which we contrary to their roles or in some cases when they stepped outside theses roles it was meant as part of a cautionary tale to ward Greek against emulating such behaviour.

Things got much more interesting for the Greek gods with the coming of the second generation that included Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, the Charities, Heracles, Dionysus, Hebe, and Persephone all of whom were according to some stories the children of Zeus and in most cases they shared some of that great patriarch very human limitations such as greed, lust, avarice, malice, sloth, and disinterest all of which meant hell for the humans who worshiped them The fact was that the gods resembled humans more closely that the deities of most other religions which is why they were so imperfect but it is also why they have had such a significant historical impact as people see themselves reflected in them.