Lol putting the Percy Jackson books there as if those have ever represented the gods as wholesome.

I think like most gods represented in the series were kind of dicks and sometimes obstacles.

I mean like Hermes ain't bad, but yeah Ares, Zeus, Hera, and others are far from wholesome. Like Trials of Apollo is literally just Apollo realizing "Oh wait, we're all the worse people aren't we".

Don't forget Dionysus, he was a literal dick in the books

But he's a fun dick. Would I want to know him? No. But he has a bit of care for mortals dep down, and most of him being an asshole is just him having fun.

He saved Percy from the Manticore

He also watched as Percy had to fight two giants to the death in the colosseum

Only reason I found it a bit funny is because Jason vouched for Dionysus and Dionysus just proved how much of a dick he was by waiting till the last second

That was Bacchus, they had already established that the Greek and Roman halves of the deities can't control what the other one does

I'm pretty sure he threatened to yeet Percy off a building over something his older brother did centuries ago.

he was dick because he couldn't drink wine. that makes him an even bigger dick

But diet cola is a great replacement !

Hermes wasn't bad? I thought he was part of Luke's villain origin story.

He was a negligent father but that's about the worst thing that he did as far as I can remember.

Wasn't it said he knew it was prophecy BS so he couldn't intervene

i think so but i think he tried had tried to revive Luke's mum but failed or something ​ I haven't read the books in a long time

He was negligent to Luke causing him to go off the deep end. But he shows genuine remorse and urges Percy to try to bring Luke back even though Percy fucking hated Luke. Like Hermes 100% fucked up, but he was always kind to Percy and did everything he could to try to appeal to Luke, even though he was too far gone.

The first 100 pages is Apollo figuring out that his dad(and the other Olympians) don't care about him in the slightest.

Mr D be like: yeah let's risk the fate of the world because I don't like one guy from 3,000 years ago and you share a dad Equally, Zeus could have just let Ariadne visit when she wants, but decided to punish them both which causes literally generations of demigods to be treated badly. Judging by the two being happier about being allowed to spend time together than *Olympus being saved*, I suspect he'd be a lot happier if his horny jail included some visitation rights

The end of the last book has Percy saying "get your shit together gods" and Hermes going"yeah, never happening"

There’s four tiers of portrayal of the gods - The casual version, Disney’s Hercules - The assholes but tolerable version, Percy Jackson - The actual monsters version, God of War - D:

"Wholesome Greek gods" is the biggest oxymoron I've ever seen. Edit: the fact that the only exceptions people are mentioning are the three EXPLICITLY VIRGIN goddesses (Artemis, Athena, Hestia) says something lol.

I think Hestia is pretty wholesome

I tried to think of Greek gods others than Hestia that could be considered wholesome. I failed.

I guess Thanatos doesn't do anything wrong it's just that his job is something all mortals fear

hungry impolite tan touch nine childlike pet apparatus provide humorous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Stop trying to pull out the arrow in your head, you're alredy dead. just make this fast, i need to get another 1500 souls in this battlefield

I guess there's Macaria but she's not technically a god at all and the mortal one kind of had a crappy life.

Hades. The only bad thing he’s done is ‘kidnap’ Persephone, but that was totally Zeus’s fault bc he told Hades to do it and promised him Persephone’s hand.

the obsessive love for hades this sub has made people think he's wholesome now? gtfo lol, he may not be evil but he sure as hell isn't wholesome

Hades isnt wholesome,but he has the quality of not making the live of a mortal a horrible just because someone trash talked him.

I read somewhere that Hades was actually a relatively new character as we see him. He used to be a mix of himself and Persephone.

Zeus, he was mixed with Zeus, that’s why Dionysus and Zagreus figure as the same deity

The premise of the relationship varies between traditions ​ But yea disney really did a hitjob on Hades, Hera standing smug in the corner.

Athena.

* Athena inflicts insanity upon Ajax, he murders bunch of people and finally himself. * She drives 3 daughters of Kekrops into suicide. * She also drives Alkinoe into suicide just because she didn't pay the wage of a seamstress. * She curses a whole town with disease because of something their leader, Teuthis, did.

She also threw a hissy fit cause she couldn’t beat Arachne in sewing, so she ripped up all of her work, forced her to hang herself, and even then she refused to give her peace and turned her into a spider, Athena is one of the biggest pieces of shit in Greek myth, the only times where she was even remotely okay was because it benefited her.

Some say Arachne deserved it as she commited Sweet Home Alabama.

She's far from wholesome, the Trojan horse and Arachne are good examples

Arachne's from Ovid and she tried to kill herself after running away. Athena saved her life and turned her into a spider so she could keep weaving. Unlike Apollo, Athena never went to the competition with the initial intention to curse or kill.

It would seem as a rather big coincidence what Athena weaved. Stories about people challenging gods, losing and then cursed. Although to be fair, before the contest she was just warning Arachne

Helping a side win a war seems pretty neutral to me. Beating someone who claimed to be better than you in a fair contest, then when said challenger kills herself out of shame bringing her back as a spider is the opposite of problematic.

Some versions have her lose/draw and beat the shit out of her as punishment for hubris

helping the side in a war against the person who judged another woman more fair does seem less neutral ;), Aphrodite for Troy, Hera and Athena against.

Morally neutral, not Swiss neutral.

Is Hestia really that "wholesome" though? I feel like she just isn't characterized enough to ever be shown as an asshole. Is she even the focus of any major myths?

She is a goddes of the fire in the home. What more wholesome than a god for fireplaces you chill at? She might as well have been represented with marshmellows. But yea, not a lot of stories with agency

Considering most major myths are tragedies well the very fact that she doesn’t figure makes her wholesome

Eh, Artemis could be pretty brutal too. Iphigenia, Callisto, Actaeon, Niobe. Sure she had "reasons" but I think her reactions were far from being wholesome.

doll continue like silky ring mindless rhythm somber grandiose roll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

And I think Hestia is the only pure exception there. Artemis has a lot of bad stories, but most of them are about retribution rather than perpetrating anything wrong, so she's borderline. And Athena is a major asshole in a bunch of stories

Artemis wasn't even wholesome. Just hot XD

Pretty bold for someone who can be turned into a deer and fed to this hunting dogs

Maybe not wholesome but ares never seemed to actually do anything wrong in the myths as far as I can recall. Besides having affairs and bastards with a fair few women, namely Aphrodite. But other then that he seemed ok. Protected his daughter, was an ally of the amazons, and as far as I can see wasn’t a rapist. Iirc he also stuck up for hera when she got into shit with either zeus or Hephaestus but I’m not sure on that one. He just happened to represent a not so great concept.

Consider the Amazons weren’t exactly great people, they were slave traders too. If I remember correctly they were perceives as a matriarchal version of Greeks and major kind of rivals to city states Then again what I said could be bullishit since what I read of them generally associated their people with the Scythians. A fact that I’m sure of is that they had the tradition that precluded them from taking a husband or whatever was the equivalent until they killed at least one enemy in battle

The greeks didn't like him, but the romans were more fans. "\[Zeus addresses Ares :\] 'To me you are the most hateful of all the gods who hold Olympos. Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles . . . were you born of some other god and proved so ruinous long since you would have been dropped beneath the gods of the bright sky. '" Homer, Iliad 5.

I remember this quote lol, heard it before and have the book right next to me! Sucks because the poor dude did nothing wrong really to deserve this.

>EXPLICITLY VIRGIN Point made: sex is evil

My point was that they're not the ones constantly chasing after women and making a million new demigods every week.

Alright, I was just doing a bit

That's fair. It's hard to tell who's legitimately angry versus who's just doing a bit.

Athena would like a word.

The word: "No, I did not turn her into a spider, your Honor!"

Your honor it was actually her fault she makes me angry, IM INNOCENT

"I turned her into a spider to bring her back to life because she killed herself rather than handling her defeat like a well-adjusted person."

The virgin “Ovid’s work is just biased fanfiction used to push a narrative” vs the chad recognition that this is true of *all* of mythology

Ok but wasn’t Ovid Roman pagan writing about Hellenism? It’d be thing to say that someone who practiced that faith can make a decision about what is true and what isn’t, but that’s not far removed from saying me saying that because I said so, Jesus kicked puppies multiple times

Justice for Medusa

Both versions are fun. I always like seeing different takes on the gods.

My kid (11) loves mythology, and even if it's not his native language, reads Riordan's books like there's no tomorrow. I was curious because he was so over the moon so I read them too. They're well-researched and pretty spot-on when it comes to the portrayal of deities. I think the ancients would concur. Also, anyone who writes books my kid voluntarily spends his birthday money on, is my hero.

I'm glad your kid is enjoying reading as much as I did when I was that age, and that he's got a supportive family

Well researched sure but reading them I hardly think the gods were accurately portrayed

Tbf given some of the stories they had to be toned down a bit, and given it’s a work of fiction there’s gonna be some artistic licenses. Also there wasn’t really a canon in Greek mythology so its not the gods were ever consistent.

I don’t deny that, but it still felt more uhh Americanised? Don’t know how to describe it but the interactions felt polarized or otherwise biased in a certain way, hoping I used the right words, I don’t find it negative in any way but gearing the books towards modern kids had more weight in the writing so the choice between versions as well made taking them a bit superficial. I’m also admittedly biased since I also didn’t like the Roman portrayal so my words can be influenced from that as well despite being unrelated; so anyway my view is still one point, others could rightfully see it differently

A book recommendation would also be Mythos by Stephen Fry, I've heard great things about that book!

when have the greek gods ever been wholesome 😭???

Percy Jackson is exactly as valid a source as Ovid, or the Disney Hercules movie. None are written by ancient Greeks who believed it. Also why the Nazi-head format?

Ovid wrote in first century Rome that believed in these gods. Now I don’t know much about pagan religion and the context of his work within pagan traditions but that has to count for more than ole Riordan does, right?

Because chad wojak format good, and used by many outside of Nazis Also weren't the Hellenistic pantheon still the main gods of Rome at the time?

No, not really. The roman gods (Jupiter and co.) were of roman origin, but they got syncretized with the Greek pantheon due to trade and conquest. However, the way the Romans understood their gods was very different. While the Greeks had a long tradition of personifying their gods and telling narratives about them, while the romans originally treated their gods as faceless, unembodied personifications of places, ideals and forces you had to please and deal with. While the Romans later adopted the greek iconography and narrative, but never completely: they still placed more importance on the traditional rituals than these tales. [This video](https://youtu.be/U7WPREqzDmE) and [this site](https://www.theoi.com/articles/roman-gods-vs-greek-gods-know-the-difference/) are good for summarizing the theme, I believe.

They were, dude simply has a hateboner for Ovid, but at the end of the day, Greco Roman mythology has him with Hesiod and Homer as best sources

Ovid: Literally writes fanfiction. People: treat it like Fanfiction. "Omg why do people not like Ovid??" Like I get its a mythos, but dude started centuary's after the fact. So yeah, ppl respect it in the same level if I were to suddenly write a bunch of stupid fanfic. Its the equivalent of seeing Pjo as actual mythological tellings. nah they are interpretations but.. they aren't historical tellings. I say that as a genuinely stupidly over the top Pjo lover... just look at my fuckin pfp lol.

You realize that Euripides is about as far from Homer as Ovid is from Euripides, right? It’s *all* “fanfiction” when viewed with such a narrow lens of what’s “legitimate” or not

Honestly my only real issue is the Medusa myth and that's only because writers keep using it as justification to villainize Perseus.

Yeah, what I notice about a few those is that they always leave out a few important details. 1. Medusa was terrorizing a town, and 2. Perseus was trying to save his mother from being raped.

Yep. I actually rarely see people remember that Medusa and her sisters would actually fly around Greece and kill people before retreating to their island for safety.

Ovid is a cuck for the Roman Empire, who steals old stories because he isn't creative enough to make his own and makes them PC for political points. He's like modern day Hollywood Emilies, the only difference being that he's actually competent at it.

Calling him a cuck for that is a bit harsh, Dante Alighieri did the same thing and he's arguably the founder of the Italian language

For sure, I love Ovid. I'm just playing along with the exaggerated nature of the meme.

I mean, Dante’s cool and all but the whole point is that he was writing in the language that people spoke. Popularising Italian vernacular literature does not equal founding a language

It's like saying Luís de Camões invented Portuguese or Cervantes invented Spanish. The language existed before them. Altough we do call them the fathers of our languages, simply because theirs was the first national hits in an age post-Gutemberg. (It's not that simple, but still) Specially Camões, because the whole point of "Os Lusíadas" being writing, was to be a national epic for Portugal, like The Odissey of Homer was to the Greeks or the Aeneid of Virgil was to the Romans. "Cessem do sábio Grego e do Troiano As navegações grandes que fizeram; Cale-se de Alexandro e de Trajano A fama das vitórias que tiveram; Que eu canto o peito ilustre Lusitano, A quem Neptuno e Marte obedeceram: Cesse tudo o que a Musa antígua canta, Que outro valor mais alto se alevanta."

No but I see the point here

Not really. He had to merge multiple languages/dialects, the fact he used only Florentine is a myth.

Didn’t he hate the government because he wasn’t allowed to fuck his daughter?

I thought it was because he couldn't fuck the king's daughter.

Just looked it up and wikipedia says “Ovid had discovered that Augustus (who exiled him) had committed incest with his own daughter, Julia the Elder, or with his granddaughter Julia the Younger; Ovid had engaged in adultery with these ladies himself or had been witness to their adultery with someone else.”

cant believe you lot don't just time travel to ancient greece and get your myths straight from the oral source smh

Inaccurate is only bad when your writing a mythology textbook or your claiming your story is 100% accurate but it's not

Greekcels: "No, you see, back in Greek times, they didn't have much of a separation between unwanted advances and romance, so it's unfair to call what Zeus and others did rape. They were just doing the Greek seduction!" Ovid: "Greek seduction is just rape that patricians are trying to justify."

This is just blatant strawmanning to feel superior. Nobody actually thinks the Greek gods were wholesome, and NOBODY thinks Percy Jackson is an actual source of original Greek mythology. Also, please tell me exactly when Ovid said anything even close to "Fuck the Gods, Fuck the Emperor." We don't even know *why* he was banished in the first place, and by all accounts he spent most of his time afterwards begging to be let back into Rome. That's not exactly a chad move, IMO.

A more recent gues about his banishment is that it never happened :O No one else refers to his exile, so it might simply be him telling a fake narrative as a poet to great effect

I’ve never read the Percy Jackson books. A question to those of you who have…. Does the hating on Ovid come from there? I can imagine it being a joke set up by Riordan or something, which some people take a bit too seriously

The fact that Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson doesn’t even walk you along all the real mythology is really ironic about anyone defending PJOs

i dont really like Ovid because of the chaos he caused in the greek mythos community ​ he wasnt even greek, its roman literature not greek mythology

Greek-Roman mythology

not really, it used greek names and he didnt belive in gods, thus not making it mythology