THE GODS IN TRAGEDY

It is often emphasized that we must be careful to avoid seeing the Greek gods through Christian spectacles. But the emphasis has, I suggest, itself often distorted our view. Here, for instance, in an influential paper on the Oedipus Tyrannus, is E. R. Dodds:

But what is this supposedly decisive opinion of Achilles? That Zeus has two urns, from which he distributes to men either a mixture of sorrows and blessings or mere sorrows. This idea, which occurs only this once in Homer, does not in fact exclude the possibility that Zeus upholds justice and punishes injustice. True, the Homeric Zeus does not on the whole have such a role, at least as far as our conception of justice is concerned. But what has been ignored until recently is that he and other gods have a strong sense of the reciprocal obligation imposed on them by (especially) animal sacrifices, even if they are sometimes unable to fulfil it.