The Greek gods that lived on mount Olympus were a very central part of Greek society. There was a very large array of different deities. These deities could account for almost every facet of the day-to-day lives of Grecian men and women. The Grecians connected their feelings, circumstances, situations, fate, and consequences to the gods. Most Greeks thought of the gods in a very involved and direct way, while others may have seen them more distantly.
             The Greeks, I believe, sought to understand the world. I feel that they could not come up with a clear reason for many events and feelings that happened around and to them, so they created a religion to explain those things. For instance, if a man was feeling the pangs of love for a woman, the goddess of love, Aphrodite, was affecting him. I saw this clearly throughout the story of the Iliad.
             In the very beginning of the Iliad Chryses, the priest of Apollo, goes to the Achaeans to try to ransom his daughter. Agamemnon is the man that is holding his daughter captive. Agamemnon is very fond of her and refuses to give her back. Chryses then goes and prays to Apollo to avenge him. Apollo hears his prayers and the text says,
             He came down furious from the summits of Mount Olympus, with his
             bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled upon his
             back with the rage that trembled within him.... first he smote their mules
             and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people
             themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.
             What I gather from this part of the story is that the Achaeans had fallen under a plague not from Apollo, but from some natural occurrence. Because of the close relationship between god and man in Greek mythology the only answer for the plague was the thought that they had angered a god somehow. Any occurrence in the Greek society, either a positive or negative event can be attributed to the gods. Jus...