“What I find funny is this: Do you think Greek peoples worship the Greek pantheon today?”
“Probably not, no.”
“Right, but they did in ancient times?”
“Well, yeah. At least most did, if not everybody. How else are they going to get all those statues?”
“Totally. Last question before my point: Do you think they thought of the gods as real, or as ideas?”
“Mix of both, likely. But would it matter?”
“Totally, and in some ways, maybe. Take Athena for example, goddess of wisdom, right? More specifically, she’s the goddess of wisdom in battle. Strategy and tactics in war. Ideas. Pieces on a board. That might be why she’s depicted beautifully and with strength. But war is the domain of Aries, right? And his statues aren’t always as pretty. Some are, when he’s being glorified, but many others show him as savage and scary.
“That might be because while Athena rules the strategy, tactics, and pieces on the board, Aries is the brutal, on-the-ground reality of war. So when a soldier died, feeling the sharp steel of a spearhead tearing through his guts while far from home, that was Aries. When a once fresh-faced young man had to lie face down in a slurry of mud, blood, and feces in hopes of being overlooked while the enemy combed the dead slaughtering survivors, that was Aries. And when a child’s memory of an unremarkable, warm morning fades as she watches from beneath the bed as her mother has her body pillaged by rabid men, the stink of her blood and the sweat and the breath fills her nose, she’s staring deeply into the eyes of Aries himself.
“I think the gods had their statues built out of a mixture of worship and of fear, but I think that’s always been the way that power has been displayed to people, and I think that’s on purpose.”
The Light of Day 