The Gods were generally considered agathoi, were they not? There were no gods of evil in the Greek pantheon, or come to think of it in any pantheon of which I am aware.
I would guess that most pre-Christian societies equate power and good, meaning worthy of respect. Alexander is Great because he is a great conquerer. You are kakos of you are a weak little pussy, unable to stand up against the agathoi (who will probably come in and enslave you and take your women, as they are entitled to do). What is more powerful, and therefore more worthy of respect, than a big natural phenomenon, like a plague (Apollo) or earthquake (Poseidon)?
--- On Sun, 10/19/08, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> I don't have the energy just now to debate this, but
> this is absolutely
> wrong. The very term, "good," makes no sense at
> all in this context.
> Something that was powerful was powerful, PERIOD. It is
> absurd to add
> "good" or "bad" to this proposition.
> The nearest Homer comes to applying
> such a judgment (and only implicitly, since I doubt that
> the appropriate
> abstraction existed in his vocabulary) is in an episode
> that I have not
> reread recently and can't be specific or not, but the
> gods begin to
> laugh uncontrollably. The gods are powerful and must be
> respected, or
> elese, but there is essentially nothinng "good"
> about them. Because they
> cannot die, they cannot have the dignity nor the greatness
> of an
> Achilles knowing he is going to die, and acting under that
> knowledge.
>
> You and I look at the same evidence and come to opposite
> conclusions,
> so I don't know what can resolve the debate.
>
> Carrol
>
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