Pagan Passions
The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece and Rome had returned to Earth--with all their awesome powers intact, and Earth was transformed almost overnight. War on any scale was outlawed, along with boom-and-bust economic cycles, and prudery--no change was more startling than the face of New York, where, for instance, the Empire State Building became the Tower of Zeus! In this totally altered world, William Forrester was an acolyte of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and therefore a teacher, in this case of a totally altered history--and Maya Wilson, girl student, evidently had a totally altered way of grading in mind--but what else would a worshipper of Venus, Goddess of Love, have in mind?
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there wasn't a thing. No irreverence toward any of the Gods, in his private life, his religious functions or his teaching position, at least as far as he could recall. The Gods knew that unorthodoxy in an Introductory History course, for instance, was not only unwise but damned difficult.
Of course, he was aware of the real position of the Gods. They weren't omnipotent. Their place in the scheme of things was high, but they were certainly not equal with the One who had created the Universe and the Gods themselves in the first place. Possibly, Forrester had always thought, they could be equated with the indefinite "angels" of the religions that had been popular during his grandfather's time, sixty years ago, before the return of the Gods. But that was an uncertain theological notion, and Forrester was quite ready to abandon it in the face of good argument to the contrary.
Whatever they were, the Gods were certainly the Gods of Earth now.
The Omnipotent Creator had evidently left it for th
