The World Cup has started, and the gods of football will be in their heaven for a whole month. Not the players, of course: the spectators.
Ancient gods, wielding absolute power, expected to have that power acknowledged. This was usually done by their adherents carrying out specific rituals at the right time and the right place. Do that, and the gods would smile favourably upon them, offering them personal benefits and even immortal glory in the eyes of the world. Fail, and that would be an affront, an insult to the gods’ dignity: their wrath would be unconditional.
So when, in the course of the Trojan war, Paris, seducer of Helen and cause of the war, was defeated in single combat by Helen’s husband Menelaus, the sex-goddess Aphrodite saved Paris from certain death, removed him from the battlefield and instructed Helen to make love to him.
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