The Greeks had a unique juxtaposition between believing in multiple gods and goddesses on the one hand, and the pursuit of the liberal arts steeped in wisdom and virtue, with a healthy dose of scientific examination, on the other.  The gods that ruled over man could be benevolent one moment and angry or jealous the next.  These male and female gods with their dramas, played out in the heavens and on earth,  rivaled the best melodramas ever written by and about mere mortals.  In contrast, the great Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle espoused a more down to earth philosophical belief based on the pursuit of wisdom, virtue, and scientific exploration.  One could wonder (me) whether the belief in multiple gods who intervened in human life was maybe a product of a precarious environment, as opposed to the deep philosophical meditations of the great Greek thinkers at the time, which could have been born of the human imagination, irrespective of the environment.