Thwarted Expectations of Divine Reciprocity

Abstract

The notion of reciprocity in Greek religion has been approached from many angles. One question that has not been treated concerns human discontent at gods’ gifts. Given that, in Greek literature, characters conceptualised their relationship with gods as a bond of reciprocal χάρις, did these fictive characters use the same conceptual frame in talking about frustrated expectations of divine reciprocity? When gods did not give in return what had been hoped for, was such disappointment ever constructed as a case of dysfunctional reciprocity? In this paper I argue that the answer is ‘no’, but a conscious no. Explicit disappointment in divine reciprocity occurs, but exclusively under ‘special circumstances’. Such criticism is uttered by characters who are not Greek, for example, who are portrayed as having rather strange views anyway, or who have a very special reciprocal relationship with a god based on divine parenthood of a human child. The distribution and nature of complaints shows that reproaching gods about disappointed reciprocity was consciously considered as very un-Greek.