It is not that the Greeks saw the gods is being created straightforwardly in their human image the gods have a certain vitality about themselves. A certain pure energy, evident in the passage of Dionysus in the Homeric hymn?
The Homeric hymn to Demeter depicts the deity in anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic representations nicely in three passages. In the first passage Demeter is wondering the Earth and she has disguised her Divine Divinity ‘no man can see through her cover’ but there two instances where she fails to (one-time accidentally and the other time deliberately ) repress her true form. In searching for her stolen daughter Persephone Demeter becomes a nurse at the house of Keklos. Both passages of very interesting for what they can tell us about how dangerous a direct encounter with a Greek divinity is. She has been depicting herself in different kinds of anthropomorphic ways and that means that she can move among humans unrecognised but then her true divinity slips out in the second passage and then she manifests into her true for in third passage.
In the second passage we have a partial epiphany of the goddess, because she is mourning her lost daughter she stops being able to disguise her divinity fully. Is entered into the palace what she sees is the wife of …. Holding her child and precisely because she is missing her own child so deeply she lets her anthropomorphic veil fall momentarily. How is it the divine nature manifests itself in this passage? Because her divinity transforms the surroundings there is a lot of emphasis on light. Light plays a very significant role in divine appearance e.g. in Homer's Odyssey Athena is typically manifested as a CNET glower copious, often translated as grey eyed Athena. Athena manifests many many times in the Odyssey often appearing in bright light, dazzling light, a quite unsettling presence as well. Apart from when Athena is making particularly developed disguises that will protect mortals from unmediated encounter with the deity. Here we have a very strong emphasis on light and the effects on the Queen (Metinira) are very interesting. She sees with fear, reverence and a pale fear ‘green fear’ that seizes Metinira. She senses that something greater has overcome her, she doesn't actually realise who she has encountered but there is an awareness on Metinira’s part that she has come into contact with something that is greater than herself. The significance of the height of the goddess also ‘she is the height of the mortals’ but when she is temporarily manifesting her Divine presence she becomes taller as well. Then when Metinira offers Demeter a chair she refuses to come down to Metinira’s level; which is the logic of that reference. The divine light showers her surroundings and Metinira feels awe and fear; these feelings are typical of what happens to mortals when they experience their epiphany manifestation of a deity.
In the final passage what Demeter does is shared of her disguise completely. She is angry, she is furious at this point; Metinira walks in on Demeter (who has been nursing her young born son, grooming him to divinity, to keep as her own, making him immortal-a son and heir of the kingdom) entrusted to Demeter as a nurse. Every night performing various rituals to make him divine and immortal placing him in fire every night which is a very interesting manifestation. Metinira accidentally walked in on this transformation progress when she believe Demeter was trying to kill him, when actually indeed she was ironically trying to make him immortal. Demeter was furious to have this immortalisation process interrupted. We get her manifestation of her true divinity where she changes the size of her appearance- thrusting of her disguise as an old woman. ‘She becomes larger-than-life; her youth and beauty manifests themselves’ light again is very significant, radiance floods in like lightning. There is a very strong emphasis on movable light in divine epiphanies just as Athena's gaze glower copious gaze is a very movable darting gaze. Again we can chart this affects that this epiphany has on Metinira she can not speak because she is coming to the presence of Divinity. For example Metinira’s knees buckle, she loses her voice for a long time, she's petrified, she even forgets her role as a mother because of the effects that are so profound she forgets to pick up a her only dear son from the floor therefore she is being neglectful under the awe of reverence that she is experiencing.
In conclusion the Greeks depicted their gods in a variety of different ways. Which conveys just how far divine for the Greeks was something very diverse something very varied, like looking at polytheism there are numerous gods all represented in different ways. Here we can look from a different perspective on just how diverse and varied the divine role was to the Greeks. Each deity would be infinitely extendable by their epithets; here we can see how diverse individual deities are thanks to the range of ways that they can be represented anthropomorphically and non-anthropomorphically. Also intriguingly the combination of use of anthropomorphism and non-anthropomorphic. One must stress that these humanised traits are so significant to divine representations, the fifth re is a convenience that they enable communication between humans and their gods. They enable humans to enter into a relationship with their deities however divine nature is more pure, it is more perfect than flawed human bodies are. Gods are both accessible but also fundamentally other. A god is over granting duality of deities and anthropomorphism expresses this duality very nicely.
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