Modern Day Military VS Olympian Pantheon.

[madd0ct0r]

divide and conquor?

the greek gods were always fractious - secretly offer a few of them more worship in return for getting rid of the rest of the family?

[Batman]

Don't you mean Kevin Sorbo?

In the Hercules and Xena shows, Ares was played by actor Kevin Smith.

As this is supposed to be in-universe I don't know how either actor's mass figures into it. Especially in a universe where pretty much everybody is that evil-tempered Canadian. Every time Herc throws henchmen of the week into the nearest wall/tree/rock, they get up and run away.

[Solauren]

I still say that Hercules and Xena are a bad measure of the combat abilities of the Olympians.

Hercules consideration -
Zeus extended his rule against Olympians killing Olympians to include Hercules and a number of his offspring. Therefore, Ares couldn't just beat the tar out of Hercules using divine power. He had to go at it the old fashioned way (hand to hand), and in that case, Hercules proved to be a better warrior.

Also, it was shown Hercules was comparable in power to other pantheons deities even without that limitation (meaning Ares would have been at a disadvantage). i.e Hercules went head to head in combat with a Divinely powered Gilgimesh (after he drank the Nector of the Gods of his pantheon), and with Thor himself (hammer and all). There is no question that Hercules beat Gilgimesh in a fight, but there is a little with THor due to Loki's use of the Paints of Fate. However, Hercules WAS able to pick up Mjonir without any problems.

Hercule also beat up and killed at least one Celtic Deity as well. Also, during the exercism of Dahak from Ioulous, he stood toe to toe with Dahak for a bit. Let's also not forget that he's travelled to another dimension and rescued his pantheon from imprisonment.

And, most telling, the second Ares was fighting a Hercules he wasn't forbidden to kill, the Sovereign, Ares easily killed him.

Now, let's consider Xena
There is a small chance that Xena was actually Ares daughter. Zeus would have known this, even if Ares didn't, and could have extended that rule covertly. THis is, however, highly unlikely. I'll ignore this fact.

First, Xena had a magical weapon. Her Charkam was apparently the Charkam of Darkness. It's opposite, the Charkam of Light, was capable of killing gods. In fact, we saw it do just that. The Charkam of darkness may have had the effect of protecting her when fighting deities. This would explain why Xena, a mere mortal, was able to stand up to Ares in a fight, how she was able to go toe to toe with Callisto after she became a deity. Once she balanced the Charkam of Light and Darkness, it was no longer able to kill Deities on it's own. However, after this point, Xena didn't fight any deities until she was empowered by the Archangel Micheal and his 'mysterious' lord to fight and kill them in defence of her daughter. It also explains how she was able to beat up Odin later in the series. She was indirectly protecting Eve by giving Ares and Aprodite golden apples to regain their divinity, thereby stabilizing the world.

In short, we can't measure the powers of the Olympian deities using that show, because the two characters that actually fought them, usually had divine help of some kind in the process. Essentially, it was deity vs deity.


We did see, however, that Hera could plung the entire world into an ice age (Hercules movie), that the gods can time travel (Callisto did this, guided by Dahak's daughter), open Interdimensional Portals (several instances), teleport (numerous instances), perform telekinesis (several instances), had telepathy (Ares read Jocker-desendent's mind in one episode), bring back the dead (several instances), transmute matter (several instances), control the weather (several instances), hurl fire (mostly Callisto), hurl lightning and energy (numerous instances), and apparently, and they could also be restored to life. (Every episode of Hercules and Xena are considered canon. So despite Callisto killed Strife, and Xena killing just about all the olympians, they are mentioned as being alive in our time period by Ares, and Strife is seen at least once). They're also hinted at being capable of alot worse.

Also, we can't forget about the existence of ambrosia. If it turns out the Olympians are outmatched by the modern military, that can just bring a bunch of loyal worshippers back to life (or recruit them), and feed them ambrosia to increase their numbers!

Sorry, if any pantheon but the old Norse gods show up, we're boned.

If the old Norse Gods show up, we just have to introduce them to modern alchol (followed by the concept of AA)

[Revy]

As this is supposed to be in-universe I don't know how either actor's mass figures into it. Especially in a universe where pretty much everybody is that evil-tempered Canadian. Every time Herc throws henchmen of the week into the nearest wall/tree/rock, they get up and run away.

Hey, I wasn't advocating using the actors mass to calculate anything here. In fact I did a post recently saying the exact opposite. I was only pointing out above that the person who did suggest doing so likely did in fact mean Kevin Smith and not Kevin Sorbo. But like you say, I don't see what use drawing upon either actors data does given that divine powers are supposed to be involved.

[jollyreaper]

The myths are a total mess. They make comic book continuities look sane and sorted. It's hard to reconcile ideas like gods dropping mountains in one myth and tussling with mortals the next. It's literally a case of 'power depends on the writer.'

As for power by worship, that's an old trope. Greek gods are said to consume nectar and ambrosia which is the food of the gods and keeps them immortal. The food can be stolen which is worthy of eternal punishment.

But remember, there are many competing myths. Were the Titans overthrown by the Olympians? Yes. So they're all in Tartarus? Yes. Except how did Prometheus steal fire if he's a Titan if he's locked away? And how is Atlas holding up the world if he's trapped in Tartarus?

So it's a pretty hard question to ask, how would these gods fare against a modern military. This is pretty much like Star Wars vs. Star Trek. It's impossible to say in the abstract and you'd have to assign some arbitrary values. It'd be like if you tried to pit Norse gods vs. Greek gods vs. Aztec gods, you'd have to determine relative power levels and balance things so the story could remain interesting.

In Greek mythology Zeus was more of a dickhead in chief but Jupiter was more praiseworthy as a godly god, a real prototype for the Christian bearded man in the sky. In terms of power, I'd say he certainly ranks above Cthulhu. Compared to the Christian god, I think our concept of alleged power is greater due to our sense of cosmic scale. The known universe of the 21st century is so much bigger than the known universe of Greece and Rome. But if the Romans had modern astronomical data, I'm sure they'd say Jupiter did it, too.

[Eternal_Freedom]

IIRC, Prometheus was able to avoid being locked up because he sided with the Olympians. Presumably Atlas did something similar.

[Darth Wong]

The myths are a total mess. They make comic book continuities look sane and sorted. It's hard to reconcile ideas like gods dropping mountains in one myth and tussling with mortals the next. It's literally a case of 'power depends on the writer.'

The big problem with anything involving Olympian gods is that there is no "official" text on them. The Hellenic religion never had the centralized legalistic attitude of Christianity, with a single authoritative book. So you have a hodge-podge of different stories.

[madd0ct0r]

Mein Gott, Ich hat vergesse meiner Historik!

in the events that precipitated the Trojan War, the gods were arguing over who was the rightful owner of the three golden apples.
(they had, 'to the fairest' or something written on them.)





where is the third?