Once Zeus has beaten the Titans and divided up the world, you might expect the stories to get quieter. A new king, a settled order, the end of the fighting. Instead the Olympian age is full of arguments, and if you look at what they are about, you start to see a pattern. Nearly every important fact about how the world works, the way we sacrifice, the cycle of the seasons, which city belongs to which god, is the outcome of a bargain. I'd call this the age of the settlement, because the central activity of the gods is not ruling. It is settling.
How to cut up an ox
The first deal is also the oddest. In Hesiod's account, at a place called Mecone, gods and mortals came together to decide what share each should have of a sacrificial animal. Prometheus, acting for humanity, killed a great ox and divided it into two portions. In one he wrapped the good meat and the entrails in the ox's stomach, so it looked ugly. In the other he arranged the bare bones under a layer of shining fat, so it looked splendid. He then asked Zeus to choose.
Zeus, Hesiod says, saw through the trick and chose the fat anyway. That is part of what makes the story fascinating. He knew. He took the bones and let the humans have the meat, and in return he made them pay for it. He withheld fire, hid the means of life, and later arranged for Pandora.
But think about what the scene explains. It is the reason that in a Greek sacrifice the gods get the smoke of the bones and the fat and the people eat the meat. The settlement is a joke that everyone has agreed to treat as a law. I'm struck by how openly cheeky it is. The ritual that the whole religion rests on is presented as a swindle that the god let happen.
The year as a compromise
The second great settlement is the seasons. Hades, with Zeus's consent, carries off Persephone. Her mother Demeter, who is the goddess of grain, stops letting anything grow. People starve, and with them go the sacrifices, so the gods have an interest in resolving this. Hermes is sent down to bring the girl back. Hades agrees to release her, but first he gives her a pomegranate seed to eat, and having eaten in the underworld she cannot be entirely released.
The compromise is that she spends part of the year below and part above. When she is below, the fields are bare, and when she returns, they flower. According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess then gives the people of Eleusis the Mysteries, a set of secret rites that promise a better lot after death.
I like to point out how shaped this is. The natural year, the thing that seems like a law of nature, is explained as a custody arrangement. Nobody wins. Persephone doesn't get her freedom. Hades doesn't get his wife full time. Demeter doesn't get her daughter back for good. The cycle that governs everyone's lives is what's left when three parties have each given something up.
Who gets which city
Then there is the question of who protects whom. Athens is the best-known case. Athena and Poseidon both wanted it, and a contest was held on the Acropolis. Poseidon struck the rock and a spring of salt water appeared. Athena planted an olive tree. The Athenians, or the gods who judged, chose the olive, and Athena got the city. Poseidon sulked, flooded the plain, and was eventually given a shrine on the Acropolis too, in the same building.
Notice that it isn't a winner takes all result. The loser gets his place at the table. Argos goes to Hera, after a contest with Poseidon. Corinth is shared with Helios. Delphi is Apollo's, but Gaia and Themis were there first, and the story of how he took over the oracle includes killing the serpent Python and being purified for it. In each case a god takes the lead and an older claimant is bought out.
This is why I think the Greek city is such a typical Olympian creation. Each one chooses a patron, and every patron has rivals, and the rivals must be placated. A city in the Greek world is a small treaty system, with one god in charge and several others who have to be kept on good terms with sacrifices. Mortals don't just worship in this age. They manage a diplomatic situation.
Everyone has a time
There is a word the poets use that I think sits at the centre of all this: time, which is pronounced tee-may and means honour, or a share of respect. Zeus's great skill, in the Theogony, is that he makes sure that everyone has a time. Hecate keeps hers. Styx gets hers. Even Night and Strife are kept in their places. The gods are always very concerned about whether they are being given their due.
Seen that way, the Olympian world is a system for distributing honour. A god who is slighted does something terrible. Artemis sends a boar because the king forgot her at a harvest feast. Poseidon plagues a city because it didn't pay him. Hera is unforgiving about the judgement of Paris. The things that seem like petty tempers are the way the system enforces itself. If you are not given your share, you have a right to make a scene.
The court that can't stop interfering
This explains something that confuses many readers: why the gods keep meddling in human affairs. They aren't simply bored. They have interests. Each one has a portfolio of cities, heroes and favourites, and each one is afraid of losing standing. In the Iliad, the gods take sides at Troy and spend half the poem trying to rescue their people while Zeus tries, with limited success, to keep order. Hera and Athena back the Greeks. Aphrodite and Apollo back the Trojans. It looks like a divine soap opera, and it is also a war between portfolios.
Even their home is built like a place for negotiation. In the Iliad, the gods meet in a great hall on Olympus, where Zeus sits at the head and the others argue. The gates are guarded by the Seasons, who open and close them. When there is something to decide, Zeus calls an assembly, as a human king would.
The price of a deal
Every one of these settlements had a loser, and I think that's what keeps the age interesting. The ox deal cost humanity fire. The seasons deal cost Persephone her childhood. The Athens deal cost Poseidon his city. Prometheus, who started the whole sequence of bargains, was chained to a rock for his trouble. The settlement makes life possible, and it also makes someone angry, who then waits for a chance to make trouble.
That is the reason I think the Olympian age is described as the long present. It is the age we are still in, because the settlements are still in force: the bones and the fat, the seasons, the patron cities. Nobody can reopen them without breaking something. The hymns that survive are all attempts to keep the deals working, by saying the right words to the right god at the right time, and they keep their tone because everyone involved knows how easily it could come apart.