Page "Naiad" Paragraph 8

Walter Burkert points out, " When in the Iliad Zeus calls the gods into assembly on Mount Olympus, it is not only the well-known Olympians who come along, but also all the nymphs and all the rivers ; Okeanos alone remains at his station ", Greek hearers recognized this impossibility as the poet's hyperbole, which proclaimed the universal power of Zeus over the ancient natural world: " the worship of these deities ," Burkert confirms, " is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality.