“Humans get what they deserve from the Gods.”
How far do you agree with this statement?
The Gods often punish the humans, or reward them for their actions so I will be talking about the fairness of these punishments and how appropriate they are. Strictly speaking characters such as IO and Daphne are not humans but are so close to humans that they are treated as humans not deities so will be included in my answer. I will be talking about how the Gods and Goddesses treat humans, whether I think this treatment is fair and anything else significant.
In the story of IO, Jupiter sees IO and finds her irresistible so he surrounds them in clouds and rapes her. Juno sees the clouds and gets suspicious (knowing her husband Jupiter) so rushes down to see what is happening. Jupiter thinks fast and turns IO into a beautiful white cow however Juno is smart and asks for the cow as a present and orders Argus to watch over the cow (IO). Jupiter then sent Mercury to kill Argus and reclaim IO. Juno was mad so cursed IO with madness. Jupiter convinced Juno to remove the spell and return IO to human form. IO then becomes a Goddess and bears a son called Epaphus who is also a God. In this story, although IO is unfairly raped and then turned into a cow and cursed with madness; she later becomes a Goddess and has a child who is also a God. In this case IO does get what she deserves from the Gods in the sense that their wrongdoings were made up for by rewarding IO with becoming a Goddess and returning her to human form.
In the story of Lycaon, Lycaon tried to feed Jupiter human, killed a hostage and laughed at people praying to the gods. In return, he was turned into a vicious animal (a wolf) which is very appropriate as what he did was vicious and animalistic. In this case Lycaon got what he deserved from the Gods as he was himself a bad person. This shows that the Gods do in fact punish bad people for doing bad things and that some humans do get what they deserve from the gods.
In the story of the flood, Jupiter destroys the entire human race besides Deucalion and Pyrrha by flooding the earth, which could be seen as an over-exaggeration as surely not the entire human race could be evil. Deucalion and Pyrrha were god fearing, which is why they were saved. However this is an example of the gods being overly-harsh to humans and showing that humans do not get what they deserve from the gods.
In the story of Daphne, cupid makes her reject Apollo after making Apollo fall in love with her which leads to Apollo wanting to have sex with her. Apollo chases after Daphne until her father turns her into a laurel tree. This is appropriate as Daphne loves nature and wouldn’t have minded being a laurel tree. Although she was turned into a tree after fleeing from the predator Apollo, in