The Greeks:

Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae:

"In Egypt, sky-cult and earth-cult were harmonized, but in Greece there is a split. Greek greatness is Apollonian."

"Greece, unlike Egypt, never worshipped beast gods. Greek sky-cult kept nature in her place."

"I say there is neither person, thought, thing, nor art in the brutal chthonian."

" 'Olympian religion is essentially a religion of the successful, comfortable, and healthy ruling class. The downtrodden peasant, harassed by the necessities of keeping body and soul together in a natural unfruitful land, crippled by debt and social injustice, asked something very different of his gods: the Olympians bore a discouraging resemblance to his oppressors.' Aristocracy is aboveness. The Olympians are authoritarian and repressive. What they repress is the monstrous gigantism of chthonian nature, that murky night-world from which society must be reclaimed day by day."

"The fraternal androgynes Apollo and Artemis are, with Athena, the most militant of Olympians in the war against chthonian nature."

"Archaic art shows [Artemis] standing between heraldic animals, which she strangles with each hand. She rules them and she slays them."