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What happens to a people who show no regard for Divine Law? Myth is not always metaphor or allegory. Sometimes we can physically see the ghosts of their realities.
I believe I heard this Myth for the first time many years ago, but it's one that has stuck with me as one of my favorites for several reasons. The story of Baucis (the wife) and Philemon (the husband), is about an impoverished couple who lived in a village in Phrygia (modern Turkey). While there is no surviving text that explicitly ties this story to Greek Myth, it was written by the Roman Ovid, who simply copied the Greek Myths he knew. Therefore, we might reasonably assume that Baucis and Philemon was one of those that he copied as well.
The Gods Zeus and Hermes went in disguise as needy travelers to test the Xenia (hospitality) of the people they encountered, as Xenia is a sacred and Divine Law of treating travelers and guests with help and courtesy. When they entered the village, they found that everyone turned them away, except for this elderly couple who likely had far less material wealth than some of the other villagers.
They did not have lavish banquet tables and expensive feasts for the Gods, or gold and silver to give them. They probably just had something like a wooden slab for a table, old wooden chairs, and a simple Hearth for cooking whatever they had. They likely had fresh water to offer to drink, or perhaps some young wine, and some basic fruits and vegetables. They may have had some basic meat if they had fished or hunted at times. But despite their lack of material, they treated the travelers with the greatest courtesy and gifts they had at their disposal. Ovid says they gave the Gods a feast of cabbage, smoked pork, olives, vegetables and herbs, eggs and cheese, and for dessert they gave nuts, apples, grapes and honey.
Having found the couple to be the only ones in the village worthy, the Gods took them to a hill overlooking the area before they flooded the village and everyone else in it, wiping them from the Earth. I imagine that, for this level of extremity, the Gods must have found the village unredeemable. As a reward for the elderly couple, they granted the couple any wish they wanted. They asked for two. One, to have a wonderful temple to serve the Gods in, and two, that they both die at the same time, so that neither one of them would ever have to be without the other. Both wishes were granted, leaving only the temple remaining in the area, and they lived out the rest of their lives as priests of the Gods and passed into their next life side by side. They both became intertwined trees, Baucis (Linden tree) and Philemon (Oak tree).
The obvious meaning of the story is simple, that Xenia is a Sacred Law that the Gods highly value and expect. But also, that the Gods will never look down one someone who is doing what they can with what they have, who is doing the best they can.
Modern archaeologists who have excavated this region have found submerged villages. In fact, throughout the region's history, places have been dropped right into lakes and the Sea. At present, there has been no temple found overlooking one of these submerged villages, but archaeologists have not even come close to excavating all there is to find in this part of the world.
Divine punishment came to the people of this village for their breaking of the sacred. Perhaps we might also look at it as a consequence of man's own folly, that when he disconnects from the Gods, it may not be that the Gods directly punish him, but that he loses their good graces, and disaster then more easily befalls him. In short, without the Gods, man is nothing. I don't see it as a message of fear-based religion, but of how much better our lives are when we are in harmony with the Universe.
In the Goodness of the Gods,
I'll see you at the next Herm down the road,
Chris Aldridge.