In the following excerpt, Griffin looks at the ways in which the Diad deals with a past mythic age in which the gods involved themselves in the lives of godlike, heroic humans.

With small exceptions, the serious poetry of Greece is concerned with the myths; and the subject of Greek mythology is the heroes. These are two obvious facts. Epic dealt with the "deeds of gods and men," and so did the choral lyric, while even the personal lyric is full of mythical narratives and excursions. Tragedy, too, tended to restrict itself to the mythical period, although the Capture of Miletus, by Phrynichus, and the Persians, by Aeschylus, show that this was not actually a rule. The mythical period was quite a short one, two or three generations about the time of the Theban and Trojan wars; the rest of the past, however vivid or striking in...