It’s safe to say that we no longer believe in the gods of the ancient world — or rather, that most of us no longer believe in their lit­er­al exis­tence, but some of us have faith in their box-office poten­tial. This two-part video series from Van­i­ty Fair exam­ines a vari­ety of movies and tele­vi­sion shows that have drawn on Greek and Roman myth since the mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry, includ­ing Jason and the Arg­onauts, Clash of the Titans, Troy, and Dis­ney’s Her­cules. Offer­ing com­men­tary on their faith­ful­ness to the source mate­r­i­al is Peter Mei­neck, Pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics in the Mod­ern World at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

Not that he insists on hold­ing these enter­tain­ments to rig­or­ous stan­dards of accu­ra­cy. “I would not use the term ‘accu­ra­cy’ at any point in Xena: War­rior Princess, because it’s fan­tas­tic,” he says at one point. But then, when it comes to the sto­ries told by ancient Greeks and Romans, we’re deal­ing with rather fan­ta­sy-rich mate­r­i­al from the start.

Height­ened, aug­ment­ed, refined, and syn­cretized over many gen­er­a­tions, they’ve come down to us in forms that reflect more or less eter­nal­ly human notions about the forces that gov­ern real­i­ty and its vicis­si­tudes — ready made, in some cas­es, to incor­po­rate into the lat­est twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry super­hero spec­ta­cle.

Pos­sessed of dis­tinc­tive phys­i­cal traits, tem­pera­ments, super­hu­man pow­ers, and even grudges, the many gods of the poly­the­is­tic antiq­ui­ty were, in their way, the com­ic-book heroes of their time. And just as we have dif­fer­ent “uni­vers­es” of char­ac­ters to choose from, dif­fer­ent eras and cul­tures had their own line­ups of deities, none quite the same as any oth­er. “At the pin­na­cle of this teem­ing numi­nous uni­verse were the Olympians, the twelve gods head­ed by Zeus and Hera,” says ancient-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan in the Told in Stone video above. “The Greeks influ­enced Roman reli­gion vir­tu­al­ly from the begin­ning. By the time Rome emerged into the full light of his­to­ry, the Roman gods had been assim­i­lat­ed to their Greek coun­ter­parts.”

Hence our rec­og­niz­ing Greek Olympians like Posei­don, Artemis, Athena, and Diony­sus, but also their Roman equiv­a­lents Nep­tune, Diana, Min­er­va, and Bac­chus. “There seems to have been lit­tle doubt in Romans’ minds that their chief gods were the same as those of the Greeks,” Ryan says. “The Greeks, for their part, gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that the Romans wor­shipped their gods under dif­fer­ent names — while also being “eager col­lec­tors of exot­ic deities,” many of which could be found with­in their own vast empire. The result was a bewil­der­ing pro­fu­sion of gods for every occa­sion, Greek-inspired or oth­er­wise: an omen of the more-is-bet­ter ethos that the Hol­ly­wood block­buster would embrace a cou­ple of mil­len­nia lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

How Rome Began: The His­to­ry As Told by Ancient His­to­ri­ans

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.