Here... I'll give an example. (Most folks didn't study ancient Greece. I've actually taken some college courses, they're electives, in some of this sort of stuff.) This is a fun one. They don't actually teach this in detail at most schools, so you'll know part of the story. Everyone's heard of Pandora's Box and how it released all the bad things into the world. However, her box wasn't emptied - because it was the cruelest thing the gods could do to the humans. There was one thing left in Pandora's box when everything else was dumped out. That one thing was 'fate'. The humans could have everything, but they couldn't have that last item. Why? Because the gods most cruel thing is to never let man control their own fate. You can have disease and war, pestilence and plague, because you might someday control them - but no matter what, you could not control your fate. If the gods decided to fuck you over, you were fucked over - no matter how hard you tried. Along these lines is why so much Classic Greek mythology and art (such as plays) are tragedies. Humans could never control their own fate. That decided a lot of what they did. They'd go to oracles to hear what the gods had said would happen, to find out their fate. They'd find out their fate for a certain action, for a big decisions, or sometimes just once. There was a whole market economy surrounding it. It's pretty neat.