Thwarted Expectations of Divine Reciprocity

The notion of reciprocity in Greek religion has been approached from many angles.
One question that has not been treated concerns human discontent at gods’ gifts.
Given that, in Greek literature, characters conceptualised their relationship with gods
as a bond of reciprocal χάρις, did these fictive characters use the same conceptual
frame in talking about frustrated expectations of divine reciprocity? When gods did
not give in return what had been hoped for, was such disappointment ever constructed
as a case of dysfunctional reciprocity? In this paper I argue that the answer is ‘no’, but
a conscious no. Explicit disappointment in divine reciprocity occurs, but exclusively
under ‘special circumstances’. Such criticism is uttered by characters who are not
Greek, for example, who are portrayed as having rather strange views anyway, or who
have a very special reciprocal relationship with a god based on divine parenthood of a
human child. The distribution and nature of complaints shows that reproaching gods
about disappointed reciprocity was consciously considered as very un-Greek.