Greeks practiced a polytheism, and indeed a polytheism of gods that are comparatively less "spiritual" and altogether of a lesser nature. As long as we make no attempt to think the Greek gods in the Greek way, i.e., on the basis of the essence of the Greek experience of Being, i.e., on the basis of ἀλήθεια, we have no right to say a word about these gods, whether in favor of them or against them.
b) The connection between μῦθος and the Greek deities. Earth, day, night, and death in relation to unconcealedness. The mysterious as one of the modes of concealment. Rejection of the negativity in falsity and in dissembling as the one and only counter-essence to the truth.
Since, in these remarks on the "didactic poem" of Parmenides, we are seeking the essence of the goddess Ἀλήθεια, sooner or later a time must come when we are forced to elucidate the connection between μῦθος and the Greek deities, for only these can be considered here. Μῦθος is legend, this word literally taken in the sense of essential primordial speech. "Night" and "light" and "earth" are a μῦθος—not "images" for concealing and unveiling, "images" which a pre-philosophical thinking does not transcend. Rather, concealment and unconcealedness are in advance experienced in such an essential way that just the simple change of night and day suffices to enhance the emergence of all essence into the preserving word, μῦθος. The mere distinction between light and darkness, which we usually ascribe to day and night, does not, taken for itself, say anything. Since the distinction as such says nothing about the essence of concealment and disclosure, it does not at all have the character of a μῦθος. The distinction between light and darkness remains "unmythical" unless first of all clearness and concealment already appear as the essence of the light and the dark and along with them that which comes into the light and recedes into the darkness appears in such a way that precisely this coming into the light and this receding into darkness make up the essence in which all presence and all absence dwell. Only if we pay heed to this will we have a measure for comprehending that the primordial thinker thinks Being itself on the basis of unconcealedness and concealment. And only if we have this measure can we assess the Greek words of concealing and sheltering in their essential relations to earth, death, light, and night.
Of course, the bastion of the prevailing essence of truth, veritas and truth as correctness and certitude, is occluding the primordial understanding of ἀλήθεια. This does not simply mean that culturally, in historiographical presentations of the Greek world, we no longer know and appreciate the early Greek "concept of truth," but it means something