Why the Greek gods are a form of propaganda

Very absorbed in and very much enjoying reading the Stephen Mitchel tr. of Homer's The Odyssey, yet of course feeling a little uncomfortable as well: yes this a seminal work of world literature and yes it's written from the viewpoint of an entirely different culture and yes our world has evolved, perhaps even for the better, over 2 + millennia and yet: are others troubled by the class structure of "classic" Greek literature? We extol the virtual of Greek literature, philosophy, and, most important, Athenian democracy - but reading Homer we also see how limited any democratic principles were when it came to afflicting any of the powers of the oligarchs - however wise and benevolent they may have been. This was a slave society, there's no other way to put it, and the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the very few who, through their well-armed militias, protected that wealth. Yes, much of The Odyssey concerns Telemachus' protection of his family fortune - but by whose right does he own that fortune? You can be sure there were (quiet) voices of dissent in Homer's time - but not from the official (that is, protected and preserved for posterity) court poets. If there weren't some form of dissent or uprising, Homer and his cohort would not have felt compelled to create the superstructure of deities that seem to "control" all of the action in the Odyssey: this control by the Greek gods is a difficult concept for modern readers, but you have to see it as a form of social control: it's not just that your king controls all of the wealth in the kingdom and keeps armies and harems of palace slaves, it's that all of this behavior, this class structure, this oligarchy, is sanctioned from on high, it's not the way of the world it's the way of creation, the way of the universe. The deities with their many appearances on earth in human guise serve the real, ultimate purpose of making readers and listeners believe that the structure of Greek society is somehow "natural" - when in fact it's imposed by power. The Greek gods are a form of literary propaganda.