Laudator Temporis Acti

Kenneth Dover, ed., Aristophanes, Frogs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 41:

Adherents of monotheistic religions which treat God as omnipotent and omnipresent have difficulty in coming to terms with the handling of gods in the Greek theatre, and particularly with the readiness of a comic poet to ridicule the god of the dramatic festivals even to the extent of portraying him as defecating in fear (479-89).

Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, tr. T.G. Rosenmeyer (tr. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), p. 41:

We find it difficult to understand how the gods of one's faith could be subjected to Aristophanic jests. But laughter is part of the meaning, the fruitfulness, the positive side of life, and it is therefore, in the eyes of the Greeks, more godlike than the sour solemnity which we associate with piety.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 133:

The occasional fun poked at the gods in comedy is no evidence against the religious conservatism of the common man; it is when religion is sure of itself that such amusement is permitted.

Richard Janko, The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume IV: Books 13-16 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 170 (on 14.153-353):

Few Greeks ever took their gods wholly seriously: this is, perhaps, the Greeks' greatest gift to civilization.