When disaster strikes, I always seem to feel an overwhelming urge to understand it. Whether it's the attacks on 9/11 or the recent flooding of Tennessee, these questions always come up: Where was God? Why did He allow this to happen? This is not unique to Western culture, or even Christianity, as it seems that humans the world over just want to feel safe and secure, and disasters strike a blow to our sense of spiritual safety just as surely as they throw our sense of physical safety right out the window.
The Greek and Roman Pagans did not believe in benevolent, all-loving protector deities, as you will quickly find by reading literally any story about their gods. Most animals were given stories that involved puny mortals pissing off the gods and being cursed with their present forms. Even answering the question of why we have winter for half the year involves deception, kidnapping, and rape.
Persephone was a lovely young girl, and an illegitimate child of Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of nature. Like her mother, Persephone enjoyed taking walks in the woods and playing with woodland creatures like a princess in a Disney cartoon. Many of the male gods wanted her for a wife, pursuing her with gifts, but Demeter refused them all, hiding her daughter in some remote woods. This dissuaded the Olympian gods, but you can't hide from Hades. Being the god of the underworld, he heard Persephone singing while picking flowers one day, and burst out from the rocks and kidnapped her. He took her for his wife (which is to say he raped her) and Demeter was heartbroken when she discovered that her daughter was gone. She looked far and wide, neglecting her duty as the goddess of nature, and so the earth became cold and barren. Zeus finally got involved and solved the dispute by agreeing to joint custody of Persephone between Hades and Demeter. Because she had eaten Pomegranate seeds while in the underworld, she could only leave it for a time to be with her mother, which is why we have six months of decay and six months of plenty.
It's very common to read in Ancient Greek literature about some disaster that occurred because Poseidon was upset (he was blamed for earthquakes and storms at sea) or because Hephaestus fell asleep while his forge was burning (volcanic eruptions). Given the violence and pettiness that these gods were prone to, I have to say that these disasters probably didn't bother the Pagans as much as later disasters would bother Christians. They probably just shrugged and said, along with Kurt Vonnegut, “So it goes.”
Pax vobiscum
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