Some common Christian attacks on paganism followed by strong responses.

Paganism was proto-Christianity.
Counter: Christianity is crypto-paganism.

Elaboration: Christianity is a schizophrenic, rogue quasi-paganism which tried to meld Judaism with pagan philosophy and cult. It isn't even happily monotheistic: the Trinity is incoherent unless understood polytheistically, and most Christians are functionally tritheistic.

Paganism is larping, it's made up, there's no tradition.
Counter: Most of what could be interesting about Christianity is rooted in European paganism, and most of what isn't interesting about it is Jewish. There has always been an undercurrent of pagan spirituality in Europe, and it's beginning to shine brighter now as Christianity slowly dies.

Elaboration: The pagan classics have formed a very significant part of the bedrock of Western Civilization. The worldviews of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, though officially Christian, were heavily influenced by pagan Rome and Greece as well as the native spiritualities of northern Europe. Many people were suspected or accused of being pagan over the centuries. It isn't uncommon in European literature to encounter invocations of the Muses or references to pagan Gods mixed in with references to the Bible. In addition to that, many folk customs with pagan origins have survived. It's true that we cannot - and should not try to - return to the past. We are not ancient Romans or Greeks, nor are we Vikings; we are deeply spiritual modern people who are drawing on a very European spiritual current that has always been there.

Paganism is relativistic, materialistic, amoral, and hedonistic.
Counter: No, it's not. In fact, virtually everything about Christian teaching - including moral teaching - that is good and true was either borrowed from paganism or coincides with paganism. What is bad and false about Christian teaching is either Jewish or unique to Christianity

Elaboration: Paganism is a strong, ennobling way of life with serious metaphysics behind it. We believe that the light of the Gods is constantly shining throughout the universe, and we seek to live in that light.

Christianity is the only thing that can save us from globalism.
Counter: LOL.

Elaboration: First, adopting a religion purely for political reasons is illegitimate and should be avoided. Second, far from saving us from the problems of globalism, Christianity naturally falls in step with it as it seeks to convert even the most foreign peoples to its dogmas, and it struggles (because of its monotheism) to understand how different peoples could have their own different, valid spiritual expressions.

Today, we honor Juno Lucina who brings children to the light of life. We give thanks to all the wonderful Mothers who bring joy and life to their families.

"For neither is one otherwise able to ascend to that which is essentially most divine and primary unless he uses a genius [daemon, guardian spirit] of this kind, by whom it is necessary that every lover of the Gods should be genuinely purified."

Iamblichus, Exhortation to Philosophy

"Vulcan is that divine power which presides over the spermatic and physical productive powers which the universe contains: for whatever Nature accomplishes by verging to bodies, that Vulcan effects in a divine and exempt manner, by moving Nature, and using her as an instrument in his own proper fabrication. For natural heat has a Vulcanian characteristic, and was produced by Vulcan for the purpose of fashioning a corporeal nature. Vulcan, therefore, is that power which perpetually presides over the fluctuating nature of bodies; and hence, says Olympiodorus, he operates the bellows, which occultly signifies his operating in natures."

Thomas Taylor, footnote to his translation of the Orphic Hymn to Vulcan

"Eudemus [the Aristotelian philosopher] therefore commences his genealogy from Night, from which also Homer begins: though Eudemus is far from making the Homeric genealogy consistent and connected, for he asserts that Homer begins from Ocean and Tethys. It is however apparent, that Night is according to Homer the greatest divinity, since she is reverenced even by Jupiter himself. For the poet says of Jupiter, 'that he feared lest he should act in a manner displeasing to swift Night.' So that Homer begins his genealogy of the Gods from Night. But it appears to me that Hesiod, when he asserts that Chaos was first generated, signifies by Chaos the incomprehensible and perfectly united nature of that which is intelligible: but that he produces Earth the first from thence, as a certain principle of the whole procession of the Gods."

Damascius, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles 3.163

"With Syrianus and Proclus, the search for the nature of the divine and the hierarchy of the gods has become the almost exclusive object of philosophy. And since, in Greece, philosophy was never only an intellectual activity, but also a lifestyle, the spiritual life of these philosophers became a continual prayer and liturgy. While Christian emperors forbade the worship of pagan gods, closed temples and removed cult statues to transform them into decorative objects in their palaces and gardens, pagan prayer and liturgy became an interior prayer and a domestic liturgy. Better still, philosophical activity itself, by its own object, is a cult rendered to the gods."

H.D. Saffrey, Les débuts de la théologie comme science 27 (Google translated from the French)

Below is a list of classical music compositions which are based on or inspired by Greek or Roman mythology, religion, or philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven
The Creatures of Prometheus (ballet)

Hector Berlioz
The Trojans (opera: based on Virgil's Aeneid)

Benjamin Britten
Six Metamorphoses after Ovid (program music)

Francesco Cavalli
Hercules in Love (opera)

Luigi Cherubini
Medea (opéra-comique)

Claude Debussy
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (symphonic poem)

Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf
Six Symphonies After Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Gabriel Fauré
Prométhée (cantata)

César Franck
Psyché (symphonic poem)

Christoph Willibald Gluck
Alceste (opera)
Iphigenia in Tauris (opera)
Orpheus and Eurydice (opera)
Paris and Helen (opera)

Reynaldo Hahn
Andromeda Resigned (poem for piano)
Eros Hidden in the Woods (poem for piano)
Ouranos (poem for piano)
Prometheus Triumphant (choral poem)

G.F. Handel
Acis and Galatea (pastoral opera)
Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus (serenata)
The Choice of Hercules (oratorio)
Hercules (oratorio)
Semele (oratorio)

Gustav Holst
The Planets (orchestral suite)

Leonardo Leo
The Marriage of Iole and Hercules (cantata)

Franz Liszt
Symphonic Poem No. 4 "Orpheus"
Symphonic Poem No. 5 “Prometheus”

Jean-Baptiste Lully
Phaëton (opera)

Felix Mendelssohn
Oedipus at Colonus (incidental music for the Sophocles play)

Wolfgang Mozart
Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter" (note: "Jupiter" is a nickname and not the noscript given by Mozart himself)
Apollo and Hyacinthus

Claudio Monteverdi
The Coronation of Poppaea (opera: features numerous Roman gods as well as the philosopher Seneca)
L'Orfeo (opera)
The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland (opera)

Jacques Offenbach
Daphnis et Chloé (operetta)

Carl Orff
Antigone (opera)

Henry Purcell
Dido and Aeneas (opera)

Jean-Philippe Rameau
Hippolytus and Aricia (opera)

Maurice Ravel
Daphnis et Chloé (ballet)

J.F. Rebel
Ulysses (opera)

Albert Roussel
Bacchus and Ariane (ballet)

Erik Satie
Socrates (symphonic drama)

Alexander Scriabin
Prometheus: The Poem of Fire (tone poem)

Gaspare Spontini
The Vestal Virgin (opera)

Johann Strauss II
Echoes of Rhadamantus (waltz)

Richard Strauss
Ariadne on Naxos (opera)
The Love of Danae (opera)
Daphne (opera)

Igor Stravinsky
Apollo (ballet)
Oedipus Rex (opera)

Karol Szymanowski
Myths (violin & piano)
The Fountain of Arethusa
Narcissus
Dryads and Pan

Antonio Vivaldi
Hercules in Thermodon (opera)

My goal is to make this list comprehensive over time, so please check back occasionally as I continue to update it.

Lamentation d'Orphée
By: Alexandre Séon

If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other.

Epictetus

"The world's wide bounds, all-flourishing, are thine,
Thyself of all the source and end divine.
'Tis thine all Nature's music to inspire
With various-sounding, harmonizing lyre:
Now the last string thou tun'st to sweet accord,
Divinely warbling, now the highest chord;
Th'immortal golden lyre, now touch'd by thee,
Responsive yields a Dorian melody.
All Nature's tribes to thee their diff'rence owe,
And changing seasons from thy music flow:
Hence, mix'd by thee in equal parts, advance
Summer and Winter in alternate dance"

Orphic Hymn to Apollo

GreekMedicine.net has a lot of useful information about traditional European holistic medicine. From the website's introduction:

"It's highly ironic that Western man has been increasingly turning to the Orient in recent years for natural healing solutions when Western civilization has at its very roots a fine, outstanding holistic healing system of its own. The basic ideas, philosophies and archetypes that underly Greek Medicine are not foreign but rather indigenous to Western civilization and culture. And so, reviving Greek Medicine as a holistic healing system can have a profound healing and regenerative effect on Western civilization itself, and create a renewed appreciation and respect for our relationship with Nature. Greek Medicine offers a wealth of natural remedies, treatments and therapies to heal body, mind and spirit.

Modern medicine would benefit greatly by returning to its traditional Greek roots to recover the natural, holistic perspectives and virtues it has lost. This need not be done in a blind, uncritical manner, but rather with a discerning, integrative approach that synthesizes and combines the best of the old with the best of the new."

The original Hippocratic oath swore by the Gods of healing.

"I swear by Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture."

Orpheus And Eurydice (1876) by Emil Neide.

Today we celebrate Mercuralia. This is a time to honor Mercury by reading his myths and the revelations of Mercurius ter Maximus.

"Do not form your vision by diverting your thought elsewhere. ... Rather, it is as one says in the case of matter, that [the soul] has to be unqualified by anything, if it is to take on the impressions of all things; so, in this case, the soul has to be formless to a greater degree, if it is not to be prevented from being filled and illuminated by the first nature.

If this is so, then the soul should withdraw from everything external and revert entirely to its own inside, without any inclination to anything external. Rather, the soul should ignore everything, especially things in sense-perception, but also in forms, and then, in considering the One, come to ignore itself. And when the soul has come to be with the One, and, in a way, communed with it to a sufficient degree, then it should tell others of this intimate contact, if it can. It is, presumably, because he had such intercourse that Minos is famed as 'Zeus' familiar'.

In fact, not considering politics to be worthy of himself, he wanted always to remain up there, a state which anyone who has seen much may well be in. Plato says that the One is outside nothing, but it has intercourse with all things, without them knowing, for they flee outside it, or better, outside themselves, and so cannot grasp what they have fled from; indeed, because they have destroyed themselves, they cannot look for someone else, any more than a child which is beside itself with madness knows its father. In contrast, someone who knows himself knows where he is from."

Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.7

"What good do you have or what pleasure do you know, if you do nothing to get them? You don't even await the desire for pleasant things but fill yourself with all things before you desire them: eating before you're hungry, drinking before you're thirsty; for good eating getting yourself cooks, for good drinking buying expensive wines and running around in the summertime in search of snow; for good sleeping you buy not only soft blankets but bed frames too. For it is not toil but the tedium of having nothing to do that makes you long for sleep. You force lust when there is no need, by all kinds of tricks and by using men as women: thus you train your own friends, running riot at night and sleeping through the best part of the day."

Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.30 (This is excerpted from Socrates's retelling of The Choice of Hercules, in which Virtue, who is here speaking, warns Hercules not to follow Vice.)