On the peak of the high and mighty Mount Olympus, The population of Greek Gods gathered together.
"What is this about now," Aphrodite asked Zeus, the king of the gods. "I need to file my nails."
"We know your beauty treatments mean a lot to you, Beauty Queen. What's your talent? Combing your hair?" Hades offered.
"Hades? Why I thought we'd never see you again…what are you doing here, cooling off from the underworld? And for your information, my best talent is surfing on seashells." Aphrodite questioned and answered.
"I'm here because I believe in attending your own meeting."
"And what is this about? More fire pits?"
"Hush your mouths!" Zeus shouted, while he threw a lightning bolt through the crowd. This surprised Athena, which made her scream in the midst of her sharpening her spears.
"Now if you would please sit your hineys down on a puff of cloud, we can start the so called meeting," Zeus continued. "Hades and Persephone…what will I do with you?" He scowled at the couple." Stop flirting, or I will have Poseidon throw a tsunami at the underworld." The lovebirds laughed quietly, engrossed in conversation.
"Now brother," Hades offered. "Take a rest while I lead the meeting." Zeus nodded, and Hades continued.
"It has been brought to my attention that the population of underworld has decreased dramatically." At this point Hades grimaced. "The buffoons decide not to watch their left-hand turns, and fall into Tartarus.
"Yet either way, Earth has an abundance of people, dare I say overcrowded? I say we kill them off for my utopia of death!" Hades proposed, with a maniacal smile on his face.
Athena had risen with shock. She had not been paying much attention up until this point. "Well, what am I supposed to do? Just take a large golden spear and create a battle scene? It sounds marvelous, but how?" She smiled at her ideas raging inside her head.
Demeter, also known as Ceres, rose off of her puff. "That would be unnatural…all the flowers would wilt at the sight of their precious friends gone!"
"Oh please mother," Persephone stood and circled to the front of the cloud to stand with her husband. "We need to do something… Zeus, do you have any ideas?" Zeus was asleep. He mumbled worlds everyone could hear.
" Oh no…not the big b-b-bad wolf…"
"And there goes that." Aphrodite said, breaking the silence, while practicing her usual eye-roll. "I have an idea…why don't we have mortals shrivel up and die? In simpler terms, age. In this case, I could be the most beautiful in all the land, for they would hate how they look wouldn't they?" She grinned in delight. " You see Hades, I'm not shallow! Well I guess you couldn't call me deep either… I believe I would be a lily in the middle of the pond."
Zeus had practically fully awoken at this point in the meeting.
"So if that's settled I would enjoy…getting some actual sleep…without any interruptions from…cranky gods!" he then raised his gavel. "Meeting over, mortals will now age for the benefit of earth and Hades."
***
And from that day on, humans aged and died through natural causes, instead of ongoing life. Unfortunately the gods weren't expecting Pandora to actually open the box… 'It was merely a joke' was all Zeus would say, after he remembered that night when he created the blasted box full of diseases and crime. Now we know that until curiosity killed the cat, humans aged.