You are mostly familiar with Graeco-Roman mythology and less familiar with the literature of that period. But that literature certainly existed and I don’t know on which basis do you make assertions about “most of their stories”.
Take Apuleius’ Golden Ass—a story about the misadventures of a man who (spoilers!) manages to turn himself into a donkey. You think most people took it as true?
In any case, which characters are fictional is irrelevant to the original issue of spending empathy. What matters is whether the character you’re feeling empathy for is someone you could meet in real life and form a relationship with. If the story, for example, concerns some illustrious ancestors who might well have been real, you’re still “wasting” empathy on them because in the zero-sum game postulated by the OP this takes away from the empathy available for you to feel for your neighbours.
Nope. You continue to be wrong.
You are mostly familiar with Graeco-Roman mythology and less familiar with the literature of that period. But that literature certainly existed and I don’t know on which basis do you make assertions about “most of their stories”.
Take Apuleius’ Golden Ass—a story about the misadventures of a man who (spoilers!) manages to turn himself into a donkey. You think most people took it as true?
In any case, which characters are fictional is irrelevant to the original issue of spending empathy. What matters is whether the character you’re feeling empathy for is someone you could meet in real life and form a relationship with. If the story, for example, concerns some illustrious ancestors who might well have been real, you’re still “wasting” empathy on them because in the zero-sum game postulated by the OP this takes away from the empathy available for you to feel for your neighbours.