Cornelius had maxed out his political maneuvering skills and had now started putting points into strength. He knew the most important thing in life was to do as you were told. If your boss told you to take the blame, you took it. If he told you to retire, you retired. And if he told you to get lost but you still clung to your seat, disaster would strike in an instant. He had a hundred ways to make you "voluntarily" pack up and leave.
If that was true of a boss, it went double for a god.
A god's will could not be defied unless you had another god to back you.
Athena clearly had no intention of offering him that support, so he stepped down from the presidency of his own accord rather than invite the petty queen of the gods to target him.
When a god targeted you, resignation was the least of your worries.
The experts and scholars in the Presidential Palace had only just recovered from the shock of three Goddesses descending when Cornelius's words startled them all over again.
He was resigning? He had been doing perfectly well, so why would he... Right. A god wanted him to resign. He had no choice.
Once they understood that, some of the experts and scholars looked at him with sympathy.
To be fair, Cornelius had done a decent job as president. True, Greece had clashed with its neighbors several times during his term, suffered a demon invasion, and seen huge numbers of Greeks flee the country. The economic losses were beyond counting. The damage from the financial crisis could not compare with this. By initial estimates, the economy would be set back decades. If things continued this way, this year's GDP report might as well show