Do I Believe in Me?

You've lost faith in yourself! Isn't that rich? A god who has become a self-atheist!
Baba Yaga, _Enchantment_ by Orson Scott Card

The ancient world had oodles of gods. Between the Romans and Greeks, there were gods to cover anything imaginable. Apparently there was even a god for mildew. But in most of the stories about large pantheons, the power of a god comes from belief in the god; once people cease believing, the god ceases to exist.

So that causes one to wonder, is a god's belief in itself enough to keep them going? (It also begs the question of which came first, the gods or the people that believe in them? I think it was the chicken.) Or does another god's belief in it keep it going? Could the gods form a coalition of powerful beings, a group of mutual belief, keeping them going for centuries after mortals cease in believing?

Would the gods then be powerful enough to create new gods, just by believing in something that didn't exist yet? Would they actually care about people believing in them? Would this be a source of infinite power? Could they then make unlimited rice pudding?

One would assume not. Otherwise they wouldn't have sold out to so many writers, allowing themselves to be used in horrible novels, just to be remembered. They should have at least held out for made-for-TV movies!