The Apollonian Hermetic Maenad

The question, paraphrased: Did the gods do this to punish people for collective miasma?

No.

...just maybe...we needed a collective kick in the asses to
genuinely appreciate them. They had been around for so long without
an issue that once it BECAME an issue it also became a whole other
ballgame.

I despise the New Age sentiment of "Ooh this bad thing happened to you
because of karma." I really, strongly doubt that our gods decided to
punish the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great * whatever
grandchildren of our ancient brethern because they misplaced a word in
some ritual they did, and henceforth our religion was illegal for a
time in modern day Hellas and receives scorn in countries such as the
US of A.

And if they're that petty to curse generations that had NOTHING to do
with the original miasma, then wtf are we worshipping them anyway?
Call me crazy, but this is not the image of my gods. Maybe it was to
the ancients, and that's maybe why we have (and had) to learn today
that the gods are above that petty crap.