Religion in Ancient Greece
Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs and rituals practiced in
Ancient Greece in form of cult practices, thus the practical counterpart of
Greek mythology. Within the Greek world, religious practice varied enough so
that one might speak of Greek religions. The cult practices of the Hellenes
extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia
Minor, to Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek
colonies in the Western Mediterranean, such as Massilia (Marseille). Greek
examples tempered Etruscan cult and belief to inform much of the Roman religion.
Main sanctuaries of classical GreeceIt is perhaps misleading to speak of 'Greek
religion.' In the first place, the Greeks did not have a term for "religion" in
the sense of a dimension of existence distinct from all others, and grounded in
the belief that the gods exercise authority over the fortunes of human beings
and demand recognition as a condition for salvation. The Greeks spoke of their
religious doings as "ta theia" (literally, "things having to do with the gods"),
but this loose usage did not imply the existence of any authoritative set of
"beliefs." Indeed, the Greeks did not have a word for "belief" in either of the
two senses familiar to us. Since the existence of the gods was a given, it would
have made no sense to ask whether someone "believed" that the gods existed. On
the other hand, individuals could certainly show themselves to be more or less
mindful of the gods, but the common term for that possibility was "nomizein", a
word related to "nomos" ("custom," "customary distribution," "law"); to nomizein
the gods was to acknowledge their rightful place in the scheme of things, and to
act accordingly by giving them their due. Some bold individuals could nomizein
the gods, but deny that they were due some of the customary observances. But
these customary observances were so highly unsystematic that it is not easy to
describe the ways in which they were normative for anyone.
First, there was no single truth about the gods. Although the different Greek
peoples all recognized the 12 major gods (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis,
Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, and Hestia or Dionysus),
in different locations these gods had such different histories with the local
peoples as often to make them rather distinct gods or goddesses. Different
cities worshipped different deities, sometimes with epithets that specified
their local nature; Athens had Athena; Sparta, Artemis; Corinth was a center for
the worship of Aphrodite; Delphi and Delos had Apollo; Olympia had Zeus, and so
on down to the smaller cities and towns. Identity of names was not even a
guarantee of a similar cultus; the Greeks themselves were well aware that the
Artemis worshipped at Sparta, the virgin huntress, was a very different deity
from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus. When
literary works such as the Iliad related conflicts among the gods because their
followers were at war on earth, these conflicts were a celestial reflection of
the earthly pattern of local deities. Though the worship of the major deities
spread from one locality to another, and though most larger cities boasted
temples to several major gods, the identification of different gods with
different places remained strong to the end.
Second, there was no single true way to live in dealing with the gods. "The
things that have to do with the gods" had no fixed center, and responsibilities
for these things had a variety of forms. Each individual city was responsible
for its own temples and sacrifices, but it fell to the wealthy to sponsor the "leitourgeiai"
(literally, "works for the people," from which the word "liturgy" comes) --the
festivals, processions, choruses, dramas, and games held in honor of the gods. "Phratries"
(members of a large hereditary group) oversaw observances that involved the
entire group, but fathers were responsible for sacrifices in their own
households, and women often had autonomous religious rites.
Third, individuals had a great deal of autonomy in dealing with the gods. After
some particularly striking experience, they could bestow a new title upon a god,
or declare some particular site as sacred (cf. Gen. 16:13-14, where Hagar does
both). No authority accrued to the individual who did such a thing, and no
obligation fell upon anyone else--only a new opportunity or possibility was
added to the already vast and ill-defined repertoire for nomizeining the gods.
Finally, the lines between divinity and humanity were in some ways clearly
defined, in other ways ambiguous. Setting aside the complicated genealogies in
which gods sired children upon human women and goddesses bore the children of
human lovers, after death historical individuals could receive cultic honors for
their deeds during life--in other words, a hero cult. Indeed, even during life,
victors at the Olympics, for instance, were considered to have acquired
extraordinary power, and on the strength of their glory (kudos), would be chosen
as generals in time of war. Itinerant healers and leaders of initiatory rites
would sometimes be called into a city to deliver it from disasters, without such
a measure implying any disbelief in the gods or exaltation of such "saviors." To
put it differently, "sôteria" ("deliverance," "salvation") could come from
divine or human hands and, in any event, the Greeks offered cultic honors to
abstractions like Chance, Necessity, and Luck, divinities who stood in ambiguous
relation to the personalized gods of the tradition. All in all, there was no
"dogma" or "theology" in the Greek tradition, no heresy, hypocrisy, possibility
of schism, or any other social phenomenon articulated according to the
background orientation to a codified order of religious understanding. Such
variety in Greek religion reflects the long, complicated history of the
Greek-speaking peoples.
Greek religion spans a period from Minoan and Mycenean periods to the days of
Hellenistic Greece and its ultimate conquest by the Roman Empire. Religious
ideas continued to develop over this time; by the time of the
earliest
major monument of Greek literature, the Iliad attributed to Homer, a consensus
had already developed about who the major Olympian gods were. Still, changes to
the canon remained possible; the Iliad seems to have been unaware of Dionysus, a
god whose worship apparently spread after it was written, and who became
important enough to be named one of the twelve chief Olympian deities, ousting
the ancient goddess of the hearth, Hestia. It has been written by scholars that
Dionysus was a "foreign" deity, brought into Greece from outside local cults,
external to Greece proper. 2 3
Quoting Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, article
on Zeus, "According to the Homeric account Zeus, like the other Olympian gods,
dwelt on Mount Olympus in Thessaly, which was believed to penetrate with its
lofty summit into heaven itself (77. i. 221, &c., 354, 609, xxi. 438). He is
called the father of gods and men (i. 514, v. 33 ; comp. Aeschyl. Sept. 512),
the most high and powerful among the immortals, whom all others obey (II. xix.
258, viii. 10, &c.)." 4
In addition to the local cults of major gods, various places like crossroads and
sacred groves had their own tutelary spirits. There were often altars erected
outside the precincts of the temples. Shrines like hermai were erected outside
the temples as well. Heroes, in the original sense, were demigods or deified
humans who were part of local legendary history; they too had local hero-cults,
and often served as oracles for purposes of divination. What religion was, first
and foremost, was traditional; the idea of novelty or innovation in worship was
out of the question, almost by definition. Religion was the collection of local
practices to honour the local gods.
The scholar, Andrea Purvis, has written on the private cults in ancient Greece
as a traceable point for many practices and worship of deities.
A major function of religion was the validation of the identity and culture of
individual communities. The myths were regarded by many as history rather than
allegory, and their embedded genealogies were used by groups to proclaim their
divine right to the land they occupied, and by individual families to validate
their exalted position in the social order.