When the apostle Paul visited Athens in the first century AD, he encountered a city that was, from his Christian point of view, ‘‘overrun with idols’’ (Acts 17:16). The Athenians were known in antiquity for their exceptionally large pantheon. The reason for this was, in large part, the extraordinary size of the city in ancient Greek terms. Most poleis had an average territorial size of around 70 square miles. Corinth was large at about 250 square miles, yet the size of Athens was around 1,000 square miles. It was a huge city with a pantheon to match.
The main religious beings of this pantheon may be divided into several distinct though interrelating categories. The major Olympian gods played important roles, each in specific local manifestations. This section will survey a few prominent examples to provide a flavor of the nature of the system while introducing some of the figures we will explore in more detail below.
The chief deity was Athena, whose olive-wood statue on the Acropolis was the holiest object in Athens. It was thought that she had given her name to the city, and she was noted for her willingness to intercede on her people’s behalf. The cult of Athena Polias (‘‘of the city’’) was the major civic cult, although she was known by a range of other epithets including Promachos (‘‘champion’’), Nike (‘‘victory’’), Ergane (‘‘worker’’), Hygieia (‘‘good health’’), and Boulaia (‘‘of the Council’’).
Another multifaceted goddess was Aphrodite, who was represented in her Olympian guise of goddess of love, but in a range of other ways too. As Pandemos (‘‘of all the people’’) for example, her role was to unite groups of people, including prostitutes and their clients, husbands and wives, and even the whole city. Other prominent deities included Zeus, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Demeter, and Dionysus, but perhaps the most widely represented god was Hermes, whose distinctive statues, the herms, were situated outside temples and private houses. These were stone pillars consisting of a head of the god, and, at groin level, a phallus. They were such a familiar part of the city that Thucydides described them as a ‘‘national institution’’ (6.27.1).
Another class of religious beings was personified abstractions - figures like Themis (‘‘Law’’), Peitho (‘‘Persuasion’’), and Eirene (‘‘Peace’’) - who have an intriguing status as, at once, personal gods and abstract qualities (cf. Chapter 4). Heroes and heroines were widely worshiped too, ranging from famous figures such as Heracles and Theseus to the less well known (to us), yet crucially important Erichthonius and Pandrosus, whom we shall investigate shortly.
To compound matters, the pantheon was far from a rigid system. We hear of the introduction of numerous ‘‘new gods,’’ both from other parts of Greece, and from the non-Greek world. Some imported cults, such as that of the Egyptian Isis, remained privately organized, drawing their worshipers from the city’s non-citizen population, whereas others were incorporated into state cult, as happened in the case of the Arcadian mountain god Pan in the early fifth century BC. Although more naturally associated with wild places than urban cult, he received a sanctuary beneath the Acropolis and a state-financed festival after appearing to the runner Pheidippides before the battle of Marathon.
Perhaps the most intriguing instance of an imported being is the eastern (possibly Cypriot) Adonis, a young lover of Aphrodite who had been gored to death by a bull when out hunting. First attested in Athens in the mid-fifth century, his cult became highly popular with women, who would gather noisily on the rooftops in midsummer to mourn his death. Here they would grow little ‘‘gardens of Adonis’’ in broken baskets consisting of fast-growing plants such as lettuce and fennel that would develop quickly only to wither and die in the heat. One thing that is curious about the festival is its location: on rooftops temporarily transformed into sacred space rather than at a designated sanctuary. Another strange feature concerns the participants. Although the cult remained outside the framework of state religion, it had wider appeal than other privately organized cults, with worshipers including citizen women as well as their non-citizen counterparts.
The presence of a large, varied, and ever-growing pantheon begs the question as to whether the Athenians were more religious than other Greeks. Certainly this was their reputation in antiquity, where they were distinguished for being, in the words of the second century AD visitor Pausanias, ‘‘far more zealous than other people in matters concerning the gods [ta theia]’ (1.24.3). Alternatively, it may simply be the case that a city with a large territory and population was inevitably going to possess a greater number of cults. In the following paragraphs, we will investigate the nature of the Athenians' religiosity in order to test how far they were distinctive among the peoples of the Greek world.
We will begin with the aspect that gave the Athenians the greatest claim to a special relationship with the divine. Although, as we have seen, they stood out because of the number of gods they worshiped, they were also renowned for an exceptional bond with one deity in particular: Athena. In the first ever reference to Athena by an Athenian, for example, Athens is seen to be beset by civil strife but, nonetheless:
Our city will never be destroyed by the decree of Zeus, nor by the wish of the blessed immortal gods, for such is she, our great-hearted goddess, mightily fathered, who protects us, Pallas Athena, who holds out her hands over us. (Solon fr. 4.1-4 West)
This special relationship makes our task of discussing the pantheon a little easier. Rather than attempting to cover the full range of gods and heroes in the space of a single chapter, our focus will be in large part Athena: her main place of worship (the Acropolis), her role in local myth, and the place of her cult in the city’s ceremonial life. It should be emphasized that she is not being singled out as a case study; rather, she will be central to our discussion because she is central to the religious system in Athens.
Gods are human inventions. It is necessary to keep asking what desires or requirements led to the creation or development of their roles and functions. In the case of Athena in Athens we have an opportunity to trace developments in perceptions of the deity and in her significance for the community. Indeed, we are even able to trace her own role in the history of the city, for as we shall see, her worship evolved as her city grew in power and prestige.
It would be beyond the scope of this chapter to address the complex and controversial question of why Athena's cult came into existence in first place (whenever and wherever that was). Instead, our starting point will be an early development that provided the conditions to enable her to become the major deity of the whole state.
This was the synoecism, the process whereby the towns of Attica were made into a single political unit under the control of Athens. The ancient Athenians considered the process to be the achievement of Theseus, whose feat they celebrated each year at the Synoikia festival, but there has been extensive scholarly discussion concerning the period to which it is attributable, with possibilities ranging from the late Bronze Age to the early eighth century (see Parker 1996:12-17). In any case, by the time our sources begin Athens was a centrally administered ‘‘monocentric’’ city, the main urban sanctuary of which was the home of the principal cult of the whole polis, a situation neatly expressed by Pausanias: ‘Both the city and the whole of the land are alike sacred to Athena, for even those who in their parishes [‘‘demes’’] have an established worship of other gods nevertheless hold Athena in honor’ (1.26.6 (Loeb trans.)). This made Athens unusual in the Greek world. Most cities were ‘‘bipolar,’’ with their major sanctuary located beyond the urban center. Argos’ principal cult site for example, the Argive Heraion, was situated around 8 kilometers from the city, and the major sanctuary of Sparta, that of Apollo Hyakinthos, was at Amyklai about 5 kilometers away. But Athena’s cult was situated at the heart of the city. Argive Hera and Spartan Apollo both protected their cities, but Athena’s cult had a visibility and accessibility lacking in any other major polis cult.
The synoecism determined the significance and development not only of the cult of Athena, but of the religious system in general. This centralizing process is seen most strikingly in the case of the Great Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis in honor of Demeter and her daughter, Persephone or Kore. Originally an independent polis, Eleusis was incorporated into Attica in the late seventh or early sixth century BC. Thereafter, two Eleusinian families, the Eumolpidai and the Kerykes, who had been responsible for the administration of the cult, retained their priestly roles, but overall control passed to the King Archon, the official in charge of traditional cults. Moreover, from then on, the cult’s hiera (‘‘holy things’’) were housed in an urban headquarters, the Eleusinion on the slopes of the Acropolis, and were taken to Eleusis by procession at the time of the festival.
On one level, the Mysteries dwarfed in importance the cult of Athena Polias. Not only was it a panhellenic cult open to any speaker of Greek, but it appears to have addressed such universal concerns as the growth of the grain crop, and death and the afterlife: I say ‘‘appears’’ because so secret were the rites that our knowledge of them is frustratingly elusive (cf. Chapter 22). But far from ever challenging Athena’s preeminence, the cult reinforced her place at the head of the pantheon. After the holy objects reached Eleusis, an official returned to Athens to report their safe arrival to the priestess of Athena. This bears out Pausanias’ comment quoted above, that however much the demes had ‘‘an established worship of other gods,’’ they also paid homage to the cult of the national deity.
World History
