As in any religious system, we can pick out certain tendencies and characteristics in the religion of fifth - and fourth-century Greeks, but these are far from defining that religion in its entirety. Perhaps we should try to define Greek religion in another way: geographically, with respect to its contemporary neighbours. Since the ancients lacked the concept of ‘a’ religion, a belief and practice system whose adherents could be counted and which excluded the adherents of rival systems, precision is not easy here either. In some ways it is tempting to adopt a minimalist approach. On the one hand, the cults practised within a Greek city were proper only to its citizens, and non-citizens, even though Greek, were very often barred from participation; on the other, some aspects of Greek practice do not seem to have been very different from those of their near neighbours in Asia, the Karians, Lykians and Mysians, while deities from other parts of Asia (Kybele, Adonis) and Thrace (Bendis) were taken over into the pantheons of the Greek cities.
But the Greeks themselves were - rightly or wrongly - conscious of the distinctness of their religious practices, at least by the classical period; it may well be, as many scholars surmise, that it was the Persian Wars which finally crystallized a sense of Greekness among Dorians, lonians, Aeolians and others, and in the famous statement which Herodotos puts into the mouths of the Athenian envoys to Sparta common religious practice goes hand in hand with to hellenikon (Hdt. 8.144, alluded to above). ‘Common sacrifices’ were seen very obviously in the great panhellenic festivals at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea and so on, which brought participants together from all over the Greek world. Greeks of different cities also worshipped Gods with the same names, though the significance of this is somewhat diminished when we realize that in the usual conception foreigners did not worship different Gods, but rather the same Gods under different names: Mylitta (from Neo-Assyrian Mulissu) is the Assyrian word for Aphrodite (Hdt. 1.132.1) just as bekos is the Phrygian word for bread (Hdt. 2.2.4). Mythology was perhaps more helpful: thanks to Homer and Hesiod, most Greeks could agree about most of the relationships of the Gods to each other, and shared a common stock of stories about the Gods (with some local variations) which was not also common to Persians, Lydians or Egyptians. It is clear also that authors writing for a panhellenic audience seldom felt the need to explain cult practice in a particular Greek city - readers would fill in the blanks from experience in their own. For the modern historian of the ancient world, a review of some of the more prominent features is enough to indicate that there is indeed a more or less coherent whole which can be called ‘Greek religion’, even if its boundaries are markedly permeable.
Most of the Gods worshipped in a Greek city would be recognizable to Greeks from elsewhere, although the emphasis might be different: Persephone in the Italian city of Lokroi Epizephyrioi appears to have had more to do with marriage than with death, Demeter in Arkadia has apparently little connection with corn. Even in one city, the same God had often several manifestations. Pausanias, whose second-century ce view of the Greek cities reflects many of the conditions of a much earlier period, names at Argos for instance Apollo Lykios, Agyieus and Deiradiotes, and Zeus Hyetios, Meilichios, Nemeios, Phyxios and Larisaios, all with separate cult-places and all no doubt of different appearance: Zeus Larisaios, on the Argive akropolis, was depicted with three eyes. Or were these Zeuses and Apollos the same God? Often people spoke of the God in a particular sanctuary as different from a God of the same name in another: this Apollo, that Apollo. Just so the Virgin of Lourdes is often perceived as different from the Virgin of Fatima, whatever may be the case theologically, and however little anyone believes that Christ has more than one mother or that there are several Christ and Virgin sets.
It was location which defined the cult of a particular deity, in this narrow sense. The Gods might be called ‘Olympian’, and Homer might picture their houses on top of a massively high mountain or even in the sky, but as far as cult was concerned the God was located in his sanctuary: the word for temple, naos, means ‘dwelling-place’. At the very least the God made his way there to receive sacrifice. Sanctuaries varied from the very large and elaborate, the object of civic ostentation, to tiny plots round makeshift altars. What they all had in common was a strict demarcation of their sacred space from the space outside. A temenos of this sort was a God’s property, just as in earlier Greek a temenos was the land of a lord or chieftain (anax, basileus). The essential for cult was a place for sacrifice or, more rarely, to perform other offerings. The temple proper was a secondary development, its original function to house the cult statue. By the classical period, however, temples had become often magnificent structures, and certainly were more than just backdrops for action at the altar outside, as they have sometimes been described; the statue itself was probably the focus of much prayer and exchange between deity and worshipper (see below). Larger sanctuaries also contained shrines of subsidiary deities, altars, statues, and tombs of heroes, all places of cult.
Of cult activities, animal sacrifice was undoubtedly the most central and characteristic. The origins of the practice have been the subject of much discussion among historians of Greek religion, but for the Greeks themselves sacrifice was the obvious way of pleasing the deity to whom it was offered. It was the almost inevitable accompaniment, even climax, of whatever other rituals were performed at any regular observance, and it was also frequently performed in cases of individual or family need. The expense, and the time necessary from the preliminaries to the conclusion of the feast which usually followed the slaughter, meant that even for the most pious of ordinary individuals, sacrifice could not be a daily event; on the other hand, the smallest of usual sacrificial victims, a piglet, was well within the reach of even a poor family’s occasional function.
Animal sacrifice, however common, had its disquieting elements. The ‘drama of death’ was certainly played up in the ritual, and some observers were led to ask unanswerable questions: why was it pious to shed sacrificial blood over the altars of the Gods, when other kinds of blood were impure and polluting? Why did the Gods so seldom receive the whole offering, and why were the pieces of meat they did receive such unappetizing ones? Very few, however, were led by such doubts to reject the practice altogether. To do so would be to reject the offering of the standard and most effective gift to the Gods, sanctioned by immemorial tradition, and the articulation of the community, large or small, that went with it. A complete withdrawal from normal religious practice, even more perhaps than the airing of disturbing views about the Gods, was generally regarded with suspicion.
We are best informed about those sacrifices which came round on a regularly recurring basis, as part of observances which are generally, if sometimes misleadingly, called festivals. This is due partly to chance mentions in literary sources, but also to the penchant of the Greeks for setting up regulatory inscriptions about cult, often in the form of calendars listing the victims to be offered at different dates in the year. A fair number of such calendars survive, either in whole or in part, mainly from
Attika, the islands, and the Greek cities of Asia Minor. These enable us to see clearly the range of possibilities in ‘normal’ sacrifice. The victim is one of the commonly domesticated animals, pig, sheep, goat or cow - without blemish, it goes without saying, as we know from the literary sources - and virtually without exception of the same sex as the deity to whom it is offered. A young animal may be specified (cheaper); sometimes, usually for deities concerned with fertility, a pregnant one (expensive). Indeed, one of the main purposes of these calendars was budgetary; they enabled those responsible in the group to whom the calendar belonged to see at a glance how much would have to be spent on each occasion - the price of the victim is normally given, and other expenses would not, presumably, vary a lot between occasions. Whether the event was paid for by common funds or by an individual benefactor, if the group concerned was the city or one of its local subdivisions, we can legitimately speak of public sacrifices, public festivals - these were the concern of the people as a whole.
Typically such occasions would involve a procession, several sacrifices - each with a specified and appropriate victim - often some ritual peculiar to that occasion, and a meal. Frequently some sort of contest was held, whether poetic or athletic. But exceptions to the usual pattern are not that uncommon. The victim’s flesh might be burned completely (so no meal - at least not with sacrificial materials); the libations of liquid which accompanied sacrifice might omit wine, which was seen as changing the character of the rite; the meat might be distributed only to a certain group among the participants, for example women; the meat might have to be consumed entirely on the spot (it was clearly normal to take some away). Such variations played an important part in defining the distinctive nature of each observance.
In other respects, annual observances were very various in character. We are best informed about those of Attika, but there is no reason to suppose that the picture was substantially different elsewhere; a number of festivals, in fact, were common to many or most Ionian cities, though the exact details of their celebration no doubt sometimes diverged: such were, for example, the Thesmophoria (see below) and the Apatouria, the latter for Herodotos (1.148) a touchstone of Ionian identity. ‘Public’ festivals, public in the sense that their performance was a state responsibility, even necessity, ranged from huge celebrations involving much of the population to tiny but nonetheless vital rites in which only a handful of people took part. Athens had many of the former type: a well-known example is the City Dionysia, where the centrepiece and characteristic feature was the competitive production of tragedies, dithyrambs and comedies, where crowds were evidently huge and included bigwigs from many other cities. The classic ‘tiny’ rite is that of the Arrhephoria, celebrated in honour of Athena and Pandrosos, daughter of Kekrops, where the participants seem to have been limited to the priestess of Athena Polias and two or perhaps four little girls called arrhephoroi, who carried mysterious objects between certain sanctuaries - neither girls nor priestess knowing what these objects were, Pausanias tells us (1.27.3). Small though this ritual might be in terms of participation, it was an essential part of the cult complex of the akropolis, and a very great honour for the girls and their families.
Neither is there any contradiction between the idea of public cult and the insistence on secrecy. ‘Things not to be spoken’, arrheta (sometimes taken, in both ancient and modern times, as the origin of arrhe-phoria), are quite a conspicuous feature of Greek religious life and sensibility. A certain coyness in speaking about religious matters is observable in several authors, notably Herodotos, who is fond of signalling some myth or explanation for a rite as somewhat esoteric by stating that he himself knows it, but will not repeat it (e. g. 2.47.2,48.3). Perhaps these logoi might sound foolish or risque without proper exegesis; perhaps they were simply too holy to be passed on randomly. Whatever the reason, secrecy could be a feature both of things told and of things done. There were secret or unutterable names, often of underworld divinities whom you might not want to alert by naming them; secret tombs, like that of Dirke in Thebes (Plutarch Moralia 578a-b); and above all secret rites, known only to those who had taken part in them. In some of these, the participatory group might be quite large: ‘women’s festivals’, discussed below, are an example, for in most of these there was at least an element of secrecy, something done which should not be divulged to men.
Another type of secret celebration was the rites known as ‘mysteries’, mysteria. Here the participants, other than the priestly officiants, underwent an ‘initiation’, myesis, consisting in seeing, doing and experiencing certain things, perhaps also being told things, which constituted the central part of the rite. The most famous Mysteries were of course those of Eleusis, which came to have unchallenged prestige in later times but which Athens was already pushing in the fifth century as a great Athenian benefaction - for although this too was very much a state cult, initiation was equally open to non-Athenians. Another famous celebration was that associated with the Kabeiroi, local Gods of Samothrake; but similarly structured cults existed all over the Greek world, some with more or less local reputations, others better-known.
The fundamental appeal of such initiations was presumably the seriousness and sense of importance hinted at by the secrecy. There were also well-publicized consequences of initiation; a better fate after death for Eleusinian initiates, or more modestly freedom from shipwreck for those of Samothrake. But what was actually experienced at initiation, or felt as a consequence afterwards, is impossible to recover. We know a certain amount about the preliminaries of some of these rites, which involved elaborate purifications, and Christian writers purport to reveal the sacred things done - but their testimony is obviously suspect, and no coherent overall picture can be formed. It does seem likely that at Eleusis the initiates in some way re-enacted or re-experienced the search of Demeter for her daughter, their reunion, perhaps the marriage of Kore/Persephone with the underworld God, all the elements of the central myth complex relating to the Two Goddesses; though the scraps of information and hints that we do have suggest a greater complexity than this simple summary might suggest. It was at any rate a powerful emotional experience. It may even be that a greater knowledge of these important rituals would considerably modify our impressions of how Greek religion worked. It is possible that after initiation a different sort of relationship with the God could have been felt, or a new understanding of ‘things to do with the Gods’. This is speculation, of course, but we do have (once again) Herodotos’ witness that initiation could affect the way one might look at other religious practices: speaking of ithyphallic statues of Hermes, Herodotos says ‘Whoever has been initiated in the rites of the Kabeiroi which the Samothrakians celebrate... that man knows what I mean’ (2.51).
Mysteries or otherwise, regular, major rites, and especially sanctuaries for their performance, demanded a religious personnel to carry out ritual and make sure things were done properly. But the priest in the Greek world was a very different figure from that of most ancient civilizations. There was no hereditary group of priests as such, and a person was not simply ‘a priest’ but ‘the priest of such-and-such a God’ - Artemis Limnatis, Apollo Pythios, or whatever, the deity of a particular sanctuary. Typically a priesthood was held in one family, whether that was defined as a large or a small kinship group, and might be strictly hereditary or else determined by drawing lots among the eligible members - sortition being, among other things, a method of discovering the God’s own choice. But there were other methods. The Pythia at Delphi needed only to be ‘of good family’, not to come from any particular family, and the newer priesthoods established in Athens (and probably other democracies as well) had also very wide eligibility - in practice, probably extending to those who could afford the expenses. (At a later period, the sale of priesthoods was common in many cities.) Priesthoods on the older model were usually held for life; the newer kind were sometimes appointed annually, making them even more analogous to the magistracies with which modern scholars sometimes compare priesthoods. Despite this relative lack of priestly mystique, there remained something special about the priest’s office; he was after all the intermediary with the God, and in recognition of this his person was supposed to be inviolable - it was an outrage to lay hands on a priest wearing the characteristic holy headbands.
The actual job of the priest would vary somewhat from sanctuary to sanctuary. Larger places had numerous cult personnel, medium-sized ones at least a neokoros (warden or caretaker); in the very smallest, perhaps most or all aspects of the day-to-day worship and care of the shrine fell to the priest’s own lot. The essential function of the priest was to preside over sacrifices, directing operations and speaking the right prayers. Most often he did not kill the sacrificial victim himself - that was the role of the mageiros (butcher/cook), who then took charge of the processing of the meat. It could also be assumed that the priest would somehow have acquired some knowledge about the traditions, practical and otherwise, of his shrine, but a priest was not necessarily a religious expert; when facing a difficult question on general religious practice, in Athens at least, you would probably be more likely to consult an exegetes, a state official whose job it was to know and interpret a vast amount of religious lore. (We have a few fragments of the works on religion and antiquities written by a fourth-century Athenian exegete, Kleidemos or Kleitodemos.) This was as close as the Greek world got to a group of cultic specialists, but in terms of historical development, the exegetai are clearly secondary to priests. On the other hand, we should not form a picture of priests who simply performed the actions required of them with no further thought. Some did, undoubtedly, but others we might expect to have been more like Plutarch in later centuries, for whom his Delphian priesthood went hand in hand with a deep interest in ‘divine things’ more generally. Nor was it perhaps entirely whimsical that Plato chose to make Sokrates’ instructor in the Symposium a priestess, the no doubt fictional Diotima; in the Meno also (81A) Sokrates claims to have heard his logos from ‘wise men and women’, whom he defines as ‘those priests and priestesses who have taken the trouble to be able to give an account ( logos) of the things they are occupied with’. We do not have to believe that this is actually where Sokrates heard the doctrine of rebirth; the point is rather that some priests and priestesses might reasonably be expected to have a degree of theological interest and skill.
Priests and priestesses: the gender issue can no longer be postponed. Priestesses were as normal and everyday a phenomenon as priests, again in distinction from many, if not most, ancient societies, and apparently in stark contrast to women’s lack of a public role in Greece in other spheres. The two were not interchangeable, of course; each cult required either a priest or a priestess. Most often the sex of the officiant was the same as that of the God, but there were numerous exceptions to this rule. In general terms the role of a priestess was identical to that of a priest, neither was there any sense that only minor priesthoods could be held by women. In Athens, the city’s own special protector, Athena Polias, was served by a woman (we know the names of several of her priestesses, including Lysimache, who held office for 64 years in the fifth century). Within the category of females, however, further specifications could be made, since more than men women were defined by their stage in the lifecycle and potential sexual and reproductive role. Thus some cults were served by a virgin priestess, who given the norms of Greek marriage would be either a little girl or at most a young teenager. Other priesthoods were reserved for women who ‘had finished with sex’. But very many had no such restrictions, as in the case of Lysimache. Since a priestess needed presumably to be on hand whenever the calendar demanded a special observance, this has the interesting consequence that menstruation could not have been regarded as a serious impurity - at least, not so serious that it could not be dealt with in some way.
The responsibilities assigned to women as priestesses seem to sit oddly with their severely circumscribed role in other spheres. But priestly roles for individuals did not exhaust women’s public religious functions. Actual participation in a cult or festival was sometimes limited to one sex or the other. While certain sanctuaries (quite often those of Herakles, for example) did not allow women within their bounds, rather more widespread were those celebrations already alluded to which excluded men from all or part of what was done. These were often festivals in which the worship of Demeter was primary, and frequently had to do with fertility, whether human, animal or vegetable. Reproduction and the care of children was after all women’s primary contribution to the life of the polis, and it was a process that could not be carried on without them; it was logical, therefore, that they should be the ones to take responsibility for sorting this out with the Gods. How far this was a conscious calculation is difficult to say, but everyone knew that these rituals must be performed, and could only be performed by women. This did not prevent men from feeling some anxiety about women getting together in this way, whether it was expressed comically in Aristophanes’ treatment of the Thesmophoria (where the women’s secret is winedrinking), horrifically in the traditions of violence carried out by maenads, or protectively in the myths of women at festivals carried off by raiders. Certainly in hellenistic times and probably earlier, many communities empowered a male gynai-konomos to supervise the proper carrying-out of women’s rites, no doubt in part in a spirit of protection, to make sure that conditions were suitable and the women were undisturbed, and without compromising essential secrecy. Some male mediation was also necessary in order that such observances should fit smoothly into the pattern of public life, otherwise exclusively male. Thus in decrees of the fourth-century Attic demes, we find the hieromnemones, officials regulating many aspects of public cult life, also concerned in some way in the local Thesmophoria, and some male official, presumably the demarch, assisting the priestess of the Two Goddesses in maintaining proper order in and around the Thesmophorion - though his role seems to be curtailed when women gather to celebrate their festivals (IG 22 1184; 1177).
Even at celebrations open to men and women, which were the majority, certain of the roles were differentiated between the sexes. At a sacrifice, it was a man who did the killing, but an unmarried girl who carried the basket containing the grains to sprinkle on the animal’s head, and all the women present who cried out the ololyge or ululation. These roles can be seen as a continuation of roles assigned to the sexes in other areas of life. Men kill, women mark a death by lamentation. Men deal with meat, women with the grains and flour to make bread and cakes. If groups of girls sing and dance to please Artemis and other virgin Goddesses, that is because it is evidently a girlish occupation anyway; the chorus (choros) become the Goddess’s own companions and playmates. Following on this line of thought, the priestess’s work has been seen as analogous to that of a responsible housewife.
World History
