The ancient Greeks did not create an organized system of theology, but their religion and rituals played an important role in Greek culture and profoundly influenced the art, literature, philosophy, and religion of later ages in Europe.
Date: From the second millennium b. c.e.
Category: Religion and mythology
Origins of Greek Religion The earliest evidence of the Greek gods comes from the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. The Minoan culture flourished in the second millennium b. c.e. on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean, where shipping trade allowed for the exchange of common stories from Egypt and Mesopotamia. The legends of Theseus, Daedalus, and the Minotaur figure prominently in Minoan culture and show the dominance of Knossos over Athens in early history. Mycenaean civilization developed between 1600 and 1200 b. c.e. on the mainland at the fortified cities of Tiryns and Mycenae. Some time around 1200 b. c.e., the militaristic Mycenaeans spearheaded an assault on Troy, which was a center of trade. The Mycenaean culture was short-lived and ended with the invasion by the northern Greek tribes known as the Dorians.
The ancient Greeks developed a complex polytheism and believed that their twelve major gods, the Olympians, lived atop Mount Olympus, apeak in northern Thessaly sometimes covered in snow. The Greek gods were an extended family headed by the powerful thunderbolt-throwing Zeus and his often suspicious wife Hera. According to the poet Hesiod in his Theogonia (c. 700 b. c.e.; Theogony, 1728), the gods divided up the cosmos into three equal parts: Zeus ruled the heavens and earth, Poseidon the oceans, and Hades the underworld.
Nature of the Gods Scholars debate the number of Greek gods. In his epics the Iliad (c. 750 b. c.e.; English translation, 1611) and the Odyssey
Worship at shrines was an important aspect of religious life in ancient Greece. (F. R. Niglutsch)
(c. 725 b. c.e.; English translation, 1614), Homer describes the actions of Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Hermes, Hephaestus, Ares, Dionysus, and Demeter. These twelve Olympians were recognized across the Greek-speaking world from the fifth century b. c.e. onward, but they were not all equally well defined. They were joined by numerous lesser deities such as Rhadamanthus, god of the underworld, or Proteus, servant of Poseidon.
Homer probably lived in the eighth century b. c.e., but he drew on a much older tradition of stories about the Trojan War and the Greek gods who interfered with the heroes who attempted to recapture Helen, the wife of King Menelaus. She ran off with the Trojan prince Paris because she was awarded as the prize of a contest. According to the story of “The Judgment of Paris,” the gods gathered to celebrate the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. The minor deity Eris threw out a golden apple among the guests, explaining that she would award it to the most beautiful of the three goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Paris was given the task of choosing among them. As a result of being bribed with the hand of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, Paris selected Aphrodite as the winner, creating the motive for Greece’s war of revenge against Troy.
The Greeks thought that the gods interfered in the affairs of humans, sometimes bringing about good fortune and sometimes causing disaster. Besides the twelve major gods and innumerable lesser gods, there were semidivine heroes such as Achilles or Heracles (Herucles) who could be objects of cult worship. The many gods themselves combined good and bad features of human behavior, and the gods acted in unpredictable and mysterious ways. In the Homeric epics, Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Athena sometimes direct their attention to the battlefields or the courts of kings, guiding arrows toward their targets or warning the hero of an impending crisis.
Society and Ritual Practice Ancient Greek religion was a matter of ritual (performing sacrifices and ceremonies) more than belief in fixed doctrines. To request good fortune or fair sailing weather, priests and priestesses offered libations, prayers, songs, and sacrifices of animals to many different gods. The sacrifice was the most important ritual of Greek religion. Livestock such as cows, pigs, goats, sheep, or chickens were sprinkled with water before the priest cut the animal’s throat. The priests and prophets of ancient Greece hosted hundreds of religious festivals in honor of the gods. The Greek calendar of religious festivals included special feasts and sacrifices to the major gods as well as to local gods and heroes. Individual Greek cities might honor one god as native to that region, while other gods enjoyed widespread acceptance over the Greekspeaking world. Athena was the patroness of Athens, while Heracles was sacred to Thebes, but all ancient Greeks knew both. On the island of Aegina, however, the gods Damia and Auxesia were the objects of sacrifices and probably unknown anywhere else.
Religion and Cult The Greek gods lived on distant Olympus and were beyond reproach, while mortals lived on earth and appealed to the gods to help them. The third category in Greek culture was “heroes,” very important in Homer’s epics. A hero was not a god, but one of his parents might be a god. The hero lived a life of adventure and died, whereupon his tomb became the site of a cult where priests made sacrifices to the hero’s memory.
Among major deities, Athena had the most important temple in the Parthenon at Athens, but many other gods had temples in Athens, such as
Hephaestus, god of blacksmiths. At the temple of Apollo in Delphi, female priestesses known as oracles inhaled smoke from a fire of laurel leaves and gave answers about the outcome of battles or predictions of the future in vague words that could be understood in many ways. Once a year, a large procession of priests walked from Athens to Eleusis to perform the Eleu-sinian Mysteries, secret initiation ceremonies inspired by the story of Hades’ abduction of Persephone into the underworld.
Further Reading
Boardman, John, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray, eds. The Oxford History of the Classical World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Cahill, Thomas. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
Mikalson, Jon D. Ancient Greek Religion. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004.
Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.
Jonathan L. Thorndike
See also: Amazons; Artemis at Ephesus, Temple of; Athens; Cosmology; Crete; Daily Life and Customs; Death and Burial; Delphi; Delphic Oracle; Eleusinian Mysteries; Hesiod; Homer; Homeric Hymns; Literature; Mycenaean Greece; Mythology; Parthenon; Zeus at Pergamum, Great Altar of.
World History
