Introduction

‘Regarding the Gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or do not exist, or what they are like in form.’ The statement of Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490-420; 80 B 4 Diels-Kranz) has often been taken as emblematic of fifth-century sophistic rationalism, but it may be less revolutionary than it sounds. Greeks of the classical period had a tendency to believe that no certainty was possible with regard to the divine. Thus Herodotos, whose work is full of‘god’, ‘gods’ and ‘the divine’, remarks in connection with Egyptian religion that ‘all people know an equal amount about the divine’ (Hdt. 2.3.2) - by which he clearly means ‘equally little’. But Protagoras’ words certainly point up a paradox at the heart of Greek religion. For if the Greeks in reflective mood believed that they knew little about the Gods, in other contexts they acted as though they knew a lot. They knew the names of the Gods, or at least some of them; they knew that Poseidon had to do with the sea, with earthquakes and with horses, and Demeter to do with land cultivation and cereal crops; they knew that Hera was the protector of Argos, and Athena of Athens; they knew that pigs should not be offered to Aphrodite, but that she was, on the other hand, rather fond of pigeons. And these were not simply odd facts that could be neatly sorted into a category ‘religion’; things to do with the Gods permeated pretty well every aspect of life. Whether it is Plato’s Sokrates investigating the nature of some abstract quality, Pindar celebrating an athlete’s victory, or the orators praising the city or vilifying their opponents, few are the texts which fail to indicate the closeness and importance of the Gods to human life and ways of thought. Even Thucydides, who famously removes the divine as a direct causal explanation from history, allows on occasion human beliefs about the Gods as a motivating factor (e. g., 7.18.2) and becomes quite discursive on the history of Delos as sacred island (3.104).

In this respect at least, literature seems to have reflected life. It was impossible to pass through a Greek city without being aware of the presence of the Gods on

Every side, from the loftiest and most magnificent temples to wayside shrines, fountain-heads, and herms - ithyphallic markers of the way identical in name with the God Hermes, and sacred enough for their deliberate mutilation in Athens in 415 to be the cause of real outrage and panic. Similarly, a person’s life was marked out with religious ritual - not just the obvious life-cycle events, but almost all their significant occupations. In Athens, for instance, men grouped themselves for political activity and mustered for military service under the watchful eye of their tribal eponymous hero, who was the object of cult; they prepared for battle with elaborate prayers and sacrifices; and well-born women left the house almost exclusively for funerals and religious rites.

Literary and epigraphic sources concur in showing that the Gods and their interaction with humans (or the attempts of humans to interact with them) are to be found everywhere, and because in our period - or at least the earlier part of it - the majority of our sources are concerned primarily with public rather than private life, this makes Greek religion seem to be a very public, community-oriented affair. Indeed, while studies of mythology have often taken a different direction, over the last thirty years or so perhaps the main concern of writing on Greek religious practice has been ‘polis religion’. And a model that works for the polis, in most areas of the Greek world the fundamental unit of society, works also for larger groups - Leagues, Amphiktyonies - and smaller (phylai, phratries, local groups such as demes). Religious activity and sentiment, once tacitly dismissed (at least in much Anglo-Saxon scholarship) as a polite fiction, a mostly meaningless survival like the prayers in the Houses of Parliament, is now seen to be thoroughly ‘embedded’ in society.

Fashions in historical interpretation change, but it is hard not to suppose that this view is essentially more correct than that in which religion is no more than an ornamental periphery. At its most basic, religious organization can be seen to be operating throughout society in different but complementary ways, both as a defining and limiting force and as a cohesive force. Greek society was full of interlocking and overlapping groups, and a group is maintained both by defining who is not a member and by strengthening the feeling of belonging which the members have. In almost all cases it was those who sacrificed with you who belonged to the same group, and those who didn’t share sacrifices who were outside. ‘Common sacrifices’ were a potent emotional bond, from the level of ‘Greekness’ (Hdt. 8.144) down to the smallest local and family units.

We shall see that this role, fundamental as it is, is very far from exhausting the interactions of religion and society. Even so, the concept of ‘polis religion’ is not the key to understanding everything about Greek religion. To begin with a very simple point, it is clear even from fifth-century evidence that religious activity was carried out by the individual as well as the group, and the impression is strengthened in the fourth century by the greater willingness of the texts to engage with private affairs and everyday life. Indeed, it would be a very singular society where no religious practice or experience took place on an individual basis! More tellingly, we might remark that the individual’s religious position was not entirely dictated by his or her place in society. Certainly, birth and (for women) marriage within a particular community determined many of the cults that one was able or obliged to take part in, but there were variations possible which had more to do with personal choice. The choice whether or not to receive initiation into various Mysteries (see below) might have something to do with whom you knew and whom you were related to, but equally it might not; in any case, it was emphatically not a consequence of your belonging or not belonging to a formally constituted group. The same might be said of the more radical decision to follow an Orphic or Pythagorean way of life. Seeing dreams and visions had more to do with the wish to satisfy personal needs and with the deity’s relationship towards an individual than with that individual’s formal position in city, tribe or phratry. And although serious atheism and total non-participation in cult was scarcely an option for Greeks of the classical period, the fundamental choice of less or more piety and observance was overwhelmingly a personal matter.

Another aspect of religion which can only partially be dealt with by the ‘polis religion’ idea is that of assumptions and speculations about the nature of the Gods. Here, we find in the classical period something of a dynamic between community and individual. However uncertain many Greeks may have been of what the Gods were really like, in practice some assumptions were accepted as necessary to the proper functioning of the community: that the Gods existed, that they took account of human affairs and (other things being equal) were likely to favour their worshippers, and that they were pleased with worship according to ancestral custom. Without such beliefs operating at least at some level, the public cult so conspicuous in Greek cities would have operated in a strange and implausible vacuum. But in more speculative contexts, there was room for a variety of individual approaches. In Protagoras’ statement, we find an assertively personal note which is typical of fifth-century prose writers: ‘Concerning the Gods, I have no means of knowing... ’. To be sure, the reasons given for this lack of resource are universal (the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of life), but Protagoras presents himself as the one who has understood this, in distinction from the mass of mankind - in this perhaps anticipating his adversary, the Platonic Sokrates. Not all such speculation was acceptable to the wider community, and the apparatus of state control could on occasion be brought in to curb its excesses. Hence, notoriously, the trials for impiety (asebeia) which occurred sporadically in Athens in the second half of the fifth century. Less adversarially, individual and community were both involved in the often disturbing presentations of the Gods in tragedy, which originated in the mind of an individual but were presented to the city as a whole, in the context of a public festival.

On the other hand, the religious thought of (say) Herodotos or Plato, although in certain contexts engaged with the community, in others went far beyond it. There has been something of a tendency since the mid-twentieth century to play down the thought and belief side of Greek religion in favour of religious practice, ‘cult’, which has been generally assumed to be primary and somehow more genuine. This has made it easier to see the religion of the Greeks as essentially public - and the public aspect is as we have seen important and characteristic - but it would probably have surprised the Greeks themselves.