Search Results

Among the many places of worship that could be found in the territory of the city of Athens and its chôra during the classical period, several offer remarkable configurations of nature: the sanctuary of Aphrodite of the Gardens on the slope of the Acropolis with its flowery meadow, the green field in Eleusis for the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries in honour of Demeter and Persephone, the olive tree sacred to Athena near the Erechtheion, groves and running water at Brauron where young Athenian girls played the bear in honour of Artemis, etc. Often actualised in the tragedies of Euripides, the aetiological legends that constitute the foundations of these cults help to associate the relevant divinity with a hero or heroine. This combination is the starting point of a discussion of the identities of the gods in a polytheist system and their modifications through the association of a heroic partner.

Greek gods and polytheism as a distinctive feature of Graeco-Roman culture and religion was a favourite theme among the Christian Apologists of the second century AD. This chapter analyses both their approaches to Greek deities and the evolution of motifs, which oscillate between the rigid criticism of idolatry based on Jewish lore and a richer rational censure of anthropomorphism originating in Greek philosophy.

The Greeks were polytheists who believed in a multitude of gods. In the modern discussion of Greek religion the gods take second place to ritual, and the study of individual gods is privileged over attempts to define their general characteristics qua gods. While studies of the functions and personalities of gods like Apollo, Demeter, Dionysos or Herakles abound, no comprehensive treatment of the generic properties of the Greek gods exists. The question “What is Greek god?” is considered too ‘theological’ and therefore shunned. This chapter examines four divine qualities that are shared by all the Greek gods—their immortality, anthropomorphism, foreknowledge, and finally their power.

As a system, polytheism can integrate outsiders into its pantheon when necessary. However, the “logic” of polytheism excludes the possibility of the existence of another pantheon; by virtue of its divinity, all gods are necessarily part of the same divine pantheon. As the peoples of the Mediterranean came into more meaningful and more frequent contact with one another, a set of discursive and hermeneutic practices developed as a means of essentially translating the names of the divine from one group to another. The question that Herodotus asked of the Egyptian priests was not, “who is Osiris,” but rather, “which one of the gods do you call Osiris?” These sorts of “syncretic associations” that enable the cultural go-between to explain Dionysus to Egypt and Osiris to Greece, however, are rarely stable. Rather, the relationships between pantheons evolve with the changing patterns of intercourse between the peoples themselves. While Herodotus might argue that the names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt, Plutarch argued that in fact, Isis is a Greek word. This chapter looks at how two early imperial intellectuals, Plutarch and Lucian, used and played with various syncretic associations of deities as means of envisioning the unity and diversity of the oikoumenê.