greek religion

Cult, Art, and Ritual of Greek Religions

hackney@uoregon.edu

There were many ways that the Greeks worshipped their gods. Perhaps the best well known is that of sacrifice but they also gave the gods material things, statues and sculptures made of gold. These were another way to honor the gods, to use as a gift so that they may favorably look upon a request being given. There would be sculptures given to the gods to try to gain favor in upcoming wars or to give thanks for the victory in past war. These different ways that the Greeks used art strengthens their cult worship, it gave them a way to gain favor with the gods by more then just the sacrifices. The panhellenic statues and gifts also strengthened  a larger group of people’s favor with the gods and affected a wider group of people.

There were many rituals carried out by the cults that defined and shaped the ways that the Greeks practiced their worship. For example there were rituals to purify people who had been polluted, this meant that anyone who had been polluted by birth or death was not able to partake in any of the rituals or even enter the temples and sanctuaries until they had been purified. The ritual for purifying was also only to make a person physically clean, being morally clean was not an issue. If worshipping a female goddess then the leader of the sanctuary would be a priestess, if the god was a male then the leader would be a priest. The priests and priestesses also had more rituals and rules to follow then the average worshippers at a temple. The rituals carried out by the people played a more predominate role than that of myth and literature. Myth and literature also played noteworthy roles in the sanctuaries, namely that of  deities that were a creation of the literary tradition or folklore, they did not receive sacrifices, prayer or dedications. These deities were still worshipped and some later transitioned into religious figures, Eirene and Agathe Tyche for example. While both influenced the lives of the Greeks, it seems as though the rituals that they had to carry out influenced their lives more on a daily basis.

All the dimensions of worship and celebration converge at Sunium to form a large and important temple to the Greeks. The flow into each other, the cult uses art and myths to enhance their religious experiences and temples. It would be unusual to have a sanctuary without all these aspects of worship represented. After this chapter my overall impression with the Greeks is that they spent more time on making sure that the gods were happy with them by giving items and sacrificing to the gods than they did on being morally sound. Their “religiosity” was based solely on material things and material gain than it was on them being good people. It seems to me that this wasn’t so much a religion as it was a way to get farther in their world and a way to look good in the eyes of society.

 

Introduction to Greco-Roman Religions

lgc@uoregon.edu

In his chapter on Greek religion and Greek culture, Jon Mikalson attempts to draw distinctions between the aspects of Greek life that were heavily influenced by religion and those that were almost entirely secular. In this attempt, Mikalson places himself at odds with many scholars on the topic who hold that religion touched all aspects of Greek life. The sense that I got from reading the chapter was that each aspect was influenced by religion in some way, some more so than others. For example, the Greek government buildings were architecturally similar to the temples, and the meetings were opened with a prayer and an offering. After which, business at these meetings was purely secular. There was an excerpt from Socrates that explained how in many ways this was because it was important for humans to use the skills and abilities the gods had given them in order to handle their own affairs. The subtopic regarding Localism, Nationalism, and Polytheism was of particular interest to me because of our discussion on Tuesday regarding how religious traditions interacted. As each locality had its own gods and goddesses, it is surprising that there was not a higher degree of religious conflict. According to Mikalson, “There was never a crusade by one Greek city-state to impose its gods or cultic system on another, and there is no evidence that there were even proselytizing efforts in this regard.” It appears that to the people of Ancient Greece it was more important to respect the gods of someone else than to attempt to claim yours as superior.

Greco-Roman Religions: Introduction

hackney@uoregon.edu

Mikalson’s chapter highlights the different ways that Greek religion affected the government, culture, artistry, and way of life of Classical Greece. There is an emphasis that events that take place during a religious festival, whether or not they are part of the ritual, are religious in base. Many commonalities that religion has with some of the subtopics rely on the fact the Greeks believe that if you invoke a god’s name in an oath then that oath must be fulfilled; otherwise the god’s wrath would come down. The courts required oaths of innocence and oaths of truths from the jurors, if found lying then the guilty party would be expelled from the city or killed to rid the city of the pollution. The telling of tragedies and comedies were performed at festivals honoring Dionysus, it was not until later that those two genres were anything but religious in nature. There is also an emphasis on how little the gods seem to care about anything relate to politics, court trials and the people’s life after death. If a juror took a bribe then the gods would do nothing about it because it was not the god that had been offended, a similar reaction to the gods’ lack of attention when someone died. They are only willing to interfere in people’s lives, not their afterlife. There was a definite and undisputable influence that the gods and the people’s religion held over the everyday lives of the Grecians though there are parts of the people’s lives that existed outside of religion, their secular art for example. Mikalson’s presentation of Greek religion intersects with our impression in class of Greek religion in that both parties acknowledged that there was a god for certain aspects of daily life, that the gods were generally characterized by immorality and that the Greeks absorbed gods into their fold instead of taking over the religions of conquered peoples. There are many points of agreement between the class list and the chapter, there could be some fine tuning on the importance of the festivals and the specific aspects that correlate to each god.

Welcome to Greco-Roman Religions!

dreis@uoregon.edu

Welcome to the website for the students of REL 399: Greco-Roman Religions at the University of Oregon (Fall 2014). The site is maintained by Dr. David M. Reis. Click the play button to listen to music from ancient Rome as you scroll through the images.

 

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