greek religion

Cult Worship of Isis

hackney@uoregon.edu

In the reading from Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice Isis is the supreme god in a way. She has control over the cosmos, life and death, and most importantly faith. She was worshipped outside of Egypt long before she became a prominent goddess of the Greeks and Romans. In the reading it says that Isis is Demeter in Greek, and that the mysteries of Demeter were an extension of the mysteries of Isis. Isis has three deities she is commonly associated with, Anubis Horus and Sarapis.  She is known as the goddess of a thousand names, each culture has a different name for the goddess, sometimes more than one. We know very little about her mysteries, we do know though that anyone could worship her in daily rituals. They did not have to be initiated into the mysteries.

The writers praise Isis as basically the goddess who has some sort of rule over everything. They praise her as a goddess of all the people and one who hold justice in very high esteem. She is known to calm or agitate the sea, as well as being the rays of the sun. In Egypt, she was responsible for searching for, putting back together, embalming, and reincarnating Osiris, then magically conceiving and giving birth to Horus. Horus would then be reborn and embodied by each new pharaoh.

Isis is worshipped for setting up sanctuaries for the gods and putting an end to tyrants. Her interactions with humanity are that she makes seafaring possible, she watches over people and to her “everything is possible”. I think she was so popular because Isis could claim having a hand in every aspect of someone’s daily life. She was credited for drawing man an women together, making sure children loved their parents, and taught people to honor the gods. So technically she could be praised for all the religious notions that all the Greek people have, and thus should be worshipped. Also since she had control over the seas and safety of seafarers she was the perfect goddess to pray to for safe passage in travels.

The Amphipolis Tomb

dreis@uoregon.edu

amphipolis-tomb
Archaeologists have recently discovered a Macedonian tomb in Amphipolis, a city in northern Greece, dating to the time of Alexander the Great. Inside the tomb is a mosaic of Hermes leading a charioteer into the underworld.

The Role of Cult, Myth, and Art in Ancient Greek Religion

thatcher@uoregon.edu

Cult, myth, and art were religious tools used in Sunium to worship the god Poseidon. Ritualistic aspects of worship are prominent and can be seen by some of the standards set in Greek religion. Being “polluted” ritually is an example of the cult, ritualistic aspects of Greek religion (Mikalson, 8). If one had been in the house of someone giving birth they could not go inside the temenos . Little things like that show how Greeks were very ritualistic in the way they lived and worshiped. While ritual provides a vague rule system in which to worship the gods, myth and literature were the stories about the gods. Myths usually were very regional things for the most part with specific groups of people believing in the gods in a wide range of capacities. While myths are mostly thought of as poetic literature they could be any type of divine belief associated with reality. The gods of the Greeks did not have a set “code for human behavior” which allowed for many interpretations and diverse belief among the ancient Greek people. I would argue that ritual is more prominent just because there are more consistencies and less diverse beliefs when it comes to them. An example being that all altars faced east or that altar to gods in the sky had to be outside. Myths on the other hand are up for interpretation and had a more diverse range of beliefs associated with it.

The way art enhances cult worship is due to the wonderful nature of art and the meaning behind its creation. Just like the reading when there were statues built after the war with the Persians serving the purpose of thanking the gods but also reminding the people of them and their power. If everyone thanks the gods for a win in battle then future generations will follow in their belief. Art was a way for the gods presence to be felt in the reality of every day life. When most people had huts to live in, it becomes a big deal that there is a giant bronze statue of a god just down the road. Art allows for the gods to be more prominent and real so that their influence can always be felt.

So far I would say the “religiosity” of the Greeks is somewhat flawed but worked in the times that they lived in. Greeks couldn’t come up with one set of particular rules in which everyone believed because the systems to distribute those rules were not around then. Living in antiquity the Greeks focused more on daily life and what to do not to anger the gods. This comes from a completely different direction of normal religious life in which there is a “loving” God. Gods to the Greeks just needed the honor and respect of the people so that they did not have to punish them like they did Odysseus. This is partly why ritual and cult practices are so prominent because there is no set of religious beliefs with the belief system based around not offending the gods. This allows for the outward practice of faith and “religion” more so than the inner practice most people are familiar with today.

Relationships with the gods and cult practices

lgc@uoregon.edu

In his hypothetical construction of a temple at Sunium, Mikalson attempts to address the various dimensions of Greek religious life and how they combine and converge at temple sites. In his step-by-step approach, Mikalson successfully explains which components of religious sites were most important, and those that followed once a cult had become popular enough to sustain a large temple. In his introductory chapter James Rives talks at length about the four dimensions of religious worship: cult, art, myth, and philosophy. In many ways cult, art, and myth converge during the production of a religious worship site like the one Mikalson constructed in his chapter. In the Greek religious landscape, the most important step to becoming a pious individual was to worship in the correct fashion, hence the importance of cult. This same reverence for cult drove the Greeks to place their worship sites in locations that were suitable for each individual god. Mikalson points out, for example, that mountaintops were often sacred for Zeus and the Site of Sunium was fitting for the god of the sea.  After choosing a proper location, nearly every aspect of the temples construction had a cult purpose, most notably the altar on which offerings would be made. The altar was the crucial aspect of cult, as the practice of sacrificial offerings was a fundamental part of their religious lives and a crucial aspect of remaining in good favor with the god. While myths of the deeds of gods and heroes likely served to reinforce the cult practices, they were not what modern Westerners would classify as a sacred religious text or tradition. Myths were often oral traditions that were used as symbolic representations of philosophical truths, according to Rives.  As it pertains to the temple at Sunium, there would have likely been tales of men lost at sea or killed in naval battles as a result of not providing the proper offering to Poseidon. So while myths might not have served a central role in religious life, it probably reinforced the central ideas and practices of cult. Besides just performing an offering before embarking on the sea, many worshippers would have brought dedications to the temple at Sunium in thanks to the god for fulfilling their requests. These dedications were often works of art such as small statuette or sculpted or painted plaques that would decorate the temple. In many ways, these works of art would be physical and tangible evidence that Poseidon had in fact helped dozens of sea merchants or sailors.

As I previously stated, the presence of myths was far more important to literature and art than it was cult. As Rives states, “…myth remained a fluid tradition, reworked and adapted to new contexts by successive generations…”
Cult worship was clearly the more important aspect of Greek religious life and was merely reinforced by myth and literature.

What I found most interesting about the overall “religiosity” of the Greeks was that they seemed to rely on the gods to help them with things that were out of their control. For example, a sailor would make an offering to Poseidon before setting sail because once they were on the water they were at the mercy of the elements. Greeks made offerings to Zeus because they could not control the climate and weather. So while they were ritualistic when they needed to be, more often than not they were able to complete tasks without invoking the gods.

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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