Greek Religion Scholars Flashcards
Scott (Greek religion)
What is Greek religion?… there is no such thing as Greek religion
Hornblower and Spofforth (nature of Greek religion)
Greek religion is primarily a public religion rather than a religion of the individual.
Parker (amount of gods)
Gods overflowed like clothes from an overfilled drawer which no one felt obliged to tidy
Emerson (role of festivals - day to day experience)
participating in them would belong to his identity as a citizen of that city, it would not necessarily be a religious choice.
Van Wees (festivals and the calendar)
The classical calendar (…) shows that public interest in cult focused heavily on regulating its costs
Harrison (chthonic worship)
Herodotus knows of another rituals, addressed to quite other powers (…) The distinction is clear to all; you may not eat of dead men’s food; the Olympians shares the feast offered to them
Harrison (Ritual)
Ritual in homer is simple and uniform. It consists of prayer accompanied by the sprinkling of grain followed by an animal burnt offering
Sourvinou-Inwood (polis as religious authority - Polis religion theory)
the polis was the institutional authority that structured the universe and the divine world in a religious system
Sourvinou-Inwood (polis’ role in perception of gods)
All such activity was perceived as symbolically legitimated through the religious system of the ‘polis’, which shaped the perception of the gods and articulated the relationship between men and the divine
Parker (social groups)
Every formal social grouping was also a religious grouping, from the smallest to the largest.
Burkert (polis and public religion)
Greek religion, bound to the polis, is public religion to an extreme degree
Sourvinou- Inwood (religious mentality)
A religious mentality in which the individual’s act of worship is not different in nature from that of the group’s.
Kindt (personal religion)
‘Personal religion’ coexisted with other manifestations of the religious, including those of ‘polis religion.’
Sourvinou-Inwood (oikos cults)
oikos cults (…) are regulated by the polis
Mikalson (deme)
The deme was a closed community
Zaidman (festivals)
Inseparability of festivals from the very definition of Greek civic life
Harrison (hero cults)
The cult of the hero at his tomb supposes that the dead man is in some sense alive and locally present that his spirit is either in the tomb. The ghost of a man, strong in life, will be potent after death
Harrison (levels of rituals)
we have an upper level of rites belonging to the Olympians, and a lower level of rites belonging to more ancient beliefs.
Garland (votive offerings)
Votive offerings are gifts which were made either in anticipation or in consequence of divine favour
Marinatos (sanctuaries)
Sanctuaries were multidimensional institutions which served the needs of their communities and the needs of the Greek city-state as a whole
Parker (prayer)
It was unusual to pray seriously without making an offering of some kind or promising to make one should the prayer be fulfilled.
Parker (things done / things believed)
There is a difference between ‘things done’ for the gods and ‘things believed’ about them
Zaidman and Pantel (Religious authority)
Religious authority belonged essentially to the people or citizen body as a whole (demos)
Garland (priests and priestesses)
Though priests and priestesses had little overt power, we can hardly doubt that their office invested them with a certain venerability.
Garland (sacrifice)
the chief beneficiaries of a sacrifice were the human participants
Chaniotis (politics and religion)
Magistrates sometimes conducted religious activities without the assistance of priests
Detienne and Vernant (sacrifices)
sacrifice was killing for eating, especially feeding the people of a city which may have otherwise not had much meat in their diet
Naiden (sacrifice and the gods)
Sacrifice served to maintain and stabilise the relationship between the mortals and gods.
Burket (invocation and prayer)
Invocation and prayer are inseparable from libation: the cup is filled in order to pray, and the filled cup is passed to the guest with the invitation to pray in return
Burket (libations and sacrifice)
Wine libations have a fixed place in the ritual of sacrifice
Bell (ritual)
ritual becomes a strategic play of power, of domination and resistance, within the arena of the social body
Swaddling (spectators)
Greek contents were a big event, drawing tens of thousands of spectators and turning top athletes into living legends
Ekroth (Hero cults)
Hero cults originated in the cult of the dead, persevering older traits which later were abandoned in the funerary cult.
Allen (Homeric gods)
The Homeric gods are not amoral, but instead offer divine justice
Garrett (Homer’s gods)
Most of Homer’s gods or goddesses and the most important of Hesiod’s can be described as being very much like human beings
Renshaw (temples)
Such grandeur of their temples had the double benefit of honouring the gods and flaunting the city’s wealth and culture.
Zaidman and Pantel (temples and rituals)
Rituals were mostly performed outside, not inside the temple.
Zaidman and Pantel (initiation into the mysteries)
Initiation in the Mysteries, then, apparently did not involve instruction of a dogmatic nature, but was rather a process of internal transformation, founded upon the emotional experience of a direct encounter with the divine
Price (Asclepius)
As there were other ways of obtaining diagnoses and cures (self-help, independent doctors), people must have had particular reasons for turning to Asclepius.
Hornblower and Spofforth (Asclepius)
The success of Asclepius was due to his appeal to individuals in a world where their concerns became more and more removed from polis religion
