Greek Religion Scholars

Question 1

Scott (Greek religion)

Answer 1

What is Greek religion?… there is no such thing as Greek religion

Question 2

Hornblower and Spofforth (nature of Greek religion)

Answer 2

Greek religion is primarily a public religion rather than a religion of the individual.

Question 3

Parker (amount of gods)

Answer 3

Gods overflowed like clothes from an overfilled drawer which no one felt obliged to tidy

Question 4

Emerson (role of festivals - day to day experience)

Answer 4

participating in them would belong to his identity as a citizen of that city, it would not necessarily be a religious choice.

Question 5

Van Wees (festivals and the calendar)

Answer 5

The classical calendar (…) shows that public interest in cult focused heavily on regulating its costs

Question 6

Harrison (chthonic worship)

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Harrison (Ritual)

Answer 7

Ritual in homer is simple and uniform. It consists of prayer accompanied by the sprinkling of grain followed by an animal burnt offering

Question 8

Sourvinou-Inwood (polis as religious authority - Polis religion theory)

Answer 8

the polis was the institutional authority that structured the universe and the divine world in a religious system

Question 9

Sourvinou-Inwood (polis’ role in perception of gods)

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Parker (social groups)

Answer 10

Every formal social grouping was also a religious grouping, from the smallest to the largest.

Question 11

Burkert (polis and public religion)

Answer 11

Greek religion, bound to the polis, is public religion to an extreme degree

Question 12

Sourvinou- Inwood (religious mentality)

Answer 12

A religious mentality in which the individual’s act of worship is not different in nature from that of the group’s.

Question 13

Kindt (personal religion)

Answer 13

‘Personal religion’ coexisted with other manifestations of the religious, including those of ‘polis religion.’

Question 14

Sourvinou-Inwood (oikos cults)

Answer 14

oikos cults (…) are regulated by the polis

Question 15

Mikalson (deme)

Answer 15

The deme was a closed community

Question 16

Zaidman (festivals)

Answer 16

Inseparability of festivals from the very definition of Greek civic life

Question 17

Harrison (hero cults)

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Harrison (levels of rituals)

Answer 18

we have an upper level of rites belonging to the Olympians, and a lower level of rites belonging to more ancient beliefs.

Question 19

Garland (votive offerings)

Answer 19

Votive offerings are gifts which were made either in anticipation or in consequence of divine favour

Question 20

Marinatos (sanctuaries)

Answer 20

Sanctuaries were multidimensional institutions which served the needs of their communities and the needs of the Greek city-state as a whole

Question 21

Parker (prayer)

Answer 21

It was unusual to pray seriously without making an offering of some kind or promising to make one should the prayer be fulfilled.

Question 22

Parker (things done / things believed)

Answer 22

There is a difference between ‘things done’ for the gods and ‘things believed’ about them

Question 23

Zaidman and Pantel (Religious authority)

Answer 23

Religious authority belonged essentially to the people or citizen body as a whole (demos)

Question 24

Garland (priests and priestesses)

Answer 24

Though priests and priestesses had little overt power, we can hardly doubt that their office invested them with a certain venerability.

Question 25

Garland (sacrifice)

Answer 25

the chief beneficiaries of a sacrifice were the human participants

Question 26

Chaniotis (politics and religion)

Answer 26

Magistrates sometimes conducted religious activities without the assistance of priests

Question 27

Detienne and Vernant (sacrifices)

Answer 27

sacrifice was killing for eating, especially feeding the people of a city which may have otherwise not had much meat in their diet

Question 28

Naiden (sacrifice and the gods)

Answer 28

Sacrifice served to maintain and stabilise the relationship between the mortals and gods.

Question 29

Burket (invocation and prayer)

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Burket (libations and sacrifice)

Answer 30

Wine libations have a fixed place in the ritual of sacrifice

Question 31

Bell (ritual)

Answer 31

ritual becomes a strategic play of power, of domination and resistance, within the arena of the social body

Question 32

Swaddling (spectators)

Answer 32

Greek contents were a big event, drawing tens of thousands of spectators and turning top athletes into living legends

Question 33

Ekroth (Hero cults)

Answer 33

Hero cults originated in the cult of the dead, persevering older traits which later were abandoned in the funerary cult.

Question 34

Allen (Homeric gods)

Answer 34

The Homeric gods are not amoral, but instead offer divine justice

Question 35

Garrett (Homer’s gods)

Answer 35

Most of Homer’s gods or goddesses and the most important of Hesiod’s can be described as being very much like human beings

Question 36

Renshaw (temples)

Answer 36

Such grandeur of their temples had the double benefit of honouring the gods and flaunting the city’s wealth and culture.

Question 37

Zaidman and Pantel (temples and rituals)

Answer 37

Rituals were mostly performed outside, not inside the temple.

Question 38

Zaidman and Pantel (initiation into the mysteries)

Answer 38

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

Question 39

Price (Asclepius)

Answer 39

As there were other ways of obtaining diagnoses and cures (self-help, independent doctors), people must have had particular reasons for turning to Asclepius.

Question 40

Hornblower and Spofforth (Asclepius)

Answer 40

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