Greek Religion Scholars

J. Renshaw

Such grandeur [of their temples] had the double benefit of honouring the gods and flaunting the city's wealth and culture

Amos & Lang

To us, the Olympics games are a series of sporting events. But for the first thousand years of their history they were part of what was primarily a religious occasion.

Nanno Marinatos

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

Garland

(Delphi) A journey to the earth's navel in order to deepen one’s knowledge and wisdom

Zaidman and Pantel

Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi was a constant hive of activity

Judith Swaddling

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

Geoffrey Kirk

all sorts of not very heroic qualities are allowed to enter the lives of the gods

William Allan

the gods are not portrayed as being amoral, but instead offer divine justice

Jasper Griffin

Homers epics are full of really impressive gods who deserve the worship they receive

Faraone

Criticism of the male head of the household and that no act of Greek religion could be fully private. Proposal to replace the ‘individual’ with ‘household or family’ as a more important focus of non-civic cult

Faraone

The male householders religious activities essentially replicate a civic cult

Faraone

Magic and the role of women are qualitative differences between civic and household/family religion

Faraone

Non animal sacrifice is more characteristic of household than civic religion

Jon D. Mikalson

citizens living in that deme would worship their deme deities if needed

Jon D. Mikalson

The deme was a closed community, the deities of that deme were part of that community and the worship of them was a marker of membership

Jon D. Mikalson

They would not find in other deme people, deities and priests as familiar to them as those of their own deme

Simon Price

Deme religion correlated with polis religion, some demes had festivals which reflected central polis festivals

Simon Price

The attic demes were thus integrated into the religious life of the Athenian state while preserving their own individuality

Jon D. Mikalson

The state was recognising nationally the importance of these family deities” (Hestia at the hearth in Prytaneion)

Zaidman

There is an inseparability of festivals from the very definition of Greek civic life

Sourvinou-Inwood

the fact that Greek religion was ritual, that activity took place in groups, must not be taken to entail that it is a ‘group religion’ in the sense that group worship was the norm

Sourvinou-Inwood

The individual was without doubt the primary, basic, cultic unit in polis religion

Sourvinou-Inwood

The polis was the institutional authority that established a system of cults, particular rituals and sanctuaries

Fred Naiden

The Polis did not regulate the associations, but the associations regulated themselves. The regulation of sacrifice was partly communal, but not entirely so

Kindt

Individuals were motivated by personal belief to join in festivals, it combines aspects of public and private

Flowers

The Pythia composed oracles and directly reported them to clients

H. Bowden

The Priests composed oracles and directly reported them to clients

S.I Johnson

The Pythia used lots (throwing beans or stones into a container) to answer her clients questions

A. Chaniotis

Magistrates sometimes conducted religious activities without the assistance of priests, it was less common for a public priest to perform rituals without the presence of secular authorities

Matthew Dillon

women priests in were not just the women’s equivalent of male priests; nor were they women who primarily served the religious needs of other women

Matthew Dillon

The most important cult of Apollo, the male god of prophecy, at Delphi had women priests

Matthew Dillion

Male priesthoods on the whole were often more prestigious than women’s priesthoods

Walter Burket

Invocation and prayer are inseparable from libation, in order to supplicate the gods right, a libation is required

Walter Burket

Wine Libations have a fixed place in the ritual of animal sacrifice

Joe Skinner

Some libation bowls had stoppers on the bottom and were very shallow so that the people offering the libation could offer less liquid than might appear from the outside of the bowl - therefore make it an even cheaper type of sacrifice

Zaidman and Pantel

Greek identity could be affirmed through common religious cults as much as through common language

Ekroth

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

Zaidman and Pantel

The temple was not an indispensable element of Greek religion. Rituals were mostly performed outside, not inside the temple

Emerson

Participating in religious festivals would belong to his identity as a citizen of that city, it would not necessarily be a religious choice

S. Price

People must have had particular reasons for turning to Asclepius

Zaidman and Pantel

The Sanctuaries fame gradually led to its transformation from an oracular shine for the practise of incubation into a huge complex of cures”

Hornblower

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

S.Price

Mysteries suggest that the bleak view of the afterlife implied in funerary rituals was accompanied by an alternative for those initiated there

Zaidman and Pantel

A process of internal transformation, founded upon the emotional experience of a direct encounter with the divine

Parker

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

J. Garrett

Can be described as being very much like human beings, except they are much more powerful and they never die

Garland

Eleisinian Mysteries promised eternal bliss on purely ritualistic grounds

Zaidman and Pantel

Nor were the Eleusinian mysteries a unique phenomenon within the Greek religious tradition

Garland

only with the rise of the cult of Asclepius that the healing art was transferred to a major deity

Garland

epidaurus […] gave people the gift of being able to hope against hope, the gift of life

Price

religious involvement from men and women […] resulted not from individual choices but from social expectations

Price

Some individuals had a particularly close relationship to the cults of their own or other cities

Zaidman and Pantel

combination of cures and adroit propaganda ensured the sanctuaries continued success

Bowden

oracular sanctuaries were places where strangers would meet and tell each other their stories

Bowden

(Dodona) visitors who were more used to visiting sanctuaries in urban settings, it might have been unsettling

Emma Aston

Giving up something that is of economic and social value to you

Garland

Movement included some of the brightest and most radical thinkers Greece ever produced

Garland

the challenge of the sophists not withstanding, Greek polytheism continued to play a vital role

Garland

change in attitude (towards religion) from the peloponnesian war onwards

Julia Annas

Depicting Socrates as in many ways a weird and inhuman personal making excessive demands on human nature

Julia Annas

As Plato engages more in the tradition of cosmology and investigation of argument, Socrates becomes an increasingly inappropriate representative of his views

Julia Annas

Plato would not have been the great philosopher he is if Socrates had not influenced him

Parker

The philosopher Plato launched and attack on what he saw as the growing danger of atheism

Parker

Plato sees learning to worship the gods as part of the process of growing up

Parker

religion is not a special sphere set apart from the rest of life

Parker

their role was not to teach but to supervise the sanctuaries they were attached to (priests)

Parker

the gods were just silhouettes one could fill in the details according to ones own taste

Parker

religous affairs were taken by the organs of the polis, not by a separate body of religious specialists

Michael Scott

Boundary walls encouraged everyone to morph from being spectators of ritual to participators in ritual

Price

Herodotus, like almost all other Greeks, accepted that Delphi did work

Hart

In the Asclepian cult, prayer was the most important part of the rituals

Harrison

Belief in prophecy was simply something natural, even rational

Silvermintz

he (Socrates) practises a form of sorcery that results in bewitching those with whom he comes in contact