Ancient Greece: Religion
A Matter of Faith
• The History channel’s
documentary, Gods and
Goddesses contends:
– the ancient Greeks treated the
stories (myths) of Homer and
Hesiod as a matter of faith in the
same way many today treat their
religion’s stories as matters of faith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MSEsh6jgHE&t=82s&list=PLIlRRUsS5_C4LV7vE5Dfiodew_AxLVhn&index=16
Faith in Ancient Greek Religion?
• 750 BCE:
– Homer authors the Illaid and
the Odyssey, crystalizing
Greek religion
• 700 BCE:
– Hesiod authors, Theogony, offering alternative
perspectives on origin of universe and human
civilization
• Both of these works predate most if not all of
the works in the Old Testament/ Hebrew Bible
12 Olympians
• Zeus (Jupiter)
• Poseidon (Neptune)
• Hades (Pluto)
• Hestia (Vesta)
• Hera (Juno)
• Ares (Mars),
• Athena (Minerva)
• Apollo
• Aphrodite (Venus)
• Hermes (Mercury)
• Artemis (Diana)
• Hephaestus (Vulcan)
Pre-Olympian Gods and Goddesses
• According to Hesiod’s Theogony, the gods
begin with the spontaneous creation of
– Chaos
– Gaea (earth)
– Tartarus (deepest part of the
underworld)
– Eros (love)
– Erbes (another part of underworld)
and Night are created by Chaos
– Night and Erbes mate to form Day and Space
Eros
• God of love (Cupid in Rome)
• Hesiod:
– “fairest of the deathless gods,
who unnerves the limbs and
overcomes the mind and wise
counsels of all gods and all
men within them.”
Eros. Attic red-figure
bobbin, c. 470 BC–450
BC.
Gaia’s Children
• Gaia (Earth) births
– Ouranos (Heaven)
– And the hills of the earth
• Gaia mates with her son, Ouranos, creating
– various monsters including the Cyclops (wheeleyed), and multi-arm and multi-headed
creatures (Cottus, Briareos, Gyes)
• They then mate to create 12 gods and
goddesses, the first set of Titans
– including Rhea, Themis, Ocean (river encircling
the earth), and the last born, Cronus (Saturn)
Castration of Ouranos
• Gaia asked her children to help liberate the
sons Ouranos had hidden away in Earth away
from the light, an evil act against them
• Only Cronos was willing
• Gaia gives him a sickle, and he castrates his
father
• Blood from Ouranos’ castration falls upon the
earth and creates
– Erinyes, Giants, and Nymphs of the ash-trees;
• His genitals fall into the sea and forge
– Aphrodite
• Cronus went on to rule the Titans
First Olympians and Rise of Zeus
• Cronos and (his sister) Rhea produced the first
Olympians:
– Hestia (Vesta),
– Demeter,
– Hera (Juno),
– Hades (Pluto),
– Poseidon (Neptune),
– and Zeus (Jupiter).
• After learning that he was to be overthrown by a
son, Cronos swallowed his children
• Rhea sought to save infant Zeus by hiding him in
Crete, and giving Cronos a covered stone to
swallow
• Zeus eventually freed his brothers and sisters
Orphic Religion (Orphism)
• Greek religious movement centered around
mythical poet Orpheus, Dionysus, and
Persephone, all of whom went to the
underworld and returned
Socrates on Mystery Religions
• Phaedo (“On the Soul”): drama recounting Socrates' final hours before
being put to death, in the Athens' jail
• Believed to be more reflective of Plato's ideas concerning immortality and
purification than Socrates
• Socrates contends that it may be that suicide is wrong since the gods have
a purpose for humans in mind:
– “There is the explanation that is put in the language of the mysteries, that we
men are in a kind of prison, and that one must not free oneself or run away”
(Phd 62b, p.54). JN: This sounds very much like the Christian dictate not to
love the world, but rather to view it as a means to an ultimate end.
• Aim of mystic rites of mystery religion: forging true philosophers
– “wisdom itself is a kind of cleansing or purification. It is likely that those who established
the mystic rites for us were not inferior persons but were speaking in riddles long ago
where they said that whoever arrives in the underworld uninitiated and unsanctified will
wallow in the mire, whereas he who arrives there purified and initiated will dwell with
the gods. There are indeed, as those concerned with the mysteries say, many who carry
the thyrsus but the Bacchants [or true followers] are few. These latter are, in my
opinion, no other than those who have practiced philosophy in the right way. I have in
my life left nothing undone in order to be counted among these as far as possible, as I
have been eager to be in every way" (Phd 69c-d, p.60)
Greek Afterlife:
Reward and Punishment
• In Plato’s Republic (380 BCE), book X, Socrates draws on
Homer's Odyssey (books ix-xi) to tell the story of
– “a brave Pamphylian man called Er, the son of Armenias, who once died in a
war" (R. 614 b, p.1218)
• Twelve days after Er's death, as he was laid on his funeral
pyre, “he revived and, having done so, told what he had seen in the world beyond. He said that,
after his soul had left him, it traveled together with many others until they came to a
marvelous place, where there were two adjacent openings in the earth, and opposite and
above them two others in the heavens, and between them judges sat. These, having rendered
their judgment, ordered the just to go upwards into the heavens through the door on the
right, with signs of the judgment attached to their chests, and the unjust to travel downward
through the opening on the left, with the signs of all their deeds on their backs. When Er
himself came forward, they told him that he was to be a messenger to human beings about
the things that were there, and that he was to listen to and look at everything in the place" (R.
614 b-d, p.1218)
• According to Er's report, as Socrates relays it,
•“For each in turn of the unjust things they had done and for each in turn of the people they had wronged, they paid the penalty ten times
over, once in every century of their journey. Since a century is roughly the length of a human life, this means that they paid a tenfold
penalty for each injustice. If, for example, some of them had caused many deaths by betraying cities or armies and reducing them to
slavery or by participating in other wrongdoing, they had to suffer ten times the pain they had caused to each individual. But if they had
done good deeds and had become just and pious, they were rewarded according to the same scale" (R. 615a-c, p.1218)
Purpose of Ancient Greek Myth
• Edith Hamilton contends that
myth is a mixture of
– Early science
– Literature as a form of
entertainment
– And religion
Prometheus and Zeus
• In Works and Days, Hesiod
tells that Prometheus
attempts to trick Zeus
• Zeus punishes him by hiding
fire from mankind
• Prometheus (forethought)
steals fire back for humanity
Prometheus Brings Fire by
Heinrich Friedrich Füger (1817)
Pandora and the Jar” Works and Days http://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodWorksDays.html#Pandora
Olympians Create Pandora
• Hesiod writes that Zeus retaliates against Prometheus
by creating woman and bestowing her upon mankind
• Zeus has Olympian gods to create Pandora
– Hephaestus forms her with “earth with water,” adding “the
voice and strength of human kind” and “a sweet, lovely maidenshape, like to the immortal goddess in face;”
– Athena teaches “her needlework and the
weaving of the varied web;”
– Aphrodite gives her “grace
upon her head and cruel
longing and cares that weary
the limbs.”
– Hermes the guide gives “her
a shameless mind and a
deceitful nature”
Pandora and the Jar” Works and Days http://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodWorksDays.html#Pandora
John D. Batten, “The Creation of Pandora”, 1913
Pandora’s Purpose
• Pandora means “all-endowed,” referring to fact
that all the Olympian gods had
endowed her with an attribute
• Zeus tells Prometheus
– “you are glad that you have outwitted
me and stolen fire –a great plague to
you yourself and to men that shall be.
But I will give men as the price for fire
an evil thing in which they may all be
glad of heart while they embrace their
own destruction.’”
• Pandora is
– “a plague to men who eat bread”
– a “hopeless snare” and “evil thing”
– given a “shameless mind” and
“deceitful nature” by Hermes
Pandora and the Jar” Works and Days http://www.theoi.com/Text/HesiodWorksDays.html#Pandora
Pandora (1861) by Pierre Loison (1816–1886)
Pandora’s
Box
(Jar)
• Pandora was given to Epimetheus "as a gift“
who took Pandora and only later
remembered Prometheus’ dictate not to
accept gifts from the gods
– Epimetheus means “afterthinker”; hindsight;
afterthought
– Prometheus means forethought
• Before Pandora’s arrival
– “the tribes of men lived on earth remote and
free from ills and hard toil and heavy
sicknesses which bring the Fates upon men;
for in misery men grow old quickly.”
• But Pandora unleashed death itself unto men:
– “But the woman took off the great lid of the
jar1 with her hands [95] and scattered, all
these and her thought caused sorrow and
mischief to men. Only Hope remained there in
an unbreakable home within under the rim of
the great jar, and did not fly out at the door;
for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by
the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the
clouds. [100] But the rest, countless plagues,
wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils,
and the sea is full.”
• Pandora as the apple of the Hebraic tradition
John William Waterhouse, 1896, Oil on canvas
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In Theogony, Hesiod writes:
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In Theogony, Hesiod writes:
– Don’t let a woman, wiggling her
“When he made the lovely curse, the price
behind,
For the blessing of fire, he brought her to a place
– And flattering and coaxing, take you
in;
Where gods and men were gathered, and the girl
–
She wants your barn: woman is just a
Was thrilled by all her pretty trappings, given
cheat” (70)
By mighty Zeus’s daughter with grey eyes
– “First, get a house, a woman, and an
Amazement seized the mortal men and gods
ox
–
For ploughing – let the woman be a
To see the hopeless trap, deadly to men.
slave,
From her comes all the face of womankind,
– Unmarried, who can help you in the
The deadly female rae and tribe of wives
fields
– Make ready in your house the things
Who live with mortal men and bring them harm,
you’ll need,
No help to them in dreadful poverty
– So you won’t have to try to borrow
But ready enough to share with them in wealth.
tools…” (71)
– “Bring home a wife when you are ripe
As in the covered hive the honey-bees
for it;
Keep feeding drones, conspirators in wrong,
– When you are thirty, not much more
And daily, all day long, until the sun
nor less,
– That is the proper age for marrying
Goes down, the workers hurry about their work
– Your wife should have matured four
And build white honeycombs, while those inside
years before,
In the sheltered storeroom, fill their bellies up
– And marry in the fifth year. She should
With the products of the toil of others, thus,
be
– A virgin; you must teach her sober
Women are bad for men, and they conspire
ways,
In wrong, and Zeus the Thunderer made it so.
– Particularly good is one who lives
He made a second evil as a price
– Nearby, but look around you carefull,
Of fire, man’s blessing: if a man avoids Marriage and all the troubles women
bring
– Lest
all the neighbours chuckle at your
choice.
And never takes a wife, at last he comes
– No prize is better than a worthy wife;
To miserable old age, and does not have
– A bad one makes you shiver with the
Anyone who will care for the old man….
cold;
–
The greedy wife will roast her man
The married man
alive
Who gets a good wife, suited to his taste
– Without the aid of fire, and though
Gets good and evil mixed, but he who gets
she is
One of the deadly sort, lives all his life
– Quite gtough, she’ll bring him to a raw
old age” (81)
With never-ending pain inside his heart
And on his mind; the wound cannot be healed.” (42-43)
Hesiod’s Golden Rule
• In Works and Days:
– “He hurts himself who hurts another man
– And evil planning harms the planner most” (67)
• Hesiod also describes
– “That man is best who reasons for himself,
– Considering the future. Also good
– Is he who takes another’s good advice.
– But he who neither thinks himself nor learns
– From others, is a failure as a man (68)
– “The past is finished, and can’t be undone,
– Care for the future should be our concern” (583-4, Elegies)
Greek Mystery Religions
• Became popular in 6th century (600-500) BCE
• Eleusinian Mysteries
– Centered on abduction of
Persephone by Hades, and her
rescue and return through
Demeter, the great Earth Mother
– Participants believed initiation
based at Eleusis, Greece would
facilitate eternal life
– Ended in 4th century CE (300-400 CE)
Hades abducting Persephone, wall painting in the
small royal tomb atVergina. Macedonia, Greece
Xenophanes’ Critiques
• Presocratic philosopher, Xenophanes (570-478 BCE),
criticized polytheistic and anthropomorphic Greek
religious beliefs
– “Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all the things
which among men are shameful and blameworthy—theft
and adultery and mutual deception.”
– “There is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar
to mortals neither in shape nor in thought.”
– “But mortals thing that the gods are born, and have
clothes and speech and shape like their own.”
– “But if cows and horses or lions had hands or could draw
with their hands and make the things men can make,
– “Then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses,
cows like cows, and they would make their bodies similar
in shape to those which each had themselves”