Many gods, no holy book
The Greeks worshipped many gods, each with a personality and a domain, and twelve stood above the rest. Zeus, god of the sky and father of the gods, had his brothers Hades and Poseidon ruling the Underworld and the sea; Hera was his wife and queen of the gods; Athena, patron of Athens, appears in armour and also looked after weaving and carpentry; Apollo ruled music and prophecy; Artemis, his twin, hunting; Hermes was the messenger; Aphrodite, Dionysos, Ares and Hephaistos completed the family. Their home, the Greeks believed, was Mount Olympus, the highest mountain of mainland Greece.
What the Greeks did not have was a sacred book. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, composed around the eighth century BCE, shaped how they imagined the gods, but they were poems, not scripture, and there was no Greek equivalent of the Torah, the Bible or the Qur’an. There was no strict priestly caste either. Practice was conservative, built on old observances, many of them rooted in the Bronze Age.
A relationship of exchange
So what held it together? A simple idea: exchange. People gave to the gods and expected the gods to give in return. Individuals and whole cities that had been helped, or hoped to be, brought a gift. Archaeologists have excavated these votive offerings from sanctuaries by the thousands: small bronze horses, painted wooden panels, pots, jewellery and, for those who could afford them, life-size marble statues of young men and women. Each one is a thank-you left in the god’s house.
Inside the sanctuary
A sanctuary was a well-defined sacred space, usually set apart by an enclosure wall. The Greeks called it temenos, from temno, to cut: a piece of land cut off from ordinary use. Inside stood the temple with the cult statue of the god, an outdoor altar, statues and offerings, and often a sacred tree or spring.
Where a sanctuary stood depended on the god. Some lay inside the city, others in the countryside, and the landscape often said something about the god who lived there. The Temple of Poseidon at Sounion commands a view of the sea on three sides; the Parthenon, on the rock of the Acropolis, celebrates the strength of Athena above her city.
Sacrifice: why did the gods get the bones?
The central act of Greek religion was animal sacrifice, above all of oxen, goats and sheep. It took place in the sanctuary, usually at the altar in front of the temple, and the people taking part ate the entrails and the meat of the animal. Liquid offerings, called libations, were common too.
But if the people ate the meat, what did the gods get? The Greeks had a myth for that. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Prometheus divided a great ox at Mekone and tried to trick Zeus: he hid the good meat under the stomach and wrapped the white bones in shining fat. Zeus chose the fat, found the bones, and from then on, Hesiod says, men burn white bones for the immortal gods on the altars. The myth explains the practice: the bones burned for the gods, and the meal stayed with the community.
Festivals for a city and for all Greeks
Religious festivals, literally feast days, filled the Greek year. Each city had its own: in Athens, the Panathenaic festival honoured Athena, and every four years it held games whose winners took home amphorae of olive oil decorated with the armed goddess. Above them stood the four most famous festivals, at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea and Isthmia, each with a procession, athletic competitions and sacrifices, attended by people from all over the Greek-speaking world. The Olympic Games, for Zeus, were held regularly from 776 BCE; at Delphi, which the Greeks considered the centre of the universe, people came to put their questions to Apollo’s oracle.
Some cults were closed to outsiders. At Eleusis, near Athens, the mysteries were open only to initiates. The great sanctuaries, from Olympia to Delphi, are still the best place to see this religion at work, and you can place them on the map of the Greek world.
A religion you can see
Because Greek religion lived in actions, much of Greek art was made for it: temples to house the gods, cult statues for the temples, offerings for the sanctuaries, vases for libations and festivals. Even the attributes that identify the statues of the gods, Athena’s helmet and aegis, Apollo’s kithara, Hermes’s winged sandals, are an established visual code that worshippers learned to read. So what was Greek religion? A set of shared gestures, the gift, the sacrifice, the procession, carried out in places built for them.
Where to see it
Visit a sanctuary: Olympia and Delphi show the Panhellenic festivals, the Acropolis of Athens shows a city sanctuary, and Sounion the temple of a god chosen for its landscape. The National Archaeological Museum in Athens and the Metropolitan Museum in New York hold many of the offerings and prize vases. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- C. Hemingway and S. Hemingway, “Greek Gods and Religious Practices”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2003).
- Hesiod, Theogony 535-557, trans. H. G. Evelyn-White (Perseus Digital Library).
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Archaeological Site of Delphi (393); Archaeological Site of Olympia (517); Acropolis, Athens (404).
- Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Odysseus: Panel from Pitsa (National Archaeological Museum 16464).
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records 07.286.79 and 14.130.12.
