On an altar before a Greek temple, an animal was sacrificed, the meat was roasted and shared among those present, and the bones wrapped in fat burned for the gods. The smoke rose, and the feast came down to humans. The poet Hesiod, around 700 BC, told in the Theogony the origin of this division: at Mecone, the Titan Prometheus deceived Zeus, who chose the bones covered in fat and left the meat for humankind. The historian Walter Burkert, in Greek Religion, uses this myth to explain the place of sacrifice at the centre of Greek religion.
This post belongs to the map presented in Magic and spirituality in ancient civilisations: a map to get started. In the order of the series, Greece comes after Göbekli Tepe, Mesopotamia and Egypt.
A religion without a sacred book
Greek religion had no sacred book, no fixed creed and no church. The French historian Jean-Pierre Vernant, in his essay “Greek Religion” (published in French as Mythe et religion en Grèce ancienne), describes it as a civic religion, bound to the institutions of the city and turned towards life in this world, without dogma and without a clergy separate from society. Priests and priestesses cared for a sanctuary or a cult, often for a limited period, and could be ordinary citizens chosen for the role.
What united the Greeks were the myths, told by poets such as Homer and Hesiod, and the rites, repeated in each city. The myths changed from place to place, and each city had its own cults and its own calendar.
The Greek word for the bond with the gods was eusebeia, piety. To be pious was to carry out the sacrifices, offerings and festivals at the right time, in the right way.
Gods and heroes
The Olympian gods were twelve in the best-known list, but the list changed according to the city. Zeus reigned over them. Athena protected Athens, Apollo was the god of prophecy and music, and Artemis, his twin sister, was the mistress of wild animals and of the hunt, the subject of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and of wild nature.
In general, the Greeks distinguished these gods of the sky from the chthonic gods, linked to the earth and to the world of the dead. Burkert treats this separation as a tendency, with many exceptions, and not as a fixed rule. Hades reigned in the underworld, beside Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, the subject of Persephone, queen of the underworld and lady of the seasons. Sacrifices to chthonic deities were usually made at night, on low altars or in pits, and the victim was burned whole.
There were also the heroes, men and women of a legendary past who received cult beside their tombs. Heracles, Theseus and many local heroes were honoured with offerings, because it was believed that they continued to act in favour of the city.
Festivals and oracles
The Greek calendar was full of festivals. In Athens, the Panathenaea honoured Athena with a procession to the Acropolis, where the goddess received a new robe. The Anthesteria, at the end of winter, opened the jars of new wine and, according to Burkert, were also days when it was believed that the dead walked through the city.
To know the will of the gods, the Greeks consulted oracles. The most famous was that of Apollo at Delphi, where the Pythia, a priestess, answered questions seated on a tripod. At Dodona, in north-western Greece, Zeus spoke through the rustling of a sacred oak. Cities consulted the oracles before founding colonies or going to war, and ordinary people asked about marriage, travel and debts.
Burkert describes how consultation worked at Delphi. Whoever came to ask paid a fee, the pelanos, originally a sacred cake offered on the altar and later a sum of money. Before the session, the priests sacrificed a goat, after sprinkling it with cold water: if the animal did not shudder, the god did not wish to speak that day. In earlier periods, many answers were given in verse, and, according to Burkert, it probably fell to the sanctuary priests to give metrical form to the Pythia’s words; in Plutarch’s time, they already came in prose. The site has a whole section on oracles.
Burkert also describes the diviners, the manteis, who read the liver of sacrificial victims and the flight of birds and accompanied armies on campaign.
The mysteries
Beside the religion of the city, there were mystery cults, open to those who underwent an initiation. The name comes from the verb myein, “to close” (the eyes or the mouth), from which come mystes, the initiate, and mystērion. The word itself recalled the main rule: the initiate had to keep their mouth closed about what they had seen.
The most famous were those of Eleusis, near Athens, dedicated to Demeter and Persephone. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells the myth behind them: Hades abducts Persephone, Demeter seeks her daughter and, in mourning, makes the earth stop producing, until Persephone returns to spend part of the year with her mother. The same hymn promises a better lot after death to those who have seen the rites. Burkert observes, in Greek Religion, that the secret was so well kept that to this day it is not known exactly what the initiates saw.
Other groups, linked to Dionysus and to the mythical poet Orpheus, also promised purification and a better destiny for the soul.
And magic?
Fritz Graf, in Magic in the Ancient World, shows that the word mageia comes from the magi, the Persian priests, and that the Greeks used it with suspicion. Another word, goēs, designated the sorcerer linked to lament for the dead and to incantations. Graf cites Plato, who in the Republic complained of itinerant priests who offered the rich purifications and spells against enemies.
Even so, magic was common. The best-documented practice is the curse tablets, called in Greek katadesmoi: thin lead sheets with a rival’s name, rolled up, sometimes pierced with a nail, and deposited in tombs, wells or sanctuaries. Christopher Faraone, in the essay “The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells”, published in Magika Hiera, a book he edited with Dirk Obbink, shows that these tablets appeared chiefly in situations of dispute, such as lawsuits, competitions, business and love rivalries.
Daniel Ogden, in Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds, gathers translations of these tablets, of amulet recipes and of texts on consulting the dead, necromancy. The title Magika Hiera sums up what these studies indicate: in Greece, magic and religion mixed all the time.
The next posts in the series deal with the Olympian gods, Delphi, the Mysteries of Eleusis, the curse tablets and Hecate [coming soon].
Questions answered
Did the Greeks believe literally in the myths?
According to Vernant, in his essay “Greek Religion”, the myths varied from city to city and from poet to poet, without an official version, and already in Antiquity philosophers criticised some stories. What everyone shared were the rites and the sacrifices.
Were there professional priests in Greece?
There were priests and priestesses, but, according to Vernant and Burkert, they did not form a separate caste nor teach a doctrine. Many held the office for a limited time.
What happened in the Mysteries of Eleusis?
It is known that there was a procession, fasting, purification and a nocturnal ceremony in the sanctuary. What the initiates saw inside remains unknown, because the secret was kept.
Mini-glossary
- Eusebeia: Greek piety, understood as the correct fulfilment of the rites.
- Chthonic: relating to the earth and the world of the dead, as opposed to the gods of the sky.
- Pythia: the priestess who gave Apollo’s answers at the oracle of Delphi.
- Mystes: the person initiated into a mystery cult.
- Katadesmos: curse tablet made to “bind” a rival; in Latin, defixio.
Bibliography
BURKERT, Walter. Greek Religion. Trans. John Raffan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Original: Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977.
FARAONE, Christopher A. The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells. In: FARAONE, Christopher A.; OBBINK, Dirk (eds). Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
GRAF, Fritz. Magic in the Ancient World. Trans. Franklin Philip. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
OGDEN, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
VERNANT, Jean-Pierre. Greek Religion. In: ELIADE, Mircea (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 6. New York: Macmillan, 1987, p. 99–118. French edition: Mythe et religion en Grèce ancienne. Paris: Seuil, 1990.