modern scholarship - Greek religion Flashcards
(14 cards)
nature of the gods
Geoffrey Kirk- all sorts of not very heroic qualities are allowed to enter the lives of the gods.”
Zaidman- the gods looked like humans but were far more powerful
Ekroth on hero cults
Gunnel Ekroth- heroes were worshipped on official level and were believed to have lived and died
Zaidman on religious participation / festivals
Zaidman- “religion…It impregnated each and every civic activity.”
Dillon on healing cults
Matthew Dillon- the inscriptions at Epidauros come from many different places “all over the Greek world”, indicating the popularity of the cult of Asklepios
Parker on Eleusinian mysteries
Robert Parker- “the Mysteries were, and are, the most famous Greek festival
Kindt on individual religious participation
individuals participated in festivals as an expression of their personal belief
-it would be dangerous to think of private and public worship as seperate entities;both have the same rituals
Kindt on panathenia
Kindt - cosmopolitan melting pot
Zaidman on religious authority / purity
Zaidman- “religious authority belonged essentially to the people or citizen body as a whole (demos)
Hale on delphi
John Hale- the Pythia was “(on occasion) a noble of aristocratic family, sometimes a peasant, sometimes rich, sometimes poor”
Emerson on olympia
Mary Emerson- “served no one community but the whole of the Greek world.
Bukert and Naidon on sacrifice
Bukert - shared aggression in sacrificial killing = founding of community and civilisation
Fred Naiden- sacrifice served to maintain the relationship between mortals and the gods
Hermann on Philosophy
Hermann- “wider trend which had called traditional beliefs into question.”
Osbourn on practises having to follow ancient customs and traditions
‘greek religion is ritualistic in the sense it was the opposite of dogmatic’
dogmatic = follow a set of rules no matter what
Naiden on sacrifices
‘focus on making sacrifices beautiful’
-aesthetics pkeased the gods so that they would approve
