Component 31: Greek Religion
Understanding Greek religion is at the very heart of understanding Greek literature, history, philosophy, art and civilisation more widely. Studying this topic will enable you to engage with the Olympian gods, and the role they played both in legends and in everyday life. You will study three sanctuaries in great depth, Athens’ Acropolis, Delphi and Olympia, and discover the significance these places held for the Greeks from a political and religious perspective. The course also covers religious practices such as blood sacrifice and divination and discusses the various explanations and interpretations modern scholarship offers to make sense of these. A focus of the course is on individual experiences of the divine and personal piety, raising questions such as how far we can compare our western conceptions of religion, closely linked to Christianity, to those of Ancient Greek thought: in other words, how can we truly understand ancient Greek polytheism? Finally, the course introduces ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates and their attitudes to the gods and religion, focusing on the most important thinkers and their interpretation of the divine, including those who rejected the traditional views of the gods.
Corrections to the print edition
p.11 - the Activity box refers to pp. 97-8; it should refer to pp. 89-90
p.64 - line 1: 'seventh day' not 'first day'
pp.81/82 - Fig 1.49 has been replaced with source from revised spec with the associated changes:
PS box on p.82 now says:
Depiction of the preparation of bulls for a sacrifice by the Nausicaa Painter
Date: c. 450 BC
Current Location: British Museum
Museum Number: 1846,0128.1; vase E284
Significance: The vase shows the adornment of the sacrificial animals, a crucial part during the preparatory stage of a sacrifice. Texts as early as Homer mentions the adornment of sacrificial victims before the slaughter. Unlike in Homer (Odyssey 3.430-63) however, where Nestor has a bull’s horns adorned with gold foil, adornments usually consisted of garlands, woolen fillets and ribbons around the head and belly.
Para on p.81 now says:
Figure 1.49 shows two women standing back to back, concentrating on preparing two bulls for a sacrifice. Both women are wearing a peplos and are adorning the bulls’ heads with sacrificial woollen fillets (stemmata). Behind each bull we can see a tripod, typical prizes for the winners of theatrical or musical competitions in honour of Dionysus. We can assume that the sacrifice that is about to happen was in honour of Dionysus in Athens and to celebrate a double-victory (hence the two tripods) at a choregic festival held in honour of the god. The two women, due to their mature appearance, are likely personifications of the victorious tribe (phyle) or the victory goddess Nike herself (albeit unwinged in this instance) rather than of the maidens that would usually prepare the bulls.
