The Hello and welcome back to the history of ancient Greece episode 10 pan-Hellenism.

Was there ever such a thing as Greek religion?

It may be an odd question to begin this episode with,

but it should be absolutely clear from the start that Greek religion as a monolithic entity never existed.

When Greece emerged from the dark age, different communities had developed in very different social, political,

and economic ways.

And this development was reflected also on the religious level.

Every city had its own pantheon, in which some gods were more important than others, and some gods not even worshipped at all.

Every city had its own mythology, its own religious calendar, and its own festivals. No Greek city then was a

religious clone. Yet the various religions overlapped sufficiently to warrant a

resemblance.

But in the 8th century BC, Greek religion was strengthened by poets

like Homer and Heseid, who produced a kind of religious highest common factor by inventing

combining and systematizing individual traditions which were then

spread orally via performances at local gatherings and pan-Hellenic festivals.

The two basic features of Homeric worship can be traced back to the old Mycenaean, Manoa religion. These are polytheism or the worship of many

gods and goddesses, and the ritual ways of honoring the gods with sacrifices, prayers, processions, music, dancing, and hymn singing.

Sacrifices themselves, the central event of Greek religious rituals, were performed before crowds in the open air,

on public occasions that involved communal feasting afterwards on the sacrificed meat.

Like the other Mediterranean religions, Greek religion was formal, ritualistic, and communal, not private and meditative.

But unlike some, it never developed an official set of doctrines or compulsory beliefs.

So different and contradictory ideas about the gods coexist it comfortably in Greece.

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