THE TOPIC OF GREEK RELIGION
In order to understand ancient Greek religion it may be wise to put aside all expectations of a single uniform cultural phenomenon. When we speak of ancient Greek religion we are, in fact, dealing with anything but a homogeneous field of cultural manifestations.
Even so, local traditions of different sorts did in fact become interconnected through the Greek language which, though consisting of various dialects, was the main unifying factor. In historical times, following the Dorian invasion and the Ionic settlements (1050-950 BCE), we have a common language spoken by all Greeks (panhellenoi), transmitted through oral traditions and later written down in literary works (perhaps as early as in the eighth century BCE). Even if dialects such as Aeolic and Ionic, as well as certain archaisms, are discernible in the works of Homer, it is fair to assume that the Iliad and the Odyssey comprise a tradition of myth and language comprehensible to all Greek-speaking people.Still, the ancient Greeks were competitive people in various respects and the local tribes, which grew into the well-known city-states, poleis, from around the middle of the eighth century BCE, often went to war against each other over various conflicts (for instance territorial boundaries, trade routes or scarce resources). If it seems reasonable to expect this rivalry to be reflected in local traditions of oral transmission and ritual practice, it may be all the more surprising to find many books on Greek religion in the singular (even occasionally phrased as “the beliefs of the Greeks” as in Der Glaube der Hellenen [Wilamowitz-Moellendorf 1959]). These books present the phenomenon of “Greek religion” as a coherent world-view matching a system of myth and ritual practice as given by paternal law.1
This attempt to present ancient Greek religion - if not the ancient Greek mentality as such - as the glorious roots of our own culture prevailed through the nineteenth century CE and far into the twentieth as well. But other views, such as that of the so-called mythritual school in Cambridge (established around the beginning of the twentieth century), dismissed the epic tradition as being an elitist literary tradition and concentrated instead on a variety of literary sources as a means of reconstructing various kinds of ritual practice. The guiding principle behind this approach could be phrased as “the more primitive the ritual, the more genuine the religious representation”. However, although it may indeed be important to pay close attention to ritual practices this cannot be the whole story either.