Athenian Popular Religion

by Jon D. Mikalson

Most modern studies of Athenian religion have focused on festivals, cult practices, and individual deities. Jon Mikalson turns instead to the religious beliefs citizens of Athens spoke of and acted upon in everyday life. He uses evidence only from reliable, mostly contemporary sources such as the orators Lysias and Demosthenes, the historian Xenophon, and state decrees, sacred laws, religious dedications, and epitaphs.

"This is in no sense a general history of Athenian religion," Mikalson writes, "even within the narrow historical boundaries set. It is rather an investigation of what might be termed the consensus of popular religious belief, a consensus consisting of those beliefs which an Athenian citizen thought he could express publicly and for which he expected fo find general acceptance among his peers."

What emerges in Mikalson's study is a remarkable homogeneity of religious beliefs at the popular level. The topics discussed at length in Athenian Popular Religion include the areas of divine intervention in human life, the gods and human justice, gods and oaths, divination, death and the afterlife, the nature of the gods, social aspects of popular religion, and piety and impiety.

Mikalson challenges the common opinion that popular religious belief in Athens deteriorated significantly from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century B.C. "The error in understanding the development of Athenian religion has arisen, it seems to me, because scholars have failed to distinguish properly between the differing natures of the sources for our knowledge of religious beliefs in the earlier and later periods," Mikalson writes. The difference between those sources "is more than simply one of years. It is a difference between poetry and prose, with all the factors which that difference implies."

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Greece, History, Spirituality, Ancient

186 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Classics and the author of The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year, Athenian Popular Religion, Honor Thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, Ancient Greek Religion, Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy, and articles on topics of Greek religion and literature. His research interests are Greek religious beliefs as manifested in literature, history, philosophy, and everyday life.

Reviews

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a handbook written for college students, but which is also cited by scholars in the field. It is very good. It is also short and can be read in an afternoon. It presents a clear and concise account of ancient greek religion, and is intended to clear away the many misconceptions that people have about the topic. Greek religion, as actually practiced, had nothing at all to do with the gods of Homer, which were a literary construction (they serve in Homer as a foil to point the contrast to our mortality) -- and a late one at that, with belief systems (-- there is no way in greek to say: "I believe in", nomizein meaning simply "to hold in honor", cognate with nomos = 'law' or 'custom'), or any such thing -- but was a religion (religio) of prayer and sacrifice rooted in the presuppositions of sympathetic magic.

For those who haven't the time to plough through de Coulanges or Frazer, this is a great place to start.

Let me add here what I said elsewhere today: Lafcadio Hearn's book on Japan:
http://www.amazon.com/Japan-Attempt-I...
is one of the best books I have ever read on ancient *greek* religion.