Temples were served by priests, who performed local rituals for a god or gods in approved customary fashion, but who were not normally seen as a caste apart from the rest of the population. They were doing a job on behalf of the community, rather like other officials of the city, who might collect taxes or regulate the market. So Greek religion was a set of stories belonging to the entire community, rather than a set of well-bounded statements about ultimate moral and philosophical values, and it was not policed by a self-perpetuating elite entrusted with any task of propagating or enforcing
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