Jon Mikalson. Ancient Greek Religion, Chapter 9: “Greek Religion and Greek Culture” pp. 206-226.
For Thursday March 19, 2015.
Drawing of Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, Athens Agora. ca. 430-420 BCE.
0. What “religious” things might the Athenians notice as they walk through their land? And how might they respond to them?
1. Where were ancient Greek cemeteries? Why were there no statues of the Olympian gods, or references to them there?
2. Mikalson says that Greek practiced religion did not emphasize he afterlife, and that for most Greeks, “This life was it.” What does he think is the result of this mindset?
3. What is the point of Solon telling Croesus the story of Tellus the Athenian? (Herodotus Histories 1. 30.2-5)
4. In the Athenian Agora, the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios is at the base of the hill that bears the Hephaestus temple. Inside the stoa is a statue of Zeus Soter. What do these two epithets mean, and why are they important to Athens?
5. What relationship did Zeus and Athena have with the Bouleuterion (Council House) in the Athenian Agora? Did this relationship make the Bouleuterion a religious building?
6. Did particular Greek gods favor democracy or oligarchy? How did Athenians “force” their gods to support democracy?
7. Was obedience to city-state laws a secular or religious obligation, according to Mikalson?
8. What were the first “stone-built colonnaded public buildings,” and what architectural influence did they have?
9. How did the Athenians come to worship Harmodius and Aristogeiton as heroes? What action is portrayed in the statues of them in Figure IX.4? (Roman copies of fifth-century Greek bronze originals)
10. What are agalmata? What is one example? How are agalmata related to ancient Greek religion?
11. What is the “oldest… surviving life-size or larger marble Greek statue”? Where was it found, what is its date, and what does it represent?
12. What are the earliest surviving statues of Greek gods in bronze? Where were they found, what is their date, and what do they represent?
13. What is the point of the story of Cleobis and Biton? (Herodotus 1.31) How does the story relate to the picture in Figure IX.8?
14. What are kouroi? What religious purpose did they serve? What effect did they have on secular sculpture?
15. From what tradition did Hellenistic and Roman sculpture develop?
16. How were images of Dionysus related to Greek dinner parties?
17. How were the images in the Painted Stoa (Plate 8, facing page 205) related to Athenian religion? Was this building religious or secular?
18. In general terms, what does Mikalson think the intention was of paintings in Athenian sanctuaries?
19. What was religious about Greek athletic, equestrian, and competitions “of the Muses”? Were such competitions a part of the ritual cult?
20. How susceptible to change were competitions held at religious festivals? What does that tell us about their “sacred” nature? What was the basic purpose of stephanitic games?
21. To what extent did religion come into play “in all legal proceedings” in Athens?
22. Besides murder, what three other charges “fell under religious sanctions”? What did these have to do with the gods?
23. What cultural fact resulted from the fact that the Greek gods showed “very limited interest in human moral behavior”?
24. What religious actions seem to have been involved in the origin of Greek drama?
25. To what extent was Greek lyric poetry “religious”?
26. To what extent were performances of epics like the Iliad and Odyssey “religious”? What was a cultural benefit of the fact that these epics were “not canonical religious texts”?
27. How did religion contribute to “the strong sense of national identity and independence of each of the 400+ individual city-states”?
28. What made Greek “sacred wars” different from “crusades”?
29. What was a typical Greek reaction to religion in other city-states and in the religion of non-Greeks?
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