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Overview of Greek Religion - ReligionFacts - 0 views

www.religionfacts.com/...overview.htm

shared by Seth A on 10 Dec 09 - Cached

. The cult practices of the Hellenes extended beyond mainland Greece to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor, to Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy) and to scattered Greek colonies in the Western Mediterranean, such as Massilia (Marseille). Greek examples tempered Etruscan cult and belief to inform much of Roman religion.
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Different cities worshipped different deities: Athens had Athena; Sparta had Artemis; Corinth was a center for the worship of Aphrodite; Delphi and Delos had Apollo; Olympia had Zeus, and so on down to the smaller cities and towns.
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Identity of names was not even a guarantee of a similar cultus; the Greeks themselves were well aware that the Artemis worshipped at Sparta, the virgin huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus
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The temples of the Greek religion generally were not public gathering places where people gathered socially for collective indoor prayer; most temples were little more than boxes that held a cult idol of the deity
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When we are told in studies of mythology that "horses are sacred to Poseidon" or roosters to Hermes, what this meant first and foremost was that these animals were customarily offered as sacrifices to those gods.
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Votives were gifts offered to the gods by their worshippers. They were often given for benefits already conferred or in anticipation of future divine favors.
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Theology did not come naturally to a faith this diverse and essentially local.
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Syncretism was an essential feature of Greek paganism
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Those whose spiritual leanings were not satisfied by the public cult of the gods could turn to various mystery religions. Here, they could find religious consolations that the traditional cultus could not provide: a systematic religious doctrine, an attractive afterlife, a communal worship, and a band of spiritual fellowship. Some of these mysteries, like the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace, were ancient and local. Others were spread from place to place, like the mysteries of Dionysus. During the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire exotic mystery religions like those of Osiris and Mithras became widespread.
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