Bibliography

Primary Literature

Euripides’ Hippolytus

Homer’s Iliad

Homeric Hymn 5; ‘To Aphrodite’

Plato’s Laws 653d

Secondary Literature

Bremmer, J. (1994) ‘Greek Religion’ , Oxford: Oxford University Press

Larson, J. (2007) ‘Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide’, New York and London: Routledge.

Lefkowitz, M. R and Fant, M. B, ‘Women’s Life in Greece and Rome’, Third Edition (2005)Zaidman, L.B. and Schmitt Pantel, P. (1992) ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Websites

http://chss2.montclair.edu/kellyd/mythch4.htm

http://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Zeus_s_Lovers/zeus_s_lovers.html

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-anthropomorphism.htm

http://www.controverscial.com/Greek%20Mythology.htm

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/anthropomorphism.html

http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Zeus.html

http://www.worldwander.com/greece/statueofzeus.htm

http://www.greek-gods.info/greek-gods/

Dionysus

In my opinion it is easy to notice that Dionysus is quite different from the other gods and goddesses. There is actually a special worship to this god we know as Dionysus, the god of wine, agriculture, fertility of nature and the patron god of the Greek stage. We can perceive Dionysus as being quite a diverse god, as we could also ponder the question of why and how is he technically a god. He is considered as being the thirteenth Olympian, his father was Zeus and his mother was a mortal woman named Semele. As Semele is commonly known as a mortal woman throughout antiquity, we could argue the question of why is Dionysus not just a hero, how come he acquired the privilege of being a god. Zeus fathered many children with mortal women who turned out to be heroes, for example we have Hercules; he was an exceptionally well known and adored hero, who eventually became a god through many tasks involving copious amounts of strife and hardship. To look into this topic with more detail; we could say Dionysus did not himself become a hero for many reasons such as Zeus personally gave birth to him, not in the usual natural way by his mother Semele. This gives us the impression that Zeus was somewhat the sole parent, or at least the dominating parent which could lead to the conclusion that Dionysus could be seen as being fairly special compared to Zeus’ other children, resulting in him becoming a divinity. As L. B. Zaidman and P. S. Pantel in ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’ (1992: p198) depict how this happened by stating ‘Zeus in all his glory was struck down by a thunderbolt. But his father rescued the embryo and sewed it into his own thigh, from which Dionysus was granted a second, divine birth’. 

Reading through scholarly debate and researching the topic of this infatuating god we know as Dionysus, we can clearly state that scholars have found him particularly fascinating and he has attracted a great deal of interest from them, such as J. Larson (2007) ‘Ancient Greek Cults’ in the chapter ‘Epiphany and transformation: Dionysos’. This is most likely the cause of him being such a diverse and different god as mentioned earlier. We can simply define Dionysus as being kind of destructive in some ways, we see Zeus providing order specific order to the cosmos, and guaranteeing justice of the gods and mortals. But we can counteract that act of nobility from Zeus with Dionysus’ actions as we can see him, perhaps none intentionally messing everything up, so to speak. For an example of this we can observe the women who worshipped Dionysus. The usual role for a woman in ancient Greece was a domestic and predominantly a household role, which is expressed in various ancient sources. But the women in Dionysus’ cult would leave aside their domestic and household duties and go to the mountainside to worship him. The scholar S. Humphries describes Dionysus ‘as a drug’, which is perhaps why people worship him so much and are able to abandon their daily routines to celebrate his glory. L. B. Zaidman and P. S. Pantel articulate in ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’ (1992: p88), that ‘initiates of private Dionysiac mysteries who raved through town singing and dancing with ecstatic ‘enthusiasm’’. This is a good example how in ancient antiquity within religion the gods and goddesses could break and did break boundaries. 

We can also highlight Dionysus’ frivolous nature by comparing and contrasting him to Zeus. Dionysus is expressed as a young man and also a bearded man, who is frequently associated with alcohol, theatre and celebration. Dionysus is also articulated as being more of a ‘people person’ than Zeus. According to Homer’s Iliad Dionysus is a joy to all mortals as Homer states that he is ‘the most epiphanes god’. Also in Plato’s Laws 653d Dionysus is expressed as a god who is present, rather than remote, and that he enjoys good company and having a good time, as it says he is a ‘companion of the festival’. All these examples give us more insight into the character of Dionysus, but I personally can still not determine why he is particularly special to be made a god. But overall he is a significantly unique controversial figure of Ancient Greek religion, and I’m glad the study of him has ended my blog entries, as he is undoubtedly a particularly interesting subject.

Appearances of the gods

To me it seems very apparent that if a god or goddess appears to a person, whether it is in mythology, Greek tragedies or within the Homeric Epics for example, the characters these divinities are showing themselves to are either central protagonists to the story or are particularly worthy of the gods and goddesses actually showing themselves. As we know the gods and goddesses depicted in antiquity have their favourite humans or mortals. And we also know that it worked the other way round, but mortals had to respect all the gods and goddesses or there would be serious consequences, as we have witnessed in Euripides’ ‘Hippolytus’. Another example attached to that Greek tragedy is when Artemis appears at the end of the play, to unravel everything which has happened, and uncovers how it was all Aphrodite’s fault; therefore this is seen as an important and worthy situation. L. B. Zaidman and P. S. Pantel express in their book ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’ (1992: p215) that, ‘the special characteristic of all religious representation is to endow the divinity being figured with a presence without obscuring the fact that it is not actually there. The cultic image must at the same time be thoroughly material – it can be touched, moved, manipulated – and yet leave no doubt that it stands for something which is not actually present’. 

In Homer’s Iliad, we see Pallas Athene sent by Hera intervening between the argument between Agamemnon and Achilles as she must restrain Achilles from killing Agamemnon, so that the Greek army can win the war, this is obviously seen as an important situation for the goddesses to get involved in and therefore makes Achilles worthy of Pallas Athene appearing to him. This is confirmed by Achilles saying ‘goddess, a man must respect what you and Hera say, however angry he may be’, which ends up in him only verbally abusing Agamemnon instead swearing that the Greeks will come to regret Agamemnon’s behaviour when Hector and his army are slaughtering them.   

Another example from the Iliad by Homer is when Aphrodite comes down to visit Helen. Helen is angry with Aphrodite from saving Paris from the fight, which is also another good example of the gods appearing and intervening with human lives. But here Aphrodite is trying to persuade Helen to go and see Paris, but Helen sarcastically tells Aphrodite to take her place instead and hopes one day that she becomes his wife, or slave. This indicates Helen’s deep sense of bitterness at what has happened. 

There are also occasions when the gods and goddesses appear to humans, but they are in disguise. A classic mythological example of this is the rape of Europa, when Zeus had come to her disguised as a bull. We have heard countless stories of Zeus being infatuated by love, or overpowered by Aphrodite, and this is another example, he has shown a considerable interest in Europe; proving that she is worthy of his attention and time, therefore disguised himself as a bull and cunningly carried her away.  

On the other hand, there is another way we can look at the appearances of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses. We can observe their habits and the way they do things to modern day religions, such as Christianity. To my knowledge there is no particular story within the old or new testaments of the Bible which suggest God himself to ever actually come down personally to the individuals he is wanting to acknowledge and spread the good word. We mainly know of his messenger, who is also his son, Jesus. Or we see him appearing in dreams, like when he appeared to Joseph to encourage him to marry and look after Mary when she had been told she was going to bear his child. This in itself is another example as Mary was visited by the angle Gabriel, not by God himself. Whereas we get the impression that if it was truly important he should have dealt with the situation himself, like the ancient Greek gods and goddesses have done in their stories and myths.

What is a Goddess?

When looking at ancient Greek religion we must remember to keep an open mind, as I have already mentioned in an earlier blog that modern day religion is extremely different in certain ways, for example ‘the Greek city knew neither Church nor dogma’, from Zaidman and Pantel’s ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’ (1992: p11). Looking at the subject of ancient Greek goddesses in particular, we must realise that that concept of ancient Greek religion is predominantly different to modern day religion, for example Christianity, mainly because Christianity holds believe in one God, who is also depicted as a male.

In reference to mortal females, goddesses come across a lot different to them as well. As Jan Bremmer articulates in her book ‘Greek Religion’ (1999: p69) that ‘recent studies of Greek religion have mainly analysed positions and representations of women, in so far as they have focused on gender differences at all’. Yes I could argue that goddesses can be anthropomorphised to have certain traits that normal women in ancient Greece would have, such as emotions of love, lust and hatred. But we simply cannot solely compare female deities to ordinary women due to the fact that they have so much more power than them. Another piece of information which distances goddesses from mortal females is that; ordinary women in the eyes of ancient Greek civilisation are illustrated to be under the strict reign of men and have their specific roles, as the inscription of Dionysia’s tombstone in Athens, 4^th cent. BC shown in M, R, Lefkowitz and M, B, Fant’s book ‘Women’s life in Greece and Rome’ (2005: p16) depicts that ‘it was not gold that this woman admired during her lifetime; it was her husband and the good sense that she showed in her behaviour’, this is used as a good example of a woman from antiquity. Whereas in the realm of the Great Olympians this rule did not abide, proving this point we can look at the character of Aphrodite the goddess of love. She is seen to overpower Zeus many times as he falls victim to various sexual conquests. This makes her in some ways look more powerful than a male deity, also her power could be highlighted here as Zeus is known to be the almighty, and she has somewhat defeated him as already mentioned.

This can be expressed more clearly if we take a look at the Homeric Hymn 5 as it states apart from the three goddesses Athena, Artemis and Hestia ‘there is nothing among the blessed gods or among mortal men that has escaped Aphrodite. Even the heart of Zeus, who delights in thunder, is led astray by her; though he is greatest of all and has the lot of highest majesty, she beguiles even his wise heart whensoever she pleases’. This successfully gives us the impression of the amount of power a goddess could possess.

Goddesses are the same as the gods in the respect that they all have their own specific power assigned to them, and they all have extremely different personalities, which in retrospect match their dominion of power. We can look at different goddesses and instantly notice that they are not the same, they all have many similarities to one another, but they have vast differences in their characteristics and mannerisms which all contribute to their own personalities. Focusing on Athena, Aphrodite and Hera, they are all completely different divine women, which reinforces that fact that we cannot be stereotypical in describing what actually is a goddess, and the same could go for male deities. Also we cannot determine that just because the goddesses are female that they have to possess stereotypical feminine personas. As we have examples of female goddesses being in charge of things which are stereotypically male, for example Artemis is described as the ‘wild goddess of the hunt’. L. B. Zaidman and P. S. Pantel depict in their work ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’ (1992: p6) Artemis as having a ‘dual role of ‘Mistress of Animals’ and goddess of hunting she assumes the two complementary aspects of the principle function that is peculiarly hers’. Then and now we would perceive hunting to be a particularly male attribute.  Therefore in my opinion we must observe the gods and goddesses as individuals not as two groups, divided into male and females. As one of the deities has a special power and their personalities contribute to what they do and what they represent, not what sex they are. 

The sovereign: Zeus

This blog post is all about envisaging Zeus. How do we perceive him? What does Zeus really evoke for you? How he is portrayed by the ancient Greeks, and how he is perceived by the other gods and goddesses. Firstly recalling on what we already know about him, which is pretty much general knowledge; he is king of the immortal gods and men, the god of sky and weather, law, order and fate. That was his regal position within the family of Greek gods and goddesses as Homer portrays it. For me personally it seems as though Zeus is not to be messed with, he is the almighty within the Greek realm of religion, and he is so powerful compared to anybody else it is almost intimidating. If I could say a final word about Zeus it would be that he is a force not to be reckoned with. 

For me Zeus evokes the image of a fearless ruler, a sovereign and at some points a tyrant. But I think we are able to sympathise with him in some respects; as it cannot be easy trying to keep the whole realm or family of the gods and goddesses in check at all times. As we know they have had copious amounts of quarrels with one another, and with each of them possessing certain powers it means they have their own individual way of plotting against each other, for example Poseidon could use his dominion of the sea. It is not just that the gods plan to hurt one another, it is not as simple as that, they can use each other’s loved ones, especially human beings and play harmful tricks on these defenceless individuals to plot revenge against each other. But there is also evidence to suggest that Zeus did keep the other gods and goddesses under control extremely well, as havoc and mayhem did not present itself at all times within the oikos of the immortal gods.   

The ancient Greeks obviously worship Zeus a great deal. You can tell what they think about him within their sacrifices, poems, paintings and statues.

This painting of The Statue of Zeus by M. Larrinaga, which was destroyed in a fire in Constantinople, shows exactly how you would have thought Zeus would have been portrayed by the ancient Greeks. Firstly the statue is gold, a very regal, rich and prominent colour, which subsequently mirrors his personality. Another factor being is that he is shown to have an idealistic physic of a man of that era, no coincidence there, but it seems obvious that the king of the gods would possess a desired appearance, to either be a role model or to show he is better than everyone else. An additional feature to portray that he ruled the Olympians is that he is sat upon a thrown, therefore to conclude these characteristics do genuinely confirm to us how the Greeks perceived Zeus.   

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism within ancient Greek religion is when a deity has any attribution of human characteristics. This is portrayed in L. B. Zaidman and P. S. Pantel’s work ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’ (1992: p215), which I find particularly interesting as they have an excellent and easy to understand grasp on the information they present. As they dictate that ‘the Greeks did not recognise one and only one mode of representing the divine, the familiar anthropomorphic statue’. This can either be describing gods or goddesses in human forms and possessing human characteristics and emotions such as jealousy, hatred, or love. For example Aphrodite in Euripides’ Hippolytus shows human emotions of jealousy and hatred because Hippolytus refuses to worship her and what she represents. Also the quarrelling of the gods on Mount Olympus displayed several human mannerisms, such as jealousy, greed, lust, and deception.

Not only could anthropomorphism relate to the emotions of the Greek gods in accordance to regular human feelings, but also to ordinary every day activities. The ancient Greek gods also eat, drink, sleep and also make love, exactly the same as humans are perceived to do, so why are they alleged to be so much different than mortals. Many of the gods and goddesses have experienced the human emotion of love within ancient stories and myths, especially Zeus. He has numerous female conquests; he was married first to Metis, then Themis, then Mnemosyne and eventually to Hera. He also acquired several lovers; Europa, Io, Semele, Ganymede, Callisto and Leto.

Another way of looking at the subject of anthropomorphism relating to the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, is by realising that they are immortal beings and because of this huge factor they are able to change their state of mind and the forms of their bodies. But Zaidman and Pantel state that ‘a god could be identified with certainty from an assemblage of attributes and postures, although, as with the pantheon as a whole, there existed a host of local representational variations’(p218), so there seems to be evidence that we can always recognise these gods and goddesses. We can look at this as an almighty power that we can lust to possess. Theses deities seem to be slightly tarnished by being able to seize human mannerisms, but I don’t particularly see this as a bad thing. Why would a divine being not want to experience love and other emotions the world has to offer? Also if they do not or cannot experience all the emotions they can, they do not have the right being an immortal god or not to place opinions on situations if they do not know what it is like to be in the same position. Therefore it is fair to conclude that the ancient Greek gods have been anthropomorphised to be able to relate better to the general public of ancient Greece.

Polytheism

Modern day religious views, Christianity for example differ majorly from ancient Greek Polytheistic views. Polytheism is a belief in numerous gods, which is exactly what the ancient Greeks had as they believed they had many different gods for different things, this is articulated by L. B. Zaidman and P. S. Pantel in their book ‘Religion in the Ancient Greek City’ (1992: p176) as she states that the ancient Greeks were certainly polytheists ‘since a polytheistic religion is characterised by the plurality of the divine powers that it recognises and of the cults that it observes’. In addition to this fact in reading R. Kirewan’s article ‘On the Origin of Polytheism, Idolatry, and Grecian Mythology’ (1810: p4), it states that ‘Mr. Hume, in an elaborate essay on the natural history of religion, labours to prove, ‘that polytheism or idolatry necessarily must have been the first and most ancient religion of mankind’’. In Christianity we have one God, but the ancient Greeks worshiped many gods and goddesses, in particular they had 12 main deities; Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, Athena, Ares, Hephaistos, Apollo, Artemis, Hades and Aphrodite. These were regarded as the most important deities, the Great Olympians.

Zaidman and Pantel also reflect that the gods and goddesses had their own ‘different types of supernatural power had their own dynamic, their own peculiar modes and spheres of operation and their inherent limitations’ (p177), meaning each one of these gods itself are very distinctive in what they look like and in their roles. What we must take into consideration, as the ancient Greeks had to also do within polytheism is that you could have your favourite deity, but you must continue to worship the other gods and goddesses and make sure your favourite deity didn’t exist in isolation, using Hippolytus here again as an example. Zaidman and Pantel also illustrate that ‘the Greeks worshipped more than one type of divine power, of which there were three principle categories: gods, daimones and heroes’ (p176) if we wanted to pursue the topic into more detail. It has been made clear that the Greek gods were obsessed with receiving honours and sacrifices. Nowadays in the Christian religion we do not overly donate gifts or make honourable sacrifices to our God, and it is apparent that it is possible to experience religion outside organised church events. But within the ancient Greek civilisation the gods and goddesses seem to be everywhere, in myths and legends, paintings, letters and depictions. The ancient Greek Gods and goddesses have to fit in to the network of divine beings; to me this means that they are know and respect their roles in antiquity, for example Poseidon is in charge of the sea. But they must remember that Zeus is the supreme ruler of the gods. In my understanding if the Great Olympians did not have Zeus ‘lord of the sky’ there would be no civil way of running the system. Without a leading character, individual gods would become too power happy and try taking over what is not rightfully theirs.

In contrast to Zeus being the master of all gods and goddesses we have proof that he can actually be over powered by other divine beings, we do not see this in regards to the Christian god. Aphrodite has a certain amount of control over Zeus, concerning his love for others. There are plenty of times in ancient Greek sources where Zeus has been over powered by his affection for another female, so this is startling evidence that Aphrodite in some ways has more power than the main man himself. Zaidman and Pantel describe that ‘Aphrodite’s function was to preside over the budding of sexual desire ... Aphrodite had to be handled with care’ (p71), this emphasises her power. So in my personal opinion, observing the Polytheistic religious ways in which the ancient Greek population worshiped the gods, even though Zeus was seen as the ‘father of gods and men’ I feel as though Aphrodite had more power, concerning the ways she could manipulate even someone as powerful as Zeus himself.