Ancient Greece

Lesson 6: Greek Religion and Philosophy

Gods

Traditional Greek religion consisted of the worship of the main Olympian deities.

It was a polytheistic religion (i.e. it had many gods, as opposed to monotheistic religions like Judaism or Islam which stress the worship of a single all-powerful God). It would therefore have been more like Hinduism or the Japanese Shinto religion.

Zeus was the king of the gods (and also the most powerful of them) in Greek religion. He was the son of an earlier king of the gods called Saturn whom he had overthrown and deposed.

It is interesting to note that although Zeus was the most powerful, it was not he who had created the universe. In this way, he was very different from the idea of God the Father that comes to us from Christianity.

Zeus was also not very moral in his behaviour. He was always having affairs with mortal women, and thereby begetting a whole lot of mortal offspring.

Zeus shared dominion over the entire universe with his brothers Poseidon and Hades.

Poseidon was the god of the sea. He is most well-known today for his role in the Odyssey. In ancient times, however, his worship was quite popular.

Hades was the god of the underworld. Modern representations of Hades often depict him as being evil (as for example in the popular Disney movie "Hercules"). This is highly misleading. The Ancient Greeks did not view Hades as being similar to our modern idea of the devil.

There were many other important deities in Greek religion.

Hera was the wife of Zeus and therefore also queen of the gods.

Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. She was also regarded as the goddess of wisdom. She was supposed to have sprung fully clothed and fully armed directly from the head of Zeus, without any need for a female parent.

Hermes was the messenger of the gods. He was also the god of trade and enterprise, and sometimes regarded as the god of thieves.

Aphrodite is perhaps the most well-known of the ancient Greek deities. She was the goddess of love and beauty.

Ares was the god of war.

Apollo was one of the most popular deities. Also known as Phoebus, he was sometimes associated with the sun.

Dionysus, who was later associated with Greek Drama, was the god of wine and ecstasy.

Herodotus has preserved a tradition that all the names of the Greek gods came originally from Egypt. He equates Zeus with the Egyptian Amun, and Dionysus with Osiris.

It must be stressed that Herodotus is not entirely reliable, and he may just have been recording a tradition that was incorrect in the first place.

Most modern scholars have tried to emphasise the parallels between Greek and other Indo-European mythologies. Zeus, for example, is equated with the Vedic Indra, since they both use the thunderbolt as their weapon.

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