Scribd Logo
Fazer o upload

Bem-vindo(a) ao Scribd!

  • What - Is - Ancient - Greek - Religion - Many - vs. One PDF

    Enviado por

    Jordi Teixidor Abelenda
    40 visualizações15 páginas

    Título original

    What_is_Ancient_Greek_religion_Many_vs. One.pdf

    Direitos autorais

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Formatos disponíveis

    PDF ou leia online no Scribd

    Você considera este documento útil?

    Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

    Denunciar este documento

    Direitos autorais:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Baixe no formato PDF ou leia online no Scribd
    Sinalizar o conteúdo como inadequado
    40 visualizações15 páginas

    What - Is - Ancient - Greek - Religion - Many - vs. One PDF

    Enviado por

    Jordi Teixidor Abelenda

    Direitos autorais:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Baixe no formato PDF ou leia online no Scribd
    Sinalizar o conteúdo como inadequado
    de 15
    THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION ESTHER EIDINOW and JULIA KINDT UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD Great tendon Se, Orford, 02608 Unied Kingdom ‘Oxford Univers Presi department fe Unie of Oxford 1uurherthe Universo ofereencesn resent chal. ndcatonby publi worldwide Oxfordiarepstered trade ‘Oxford Unter Pres in the URandincersn thereat (Cah Univerty Pres 205 ‘hemora ight ftheautorshaebeen asserted. ist Bion pblahedinaess Impressions llrightsreserved. Nopetof ths pblston may bereprdce, orein fretivalsptm ores, van fom ory any eans without the pre permisionntingofOxord Unrest ees or ar exprety erated Trent ienceorundertrme oped witht appro repogeaphis sighs organization Engulesconcsringeptodacton aude the ope of be ‘hove shuldbesenttothe igh Departinet, Oxford UnirerityPrestatthe dceabove| Yousnattotcrcultethisworkinany other for ndyu mustianponethisumccondonon any sequer ube the United Sater Ameria by Oxford Univesity ress Toiadion Avenue New Yon NY 06 United StesatAmeic ‘uth ikea Cataloging in Publication Data Date avlble rary Congress Contal Neer axes SBN aro 9640-8 Patel andboundtyy cer Group (UKILid. Croydon. oxo. kato hed party webs are provided by Oxford in good aad forinformatio aly Oxford denmarany espns fr teeters hatedin any hd prt webateeferenced ints wor. CONTENTS List of Figures Abbreviations and Conventions Notes on Contributors Introduction Ester E1pinow AND JoLta Kino PART I WHAT IS ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION? 1. Unity vs. Diversity Ronin Osporwe 2. Beliefvs. Practice ‘Tuomas HARRISON 3. Old vs. New Enaty KEARNS 4. Many vs. One \VINCIANE PIRENNE-DetrORGE AND GABRIELLA PIRONT! PART Il TYPES OF EVIDENCE 5. Visual Evidence Mierre GatEMAN 6. Literary Evidence—Prose Hannan Wittey 7. Literary Bvidence—Poetry Renaup Gagné xi a 29 39 st 6 83 = n, 3. 4. 1. 36. wm 38. 9, contents Epigraphic Evidence Cage Taytor Material Evidence Carruin E, Barner Papyrology Davip Martinez, PART II] MYTHS? CONTEXTS AND REPRESENTATIONS Epic RicHarb P. Martin Artand Imagery “TaNJaS. SCHEER Drama (CLAUDE CALAME History Ronent FOWLER Philosophy Rick BENITEZ AND HAROLD TARRANT PART IV WHERE? ‘Temples and Sanctuaries Micttast Scort Households, Families, and Women Marrugw Diuton Religion in Communities Kostas VLAssoPouLos Regional Religious Groups, Amphictionies, and Other Leagues Cunisty Constantaxorourou 7 13 wm 1st 165, 9 195 au 27 2a 257 23 23. 24, 2. 28, 29, 30. 3. PART V HOW? Religious Expertise MICHAEL A. FLOWER New Gods Ranp ANDERSON Impiety HuGH Bowpen ‘Sacred Law? ANDRE} PETROVIC PART VI WHO? Gods—Olympian or Chthonian? Susan Deacr Gods—Origins Carouina LOpez-Rurz Heroes—Living or Dead? (GUNNEL ExROTH Dead or Alive? EMMANUEL VOUTIRAS Daimonic Power GIULIA SFAMENI GASPARRO Deification—Gods or Men? Ivana Perrovic PART VII WHAT? Prayer and Curse HENDRIKS. VERSNEL Sacrifice FRED NAIDEN conrents 23, 35 3 35 369 383 37 48 co) a9 46 x CONTENTS 432, Oraclesand Divination a7 SARAH ILES JOHNSTON 33. Epiphany. 491 Veriry PLarr 34, Healing 505 FRirzGrar PART VIII WHEN? 5. From Birth to Death: Life-Change Rituals sm Saran Hiren. 36. Ritual Cycles: Calendarsand Festivals 537 JAN-MarHIEU CARBON 47. Imagining the Afterlife ss RapcuirFEG. EDMONDS IIL PART IX BEYOND? 438. Magna Graecia (South Italy and Sicily) 567 GILLIAN SHEPHERD 439, ‘The Northern Black Sea:'The Case ofthe Bosporan Kingdom 589 Maya Muratov 4o. ‘the Ancient Near East 605 JANN. BREMMER 41. Greco-Egyptian Religion 6a Karan Kure 42. Bactria and India 67 Ractet Mares 43, China and Greece: Comparisons and Insights 651 Lisa RapHats General Index 667 Index of Passages 693 CHAPTER 4 MANY VS. ONE VINCIANE PIRENNE-DELFORGE AND GABRIELLA PIRONTI INTRODUCTION ‘Tu term ‘pelytheism’ has come down to us from the Hellenistic Jewish philoso. pher Philo of Alexandria, who used the Greek adjective polutheos and its cognates to ‘describe a widespread vision ofthe divine that was different from that of his own rel sion (Ph. Dec 65: polutheos; Mutat. 205: polutheia). (The majority of Mediterranean cultures cons dered that many divinities existed in the world and needed to be hon- ‘oured by humans) In the context of ts emergence, the Greek word was pejorative, in the same way that ‘paganism’ and idolatry’ would soon be used in Latin Christianity “Polytheism’ began tobe used during the sixteenth century, to draw a contrast between ‘truthful monotheism and the error of pagan religions (Schmidt 1987). Its context, for ‘two centuriesat least, would remain largely determined by Christian theology. Since the nineteenth century, Greek rituals and ther social embedding have been exten: sively studied, In contrast, gods were et on the fringes of new scholaly trends as pastcusi ‘sities to be treated individually in dictionaries (god of wat, goddess of love, of wisdom, tc), justikeacolletion of statues n a museum. Today the use ofthe term ‘polytheism’ as ‘an explanatory category isa clear indicator that gods are returning tothe forefront of the study of ancient Greek religion (ecently, Bremmer and Erskine 2o%0; Parker 2011 6-102; ‘Versnel 201), Scholars are focusing on the ways in which Greek people performed rituals, ‘ot only to affirm social hierarchiesin ther local communities (the borizontal ‘embedded perspective) but also explicitly to honour theirgods (the vertical perspective). How Does PotyTHEISM Work? Understanding plurality is hard work, and describing how polytheism functions thas been a matter of scholarly debate for fifty years at least. The shift of paradigm 40. VINCIANE PIRENNE-DELFORGE AND GABRIELLA PIRONT concerning these questions is closely connected with studies devoted to the Greek pantheon by Jean-Pierve Vernant and Marcel Detieone (Vernant 1974; and Detienne and Vernant 1974, revisited by Detienne 1997), and often called the ‘French structural- {st approach’, Scholars working on Greek polytheism today must stil take this wotk {ntoaccount, Wecan synthesize itas fallow, also takinginto consideration some more recent qualifications. Vernant (1965, 1974) was reacting against two trends in schclatship, first, a long-lasting ‘essentialization’ of the Greek gods, in which individual gods were char- acterized as ‘gods of a particular domain (as mentioned), and, second, an obsessive {quest for the origin of the gods. He underlined the fact that Greek gods were divine ‘powers and not persons, despite their literary and iconographical representations as anthropomorphic figures (already, for Gernet, as early as 193, a god was a ‘system of notions (1931:222)) Vernant emphasized the necessity of taking into consideration the ‘connections between deities within a pantheon: divine powers wore to be defined in ‘contrast to other powers and limited by them, We can no longer fully subscribe to this ‘model. One of ts main imits is the fact that seeing the gods in opposition to each other runs the risk of underestimating the overlap in their fields of competence. Moreover, rigid application of the model can stil lead to identifying each god with a distinctive and exclusive ‘mode of intervention’ (Dumézil 1974; 186-256). Indeed, it gives back to the gods an ‘essentializing’ unity that was the original point of contention (Detienne 1997: 61-24 Parker 2005; 390), Nevertheless, the core of Vernant’s approach remains ‘valid, when qualified by a more complex analysis of how polytheism works. In this perspective, a god can be seen asa complex network or luster of powers. On. the one hand, each god is defined by his or her own powers, competences, attributes, and so on—its own network; on the other hand, itis characterized by relationships and associations with other gods belonging to the same pantheon—a system whose com ponents cannot be studied in isolation—for instance, inact and cults or ina literary work, with its interacting divine protagonists. Unity and plu- rality are closely related at each level of analysis: each god is conceived as many powers Jnanetwork whose core isthe god’s name; many gods form structuresthat we call pan- theons; each pantheon is sen as an organizational whole within its context (the whole ‘cosmos in atheogony; the Trojan War in epics; scenario on the tragic stage at Athens; natural, social, and political life ina city et). ‘Studies on polytheism challenge the ‘canonical vision of Greek gods as distinct per~ sonalities with a clear psychological profile established once and for alln the mytho- logical tradition, In past decades, scholars still needed to insist that Greek deities were approached in ritual practice and conceived at different levels—the local, polis level, and the Panellenic one in sanctuaries as in narratives (Sourvinow-Lrwood 1978). This assertion is obvious today, and the risk of 'essentialization’ has been reduced enough to partially rehabilitate the word ‘personality’ or the expression ‘cult persona’ to refer to the gods. Ina religions context, evoking a ‘personality’ is the way to get a handle on the gods, to pray to them, but what is finally expected by worshippersis well and truly ‘ manifestation of divine power. In the middle of this tension, the aame of the god with various sanctuaries MANYVS.ONE 41 {s essential, providing an evocation ofthe particular god in question, which pervades smyth and cult, personality and powers. “The tension between these components—single personalities’ and interrelated pow. crs within a pantheon—temains atthe core of many discussions on how polytheism ‘works and implies that there are different methodological options by which to address this question, The regional scope for studying a consistent pantheon, on the one hand, and the deity-centred option, on the other, are the mainstreams ofthe study of Greek polytheism today. Both of them can be questioned and have their limitations. In a ‘god-by-god analysis, one encounters the risk of being excessively focused on the chosen deity, drawinga staticand unequivocal picture,and forgetting therelationshipscreated. by specific configurations (see BIMCR 2011.01.14), However, the regional option creates its own distortions. t conveniently marks out connections within a local system, but does not necessarily explain why we find, in so many places, a deity named Athena, or Zeus, or Demeter, Apollo, and soon, often with specific cult epithets. Accordingly, one runs the tisk of resorting to a superficial and ‘canonical’ description ofthese deities, by describing them ata Panhellenic level, without adequate acknowledgment oftheir local persona, In other words, a study focused only on a region encounters two differ cent risks; either, on the one hand, ‘atomizing’ single deity in its local manifestations; ‘or on the other hand, reducing deities to their generic description ‘god of ‘god. ‘dess of.) which is rather paradoxical in studies trying to understand polytheism at 4 local level. Another way of addressing the question of how polytheism works would be to study a particular domain of ife (marriage, protection of children, war, politic, agriculture, seafaring, etc) and observe how different divinities are involved in this context, An ideal position would be to integrate all ofthese approaches, but such an enterprise remains dificult to conduct, except in large collaborative team thas been stated that ‘polytheism is indescribable’ (Parker 2005: 387). However, we cannot remain silent, We must try to understand how the Greeks managed to concep- tualize unity and diversity together (contra Versnel 2011). Gods cannot be conceived in static terms because cults and myths reconfigure and redefine them as personalities and, a the same time, as powers interrelated to each other. Under the same name, a deity is at once the cult persona worshipped in a particular place and the figure that Js, for example, described in the Iliad as feasting on Mount Olympos or staged by Euripides in the theatre of Dionysos at Athens. The divine name has a central value because the god is not completely absorbed in and reduced to what is particular and temporary in its Function or narrative construction (Pirenne-Delforge 1994: 10-12). ‘A god is still more than the heterogeneous mosaic resulting from an arbitrary com- bination of epithets, images, and narratives (contra Burkert 1985 19,218), To use once ‘again the metaphor ofthe network, asum would be static, while a network is dynamic, fluid, exible, A god can be conceptualized lke such a network: different activities or contexts such asthe telling of myths or practice of particular cults let some segments and portions of the network appear (Pironti 2007: 285). "The whole set of connections is not necessarily entirely activated in each context, whatever that may be, but remains potentially available, For instance, ina local cult, the god's name with a cut epithet 42 VINCIANE PIRENNE-DELFORGE AND GABRIELLA PIRONTI 4s one aspect ofthe deity seen in close-up, not the expression of complete different deity In this respect, myths and stuals are not unrelated bodies of evidence, but spe- lic languages, which resonate inside the mental frame of poets who narrated tales, oF painters who decorated Attic vases, and of worshippers who performed rituals ‘To give some flesh to these abstractions, lt us take into account two diferent types of divinity. Theirs tbe tackled are what scholarship misleadingly identifesas'minor deities’ or ‘personifications, that is, the Moirat(Pirenne-Delforge and Ponti 2010. “The second example refers to a deity belonging tothe ‘highest evel’ of the Greek pan- theon: Hera, the wife of Zeus himself. The methodological approach of poythetsm ‘mustbe the same forboth categories because both referto divinities elt by worshippers tobe powerful agents ctingin therlivesatonetime or another Case Srupy 1: THe Morrat ‘The name of the Moirai refers to the ‘portion’ or ‘share’ that every human—or ivine—being receives. In this case, the powers of the goddesses are closely related to the notion conveyed by their name, just like their mother Themis (the divinely inspired order of things’) and many other ‘divine personifications’ worshipped by the Greeks. They are commonly understood to be ‘goddesses of fate’ and actually ‘appear in mythic tales that mainly associate them with birth and death. As tradi- tional spinners and weavers, these goddesses rule over everyone's lifecycle and over the vatious patterns of the ‘life thread’, This is the traditional, Panhellenic image conveyed by tales from Homer to Pausanias and beyond. The label ‘goddesses of fate! 4s not completely wrong, butis unsatisfactory, as are all such reductive kinds of labels concerning the gods, Moreover, it is built upon the unwarranted assumption of a "universal notion of fate’, common to the Greek world and our own (as Eidinow 201 notes), We can identify the Moirai as powers whose specific network encompasses distribution, reward, and regulation, On a mythical level, they interact with the sta- bility warranted by Zeus’ authority (Hes, Theog. 901~6;¢f. Pironti 2009). Qn the level ‘of cut practices, the evidence related to them is neither numerous nor explicit about ‘worshippers’ expectations. This evidence includes three kinds of texts (we do not take {nto account funerary inscriptions, which usea very loose notion of fate’) first, in ‘vidual or familial dedications concerning pregnancy and birth (IG IP? 4475 FD IIL 4.360; ¢f. Pind. Ol. 641-43 Ant. Lib. 29}; second, family foundations ofthe Hellenistic period constructing « kind of ‘micro-pantheon’ in which the Moirai are honoured (UGXU, 43485LSAM 7a); third, civic rituals attested by literary texts and inscriptions (GP 73; Paus. 2.1.4). ‘Without addressing the detail of this evidence, we can delineate the position assumed by these goddesses in the fields of birth and family matters. Their inter- ventions in human lives and communities ate various but they are closely related to both lifespan and lifecycle, in narratives as well as in cult practice. Other deities are MANY VS.ONE 43 concerned with the same fields of intervention, but the ‘set of notions’ related to the Moirai, including distribution, reward, regulation, is specific. They are the benevo- lent protectors of the lifecycle, as well as the strict guardians ofits limits. The Moirai regulate the share attributed to everyone, determining the beginning and the end of Life,as well as the important steps that regulate life, with an eye on the correct balance between good and evil. Ona arger scale, family group honours the Moiraiin order to perpetuate the family In this case, the expected intervention not only concerns indi- vidual lives and their limits, bt the consolidation of the lineage itself, Finally, on the global level of polis religion, epigraphic and literary evidence indicates that a whole civic community could pay homage tothe Moirai. What exactly were the expectations ‘of a ety? In the Eumenides of Aischylos, where the Moirni and the Semnai theal are closely connected, we are told that the life of young people is protected by both groups ‘of goddesses since they are able to prevent civil war (Aesch. Bum. 956-67; cf, Paus 2.114, 00 acult relating the two at Sicyon). Accordingly, the balance between good and evil at the very heart ofthe polis concerns correct distribution of births and deaths within the community. The strict regulation made by the Moirai is one ofthe condi tions ofthe survival ofthe entire community of the polis, as well as ofthe families composing it The three spinners and weavers depicted in Panhellenic myths are not a fiction without any relation to cults. Moreover, their close relationship to Zeus and the identity oftheir mother, Themis, are the best indications that they are not, as has been hypothesized, primeval goddesses of death and arbitrary dispensators of good and evil Instead, they are regulators, even though human beings are often unable to grasp the cosmic dimension of this regulation and distribution, and complain about thearbitrariness of fateand the limits inherent in human life. Case Stupy 2: HERA Heras our second case study (Pienne-Delforge and Piro 2009, and forthcoming) and focus wll beer lationship with Zeus, whichis fundamental in various tales concerning the goddess. Actos the whole Greek tradition, hels the wife ofthe father andkng ofthe gos. In Homer shes depicted, at east at st sight, a5 shrev, lays geting angry Zeon Hom. 37-21 8407-8) Thestme image appearsin hoses here he persecute the illegitimate children fer cle husband (Hom. 24-36% Hes. Theo. 33-5 Ap. Rhod. 1996-7) Taken a face value, mythical narratives give the goddess an image thats incompatible with he cult person, fr example, in Argos or in Samos However, fw arf ead the many tls or mary vases depicting Hera, an scrutinize the aetiologies of some of er culls, mportant insights emerge. ving ussome ches hat canbe uted totes the valid ofaHera network’ Inthisease: mar riage legitimacy, power and sovereignty at essential aspects for determining east apartofa definitional structure ofthe goddess, which s largely ooted inthe tlation- ship betveea Hera and he husband andbrother, the king ofthe gods Regarding the cult persona of Hera in Argos, the aetiological evidence is scanty. Nevertheless, we can reconstruct a mythic

    Você também pode gostar