ClSt/Coml 200

Lecture notes for January 25, 1999

Ancient Contexts of Greek Myth: Olympian and Epichoric Religion

Background Information on:

Hesiod | The Spelling of Greek Names | The Olympian Gods | The Structure of Hesiod's Theogony

Greek Mythology and Greek Religion

Greek mythology and religion are intimately connected, but they are not precisely the same thing. Many of the gods who figure in myth were worshipped in cult as well, but many were not. The principal deities in Greek religious observance are the Olympians, who represent the last generations of the immortals. In some cases the stories with which we are familiar were closely involved in the worship of particular gods; but this was not always the case, since the worship of any given divinity took different forms at different places and times throughout the Greek world.

Olympian and Chthonic Divinities

The Olympian gods were thought to dwell on Mt. Olympus, the tallest mountain in Greece, located in a remote area well to the north of most settled areas. Their characteristics are aften suggested through comparison with their various opposites, including the gods of the previous generation, the Titans, and the various creatures who challenge their rule, such as the Earth-born monsters known as Gigantes (Giants) and the snake-like Typhoeus. The Olympians are in general associated with the airy upper regions, with light, and so on, while the older gods -- mainly Gaia (Earth) and her brood -- are associated with the lower world. There have been theories that held that the Olympian religion actually replaced an older religion that had been oriented towards these earthy or chthonic divinities, and there were even traditions in antiquity according to which some of the cult-sites of the various Olympian gods had formerly been sacred to Gaia, Cronus, or one of the older gods, but the evidence for this belief is not always convincing. Whether this is true or not, it does make sense to regard the earlier generations of Greek gods as possessing attributes opposite to those of the Olympians, who rule the world in "our" time.

Panhellenic and Epichoric Dimensions of Greek Belief and Practice

The gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon were worshipped throughout Greece, but they were not worshipped in quite the same way in every particular place. The modes of worship that were common to all the Greeks are distinguished as panhellenic (which means “pertaining to all the Greeks”), while those that were specific to individual localities are called epichoric (“which means “local”).

The Olympians were the most popular divinities during the archaic and classical periods, and their cult sites pervade the entire Greek world. But different individual divinities received cult in different places. Athena, for example, was particularly important to the city of Athens, where a series of temples dedicated to her were built atop the acropolis (or “citadel”). Hera was the focus of a particularly famous cult in the city of Argos, and Zeus was worshipped especially in the Sanctuary of Olympia. But these were not the only places where these gods were worshipped, nor were they the only gods worshipped in those places. In the sanctuary of Olympia, for instance, there were, in addition to the main temple of Zeus, a variety of other temples and other religious structures, including an important temple of Hera. One infers that she is honored at Olympia as the consort of Zeus, and that her presence does him honor as well, in that his consort is an important goddess in her own right. Similarly, the sculptural program of the temple of Zeus reflects his importance as the head of a great family of gods. Inside the temple was a monumental cult-statue of gold and ivory. In the pediment or gable at the east end of the temple was a group of statues representing the story of a chariot race between the hero Pelops and his rival Oenomaus. The central figure in this group is Zeus himself, who plays a decisive role in determining the outcome of this race. In the pediment on the west end was a similar group depicting the battle between the Lapiths and the centaurs. Here the central figure is not Zeus, but his son Apollo, who puts an end to the quarrelling between the human Lapiths and the half-human centaurs. Around the outside of the temple was a triglyph-and-metope frieze that contained bas-relief sculptures of the twelve labors of Heracles, the mortal son of Zeus, who was frequently assisted in his labors by Athena, daughter of Zeus and thus helf-sister to Heracles. The sculptural program of the Zeus temple and the building program at the site as a whole seems intended to express the importance of Zeus himself as the head of a great family of gods and goddesses.

While Zeus is the head of the Olympian pantheon in general, other gods and goddesses occupy a similarly central position in their own cult sites. Athena is clearly the dominant divinity in the sacred precinct on the Athenian acropolis, for instance. There, in addition to her own great temple, the Parthenon, there were a sanctuary to Zeus Polieus, a temple of Erechtheus, and a temple of Victory. At Delphi there was a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo. In each of these sites, one god or goddess was the principal tutelary divinity, even though others were honored as well.

Each of the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon was simultaneously a local or epichoric divinity and a panhellenic god worshipped throughout the Greek world. These two dimensions of the ancient Greek religion must always be borne in mind.

Greek Mythology and Greek Literature

Greek literature, like Greek religion, is closely wrapped up with mythology; but neither is it the same thing. All the major genres of Greek literature make use of myth to some extent, and for most kinds of poetry in particular the myths are the principal source of subject matter. But a work of literature is not the same thing as a myth: it is an instantiation of a myth that exists in many other forms. Hesiod's Theogony, for instance, tells the story of how Zeus became king of the gods. But the poem is not the myth itself, nor is it necessarily the definitive telling of that myth. Rather, it is one of many instantiations of the myth, which took many other forms as well. These forms were not only literary, of course. A myth might be represented graphically, as on a vase painting or sculptural relief; architecturally or spatially, as in a temple or sacred precinct; or in cultic practice, i.e. the actual ritual observances through which worship took place. But all these partial representations of a myth do not "add up" to the entire myth itself. Even so widespread and so consistently represented a myth as the accession of Zeus to the throne of Olympus could not be expressed entirely and in ideal form: every version is limited in the first place by its medium (textual, material, or practical as the case may be) and, in the second place, exists in order to serve some purpose more limited and specific than any ideal version could accommodate. This is true even of versions that were widely accepted throughout Greek culture and that address myths of fundamental importance from an extremely broad perspective, as is true, for instance, of Hesiod's Theogony.

The Generations of the Gods

Is Hesiod's Theogony a "Standard" Account?
Hesiod's Theogony tells how the Olympian gods worshipped in his day came to be born. This poem acquired great authority in later Greek culture. Writing perhaps eight hundred years after we believe Hesiod's poem was composed, Apollodorus based his own account of divine genealogy (which is contained in a mythological handbook known as the Library) largely on Hesiod's Theogony. But Apollodorus differs from Hesiod in certain respects: These differences are small, but there are more pronounced differences between some of the details that Homer gives about the ancestry of the principal Olympian gods: So Homer, a poet comparable to Hesiod in antiquity and if anything even greater in his influence over later Greek culture, disagrees with Hesiod in certain ways, both large and small, concerning the generations of the gods. In fact, we know by report of earlier theogonies, some of them nearly contemporary with Hesiod, others much later but still considerably earlier than Apollodorus, that also differed from Hesiod, sometimes in important respects.

The point is that while Hesiod's Theogony was regarded as an authoritative text, we cannot assume that all accounts of Greek mythology agreed with his either as a whole or in particular details.

What Does Hesiod's Theogony Have in Common with Other Theogonies?
Despite these differences, there are certainly broad similarities among the various Greek theogonies: While the details of different accounts vary from one another, they agree broadly on such features as these; and it is tempting to infer on this basis that the idea of generational succession corresponds to some sort of chronological development in Greek religion -- e.g. that worship of the elements in some deeply archaic period of Greek culture was replaced by worship of successively anthropomorphic deities culminating in the Olympians, or that worship of the feminine principle represented for instance by Gaia was eventually replaced by worship of the hyper-masculine Zeus. But this is probably not in fact the case. It is more likely that the successive generations should be interpreted without reference to time, but rather in terms of the relationships that exist within specific tellings of the myth. On this view, earlier generations exist only to serve as foils to the Olympians and, especially, to Zeus, who imposes order on a chaotic world and maintains it by virtue of his superior physical and mental power. 
syllabus