Localism, Nationalism and Polytheism

Herodotus (8.144.2) has the Athenians claim that “Greekness” consists of shared blood and language, shared sanctuaries of the gods and sacrifices, and similar customs. By “shared sanctuaries and sacrifices” he probably means those at the panhellenic cult centers such as Delphi and Olympia. Apart from such centers the Greeks did not “share” sanctuaries and sacrifices. Each city, as we have seen, had its own for its own citizens. The localism of Greek cults, their being tied closely to one village or one city-state, with significant differences between cults even of gods with the same name, is a feature of Greek religion which probably resulted from and also contributed to another feature of Greek culture. That is the strong sense of national identity and independence of each of the 400+ individual city-states.

During the quadrennial or biennial festivals at Olympia and elsewhere, the Greeks were encouraged to set aside inter-state political differences and even wars for a month and so felt, momentarily at least, a sense of unity as Greeks. But the permanent differences among the cult structures of the individual city-states outweighed these occasional moments of “shared sacrifices,” just as political and military hostilities before these festivals resumed after them. Only once in their history, and that in the direst circumstances, did religion serve to unify the Greeks. That was when Apollo of Delphi became the focal point of the Greeks’ opposition to the Persians’ invasion of 480 B.C.E. Only when the Greeks were fighting a desperate battle for their survival against non-Greek opponents did their religion serve to unite them. But, for the rest of their history, the Greeks remained devoted to the deities of their individual city-states and never worked to develop or even imagined a religious structure that would encompass them all. Viewed positively, this localism of Greek religion, along with other factors such as geography, contributed to the remarkable diversity of forms of government and society, to strong local pride, and to the fiercely independent spirit characteristic of ancient Greek culture. Viewed negatively, it was probably among the factors that prevented the Greeks from establishing some sort of permanent political unity that would have reduced the number of self-destructive wars they fought with one another.

Remarkable in this localism of Greek religious beliefs about gods is the lack of religious hostilities towards other states, Greek or non-Greek. There were some “sacred wars” among the Greek city-states, but they all concerned the ownership or perceived misuse of “sacred property,” of sanctuaries, usually those few like Delphi thought to be panhellenic and the concern of all Greeks. There was never a crusade by one Greek city-state to impose its gods or its cultic system on another, and there is no evidence that there were even proselytizing efforts in this regard. The Greek sense of polytheism no doubt contributed to this. Not only did a Greek have “many gods” whom he worshiped in his everyday life, but he also recognized that there were many other gods worshiped, perhaps in another deme down the road, in a neighboring city-state, throughout Greece, and throughout the known world. Outside the polemical philosophical/theological tradition, there is no evidence that a Greek distinguished among these many gods by labeling his own “genuine,” the gods of others “false.” And one does not find, even where one might expect it, in the speeches of Thucydides and Herodotus, the claim that “our gods are better (or stronger) than theirs.” These historians do not have the Greeks claiming that their gods were superior to the Persians’ or the Athenians asserting the superiority of their gods in the Peloponnesian War. The Greeks – and this is a distinctive feature of their religion – were remarkably respectful of the gods of others, both Greek and non-Greek.

Violations of the sanctuaries in an enemy’s land by a Greek army were rare and strongly condemned. As Herodotus (5.1021–102.1) describes it, a fire started by Greeks accidentally destroyed a Persian sanctuary, but the Persians responded by intentionally and systematically leveling all the Greek sanctuaries they could lay their hands on, and for this they were punished by the gods. In his long description of Egypt, Herodotus (Book 2) does not disparage the very un-Greek, animal-formed, and otherwise exotic gods and goddesses he found there, but rather he seeks similarities to Greek gods, likening (however improbably) Isis to Demeter and Osiris to Dionysus. He seeks to accommodate the Egyptian gods to the Greek divine world, not to distance them from it. Such was, it appears, the usual outlook of Greeks on gods that were not theirs: respect, but not worship, and caution against showing “disrespect” for anything divine.

~ Jon D. Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion