BUCHOUL SAMUEL

MCPH 2012-2013

MIH 604 COLLECTIVE-SOCIAL

WORD COUNT: 1026

GEORGE VARGHESE
FOR WEEK 7: FEBRUARY 18-24

ASSIGNMENT 6
Greek Religion: Miasma in the Polis

While it is a well-known fact that the whole lifestyle of Ancient Greece was
entirely imbued with theological elements, via the importance of the Greek
pantheon, it is more rarely clarified that this spiritual life was a very unique
type of religion. The understanding and practices revolving around the
relations between humans and God was such that calling it a religion is in
itself a controversy. The theological culture of the Greeks was very distinct
from the type of spirituality one finds in the Semitic religions. In this
assignment, we shall try to present some of the major components of the
spiritual life of the Ancient Greeks, insisting on the features that make of
Greek spirituality a very special one.
In Ancient Greek, there was no word for religion or faith. The
closest words for religion were Euseibia and Therepia, meaning care.
Religion was nothing but a care of humans for gods. There was no particular
fear of punishment. The relation to the gods was more like a contact between
gods and humans. This care included feeding the gods, cleaning their
representations, etc. It was a completely anthropomorphic approach to
divinity: Greek religion was an anthropomorphic polytheism. The main care
for the gods took place through the offerings. The most important offering was
food, in the form of sacrifice. After giving gods food, humans would eat the
leftover. Prometheus would famously disturb this balance.
Greeks never had a proper Godhead, or an elaborate original narrative.
The various gods were very mundane, practical, present everywhere in the
everyday life. The gods were a tangible reality. This very tangible religion
became a principle of the day-to-day reality. It was part of human life. It

structured the everyday life. Greek religion never had a dogmatic, theological
or explanatory core. There was no priestly class either. How did this religion
function without the priestly class? The body of the church was completely
superimposed with the Greek polis: the city as a political category. Greek
religion was a kind of its own: it was mostly a political function. The political
order of the polis corresponded with the church. The ecclesiastical body was a
completely political body. Being part of the church was not at all a personal
belief. The church was not connected with religion alone: it was of social
importance for important life ceremonies such as birth, marriage and burying.
The political structure was very dominant in defining ones position in the
religious order. The religious order was a superimposition on the political
order. Being a citizen meant being a part of the Greek religion. Believing in
the gods was ultimately the same thing as being a good Athenian citizen, just
as it was in Sparta and every other Greek city (Vegetti 1995, 281). Ones
pollution or purity depended on ones political representation in the polis. It
was the political institutions that decided the religious functions as well. Every
religious position was voted for a temporary period. There was no permanent
or life-long position. The religious organization of Ancient Greece was
completely a bureaucratic order. There was only one requirement to be a
priest: being a member of the polis, that is, being a citizen. There was no extra
sanctimonious quality or expertise for one to be a priest. Greek religion could
therefore be referred to as a sort of secular form of religion.
God was something very present in a human form. It was part of a dayto-day life. The gods were omnipotent, present everywhere. Herodotus gives
the anecdote of the tyrant Peisistratus (510

BC).

Ousted from Athens,

Peisistratus tried to retrieve back his position. He managed to do it by getting

a normal girl dressed like Athena. The city people took her for Athena. This
famous story reveals two major aspects of Greek religion. First, Greek gods
were conceived as having a very humane form. Second, faith was very simple,
not sophisticated at all. Everybody could get a grasp of it directly. Therefore
there was nothing exceptional or unbelievable in the entry of a god in a city
(Vegetti 1995, 257).

While there was no proper word for religion, one concept was of
central importance: the sacred, hieros (power). This sacred power was
manifested in certain human affects. It was expressed in mysterious places
like caves, trees, etc., as well as during natural catastrophes and important
human events like birth or marriage. The sacred was a part of the existential
aspect of the life of humans. The sacred had an opposite: if the sacred was
pure, its opposite was the pollution or corruption, miasma. It was not the logic
of a pollution of space as, for instance, with the Indian caste system: in
Greece, all could enter the sacred places. The Greek temples had no door.
There was no human difference, no taboo caused by the presence of someone.
The pollution or taboo was not religious, racist, or blood-based but political.
The idea of pollution was more ontological: certain acts were polluting
against the sacred. Instances of such activities were, among others, the
spilling of human blood (even during war); sexual activities; violating the
social order (patricide, incest, etc). This last case was contagious: the
pollution of the doer was also contagiously extended to the victim. Pharmakos
was a cathartic ritual in which a specific individual (often a cripple, or a twin,
etc.) of the group was expelled from the group. Any polluted order had to be
purified: Katharsis. Greek tragedy stemmed from this atmosphere of the
sacred, of pollution and purification. The best example is certainly Sophocles
Oedipus Rex and Oedipus in Colonus. Purification, katharsis was very
important. It would become important in the arts, in philosophy, and in
particular in Aristotles Poetics. Purification was not a coincidental but a
permanent situation. Indeed, even the human birth was a polluted situation.
There was already the idea of an uncomfortable mixture between soul and
body. Life itself was a process of purification. As Mario Vegetti (1995)
concludes, the process of living itself was thus seen as a gradual purification
from the body, so that the spiritual element, the soul, could finally be released
from its earthly bonds (261).

REFERENCES

Vegetti, Mario. The Greeks and Their Gods. In The Greeks, edited by JeanPierre Vernant, translated by Charles Lambert and Teresa Lavender
Fagan, 254-281. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.