enforce his view. The seer knows, but the ruler decides. In life a layman could even challenge and defeat the experts on
their own ground. When the Delphic oracle in 480 B.C. advised the Athenians to 'put trust in their wooden walls' against the
Persian threat, the professional interpreters understood this as a warning to remain within the city walls. The politician
Themistocles argued against them that the god was referring to the fleet. Themistocles' interpretation prevailed because the
final decision lay not with the seers, but with the citizen assembly.
There was, therefore, no religious organization that could spread moral teaching, develop doctrine, or impose an orthodoxy.
In such a context a creed would have been unthinkable. In a famous passage Herodotus casts two poets as the theologians of
Greece:
Not till the day before yesterday, so to speak, did the Greeks know the origin of each of the gods, or whether they had all
existed always, and what they were like in appearance. ... It was Homer and Hesiod who created a theogony for the Greeks,
gave the gods their epithets, divided out offices and functions among them, and described their appearance. (2.53)
It is, no doubt, true that the prestige of Homer's and Hesiod's poetry did much to stabilize the Greeks' conceptions of their
gods. But everyone knew that the Muses who inspired epic poets told lies as well as truth, and in many details of divine
genealogy Homer's and Hesiod's accounts were in fact contradictory. Such discrepancies caused no anxiety, and there was
no need to question one's conscience before doubting or disputing a traditional myth. There were no heretics because there
was no Church. The only religious crimes were acts or attitudes that caused general public resentment. The most obvious
was sacrilege in all its forms (including, for instance, the profanation of Mysteries). Another was the crime that Socrates
was charged with, 'not recognizing the gods that the city recognizes'. This was to put oneself outside the norms of society in
a way that might be found intolerable. Both the flexibility and the sticking-point can be seen in Euripides' Bacchae. King
Pentheus is here urged by his advisers to recognize Dionysus, and they offer the god to him in a variety of guises: if
Pentheus doesn't believe the myths about Dionysus, can't he think of him as the divine principle in wine? And if not that,
wouldn't he at least like people to believe that his aunt Semele had given birth to a god? But Pentheus refuses
accommodation on any terms, and so he is destroyed by the god.
Cult
'Recognizing the gods' was principally a matter of observing their cult. Piety was expressed in behaviour, in acts of respect
towards the gods. (A sociologist would be liable to say that the Greeks valued 'orthopraxy', right doing, rather than
'orthodoxy'.) Religion was not a matter of innerness or intense private communion with the god. This does not mean that
strong feelings of loyalty, dependence, and even affection were impossible. Zeus was a 'father' as well as a 'king'; appeals to
'dear' gods are commonplace, and in literature we often find close and relaxed relationships between men and particular
gods (Odysseus and Athena in the Odyssey, Sappho and Aphrodite, Ion and Apollo in Euripides' Ion, Hippolytus and
Artemis in Euripides' Hippolytus). But piety (eusebeia) was literally a matter of 'respect', not love, and even the warmest
relationship would quickly have turned sour without observance of the cult. Religion was never personal in the sense of a
means for the individual to express his unique identity. No Greek would ever have thought of keeping a spiritual diary.
Indeed many classes of person had much of their religion done for them by others: the father sacrificed and besought
blessings 'on behalf of the household, while the magistrates and priests did the same for 'the people' ('and its wives and
children', the Athenians eventually added). In all of this religion reflected and supported the general ethos of Greek culture.
It discouraged individualism, a preoccupation with inner states and the belief that intentions matter more than actions; it
emphasized the sense of belonging to a community and the need for due observance of social forms. What, then, of right
conduct? To those used to Christianity Greek religion often seems a strangely amoral affair. Man was not for Greeks a
sinful being in need of redemption; piety was not a matter of perpetual moral endeavour under the watchful guidance of
conscience. The gods excelled in strength and skill more obviously than in the quieter virtues. Indeed their behaviour in
myth was often scandalous:
There might you see the gods in sundry shapes
Committing heady riots, incest, rapes.