But even these easy-going rulers insisted (Zeus in particular) on certain standards of behaviour without which life would
have dissolved into barbarism. They punished offences against parents, guests/hosts, suppliants, and the dead. They
particularly abhorred oath-breakers, destroying them 'with their whole stock'; such a man might seem to have escaped, but
never did-his children would suffer, or he himself in the Underworld. Since oaths accompanied almost all of life's most
important transactions (contracts, marriages, and peace-treaties, for instance), Zeus of Oaths was also inevitably a guardian
of social morality. Zeus was in fact often said to care for justice in general, and it was a basic presumption of popular belief
that, at bottom, the gods were on the side of good men. 'The gods exist', the simple Greek exclaimed when a villain came to
a bad end. The Greek was not in danger of slipping inadvertently into sin, as the rules of conduct were clear. But if he broke
these rules he forfeited 'good hopes' for the future.
Sacrifice To Apollo, on an Athenian vase of about 440 B.C. The statue of the god, holding bow and laurel branch, and
laurel-crowned like his worshippers, stands on a pillar at the right behind the bloodstained altar. The priest is offering on it
the offal and bones due to the gods. The edible meat from the sacrificed animal has already been cut up and wound on to
the spits carried by the boy behind the priest, to be cooked.
All this, however, was a prerequisite for winning divine favour by ritual, not a substitute for it. Formal cult remained
essential. Its most important form was the sacrifice. The typical victim was an animal, but there were also 'bloodless' or
'pure' sacrifices of corn, cakes, fruit, and the like, sometimes offered in addition to animals and sometimes in place of them.
A Greek religious calendar was a list of sacrifices; several such survive, indicating what god or hero was to receive what
offering on what day. In the commonest form, the thigh-bones of the slaughtered animal, wrapped in fat, were burnt on a
raised altar for the gods; the meat was then cooked and eaten by the human participants. Such a sacrifice was a 'gift to the
gods'. The gods had to receive their share of all human goods- first-fruits of harvest, libations at drinking parties, tithes of