Fortunately the whole subject has recently been treated in a masterpiece of lively learning, W. Burkert,
Greek Religion, trans. W. Raffan (Oxford, 1985). This is much the best starting-point on almost all the
topics discussed here. A shorter general study is W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods (London,
1950); there are concise introductions to particular aspects in M. P. Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion
(Columbia, 1940: issued in paperback as Greek Folk Religion); H.W. Parke, Greek Oracles (London,
1967). Greek Religion and Society, edd. P.E. Easterling and J.V. Muir (Cambridge, 1985), is an
attractive collection of essays.
Source books: D. G. Rice and J. E. Stanbaugh, Sources for the Study of Greek Religion (Society of
Biblical Literature, 1979); for the post-classical period see F. C. Grant, Hellenistic Religions
(Indianapolis, 1953). Two important texts, Hesiod's Theogony and the Homeric Hymns, are available in
prose translation in H. G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, Loeb Classical
Library (Harvard, 1914, and many reprints).
Some works that are especially provocative in approach or perspective are: W. Burkert, Structure and
History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, 1979) on the psychodynamics of ritual, seeking
parallels with animal rituals; E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951) wide-ranging;
a classic; P. Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite (Chicago, 1978); J. Griffin, Homer on Life and Death
(Oxford, 1980), chs. 1, 5, 6; H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley, 2nd edn., 1984); W. F. Otto,
The Homeric Gods, trans. M. Hadas (London, 1955), a vigorous assertion of the truth and value of
Greek religion; and a collection (ed. R. L. Gordon), Myth, Religion and Society: Structuralist Essays by
M. Detienne, L. Gernet,J.-P. Vernant, and P. Vidal-Naquet (Cambridge, 1981) and other works of the
same school listed there. E. Rohde, Psyche, trans. W. B. Hillis (London, 1925) on the soul, immortality,
Dionysus, is now largely outdated in theory, but unsurpassed in learning and vigour. Two recent works
valuable for full and alert descriptions are J. D. Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion (North Carolina,
1983), on attitudes rather than acts, and W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War, Part hi, Religion
(Berkeley, 1979). The best introduction to attitudes to divination is A. D. Nock, 'Religious Attitudes of
the Ancient Greeks' in his Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Z. Stewart (Oxford, 1972). On
science and religion there is a brilliant study by G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience
(Cambridge, 1979). B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (eds.), Jewish and Christian Self-Definition hi: Self-
Definition in the Greco-Roman World (London, 1982), contains expert essays on the Orphic/
Pythagorean movement and on Dionysiac cult.
On particular topics there are:
J. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983).
W. Burkert, Homo Necans, trans. P. Bing (Berkeley, 1983), on sacrifice.
E.R. Dodds, edn. of Euripides, Bacchae (Oxford, 1960{2}) (on Dionysus).
E.J. and L. Edelstein, Asclepius (Baltimore, 1945).
L.R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1896-1909), and Greek Hero Cults and
Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921) are still valuable works of reference.