More positively, Greek religion, its myths and practices, constructs a vivid sense of
ongoing process and sequence. This movement is materialized in the passing of the
sun from dawn to setting, of the moon from new moon to full moon to waning
moon, of the stars from first rising to first setting to vanishing, in the passing of
mortals from birth to the land of the shades, via bloominghe ̄be ̄, marriage, and old
age. And it is dramatized and allegorized in the processing of particular material
products, wine, bread, cloth, from ‘‘raw’’ to consumable, in the processing of a
sacrificial victim from slaughter to butchery to roasting to boiling to consumption.
In many cases these processes are projected onto history, so that production recapit-
ulates invention. This makes of the present a culmination or a confluence of a whole
series of processes and discoveries, and of the past an unmade, incomplete present.
This sense of time as accumulative might also be vividly represented in the literal
piling up in temples and treasure houses of offerings made during previous festivals
and recorded in temple accounts. Centuries later you could still see the dedications of
Nicias at Delos, of the long-lost Sybarites at Olympia, of Croesus at Delphi, the chest
of Cypselus, the three wooden images of Aphrodite carved from the prows of
Cadmus’ ships and dedicated by his wife Harmonia, the tomb of Pelops, the place
where Poseidon’s trident struck the rock of the Acropolis. The prime example of such
accumulative deposits was the altar of Zeus at Olympia, the most material illustration
of centuries of pious offerings, and of the continual burning of the sacred flame in the
sacred hearth.
Timefulness, was a critical element in the Greek conception of what differentiated
mortals from immortals and the basis of all intercourse between them. The gods were
not merely deathless but ageless, beyond time, beyond change. And exchanges with
the gods were specifically of the here and now, each gift looking both backwards and
forwards, as thanks for past favors and in hope of future favors. Forcharis– ‘‘grace,’’
‘‘favor,’’ ‘‘thanks’’ – which is the characteristic of all forms of cult, is a characteristic of
necessarilyongoingrelationships, gifts freely given which might oblige but never
obligate the gods to return them, which they might return in a manner and at a
time of their own choosing and often in quite surprising ways. Each gift, each favor
was never paid back in full, but always left an imbalance, a further obligation, a further
debt (Parker 1998).
This sense ofcharis, of freedom in exchanges, of mystery in the way gifts to the
gods might be returned, of enigma in the way an oracle might be fulfilled, is one
crucial factor in separating piety from the more mechanical exchanges and constraints
associated with magic and witchcraft. Certainly these necessarilyongoingexchanges
could never be finally tallied up at some future Day of Judgment, for the prospect of
such a tally would underminecharis. At the same time, the Age of Zeus, unlike the
Age of Allah or Yahweh, was constructed as contingent, an epoch which had been
established at some point, before which there had been no Zeus, and the succession
to Zeus was a possibility that had had to be deferred on at least two famous occasions
in the past, when the threatened succession, of the offspring of Metis and Thetis
respectively, was thwarted. The gods were not beyond time, butsituatedbeyond
time, not simply immortal and ageless but maintainedas immortal and ageless
through regular application of nectar and ambrosia, which was sometimes seen as
embodied in the smoky essence of the parts of the victim which were burned for the
gods on the altar. Sacrifice therefore not only marked distance, it helped to maintain
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