This man put on a ceremonial robe. He mimicked the sacred rites and revealed them to
those who were not initiates. He gave voice to words that must not be spoken. This was
why priests and priestesses stood facing the west and cursed him, shaking out their purple
robes according to ancient and ancestral custom. (Lysias 6.51 (trans. Todd); cf. Plutarch,
Alcibiades22.3, on the curses against Alcibiades)In a sense, what these men did was even more serious than the mutilation of the
herms. That vandalism constituted an overt act of impiety. What is striking about the
performances of the Mysteries is that they at once showed contempt for the cult yet
adhered in certain respects to proper cult practice – appropriate clothing was worn,
ritual language was spoken, and ritual acts were performed. But the perpetrators also
did something that defied proper religious practice by performing the rites in the
wrong place before the wrong people. This would be inappropriate in any cultic
context, but as the rites were the Eleusinian Mysteries, their actions took on an even
greater degree of gravity. Indeed, their actions emphasize by contrast what was so
clever about Peisistratos’ ceremonial procession with ‘‘Athena.’’ The tyrant’s act
evoked a number of cultic and mythic parallels without emulating any single one of
them; these men in contrast performed a specific sacred rite in such a way as to
subvert the main tenets of polis religion.
The response to the profanations was extreme. There were summary arrests and
executions, ultimately leading to the exile of Alcibiades and Andocides. Indeed, the
desire to discover the perpetrators led to the closest thing in ancient Greece to a
religious persecution. What took place has implications for our understanding of the
nature and extent of religious tolerance in the city. Athenian religion was non-
dogmatic and receptive to foreign influences and new beliefs. Added to this, it was
non-credal in that it lacked a central authority or set of directives setting out what
people should believe, or not believe. But its religion was an open system only so long
as traditional practices and gods were not seen to be disrespected.
Conclusion
The divine beings, practices, myths, and events discussed in this chapter demonstrate
the integral place of religion in ancient Athens. From the earliest times, our sources
express the Athenians’ distinctive relationship with the gods, notably their patron
Athena, and reveal the various rites and festivals that enabled them to worship these
beings. Although rooted in tradition, it was a system ever on the move. The gods,
myths, and practices evolved as the city developed, with religion persistently inter-
acting with the history of the city.
With this in mind, let us return to one of the questions posed earlier in this chapter,
namely: were the Athenians more religious than other peoples, or did their religious
system develop in response to the varied needs of a large polis? Of course the answer is
‘‘both:’’ the existence of a large population led to the development of a great number
of cults and to large-scale communal events unique in polis religion. This provided a
special intensity to the Athenians’ relationship with their gods, which in turn helps
account for the particular communal displays we see, such as the great processions at
the Panathenaea and the Dionysia. It also helps to explain why it was that the city
234 Susan Deacy