entirely) homogeneous. While phratries might worship gods appropriate to their
regional and mythic situations, all seem to have cultivated Zeus Phratrios and Athena
Phratria, as well as Apollo Patro ̄os: thus the significance of one of the questions posed
to Athenian archons when appointed: ‘‘Where is your shrine of Apollo Patro ̄os?’’
(Athenaio ̄n Politeia55).
Gene ̄, by contrast, did not include all Athenians, and by the classical period and
doubtless before membership in agenoswas synonymous with being ‘‘well born.’’
Many, if not all,gene ̄had the prerogative of furnishing religious leadership to certain
city cults: a givengenostypically provided the priest or priestess of a civic cult out of its
membership. These cults may or may not originally have been restricted to thegenos.
So the Eteoboutadai, for example, claimed descent from the legendary kings of Attica
and provided the priestess of the cult of Athena Polias and the priest of Poseidon
Erechtheus. By contrast, thegenosof Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the Gephyraioi,
evidently kept only private cult and shrines (Herodotus 5.57–61).
Extra-Political Religious Associations
Many groups besides the state sponsored religious rituals, and, as the Greeks well
knew, such religious fragmentation had the potential to nourish conflict. The most
elementary and persistent group within society is the family. Since at least the time
of Aristotle the family has been seen as the foundation of human community; but as
has likewise been noted since at least the time of Aeschylus, family allegiance is an
ever-present danger to the solidarity of the larger political order. Moral and religious
obligations to the family may conflict with duty to the state. In theLaws, Plato
notoriously urged that family cults should be entirely subordinated to those of the
state: ‘‘let nobody possess shrines in private houses; whenever anyone is disposed to
sacrifice let him go to the public shrines’’ (Laws 909d–910e). Typically family
religious rites were observed, for example, at childbirth and marriage, or in connec-
tion with farming. The most prominent and socially explosive religious duty of
families, however, was their responsibility to the dead. Sophocles in hisAntigone
has left the most famous statement: there the eponymous character is faced with the
dilemma of her duty to obey state decree and leave her traitorous brothers to lie dead
on the field of battle as carrion for dogs and birds, or obey her familial duty and give
them burial. The state attempted to regulate mourning; female lamentation was
considered especially dangerous.
Some have attempted to make sense of the welter of Athenian religious groups by
insisting on a basic distinction between obligatory and voluntary groups. Member-
ship in certain organizations that practiced ritual, including tribes and demes,gene ̄
and phratries, and even the nuclear family, was obligatory for Athenians: by the
classical period membership was inherited: ‘‘opting out’’ of civic religion amounted
to ‘‘opting out’’ of the state and family – a patent impossibility. It was possible,
however, to join (or to refuse to join) other cultic organizations; as a consequence it
has sometimes been argued that such groups satisfied a spiritual need unrequited by
civic religion. Most notable among such associations arethiasoiandorgeo ̄nes. The
wordthiasosrefers originally to a Dionysiac association. The group nameorgeo ̄nes
derives from the word for cultic ritual,orgia. These groups, though best attested in
294 Charles W. Hedrick Jr.