1. CLA/SRS 3333 Religions of the Graeco-Roman World
Jitse H.F. Dijkstra

2. Historical background: Greek history
Bronze Age Minoan Civilization
BC Mycenean Civilization ( )
Trojan War?
‘Dark Ages’ ca. 1000: Dorian immigration into Greece
(Spartans and on Peloponnese); Ionians (e.g. Athens), Aeolians
Archaic Period 776: first Olympic games
Rise of the City State (polis); colonization of Italy (‘Magna Graecia’)
Homer, Hesiod
Classical Period : Persian Wars: Herodotus
: Peloponnesian War: Thucydides
sophists; Socrates/Plato; tragedy writers: Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides; comedy: Aristophanes
struggle between states

3. Greek History (next) Aristotle
338: Macedonia wins battle of Chaeronea; 336: Phillip dead
: his son, Alexander the Great conquers the world
Hellenistic 323: division of Alexander’s empire: Ptolemies in Egypt;
Period Seleucids in Persia; Antigonids Greece
BC 148: Macedonia Roman
146: sack of Corinth; Greece Roman province
64: conquest of Syria; 30: conquest of Egypt
27: start Roman Empire under Augustus (27 BC-AD 14)
Knowledge Greek Religion: mostly Classical and Hellenistic Period!

5. 1. City/village (polis, astu, kome): where you live

6. Akropolis (‘upper city’, Athens)

8. Acrocorinth: the akropolis of Corinth

9. Mt. Olympus

10. 2. Mountain: where you don’t live
3 symbolic connotations in myth:
outside/wild (you get raw materials from there: Argo; strange creatures: Centaurs live there; hunting ground: myth of Aktaion)
‘before’ (Deukalion and Pyrrha survive flood on Mt Parnassos)
Reversals: place to meet gods (Aktaion), where mad women live (maenads)
Rule: what is often ‘real’ in myth is symbolic in ritual, e.g. maenads were in reality not mad but taking part in women’s rituals outside of the male-dominated world!

11. 3. Sea: ambiguous