Assess The Effect That Greek Religious Beliefs Had On Ancient Greek Society

Assess the effect that Greek religious beliefs had on Ancient Greek society

2500 years ago was the beginning of the iconic era of Ancient Greece. The myth and beliefs that the Greeks had in the Gods and Goddess (more so the main 12 Olympian Gods) were what shaped and changed the Greeks life. Their entertainment, battles, wars, rituals, ceremonies and everyday life was in honor of the Gods. It was almost impossible to not be effected by the beliefs through the system they lived by. They believed that all the natural elements of life were in the hands of the Gods. They were different to other polytheism religion because their Gods physically came down to earth and interacted with them. The myths gave the Greeks an origin of man kind and gave
“Theous Nonizen” is a Greek term meaning “not to believe in the gods but acknowledge them pray to them sacrifice to them build them temple make them the object of cult and ritual.” Rituals were the means by which people physically related to the gods and made sense of ambiguities and inconsistenies.t through prayers. Although the ancient Greeks had no prayer book Greek literature is full of prayers. Three assumptions underlay these prayers. It was possible for a person to converse with the gods in the same language that was used to converse with other people but Gods had to be addressed with precision and courtesy by formal titles together with a rotational of the god’s powers and attributes, the person uttering the prayer had to establish bonds or obligations between the god and the worshipper. This implied that the gods and worshippers could be construed in the same terms that make sense of relations between people. The Greeks interacted with the gods as if the gods were humans who understood Greek liked to be respected and who accepted the principle that any action will be met by matching the balancing reaction good for good evil for evil these values ordered the relationships by which Greeks interacted with the gods as if the gods were divine and as if they were sources of disorder rather than order. The gods were seen
A popular example of this would be the Trojan war from Homer’s Iliad. The war began with a conflict between the Gods, this was then carried out to the Greeks. The war began after the abduction of queen Helen of Sparta by the Trojan prince Paris. Helens jilted husband Menelaus convinced his brother Agamemnon the king of Mycenae to lead an expedition to retrieve her. The war began in the 13th century BCE, the Greeks were aided by several of the Olympian gods of Greek religion for example Athena, Poseidon, Hera, Hephaistos, Hermes and Thetis all gave direct or indirect help to the Greeks in homers account of the war. The gods had favorites amongst the men fighting down on plains of troy and they often protected them by deflecting spears and even spiriting them way in the heat of the battle to put them down somewhere safe and far from danger. Most of the Trojan war was in a fact a protracted siege and ended in the famous Trojan horse. The Myths about the Gods effected their battles because they went into their battles with belief that they were or would receive help from the Gods. This effected art they had on their armor with faces of the God or Goddess engraved on it with belief it would prove themselves to that particular God and get help. In homers account the gods also influence the time of the Trojan war as it lasted for 10 years. Homer believed that this was due to the Gods helping