The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Greek religion S 185

city-states. Traditional religious practices did not disappear, but they were often overshadowed by religions that were no longer tied to particular places. Among these religions C HRISTIANITY and I SLAM eventually came to dominate the old Greek territories. BELIEFS The Greeks did not have a common set of man datory beliefs, as Christians and Muslims do. The real focus was on common practices. Nevertheless, the Greeks shared many stories about the gods and some ideas about the universe. They toler ated only a limited amount of deviation from these beliefs. For example, an Athenian court sentenced the famous teacher Socrates to death. The charges included rejecting the traditional gods, teaching of new ones, and corrupting the youth.

known as tyrants took over governments. They often modified inherited religions to suit their own personal ends. The fifth century was a time of glory, espe cially in Athens. Athenian playwrights like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides explored some of the deepest questions that human beings face. Pericles oversaw the construction of monu ments on the Acropolis at Athens. These included the most famous of all Greek temples, the Par thenon, dedicated to that city-state’s patron god dess, A THENA . During the fourth century Greek philosophy reached its pinnacle with Plato and Aristotle. But before century’s end, Alexander the Great had redrawn the map of the eastern Mediter ranean and the ancient Near East. Large Greek speaking empires replaced the relatively isolated

A procession of believers sacrifices to Demeter, goddess of the Earth, in this fourth-century B . C . E . Greek votive relief. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource N.Y.)