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ancient greek religion scholarly essays
ancient greek religion notes
religion in ancient greece and ancient rome
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“Oracles (or prophecies) themselves are messages from the gods in human language concerning the future or the unknown and are usually received in response to specific inquiries, often through the agency of inspired mediums” (Aune). For the people of Ancient Greece, Oracles were intermediaries between man and the G-ds. People would ask the Oracle questions about the future and/or ask for advice. Because the Oracles’ responses were always ambiguous, the answers could never be wrong. Regardless of the ambiguousness of the answers, the Ancient Greeks still relied heavily on the Oracles to make important life decisions.
Though Apollo and Zeus had other Oracles in Ancient Greece, Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi was the most famous and important Oracle in Ancient Greece. The Delphic oracle was located in the city of Delphi. “It was believed [that] Apollo … spoke through the mouth of an inspired woman known as the Pythia, who in turn conveyed the message to a priest, who relayed it to the person who had made the inquiry” (Rubin). People would ask this Oracle a variety of different questions; one ...
My research paper will investigate the Greek God Apollo. The reason I chose Apollo was I have never had a chance to look into other Gods or Goddess’ other than Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. The next seven paragraphs are paraphrased depictions, stories and relational information directly related to the god Apollo The information was compiled by author: Atsma, Aaron J., on the website: Theoi.com. Theoi Project Copyright © 2000 – 2011. 12 May 2014. Each paragraph is a separate encyclopedia reference and is noted in the following footnotes reference.
King Laios the ruler of Thebes, has a son with his wife Queen Iocoste. His name is Oedipus. The soothsayer Teiresias, a loyal servant to the King and Queen tells them some disturbing news. Teiresias tells King Laios and Queen Iocoste that their son, Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. The king and queen make a decision to take the baby boy up to a mountain far away from the town. King Laios gives the baby to a servant and instructs him to bind the babies ankles and leave him on the mountain side to perish. The servant follows his instructions but instead of leaving the boy on the mountain side he gives him to a shepherd and makes him promise to take the boy to a far away place.
The Greek gods and goddess have sparked my interest ever since seventh grade when I read The Percy Jackson Series. All throughout the books my attention was grasped by their power and demanding personalities, one specific goddess that stood out to me was Athena. Her charm and dominant personality fascinated me and definitely caught my attention. Before reading The Percy Jackson Series, I knew very little about Athena or the gods and goddess’ in general. Later, I took it upon myself to find out more about who the gods were and why they are important to the series I was reading at the time. My knowledge came in handy during the research I did to complete my paper. During my research I found that Athena was very important in not only The Odyssey, but in Greek mythology. She was one of the most confident and practical goddess’, and she was very well respected by the Greek people because of how she helped them.
“The most conspicuous… is probably their practice of obtaining supernatural power in a dream or vision…” (519). The Dionysian cultures believed that they could go on quests to achieve a vision of the future. Today, those quests are no farther than the telephone, advertisements on television, or on your computer screen. Everyday, people are introduced to different experiences where they can “find out their own future”. Societies have always wanted to know their futures. Recently though, the urgency to know one’s own future has increased dramatically. With the technological advances that have taken place in our society, fortune telling has become more apparent. Societies are feeling increasingly out of control of their own lives, and are going to these fortunetellers to feel more self-assured. “On the western plains they believed that when the vision ...
Oedipus reassures his people that he is doing everything possible to save them by consulting the gods. Sophocles writes, “I sent Creon, my wife’s own brother, to Delphi – Apollo the Prophet’s oracle – to learn what I might do or say to save our city” (80-82). To the Greeks there is no higher power than the gods; oracles were ...
In Ancient Greek times gods and the people that were chosen to communicate with them were very important. This was because the citizens strived for beneficial relationships with the gods and wanted to know what lay ahead for them. Some of the gods they worshiped include: Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, and Apollo. The people that are able to see the future are called seers or prophets. The gods would allow them to see what will happen and they would take what they witnessed and tell whoever it concerned. However Seers weren’t the only people who would have visions, Oracles would too. These are Priests who live and dedicate their lives to be in the Temple of the gods. These two different types of visionaries would play an important role in Oedipus Rex.
To start off with, an Oracle is a Temple or a shrine where a priest or priestess would sit and are said to have contact with the Gods of Greece. They would sit in Oracles as people came to ask for answers to questions and advice. To explain the meaning of the priest or priestesses' words, there would be someone else beside them. When people came, they would have to pay an entry fee, sacrifice a goat and look for omens in its entrails. An omen is basically good or evil. For example, I can sense a good omen coming from that girl over there. And entrails are like the insides of something.
If prophecy were to be real, one could expect what is bound to happen in the future. This is true; at least in “Oedipus the King” in which the protagonist, Oedipus calls forth his doom unwillingly. Fate is defined as something that unavoidably befalls a person. The author of “Oedipus the King,” Sophocles, writes a tragic fate that Oedipus was born to experience. Fate is what is meant to happen and cannot be avoided or unchanged. Furthermore, events that lead to other events could be the result for one to meet their fate. In “Oedipus the King,” Sophocles expresses the nature of fate to be determined upon choices made.
Since there is a human element to prophecies, these foresights cannot be seen as coming directly from God. However, through looking at the chorus over time in Oedipus the King, we can see how Sophocles’ effectively defends the prophet. Opposed to Oedipus, whose beliefs about religion are stagnant through the play, the chorus originally believes in God. But, once Tiresias condemns Oedipus, the chorus not only abandons their respect for the divine but also tries fruitlessly to find something or someone that solidifies its belief in Oedipus’ innocence. However, when trying to convince Oedipus (and itself) that he would be acquitted of murder in the morning, the chorus calls upon the power of prophets and says that, “…if I am a true prophet / if I can grasp the truth…at the full moon of tomorrow, Mount Cithaeron / you will know how / Oedipus glories in you— / you, his birthplace, nurse, his mountain-mother!” (1195-1199). However subconsciously it makes this comment, the chorus is saying that it would only trust a prophet to tell Oedipus when he will discover the story of his birth. By saying that prophets will provide Oedipus accurate information, the chorus not only recognizes the inescapable power of the Gods but also correctly predicts that these Gods will indeed tell Oedipus’ true story—even though it is likely not what the chorus wants to hear. In other words, while trying to avoid the religion that it once so fervently proclaimed faith in, the chorus is forced to go back to using prophecies in order to gain information—information that ends up being true. The inescapable nature of religion in Oedipus the King shown through the chorus’ forced return to faith allows Sophocles to successfully defend the Gods. This defense and support for the power of the Gods is what allows the reader to realize that the
...escent. The Cumaean Sibyl owned, according to tradition, nine books of prophecies, which she sold the remaining three to the Roman king Tarquin. In ancient legends women who could predict the future were called sibyls. These prophets were believed to be inspired by the gods and were found primarily in the famous oracle centers, particularly those of Apollo, the Greek god of prophesy. Sibyls were believed to live 900 to 1,000 years. According to the legends, some could interpret dreams and others could make their voices heard after death. Early Greek writers only mentioned only one sibyl, Erythraean Herophile, who predicted the Trojan war. Later on the number of sibyls were increased to ten, including the Samian, the Trojan, the Phrygian, the Cimmerian, the Delphian, the Cumaean, the Libyan, the Tiburtine, and the Babylonian. Of these the most important was Deiphobe.
The Daily Life of Ancient Greeks Life in Greece in ancient times will remind you of your own life in many ways. There were school, family, athletic competitions, and social gatherings. Knowing that participants in their sporting events competed nude or that you rarely knew your husband/wife until the wedding day does however, make you grateful for the society that you live in today. Babies Life for the Greeks in Athens began in their home. Babies were delivered by the women of the family, and only in cases of serious complications was a mid-wife called.
Sophocles says that prophecies from the gods of someone's fate should not be ignored when King Laius went to the Oracle of Delphi and received a prophecy that his child, Oedipus, was going to kill him and marry his wife, Jacosta.
They believed, that they had a set destiny that they could not alter. In Greek myth, Fate was often very mysterious and hard to explain and quite possibly more powerful than Zeus. Early myth explains Fate as a power, much like death. Hamilton says Homer makes, “Hera ask him (Zeus) scornfully if he proposes to deliver from death a man Fate has doomed,” (Hamilton 26). Despite the Greek beliefs that they could not change their fate, they still attempted to understand it. Early Greek myth shows humans trying to understand fate through myths about Apollo’s oracle. Apollo’s oracle is able to predict the future, but its messages are often vague and puzzling. So even though people could be told their future they did not necessarily understand it. The early Greeks clearly believed that life was fixed and nothing they did could change
A common struggle man faces is the question of who or what has power and control over his life. Does he have total control of his future, or is there a higher being at work that takes human lives into their own hands? Sophocles, in his work Oedipus Rex, establishes a view that gives fate, which is created by the gods, a seemingly inescapable characteristic over man. The role of fate is clearly defined, through the fulfillment of divine prophecy, and Oedipus’ inability to recognize prophecy as a realistic source of knowledge, as a fate that strikes a delicate balance with the free will of man.