Religion In The Military Of Ancient Greece

Religion in the Military of Ancient Greece

The Ancient Greeks held their religion to be a personal experience, to be practiced by the common man on a daily basis. Thus, it comes as no surprise to read in the historical works of the period that the people also relied on religion to aid them in military matters. This paper will give historical examples of the people's reliance on the deities and attempt to explain the psychological necessity of these rituals. An examination will be made of the typical forms of rituals, and cite their effects, whether ill or benign, on the military endeavors of the peoples in the age of the Ancient Greeks.

RITE OF PASSAGE

Many people

Also in the early seventh century we find the Pythia prepared to expel from the temple a soldier who has shed blood in battle, until he had made a ceremonial atonement. But evidently Delphic thought on this subject later progressed and would substitute for this irrational attitude the reasonable belief that only the deliberate crime could stain the doer. The point is made more emphatic by the balanced pattern of the story. The coward who did not help his friend, but actually shed no blood, is expelled from the temple as accursed: the brave man who shed his friend's blood involuntarily is welcomed as doubly pure (Parke 383). Ancient guilt is associated with the festival, and is made present in the race and the ram sacrifice, but at the same time the ritual atones for

At last even Nicias agreed to withdraw from Sicily. At that moment an eclipse of the moon occurred, which was taken as a bad omen. The army wanted to delay. Nicias' soothsayer declared that they should wait "thrice nine days" before departing, and Nicias had never in his career failed to exhibit the most pious respect for divination. The besiegers stayed. The Syracusans got wind that the Athenian armada planned to quit the siege of Syracuse, but they did not propose to let the Athenians retreat to some other point on the island only make trouble later. They launched another sea and land attack on the besiegers. . . . And despite Nicias' fatal blunders