Underworld Gods in Ancient Greek Religion by Mackin Roberts Ellie;

Author:Mackin Roberts, Ellie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

6 Personal interactions with Underworld gods

The most common way that people sustained their relationships with the gods was though one-to-one interaction. This mainly involved prayer and the offering of votives, even where this occurred during large-scale civic festivals.1 Votive offerings collectively make up the largest body of religious artefact from the Greek world, so we know that this is something that people are doing consistently. And, to a certain extent it is true that people maintained their relationships with Underworld gods through one-to-one interaction as well. But the most striking difference between Underworld gods and other gods is that there were no large-scale civic festivals held in their honour, and no temple precincts in which to leave votive offerings – the Eleusinian Mysteries, perhaps, and the sanctuary dedicated to Hades at Elis, notwithstanding. Of course, this is a generalisation, but it holds that most Underworld gods never received the kind of large-scale community worship that we have come to expect in Greek religion and many Underworld gods had a significant amount of one-to-one religious activity performed in their honour. In this chapter I will look at three kinds of religious practice that rely on the relationships that individuals build with the Underworld gods: curses, the so-called ‘Orphic’ gold tablets, and necromancy.

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