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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2021
Rather surprisingly, gods have not been at the centre of modern discussions of Greek religion until very recently. Although they usually appear relatively late in twentieth-century histories of Greek religion, the situation has changed dramatically in the last decade or so. And rightly so, given the importance of the gods within Greek religion. There are several questions worth asking: what is a god? What did the Greeks see as important differences between themselves and the gods, and between gods and heroes? Which factors helped to define the identity of individual gods (§1)? How should we study the pantheon (§2)? What did the Greeks consider to be the sphere of influence of individual gods? What was the nature of the divine hierarchy? And, last but not least, were the gods persons or powers – or both (§3)?
1 See Nilsson 1967: 383–603; Burkert 1985: 119–89; Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel 1992: 176–214; Rudhardt 1992: 55–111.
2 Grassinger, de Oliveira Pinto, and Scholl 2008; Bremmer and Erskine 2010; Versnel 2011; Clauss, Cuypers, and Kahane 2016; Pironti and Bonnet 2017; Gagné and Herrero de Jáuregui 2019. From the older literature, Sissa and Detienne 2000 (first published 1989) remains valuable. Historiographical surveys: Konaris 2016; Henrichs 2019: 255–98. Note also the lemmata for the different gods in van den Toorn, Becking, and van der Horst 1999; Der neue Pauly; and LIMC.
3 De Meyer 2016.
4 De Jong 2004: 158, 239–40; Bremmer 2019a. For major deities, note the exceptions of Il. 3.420 and Od. 3.166.
5 For how to define a (Greek) god, see Thomassen 2016; Henrichs 2019: 361–82. Good observations on the nature of the Greek gods also in Jost 1992: 1–34; Parker 2011: 64–102.
6 Baratz 2015.
7 Bader 1989; M. West 2007: 160–2; Willi 2009: 247–9; Viti 2017.
8 Griffin 1980: 144–204 (the gods’ serious side); Burkert 2001–11: ii.96–118.
9 See van Wees 1992: 142–9, but, in contrast, Lloyd-Jones 1983; Parker 2011: 4, 34f.
10 On tragedy, see Mikalson 1991: 17–68; Parker 1997. Comedy is insufficiently considered by Gould 2001: 203–34.
11 Burkert 2001–11: i.80–94.
12 For such names, see Parker 2000c.
13 Platt 2011; Petridou 2015; Henrichs 2019: 427–64. Note that Vernant 1994: 41 speaks of a ‘superbody’.
14 On tests, see Weiler 1974: 37–128. For affairs, see Piccaluga 1974: 9–35.
15 Markschies 2019.
16 Cf. Vernant 1991: 27–49; Osborne 2011: 185–215 (on ‘godsbodies’).
17 For this under-explored aspect of the gods, see Aston 2011; Kindt 2019; Bremmer 2020d.
18 See Gaifman 2012, 2017: 335–52.
19 See Wifstrand Schiebe 2020.
20 For Xenophanes, see Trépanier 2010: 276–81; Versnel 2011: 244–66; Tor 2017. For subsequent generations, see Feeney 1991: 5–33.
21 Bremmer 2019e: 85–93, accepted by Gordon 2013, unpersuasively contested by Parker 2011: 287–92.
22 Ar. fr. 322, translated and commented upon by Parker 1983: 243f.
23 Kearns 1989; Larson 1995; Lyons 1997; Hägg 1999; Pirenne-Delforge and Suárez de la Torre 2000; Ekroth 2002; Hägg and Alroth 2005; Jones 2010. Brelich 1956 is still valuable.
24 Graf 1996a; Parker 2017a: 1–9 (a wide-ranging review).
25 Most recently, see Graf 2010: 67–74; García Ramón 2013; Hornblower 2014; Marcos Macedo 2017; Parker 2017a and 2017b: 9–31. For a new database, see Bonnet and Lebreton 2019.
26 Bremmer 1990b: 263; on Leto's connection with initiation in Chios, see Graf 1985: 60f.
27 On Poseidon, see Bérard 1983: 15–20. On Athena, see Shapiro 1994a; Kreuzer 2010a and 2010b. On Zeus, see Arafat 1990: 166 (who notes that Zeus's thunderbolt is almost completely absent from the later fifth century onwards); Marcos Macedo 2017. On doves, see Robert 1990: 159–83.
28 See van Straten 1976: 14–16.
29 Near Eastern influence seems more likely than that of the twelve months, contra Parker 2011: 71. For possible ties between Hittite and Greek religion, see Rutherford 2020.
30 See Georgoudi 2001: 346–54; Dowden 2007; Rutherford 2010; Bremmer 2019e: 9 (Alcaeus). The Near Eastern evidence has been overlooked by Versnel 2011: 507–15. For local panthea, see Pirenne-Delforge 1998.
31 Bremmer 2019d; Eidinow 2019.
32 Parker 2011: 80–4, 283–6.
33 For a balanced assessment of the structuralist approach, see also Parker 2011: 84–97.
34 Vernant 1974: 103–20; Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel 1992: 183–6; Laurens and Lissarrague 1990 (Sophilos).
35 In general, see Arafat 1990; Dowden 2006; Kreutz 2007.
36 Bremmer 2019e: 34.
37 De la Genière 1997; García Ramón 2016; Pirenne-Delforge and Pironti 2016.
38 Baumbach 2004; Casadio 2004; Frielinghaus 2017.
39 Humphreys 2018: ii.569–625.
40 On talismans, see Faraone 1992. For Polias/Poliouchos, see Graf 1985: 44, 181–2, 209 (archives). On Athena and initiation, see Calame 1997: 128–34; Graf 2000a; Parker 2005: 458–61 (Apatouria). For Athena in Athens, see Meyer 2017.
41 For Athena Ergane, see Graf 1985: 211–12; Villing 1998. On intelligence against force, see the seminal discussion in Detienne and Vernant 1978: 187–213.
42 Hunter and Laemmle 2020.
43 Oettinger 2015.
44 On Apollo and initiation, see Graf 1985: 56–7 (Delphinios), 220–7 (Lykeios); Versnel 1993: 289–334; Jameson 2014: 41–61 (Lykeios). On music, see Sarti 1992. In general, see Graf 2009.
45 On Artemis and initiation, see Graf 1985: 52 (boys), 237–8 (girls), 243–9 (disorder/order), 414–15 (boys); Dowden 1989; Calame 1997 (≈ Calame 2019); Viscardi 2015. On boundaries see Vernant 1991: 195–206.
46 Vernant 1991: 204.
47 Graf 1985: 228–43 (Phosphoros, Soteira); Vernant 1985; Cole 2004: 178–230.
48 Mylonopoulos 2003; Doyen 2011; Bremmer 2019e: 21–7.
49 For Poseidon and Athena, see Rambach 2011; Jubier-Galinier 2012; Meyer 2017: 377–415. For Poseidon and Apollo, see Mylonopoulos 2003: 404f.
50 Burkert 1979: 127–8; Doniger O'Flaherty 1980: 166–212 (interesting parallels, improbable interpretations).
51 The differences between the two goddesses are well analysed in Klöckner 2008.
52 Farnell 1907: 68–75. Also Hdt. 7.153 (Deinomenids); Strabo 14.1.3 (Ephesus); and her epithet ‘Patroie’ in Thasos (SEG 29.766).
53 Historiography: Henrichs 1984a, 1993, and 2013.
54 See Bernabé 2013.
55 For the lateness of the polarities, see Henrichs 1984a: 235 n. 85. On Vernant, see Henrichs 1993: 31–9. On Dionysos as effeminate, see Bremmer 1999c; Jameson 2014: 62–80.
56 For Dionysos and Attic dramatic festivals, see Wilson 2018.
57 On the Agrionia, see Bremmer 2019e: 37–41. On ‘dangerous’ Dionysos, see Graf 1985: 74–96; also POxy. 53.3711 (local explanation of the epithet Omestes).
58 Carpenter 1986; Lissarrague 1990; Hedreen 1992; Schlesier and Schwarzmaier 2008; Heinemann 2016.
59 Jiménez San Cristóbal 2009; Santamaria 2013.
60 For Aphrodite, see Dodds 1960: 123. For Artemis, see Graf 1985: 242f. For Apollo, see Burkert 1983: 123–5; Calame 2018: 364–9. For Dionysos in general, see especially Henrichs 1982; Versnel 1990: 96–205; Schlesier 2011; Bernabé et al. 2013.
61 For Hermes, see Jaillard 2007; Versnel 2011: 309–77. For Hephaistos, see Bremmer 2019e: 47–60. On Aphrodite, see Pirenne-Delforge 1994; Pironti 2007; this volume, Chapter IV, §3. For Ares, see Wathelet 1992; Nicgorski 2004. On personifications, see Shapiro 1993; Stafford 2000; Borg 2002. For Thanatos, see E. Giudice 2015: 35–56.
62 See Parker 2020.
63 For this ambiguous character of some Greek gods, see also Oudemans and Lardinois 1987: 95f.
64 Versnel 2011: 145 n. 433 misrepresents my argument here.
65 However, we should always beware of claiming a straightforward relationship between the nature of gods and their representations. From the late fifth century onwards, both Aphrodite and Asclepius became very popular, but the goddess figures on many vases, whereas the god does not. In addition, the popularity of Aphrodite seems to be more a question of fashion, whereas that of Asclepius is one of religion (Chapter VII, §3).
66 Arafat 1990: 177–8 (Zeus); Laurens and Lissarrague 1990; Bruneau 1984: 491 (Ares). For Hermes, see Siebert 1990; Durand 1992; Miguel 1992.
67 Käppel 1992: 206–84; Furley and Bremer 2001: i.121–8, ii.52–84.
68 Graf 1985: 74–97, 125f.
69 See Pirenne-Delforge and Scheid 2017.
70 Similarly Parker 2011: 94f.