Introduction: ancient religion

Ancient religion, as the modern mantra goes, is ritual-based, polytheistic and embedded; its gods are anthropomorphic, its rituals sociomorphic; belief and its higher form, theology, are incidental only. As far as it goes, this is correct. Ancient religion pervaded every aspect of collective and individual life. It expressed itself in rituals that treated the gods in human shape as social partners: they received gifts through offerings, praise and promises from prayers, and were invited to common meals through sacrifices. It was not what one believed that counted, but participation in the collective rituals of one's group. This did not preclude personal piety or personal scepticism, even agnosticism, nor did it exclude public debate on the character of the divine powers and their role in the life of the city, the family and each individual.

Drama, as representation of human life, reflects the importance of ritual in the lives of Greeks and Romans. But it also reflects their complex and often contradictory thinking and speaking about the gods and heroes who were honoured in the rituals, all the more contradictory in the absence of any process for creating binding dogmas about what humans were to think about their gods.