How personal could Greek personal religion be? As the ancient civic norms were not set down in stone, there was always room for deviations at the margins. This suggests that we may speak of a kind of sliding scale. There must have been behaviour that did not violate the norms of traditional behaviour, but also did not conform to them. For example, in Isaeus’ oration on the estate of Ciron the young men who claim to be the sons of Ciron’s daughter note that their grandfather did not use slaves when making sacrifices.Footnote ¹ Apparently, that was not traditional but also not directly against established custom. Similarly, the founding of a new cult as in the Vari cave must have been rather unusual but was not forbidden. Then there was behaviour that was also personal, but clearly frowned upon, as can be seen in the mockery of certain cults in tragedy. Becoming a member of these cults was an individual choice, which was apparently so important to some Athenians that they were willing to suffer the disapproval of their fellow citizens for it. And finally, there were actions and ideas that were unequivocally rejected, such as those of the profaners of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the ‘secularising’ ideas of various philosophers and the famous ‘atheist’ Diagoras of Melos. In these latter examples, it is perhaps not so much a matter of personal religion as of the lack of religion or indifference to it. These examples, which could be expanded upon, give us some idea of the diversity of religious behaviour and thought, and the limits of personal choice in Greek religion.

Now we do not know that much about the religious norms of most Greek cities. Things are different when it comes to Athens, the city about whose religious life we are best informed. That is why I will limit myself to Athens and concentrate on the later fifth century so that we can acquire an idea of the possibilities but also the religious Handlungsspielraum within a given chronotope. I will concentrate on the individual responsible for the cave of Vari who was clearly an anomaly as regards the intensity of his religious worship. I will then proceed with some elective cults and practices that were frowned upon, continue with people who were seen, rightly or wrongly, as actually transgressing civic norms, and conclude with some final considerations, in which I will return to the problem of the relationship between personal and traditional religion. Given that much has been written on the various subjects, I limit myself to the most recent literature, including the most recent readings of important papyri, as the latter keep up throwing surprises as more advanced techniques allow us to read them more closely.

The Individual as Anomaly

One of the interesting features of Greek religious life is the prominence of sacred caves, of which about 130 have been found within the limits of modern Greece. In Attica, the cultic use of caves got off to a slow start in Geometric times, but accelerated in the Classical period, when 13–19 of the 37 caves known to have been used by people were used as cult caves, of which 10 were dedicated to ‘the nymphs and Pan’.Footnote ² Katja Sporn, perhaps the foremost authority on Greek caves, has argued that this development was connected to the arrival of Pan in Attica.Footnote ³ This is probably true, but should not be taken as an indication that those caves were not places of worship of some sort before Pan arrived on the scene. The connection of caves with the nymphs is already attested in the Odyssey (13.363–64), and we can see from the finds in some caves, such as those in Marathon, Pharsalus, Vari, and, probably, Mount Ossa, that they were used already as shrines of, presumably, the nymphs before Pan’s arrival.Footnote ⁴ In other words, the cult of Pan was incorporated in an already existing cult and probably influenced the nature of that cult.Footnote ⁵

For our purpose we will focus on a well-investigated cultic cave halfway up a hillside of Mount Hymettos near the village of Vari in south-western Attica.Footnote ⁶ What was the nature of this cult and who were the worshippers? Here we have little to go by, but various inscriptions show that it was a place for the veneration of the nymphs. In general, these minor divine figures are connected to girls growing up and their weddings, and they themselves are also sometimes called ‘girls’.Footnote ⁷ The dedication of a (now missing) statue to Charis, ‘Grace’, would fit the nymphs, as the Charites were the subject of premarital sacrifices – probably in Athens – and also resembled the nymphs in various ways.Footnote ⁸ On Thasos, we also find the combination of nymphs and Charites as well as Apollo; and indeed, in our cave there is also an inscription, which used to be read as ‘(Altar) of Apollo Hersos’.Footnote ⁹ However, the epithet Hersos is unknown of Apollo, and the suggestion that we should read Hermes has therefore much to recommend it.Footnote ¹⁰

In fact, there are at least two ways to explain the presence of Apollo and Hermes in the cave. On the one hand, the connection between Hermes and shepherds is well known, just as Apollo was worshipped with the epithet Nomios, ‘Shepherding’, which fits the apparent visits of the cave by shepherds.Footnote ¹¹ On the other, Apollo also had a close tie with the nymphs and was worshipped with the epithet ‘Leading the nymphs’ (Νυμφαγέτης),Footnote ¹² just as Hermes appears on many Attic votive reliefs with Pan and the nymphs.Footnote ¹³ It fits this ‘female’ aspect that in the cave the remains of dolls have been found, which points to the coming-of-age ritual of girls.Footnote ¹⁴ The presence of forty-two figurines and a protome also points to female worshippers.Footnote ¹⁵

As some of the figurines bear traces of burning, they might originally have been placed near an altar, as these are well attested both within cultic caves and sometimes also outdoors.Footnote ¹⁶ In our case, the existence of an altar is confirmed by the presence of goat horns and various animal bones, but also by a ‘sacred law’ inscribed on the wall of the second, smaller chamber of the cave: ‘clean the intestines outside and wash off the excrement’, as the latter presumably would have polluted the sacredness of the place.Footnote ¹⁷

However, it was not only females who visited the sanctuary. A mid-fifth-century dedication – that is, predating those of Archedamus – states: ‘this (statue) (the son of) Skyron, the goatherd (dedicated) to the nymphs’ (IG I³ 974).Footnote ¹⁸ Now, in addition to links with Apollo and Hermes, there also is a link between nymphs and shepherds, as we can see from Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, where we hear of the ‘votives of the ancient shepherds’ in a cave of the nymphs (1.4.3). Presumably, the shrines of the nymphs in the countryside also attracted shepherds. However, the fact that in this inscription it is stressed that the dedicant is a goatherd may well point to Pan, the goat god, who is indeed mentioned in two relief niches in the cave (IG I³ 976bc), although the actual reliefs are missing.

It is against this background of a combination of various divinities and worshippers, both female and rustic, that we finally turn to the man who interests us most in the context of personal religion. The cave contains six inscriptions by a certain Archedamus of Thera (the island rather than the Arcadian town) dated to about 425–400 BCE. Two of these just record his name (IG I³ 979), but four mention his name and his Theran origin (IG I³ 977ab, 978, 980). Three of these tell us about his activities in connection with the cave. Two of the latter occur on the sides of a loose block found in the southern chamber of the cave but perhaps originally placed at the entrance.Footnote ¹⁹ They proudly state that ‘Archedamus of Thera planted a garden for the nymphs’ (IG I³ 977a) and ‘Archedamus of Thera, being a dancer, also built a dance floor for the nymphs’ (IG I³ 977b).Footnote ²⁰

There certainly is an element of personal religion here, as it is the only case we have of a dedication to the nymphs, or other divinities, in the form of construction and landscaping activity ascribed to a single individual. However, Archedamus, as a metic or foreign resident, was not allowed to own land in Attica. Consequently, it is virtually impossible that he could have done his work without local approval. Even if the cave and the spring belonged to common land or the eschatiai, as suggested by Anthea Purvis and Irene Polinskaya, Archedamus would have needed the cooperation of his neighbours.Footnote ²¹ That neighbourly agreement will probably have been the easier as Archedamus did not move beyond the traditions associated with the nymphs, who are already connected with dances in the Iliad (24.616), and dancing clearly belongs to their traditional activities.Footnote ²² One need only to think of the many girls’ choruses in order to see how well dancing would have fitted in with pre-wedding rituals.Footnote ²³ We do not know what exactly Archedamus built, but he may well have installed a terrace in front of the cave, as was not unusual.Footnote ²⁴ The garden would also be equally traditional. The connection between nymphs and gardens is old, already mentioned by Sappho (215 Voigt) and, probably, Ibycus (PGM 286 Page/Davies). We do indeed have a few other examples of the connection between nymphs and gardens, such as an inscription from a cave of Pan and the nymphs in Pharsalus (I.Thess I.73) and the description of the cave of the nymphs in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (1.4.3). It is striking, though, that Archedamus made these mythological imaginaries of the nymphs into realities, which need not be left in myths, but could shape the here and now of Vari. This points to a very close bond with the nymphs indeed.

We leave the traditional connections of nymphs behind with the last inscription we want to discuss. In letters dating to the end of the fifth century, it is written on the wall of the hallway leading to the antechamber: ‘Archedamus the Theraean, seized/possessed by the nymphs, has elaborated the cave by the instructions of the nymphs.’Footnote ²⁵ Archedamus clearly wanted to stress the role of the nymphs, as he not only acted at the behest of the nymphs but also was nympholēptos. But what does this word mean in this context? In a celebrated article, Bob Connor argued that we should look at ‘the nympholept in the context of ancient Greek society’.Footnote ²⁶ This is certainly true but overlooks the fact that we have virtually no information and only few parallels for nympholepts. Before the turn of the Christian era, the word occurs only in Plato (Phdr. 238d), where the term suggests the onset of madness; Aristotle (EE 1214 a 23), who uses it for the madness of possession; Varro (LL 7.87), who tells us that those who have seen the image of a nymph in water will not stop being mad; and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Dem. 7), with a clear allusion to Socrates’ words. These passages are obviously insufficient to situate the nympholept within the context of Greek society, but they all point to a connection with madness. Yet it is impossible to know what kind of madness or, perhaps, possession the term implies. Fritz Graf has suggested that we might think of a case of epilepsy, but there is no evidence for that. It is perhaps even unlikely if we also take into account the following passage, as Graf did not.Footnote ²⁷

Plutarch relates the following in his Life of Aristides (11.3–5) in explanation of an answer from the Delphic oracle received by Aristides on the eve of the battle of Plataea (479 BCE):

The nymphs, who are mentioned together with Pan, probably represented the local divinities, as the oracle ordered the Greeks also to make vows to the Kithaironian Zeus and Hera, and after the battle the Aiantid tribe sacrificed to the nymphs.Footnote ²⁸ Nymphs are occasionally connected with oracles,Footnote ²⁹ and the one-time existence of the local oracle is also mentioned by Pausanias (9.3.9). Apparently, possession of locals by the nymphs occurred regularly, which makes the case for epilepsy unlikely. In the end, it remains unclear what exactly this possession meant for the people involved, who, to judge by the other evidence for nympholepts, were always male.

There is at least one other term that has to be taken into consideration. When describing the intriguing case of Aristeas, Herodotus, who was Archedamus’ rough contemporary, tells us that he departed to the Issedonians ‘seized by Phoebus’ (φοιβόλαμπτος: 4.13.1). Interestingly, φοιβόλαμπτος is generally accepted, and probably rightly so, but the reading of the Roman family of Herodotean manuscripts, φοιβόληπτος, could have come from Aristeas’ hexameter poem the Arismaspeia, as all later occurrences of the word have this form, so that φοιβόλαμπτος looks like a creation of Herodotus himself.Footnote ³⁰ In this case, though, the term probably meant ‘inspired by Phoebus/Apollo’, as that seems also to be the meaning in Lycophron’s Alexandra (1460), where this stickler for obscure terms speaks of τὴν φοιβόληπτον … χελιδόνα, ‘the inspired swallow’, almost certainly inspired, so to speak, by Herodotus.Footnote ³¹ The term does not occur again before Plutarch and must have been pretty unusual around 400 BCE.Footnote ³²

There can be no doubt that Aristeas was thought to have had a close relationship with Apollo, especially in Metapontum.Footnote ³³ What this seizing by Apollo meant, though, is a different matter. There have been, of course, various interpretations, but the lack of contemporary parallels prevents us from a more precise understanding of the term and its implications.Footnote ³⁴ However, it is noteworthy that Apollo also played an important role for Archedamus. The Vari cave not only contains the already mentioned inscription with Apollo’s name, but according to drawings of travellers and pre-1940 photographs, there was also an omphalos standing close to a statue that probably depicted Apollo.Footnote ³⁵ One could speculate that ‘seized by the nymphs’ was inspired by ‘seized by Phoibos’, but that is as far as we can go for lack of further documents.Footnote ³⁶

Let us now return to the problem of personal religion. There can be no doubt that the complex of inscriptions by Archedamus is unique as regards its personal dedication to the nymphs. He is not only acting ‘on the instructions of the nymphs’, but he was also ‘seized by the nymphs’. Combined with his efforts for the shrine, this personal involvement would be hard to parallel in fifth-century Athens. Admittedly, one might think of the case of Xenokrateia, who supposedly founded a sanctuary at about the same time, but this well-known inscription (IG I³ 987) has now been shown to refer to the dedication of a relief and not the founding of a shrine (on Xenokrateia see also Chapter 3: ‘Personal Religion and the Religion of the Oikos’).Footnote ³⁷

This leaves us with the obscure Archedamus. Connor ends his article with the following sketch of our Theraean devotee:

Similarly, Henk Versnel states that Archedamus and Pantalkes, another nympholept, ‘pushed their devotion to the limits by their choice for an eremitic life in cohabitation with and daily cultic service to the gods of their choice’.Footnote ³⁹ This is all highly imaginative, but one must say also completely speculative. There is no indication whatsoever of a withdrawing from society, an eremitic life, or a restructuring of personality. On the contrary. To be able to perform the construction work, Archedamus must have had the permission of the neighbourhood as well as time and money. He must have been a person with some clout and influence, perhaps even some charisma, bolstered by his claimed personal contacts to the nymphs, which perhaps entitled him to special religious respect. But we should not forget that the nymphs were not of the same status as, say, Zeus, Athena, or Apollo. Given the restrictions imposed on metics regarding participation in Athenian religious rituals, there probably were some limits to a believable claim.Footnote ⁴⁰ But that is as far as we can go. It is unlikely that Archedamus could have achieved all this in the centre of Athens, but in Vari, at the periphery, there was, perhaps, more freedom from the pressures of traditional religion to be an anomaly than at the centre.Footnote ⁴¹

Cults, Practices, and Ideas Frowned Upon

In the case of Archedamus, we can see the contours of a specific individual, at least to some extent. But there were others whom we cannot identify, but about whose religious activities we hear a great deal. So, what did the Athenian public think about people who were involved in cults and practices that deviated from traditional religion? If we make the plausible assumption that nuanced distinctions were, for dramatic purposes, a distraction or even counterproductive, it pays to take a closer look at what a tragedian singles out as deviant behaviour (see also Chapter 16: ‘Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides’). The nature of tragedy means that we cannot trace the popularity of religious practices mentioned or the degree of disdain they provoked in everyday life. Still, their being frowned upon in publicly performed drama suggests that their practitioners were engaged in cultic activities that attracted some negative attention from the public at large.

For our purpose, let us look at a familiar passage of Euripides’ Hippolytos (428 BCE). The speaker is Theseus, who is scolding his son Hippolytus, whom he wrongly suspects of having had an affair with his dead wife, Phaedra, whose body is displayed on the stage. Theseus’ reproaches mention several practices which he clearly considers undesirable. To what extent do they reflect common prejudices that can help us appreciate what personal religion might mean in the period under discussion? Let us start with the first reproach:

Theseus scolds Hippolytus for claiming that he is closer to the gods than the common man. This is a rather surprising statement, for which it would be hard to find a parallel, but it is true that Hippolytus had singled himself out from the others by saying: ‘for me alone of mortals there is that privilege: with you (Artemis) I keep company and I converse with you’ (84–85). It is not surprising, therefore, that a discussion of the Hippolytos opened a book on personal religion among the Greeks by the French scholar André-Jean Festugière (1898–1982) (on whom see also the introductory chapter).Footnote ⁴² The study betrays its time not only by its reassurance that Hippolytus did ‘not practice Dorian love’ (p. 13), but also by its Christianising interpretation of the piety of Hippolytus, who is depicted as a solitary, unsociable man (p. 17), not unlike the Dominican priest Festugière himself.Footnote ⁴³

What is true, though, is that Hippolytus’ attachment to Artemis went beyond what seems to have been normal at the time of the tragedy’s performance. Versnel has drawn attention to the emergence of personal devotion as a more general phenomenon in the fourth century, but with forerunners somewhat earlier.Footnote ⁴⁴ He does not discuss Hippolytus, but the latter certainly fits the trend towards henotheism which he has noticed. However, it is noteworthy that Hippolytus is a youth, just like Ion, who is devoted to Apollo in Euripides’ Ion. Apparently, the tragedian found it unbelievable to represent an adult as being so singularly devoted to one divinity.Footnote ⁴⁵ Their excess of religiosity seems to foreshadow the δεισιδαίμων of Theophrastus’ Characters (16, with Diggle ad loc.).Footnote ⁴⁶ As Euripides plausibly, if perhaps exaggeratedly, modelled Hippolytus on examples of real life, it is relevant to observe, given the theme of this contribution, that such an excess was frowned upon.

After the more general reproaches, Theseus becomes more specific: ‘Continue then your confident boasting, make a display (καπήλευ᾽)Footnote ⁴⁷ with your soul-free food, and with Orpheus as your master engage in Bacchic revelling (βάκχευε) as you honour the smoke of many books’ (952–54 = OF 627). These lines have often drawn attention and been interpreted as a sketch of Orphic life, which have earned them the inclusion in Bernabé’s collection of Orphic fragments. But is it true that this passage ‘shows that the link of Bacchic dances, Orphic books, and vegetarianism was familiar in fifth-century Athens’?Footnote ⁴⁸ Actually, as we will see, this remark confuses the dramatist with an anthropologist. To start with, Hippolytus, being a dedicated hunter (17–18) and meat eater (108–10), is evidently not a vegetarian. The practice is not even connected with any practices described as Orphism until Plato and is not mentioned as an Orphic trait by Porphyry in his book on abstinence, even though vegetarianism was advocated by Empedocles and the Pythagoreans.Footnote ⁴⁹ It is therefore more likely that Theseus has the latter in mind, as their vegetarianism was well known.Footnote ⁵⁰

It is different with the Bacchic revelling, although this is one of the earliest passages to refer to Orpheus, but we find the same combination in Herodotus (2.81 = OF 650), who mentions Orphica and Bacchica together at funeral rites, which is a different area of life.Footnote ⁵¹ We should also beware of over-interpreting the lines. It hardly implies that ‘Theseus scorns the rites that Orpheus teaches as a screen for immoral behaviour’, presumably of Hippolytus himself.Footnote ⁵² There is no necessary relation with the youth, nor with vegetarianism. We also do not know what position Orpheus was supposed to have in this Bacchic revelling.Footnote ⁵³ Similar groups of revellers, though, were already active in Ephesus around 500 BCE. Heraclitus threatens specific sets of people: ‘night wanderers: magoi, male followers of Dionysos (bakchoi), maenads (lēnai), mystai’ (B 14 DK = 87 Marcovich). The authenticity of the passage has been disputed,Footnote ⁵⁴ but Heraclitus evidently objects to the performance of Bacchic rituals, although there is no indication that the magoi were actually Orphic priests, as has recently been argued by Richard Janko.Footnote ⁵⁵ Like Heraclitus, Theseus too seems to have objected to these rituals, which in Athens apparently went under the banner of Orpheus, of whose importance in this respect, however, nothing else is known.

The last point Theseus mentions is the usage of books. Greek religion was by nature oral, and the invasion of books from the mid-fifth century onwards must initially have raised many an eyebrow, as is shown by satires of books in comedy.Footnote ⁵⁶ However, Aristophanes nowhere specifically associates books with Orphics, but ascribes them to Sophists, diviners, and medics. Especially illuminating is the following fragment of his lost comedy Tagenistae: ‘Either a book corrupted this man or Prodicus or one of those babblers’ (F 506 K/A). The fragment, even though we do not know its context, puts Prodicus firmly in the context of the Sophists, the ‘babblers’, and their corrupting influence.Footnote ⁵⁷ There is, then, no certainty that the audience would have interpreted Theseus’ reference to Orphic books only. Yet a connection with religion is not unlikely as, when slandering Aeschines, Demosthenes twice mentions that his opponent had read books for his mother during initiations; interestingly, at that time, Aeschines, according to Demosthenes, was about the same age as Hippolytus.Footnote ⁵⁸ In any case, our discussion suggests that we should be wary of interpreting the passage as a thick description of Orphic practices.Footnote ⁵⁹

We actually do know that Euripides did not shrink from representing fictitious Greek rituals, as is illustrated by another well-known passage, this time from his Cretans (ca. 438 BCE) where the κορυφαῖος (‘leader’) of the chorus of Cretan prophets proclaims:

Here, nothing is said of Orpheus nor is there mention of books. However, as with Hippolytus’ devotion to Artemis, we find that the prophet is ‘totally devoted’ (ὁσιωθείς) to the Mountain Mother after having become a bakchos. Now the verb normally means ‘to behave piously’, but in this case it clearly suggests a more intense degree of piety.Footnote ⁶¹ Apparently, it is after the middle of the fifth century that people start to cultivate a more than average devotion to a single divinity – that is, if we can believe our sources, which are more numerous for this period than for the previous decades. In this case too we know that Euripides does not describe a real cult, as neither Kouretes nor bakchoi belong to the cult of the Mountain Mother. Clearly, the career of the speaker is composed of several different cults, some of which are nowhere attested in our evidence and are most likely a figment of Euripides’ imagination. As Robert Parker concludes, it is ‘an imaginative portrayal set in the fabulous land of Crete’.Footnote ⁶² I take it that this is also the case with Theseus’ enumeration, which combines various practices, few if any necessarily Orphic, which he could expect (most of) his audience also to look down upon. In any case, it is clear that for some Athenians participation in certain cults outweighed the possible disapproval of their fellow citizens.

Transgressions: Ideas and Practices

Let us now turn from practices to ideas that were disapproved of and activities that are illustrative of a religious climate in which people not so much make a specific choice of promoting a new cult or joining a new religious movement, but rather seem to have lost faith in traditional religion. I will begin with somebody frowning not so much at a practice but rather at a belief – or rather the lack of one. One of the most striking discoveries for the study of Greek religion in recent decades has been the Derveni Papyrus, a commentary on an Orphic theogony. The theogony probably dates from the early fifth century, but the commentary was written in Athens at the end of that century.Footnote ⁶³ The text of its first columns has been continuously improved, but there is as yet no consensus about its exact wording. Rather strikingly, therefore, the most recent collection of studies on the Papyrus prints two different versions of these columns, by Richard Janko and Valeria Piano, respectively.Footnote ⁶⁴ I will give here the most recent translation of a passage from the further improved text by Janko,Footnote ⁶⁵ but the point I want to make stands just as well if we follow the text of Piano:

The author is clearly concerned about the fact that a number of people do not believe in the terrors of Hades. Although the identity of the author of the Derveni Papyrus is still debated, the text shows that he tried to harmonise his acceptance of the Orphic theogony with the most recent philosophical insights, especially those of Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Archelaus of Athens, just as Christian theologians have tried to harmonise the creation story of Genesis with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Now the ever-increasing number of gold leaves has shown that there was widespread interest in the whole of the Greek world in attaining a safe passage to a wonderful underworld, except in Attica, where none of the leaves have been found.Footnote ⁶⁶ Presumably, the presence of the Eleusinian Mysteries was too entrenched to leave space for the competition. Can it be that this dominance of Eleusis also made the initiated less interested in the terrors of Hades, as their initiation had provided them with ‘better hope’ for the ‘life everlasting’? In any case, given the importance of the afterlife within Orphic beliefs as a whole, it is noteworthy that the author of the Derveni Papyrus laments the lack of interest in the afterlife among many people. His concern suggests that he was himself a strong believer in the terrors of Hades, and in this respect he was an Orphic, apparently differing from many of his Athenian contemporaries.

Doubting the afterlife was, presumably, not something that bothered the average Athenian. It was clearly different with people espousing or promoting ideas that contradicted elements of traditional religion that were seen as highly important, such as those being accused of denying the existence of (the) gods or committing acts of sacrilege. It is hardly surprising that in our secularising times possible cases of ancient atheism have received a fair amount of attention,Footnote ⁶⁷ even seeing the supposed ancient atheists more or less like modern ones, as in Tim Whitmarsh’s stimulating study Battling the Gods.Footnote ⁶⁸ Yet the latter hardly distinguishes between several important different attitudes, as nicely encapsulated in the title of an authoritative study of medieval religion: atheism, unbelief, and doubt of faith.Footnote ⁶⁹ Given that Greek religion was embedded in society, it is difficult to imagine how anyone could function as a practising atheist.Footnote ⁷⁰

It is different with unbelief, which can be defined as an umbrella term for phenomena such as atheism, agnosticism, de-conversion, blasphemy, or heterodoxy. In other words, it is a category used to understand how people develop their own ‘ways of living’ depending on their religious beliefs or lack thereof.Footnote ⁷¹ Now we have no evidence of people doubting their religion for the simple reason that what we nowadays call religion did not yet exist in antiquity. In other words, people might have doubted certain aspects of traditional religion, such those who doubted the terrors of Hades or those philosophers and other intellectuals, such as Xenophanes or Herodotus, whose doubts or rejection of the anthropomorphism of the gods are well known. However, there is no evidence that they did not adhere to the religious practices of their day, although, admittedly, there is equally no positive evidence that they conformed to the practices deemed normal in their environment.Footnote ⁷²

Even Protagoras, whose famous incipit of his book On Gods – ‘Concerning gods I am unable to discover whether they exist or not, or what they are like in form; for many things prevent me from knowing this, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life’ – was notorious in antiquity, clearly was not an atheist, but what we would today call an agnostic, as Cicero (De natura deorum I.1.2) and Galen (De propriis placitis 2, ed. Boudon-Milot and Pietrobelli) still recognised.Footnote ⁷³ And indeed, he was invited by Pericles to write the constitution of the Panhellenic colony of Thurii in Southern Italy (Heraclides Ponticus F 150 Wehrli²) and lived out his life in high repute (Plato, Meno 91e).

Yet the scepticism of Protagoras must reflect the zeitgeist, as we find a whole series of critical observations on the (existence of) the gods in philosophy, tragedy, and comedy.Footnote ⁷⁴ The many utterances of characters in Euripides are very well known, but it is less often observed that they only span a distinct period of time – that is, from the late 430s to 411.Footnote ⁷⁵ This is also true for comedy, although we seem to find those criticisms starting a little bit later.Footnote ⁷⁶ It fits this chronology that the criticisms of philosophers for their ‘atheistic’ views also start in the 420s in comedy and do not seem to continue after Aristophanes’ Birds (414).Footnote ⁷⁷ Here he makes fun of Prodicus (690, with Dunbar ad loc.), whose views do not really seem to have been atheistic according to the most recent reading of the relevant passage of Philodemus’ On Piety.Footnote ⁷⁸ But philosophers were not the only ones to be mocked, as according to Athenaeus (12.551e), the poet Cinesias (c. 450–390) was also made fun of in comedy for his ἀθεότης (‘godlessness’), which may indeed have been the case, since he was often ridiculed in comedy.Footnote ⁷⁹

Cinesias is also a nice example of what looks like a blasphemous act, or at least was interpreted as one. Lysias (fr. 195 Carey apud Athenaeus 12.551 f) mentions that

Unfortunately, we do not know when this was supposed to have happened, and it may be even later than 400 BCE, although the fact that the persons mentioned have all died suggests a slightly earlier date.

In this case, we have people who are clearly making fun of a holy day, the celebration of the new moon, which was an auspicious day and celebrated in Athens with offerings and laurel wreaths for Apollo.Footnote ⁸⁰ Cinesias’ group not only changed its name – no longer those who were celebrating the new moon but those who celebrated evil spiritsFootnote ⁸¹ – but they also chose a name that was the opposite of the Agathodaimonistai, those who celebrated Agathos Daimon, a minor divinity conferring wealth and fertility, whose name was used for people who drank only little.Footnote ⁸² This group’s prankish air seems to be part of the general atmosphere in Athens in the years preceding the famous affair of the Herms of 415.Footnote ⁸³ The difference from the activities mentioned in the preceding paragraph is that we here have people listed by name, who are said to have come to a bad end through the offices of the gods. Our evidence hardly allows us to see, though, a regular confluence of convinced atheists in this group, as it is explicitly said that they met ‘at one point’. Although the idea of an ‘atheistic underground’ has been canvassed by David Sedley and followed by Tim Whitmarsh, there is no real evidence for such groups.Footnote ⁸⁴

If in this case the gods were said to punish the transgressors, it is different with the famous cases in which the Athenians themselves punished people they considered transgressors, of whom we have the following certain or almost certain examples – that is, Anaxagoras (c. 432 BCE), Diagoras (c. 416),Footnote ⁸⁵ the profaners of the Eleusinian Mysteries (415), the mutilators of the Herms (415), and Socrates (399).Footnote ⁸⁶ All these cases are well known and have often been discussed.Footnote ⁸⁷ There is no fresh evidence about them, except for Diagoras, of whom it is probably said in a newly edited Herculaneum fragment that ‘Diagoras maintains that the gods are always good.’Footnote ⁸⁸ The new reading supports the case that Diagoras was not an atheist, even though Epicurus grouped him together with Critias and Prodicus as such.Footnote ⁸⁹ In fact, the existence of a book with explicitly atheistic doctrines by Diagoras was already called into doubt by the fourth-century Aristoxenus.Footnote ⁹⁰

The profaners of the Eleusinian Mysteries, among whom we also must include Diagoras, obviously transgressed the holy rule of secrecy of the Mysteries, whereas the mutilators of the Herms damaged the statues of a god, who on vase paintings is regularly shown moving towards or otherwise communicating with the worshipper, the only god to do so regularly.Footnote ⁹¹ We may safely assume that these transgressors would also have been punished in other periods as well. This leaves only Anaxagoras and Socrates. The former was almost certainly accused of impiety for political reasons to damage Pericles, whereas in the case of the latter the evidence points to a predominance of political over religious motives, as indeed seems to have been the case in other Athenian trials of that time, even though it might be a false dichotomy to insist on a purely political or purely religious trial.Footnote ⁹² Consequently, despite first impressions, the Athenians displayed a great deal of tolerance for the diversity of religious thought in their city.

Final Considerations

So what can we conclude from our discussion? When we now look back at our period, we can see that there was a wide variety of possibilities for personal religion. People could invest in a local sanctuary in the outskirts of Attica and perhaps enhance their social status in this manner. At the periphery of Attica, they could also claim a special tie with minor divinities, such as the nymphs, although hardly with the major deities in the centre of Athens. But there were limits to this freedom in personal religion. We can see from Theseus’ reaction to Hippolytus that devotion to a single divinity could be frowned upon. In fact, from his reactions we may deduce that people also had their reservations about ecstatic cults and looked down on ‘modernists’ who spent their time in books. Given Aristophanes’ line on Prodicus and books, we can safely assume that this negative feeling was fairly widespread. On the other hand, the author of the Derveni Papyrus with his complaints about those who do not fear the terrors of Hades might have been an outlier, since a character in Euripides’ Meleagros (F 532 Kannicht) states that ‘after death every man is earth and shadow: nothing goes to nothing’. In any case, regarding eschatology there must have been a wide range of opinions.Footnote ⁹³

Finally, even though tolerant of agnostic opinions, some Athenians may have drawn the line with materialistic interpretations of the gods. Parker has argued that there is no reason to doubt the famous decree of Diopeithes (c. 432) that is supposed to have condemned ‘those who do not acknowledge the divine or teach about things in the air’ (Plut. Per. 32). However, the debate has not yet been resolved and opinions about its authenticity remain divided.Footnote ⁹⁴ It is hard to see how people like Protagoras could have promulgated their agnostic views in Athens if the decree was really upheld, but our evidence is too lacunose to decide the matter. Still, the tradition almost certainly preserves a strong resentment against those arguing for materialistic interpretations of the traditional gods, as Parker rightly illustrates with a quotation from a chorus of an unknown tragedy of Euripides:

It seems that these materialistic ideas evoked stronger emotions than the complaints enumerated by Theseus.

That leaves us with two questions: First, why do we hear so much about atheism, unbelief, and agnosticism in the period under discussion and, second, why did the Athenians not do more about it? Regarding the first question, let us first state clearly that there were no real atheists in this period or, for that matter, in subsequent ancient times. A modern atheist will not only reject the Christian ideas but also refuse to practise Christianity’s rituals. This is the great difference with antiquity, where we never hear of people refusing to participate in the traditional rituals practised by their fellow citizens. That is why we can talk about atheistic ideas, but we should not use the term ‘atheist’.Footnote ⁹⁶

Regarding the second question, various answers seem possible. Although books had been around for quite a while, it was precisely in the last quarter of the fifth century that literacy made major advances in Athens.Footnote ⁹⁷ This may have helped to spread the new ideas about the gods urged by philosophers but also by the Orphics with their stress on the pre-eminence of Zeus. The Derveni Papyrus alone can illustrate this point, with its references to and influences from philosophers, such as Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Archelaus of Athens, Empedocles, and the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus.Footnote ⁹⁸ The author may not have read them all, but these mentions suggest a very lively intellectual culture at the time. In addition, the centrality of Athens within Greece attracted the brightest intellectuals of the day, such as Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippo, and Protagoras with their challenging new ideas. All this happened in a period when Athens was involved in the Peloponnesian War, which must have caused the necessary upheavals in Athenian society. This certainly seems to have happened as a result of the devastating plague, the religious effects of which have been compared to those of the huge earthquake in Lisbon of 1755.Footnote ⁹⁹ Taken together, these factors conspired during the last decades of the fifth century in Athens to produce a real process of de-traditionalisation regarding the accepted ideas about the gods.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

And yet, despite it all, religious life during the war continued very much as it had always done. We hear nothing of dramatic changes in ritual activities, and the period is not a significant watershed in Athenian ritual life. Evidently, the average Athenian was less interested in religious ideas and speculation than we moderns might expect. It also shows that although they had beliefs rather than belief, these were not of the same importance as beliefs have been and often still are for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, who often used and sometimes still use violence against those who stray from the perceived orthodox paths.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Where does this all leave us with the idea of personal religion? As our evidence shows, the Handlungsspielraum of the individual Athenian in the period under discussion was fairly unlimited when it came down to religious discourse. Yet even here one could never be quite sure, as the examples of Anaxagoras and Socrates show, however much politics may have played a role in their trials. But these were exceptional cases. It seems that Athenians could have whatever thoughts they wanted about the gods or the afterlife without much risk to their personal safety. In this respect they could be almost as individualistic as they wished. But it was a different matter when it came to actual worship. The case of Archedamus shows that he must have had the permission of the neighbourhood to carry out his work on and in the cave. Admittedly, the insistence on his close tie with the nymphs may have helped to legitimise his position and work. However, without the acceptance of his immediate environment, it would have been impossible for him to do what he did. Thus, when it came to action in Athenian religion, the individual always had to comply with a group.Footnote ¹⁰² In the end, it seems that in Athens personal religion was still very much part of polis religion at large.Footnote ¹⁰³