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Chapter 11 - Prayer

from Part II - Beliefs and Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2025

Julia Kindt
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Summary

Scholarship on ancient Greek prayer has almost always focused on its public instantiations: in sacrifice, oratory, sanctuary contexts, etc. This chapter explores the evidence for ancient Greek prayer in the liminal space where public and private clash, coalesce, and collapse. I argue that the prayers of ancient polytheists, though rarely – if ever – strictly private, routinely operated across and between different spheres such as the public and the private, the polis and the oikos, the intimate and the communal. I approach the study of ancient prayer afresh, not as a site of opposition between the individual and the polis, nor as a space in which the distinctions between these realms of praxis are erased or effaced. Rather, prayer here features as an occasion to reflect on the spectrum of possible intersections between personal piety (individual feelings towards and actions in service of the divine) and the wider superstructures of religion, politics, society, and culture within which its practitioners were imbricated and to which they sought to respond.

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  • Prayer
  • Edited by Julia Kindt, University of Sydney
  • Book: Personal Religion in the Ancient Greek World
  • Online publication: 25 November 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009628815.012
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  • Prayer
  • Edited by Julia Kindt, University of Sydney
  • Book: Personal Religion in the Ancient Greek World
  • Online publication: 25 November 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009628815.012
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Prayer
  • Edited by Julia Kindt, University of Sydney
  • Book: Personal Religion in the Ancient Greek World
  • Online publication: 25 November 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009628815.012
Available formats
×