Le Polythéisme grec à l'épreuve d'Hérodote

The religion of the Ancient Greeks has already been the subject of a whole series of introductions and syntheses. The present work differs from those, however, through the emphasis it places on the plurality of this religious system. Indeed, the tension between unity and plurality, between the general and the particular, is constitutive of the relations that the Greeks had with their many gods. Based on this observation, several themes run throughout the book: What is the relevance of the terms “religion” and “polytheism” when applied to ancient Greece? Should we speak of Greek religion in the singular or the plural? Do divine figures dissolve in the variety of their cults and become unrecognizable? Can we speak of “belief” in this context? Was the sacrificial performance strictly local or was it based on a background shared by all Greek communities? Taking Herodotus as a common thread, the investigations in this book intend to do justice to a profusion of gods and rituals, and to make intelligible the fluid plurality of this complex system, far from the impression of chaos to which our own cultural determinisms risk reducing it.