I
RELIGION
CASE 1
The religion of the Greek and Roman peoples was composed of many elements, and presents throughout their history a great variety of cults and observances. Religious tenets were not defined, and no priestly hierarchy attempted to coerce the people in their beliefs or actions. A Greek or a Roman was not under the necessity of worshipping the gods, though he might incur the anger of his fellow-citizens by outraging their feelings. To the ordinary man or woman, however, the service of the gods was a daily duty and each important event of human life had its appropriate observance. The head of every family was its priest, and the children his assistants in carrying out the worship of the divine beings who guarded the house and fields and all the living creatures therein. Similarly the great gods of the city were served by the priests and priestesses appointed to represent the city, conceived of as one great family. Each city had its recurring festivals, its rest days sacredly kept, and its days of commemoration of the dead.
Public worship in Greece and Italy consisted of prayers and hymns, and of sacrifices offered both within the temples and shrines and in other places, such as groves and springs, which were held to be sacred. The temples were built and adorned with all possible care, and were the pride of the community. An amphora (on the bottom of Case S in the Fourth Room) decorated with a religious scene shows a common type of altar. It is shaped rather like a pedestal with an architectural moulding and “horns” on either side. A miniature terracotta shrine from Cyprus (on the right side of the top shelf in Case 1), made for household use, gives us an idea of the shape of the larger ones which held a statue at crossroads and street corners. Incense, a frequent accompaniment of worship, was burned in a covered vessel, often provided with a high stand, such as the incense burner painted on a small oinochoë in Case G in the Fifth Room; or a little altar was used for the purpose. An example from Cyprus, which still shows traces of fire, stands on the top shelf of Case 1. A marble lamp from a temple is in Case G in the Third Room. It was made to be set in a support, probably a bronze tripod, and was filled with oil in which a wick floated.
FIG. 1. PRAYING YOUTH (?)
In prayer the worshipper looked upward and raised both hands. This attitude is perhaps represented in a bronze statuette, probably a votive offering, in Case D in the Fifth Room ([fig. 1]). A small wine-jug (Case 1, middle shelf) is decorated with a scene no doubt very common in Athens; before a statue of Athena raised on a low column stands a man saluting the goddess by kissing his fingers and raising them toward her ([fig. 2]). A bronze votive statuette in Case D in the Fourth Room is making the same gesture.
