Homer: Ritual Performance and Popular Theology

Abstract

In the field of Classics, Homeric poetry is generally understood as secular— that is, lacking in religious authority or significance— (Slatkin 2011) and, in a separate strand of scholarly discourse, as aristocratic (Morris 2000). But the views of Homer espoused in antiquity by figures such as Plato, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Herodotos contradict both stances. The historical performance contexts for Homeric epic at massive religious festivals of the archaic and classical periods likewise presents a challenge to the prevailing view of Homer in modern scholarship. This dissertation identifies the festival setting as key for making sense of the association that existed in antiquity between Homer, the popular masses, and religious ideas. I offer a historical reconstruction of the social dynamics of festivals like the Great Panathenaia, the largest and most important festival in the Athenian calendar. In my analysis, I show that the festival environment itself was influential in priming its participants for the uptake of religious ideas from Homer. This was especially the case for non-elites for whom performances of Homer constituted the most accessible element of the religious event. I then demonstrate that this dynamic between Homer, popular audiences, and religious authority was identified and criticized by a firsthand observer: Xenophanes of Colophon. Through Xenophanes, we see that Homer was not only a popular religious authority but the popular religious authority—all people learned from Homer about the gods, and in particular about the nature of the gods as anthropomorphic beings who traveled, interacted with mortals, and sought to receive cult. Finally, I demonstrate the profitability of reading of the Homeric poems in light of the historical evidence for the poems’ religious performance occasions. I analyze key passages in Homer where humans and gods interact with one another through prayer and sacrifice, examining how non-elite festival audiences received the poems’ content in light of their immediate festival surroundings. In this way, I conclude, we can identify tenets of popular Homeric theology. As a result, understandings of Homer as secular and aristocratic are overturned, and Homer emerges as a newly viable source for the study of Greek religion.