Influence of Religion on Politics in Ancient Greece

The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of religion on politics from 478 to 399 B.C., the period of the Peloponnesian War in Greece between Athens and Sparta. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which religion intersected with Athenian public policy during that period and then to discuss specific features of such policy that reflect or that seem predicated of religious praxis or belief.

The principal historical point to be derived from the course of the Peloponnesian War is that by the time it ended, the political hegemony and leading cultural status of Athens were by and large in the past, absorbed by the ethos and governmental form of Sparta. But the war depleted both Athens and Sparta and ended the Golden Age of Greece. It cannot be said that religious belief and worship somehow "caused" the decline of Greece. But uses to which religion was put in regard to the general population and the religious affinities that informed behavior of individual military leaders appear to have had a role in the course of the war. The weight of evidence is that religion was not least an instrument of policy and, as required, of populace mobilization. With regard to the influence of religion on individuals, the evidence is that it proved decisive but not always beneficial to both the pious and impious.

The instrumental use of religion is presented, on the whole without comment or evaluation, throughout Thucydides's history of the Peloponnesian War.

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th them, whether invoked or uninvoked" (Thucydides 66). This cry was taken up as Apollo's command and advice to go to war inasmuch as Athens's power play had broken previous treaties (Thucydides 69). The consensus for war at the second congress was strong enough to persuade Sparta and her allies to go on the offensive against Athens and her allies. The oracle of Delphi appears to have functioned not only as a locus of prophecy and fortune but also as the de facto locus of state treasuries, with riches deposited there either for safekeeping or as sacrifices to Apollo and in temples allocated to city-state donors. In that regard, the Corinthian delegates to the second Lacedaemonian congress refer to war funds to be raised partly from "the monies at Olympia and Delphi" (Thucydides 67). Herodotus refers as well to the "Corinthian treasure-house at Delphi" (Herodotus 326). Pericles's oration to Athens includes a reference to the possibility that the Spartans would use money on deposit at Olympia or Delphi "to seduce our foreign sailors by the temptation of higher pay" (Thucydides 81) to prosecute a mercenary sea war against Athens. The texts of various treaties and truces made throughout the course of the war provide for safe passa

Category: History - I