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Greek Religion

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Greek Culture

In ancient Greece, the polytheistic religion practiced in the form of cult practices. Different cities worshipped different gods for example: Athens had Athena; Sparta had Artemis; Corinth worshipped Aphrodite; Delphi and Delos had Apollo; Olympia had Zeus. Zeus de-throned his father Cronus and Zeus banished Cronus with the Titans that fought with Cronus. Titans were also known as the elder gods. They ruled the earth before the Olympians overthrew them. The 12 Olympians were: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Hera, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, Artemis, and Hephaestus. The other gods were: Asclepius, Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, Eros, Hebe, Eris, Helius, Thanatos, Pan, Nemesis, The Graces, The Muses, The Erinyes, and The Fates. The Greek religion spans a period from Minoan and Mycenean periods to the days of Hellenistic Greece and its ultimate conquest by the Roman Empire. The religious ideas developed and evolved over the course of history. By the time of the earliest major monument of Greek literature, the lliad attributed to Homer, a consensus had developed with respect to the major Olympian gods. The lliad seems to have been unaware of Dionysus, a god whose worship spread after it was written and who later became important enough to be named one of the 12 chief Olympian gods. The Olympian gods, also known as Heroes, were demigods. They were deified humans who were part of local legendary history; they also had local hero-cults, and often served as oracles for purposes of divination. The most widespread public act of worship in ancient Greece was sacrifice, especially the blood sacrifice of animals. The temples of the Greek religion generally were not public gathering places where people gathered socially for collective indoor prayer. The temples were part slaughterhouse and part barbecue; oxen, sheep, horses, swine, dogs, various

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