Jon D. Mikalson - Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars

The two great Persian invasions of Greece, the one ordered by King Darius and turned back by the Athenians at Marathon in 490 B.C. and the other led by King Xerxes himself and repulsed in 480479 by victories of the allied Greeks at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale, offer us our very best opportunity from the whole of Greek antiquity to see the interplay of Greek religion and history on a large scale. For a period of ten years, and for somewhat longer if we include the preliminaries to the 490 invasion, we can see how the Greeks internationally, state by state, and sometimes even individually turned to their deities and their religious practices to influence, understand, and commemorate events that threatened their very existence. For this period we have accounts of Greeks praying and sacrificing, making and fulfilling vows to the gods, consulting oracles, interpreting omens and dreams, believing in miracles, pondering pieties and impieties, creating new cults, sanctuaries, and festivals, and making dozens of dedications to their gods and heroesall in direct relation to known historical events. The purpose of this book is to collect and present the abundantly preserved religious aspects of these critical times and thereby set Greek religion into a historical context so as to understand better the role of Greek religion in the Persian invasions and in Greek life in general.

Modern scholarly surveys of Greek religion, such as Walter Burkerts Greek Religion and Martin Nilssons Geschichte der griechischen Religion, collect, abstract from their immediate contexts, and summarize much of the evidence for Greek religion. They have, of course, immeasurable value and have been the primary vehicle for organizing and analyzing this Protean subject. But there is a need also to see the human situations and historical circumstances in which Greeks practiced their religion if we are to understand the place religion had in their lives. The ancient sources, written and archaeological, allow us to do this best for the period of the Persian Wars in early fifth-century Greece. Much that we describe will be familiar to students of Greek religion, but for scholars and for nonspecialists alike it may prove helpful to see these basics of Greek religion placed into social, cultural, historical, and personal contexts.

Herodotus describes Greeks practicing their religionpraying, sacrificing, making dedications, employing various methods of divination, and expressing their thoughtson so many occasions and in such a variety of situations that one can, as I do here, weave his accounts into a general picture of religion of the time. There are, of course, significant limitations in focusing on one author, but these limitations may be counterbalanced by the opportunity to see Greek religion in human, local, and historical contexts as described by one Greek. There is even an advantage that this rich store of religious material is all the product of one man. Herodotus was certainly no ordinary Greek. He was better traveled, more cosmopolitan, more curious, more innovative, and more learned than most Greeks, and it is to these qualities that we owe the Histories. But when we analyze his accounts and views of Greek religion, we find that they are largely in accord with those of other contemporary and later sources for practiced religion. In our concluding chapter we attempt to discover from his writings some of his own religious beliefs and views, but with the knowledge that these were not, or most were not, peculiar to him.