Matters of religion are central to the things we hold most dear about the culture of
the ancient Greek world. So it is with its literature, where we think first of Homer and
tragedy, its art, where we think first of the statues of the gods and the mythical scenes
of the vases, and its architecture, where we think first of temples. But beyond this,
there was no sphere of life (or death) in ancient Greece that was wholly separate or
separable from the religious: the family, politics, warfare, sport, knowledge . . . The
task of designing a companion volume to Greek religion, even one of the substantial
length of this one, is accordingly formidable. Comprehensiveness is impossible.
Indeed, it is impossible even to define in an uncontroversial way the ground one
might aspire to cover comprehensively. Defending himself for directing Lear for the
third time, Jonathan Miller likened the play to a ‘‘vast dark continent’’ that one could
never hope to explore fully. All one could do was sail around it, disembark at different
points, and make narrow treks through the jungle ahead. The chapters of this volume
constitute such narrow treks into the vast continent of Greek religion. They cannot,
between them, render the territory fully and minutely mapped, but they may offer the
reader an impression of the land’s size, layout, and diversity. They may indicate the
areas that call for closer or further investigation. And the notes made of the flora and
fauna encountered along the way will certainly intrigue.