The Daily Life of the Greek Gods

Despite the rousing stories of male heroism in battles, the Trojan War transcended the activities of its human participants. For Homer, it was the gods who conducted and accounted for what happened. This text pictures the social organization of the Greek gods, as revealed in Homer's "Iliad".

Despite the rousing stories of male heroism in battles, the Trojan War transcended the activities of its human participants. For Homer, it was the gods who conducted and accounted for what happened. In the first part of this book, the authors find in Homer s Iliad material for exploring the everyday life of the Greek gods: what their bodies were made of and how they were nourished, the organization of their society, and the sort of life they led both in Olympus and in the human world. The gods are divided in their human nature: at once a fantasized model of infinite joys and an edifying example of engagement in the world, they have loves, festivities, and quarrels. In the second part, the authors show how citizens carried on everyday relations with the gods and those who would become the Olympians, inviting them to reside with humans organized in cities. At the heart of rituals and of social life, the gods were omnipresent: in sacrifices, at meals, in political assemblies, in war, in sexuality. In brief, the authors show how the gods were indispensable to the everyday social organization of Greek cities.

Introduction
Part I. Homer as an Anthropologist: 1. Literature? Or anthropology? 2. The Gods: a particular nature, a particular society
3. Spending the time
4. Gods with a particular lifestyle
5. Savouring the sweetness of life
6. Divine interference
7. Scenes of sovereignty
8. The Gods and their days
Part II. The Gods at the Service of the City: 9. When the Olympians donned the citizen's costume
10. A polytheistic garden
11. Dealing with the Gods
12. The altars and territories that were home to the divine powers
13. The affairs of the Gods and the affairs of men
14. the power of women: Hera, Athena and their followers
15. A phallus for Dionysus
Index.