Olympian versus Chthonian Religion

Abstract

Ancient Greek polytheism was determined by the contrast between Olympian and Chthonian religion.This postulate, coined in the 19th century and still influential today, holds that the antithesis between the O lym pians, or the heavenly gods (O uranioi), and the Chthonians, or the powers of the earth and the underworld, devel oped into a quasi-archetype in ancient Greece.On this point most scholars in the field agree, at least in general terms.However, which of the gods or cults are to be ascribed to the Olympians and which to the Chthonians is still a matter of debate.But there is another, more general problem that still remains unsolved, namely, the question whether the antithesis Olympian versus Chthonian captures the essence of ancient Greek religion.In fact the ancient testimonies do not provide enough evidence for a clear distinction between Olympian cult and Chthonian cult.The following is a survey of the history of the scholarly debate on the issue in general and on the textual evidence in particular.Those contemporary scholars who regard the contrast between Chthonian and Olympian gods as of fundamental validity for the re-* Ἀ preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 20th Annual Conference of the Israel Society for the Promotion of Classical Studies in May 1991 at Bar-Ilan University and in October 1991 at the Classics Department of the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden.I should like to thank both au diences for their useful comments.My sincere gratitude is owed to Shulamit Riklin who translated the German original into English, and to Susan Guettel Cole for some further improvements.

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