This book explores the Greek gods from Homer to Late Antiquity. The Greek gods are still very much present in modern consciousness. Yet even though Apollo and Dionysos, Artemis and Aphrodite, Zeus and Hermes are household names, it is much less clear what these divinities stood for in Ancient Greece. In fact they have been rather neglected in modern scholarship which has tended to focus on other aspects of Greek religion such as ritual and myth. The book brings together a term of international scholars with the aim of remedying the situation and generating new approaches to the study of the na ... More

This book explores the Greek gods from Homer to Late Antiquity. The Greek gods are still very much present in modern consciousness. Yet even though Apollo and Dionysos, Artemis and Aphrodite, Zeus and Hermes are household names, it is much less clear what these divinities stood for in Ancient Greece. In fact they have been rather neglected in modern scholarship which has tended to focus on other aspects of Greek religion such as ritual and myth. The book brings together a term of international scholars with the aim of remedying the situation and generating new approaches to the study of the nature and development of the Greek gods. It looks at the individual gods but it also asks to what extent cult, myth and literary genre determine the nature of a divinity. How do the Greek gods function in a polytheistic pantheon and what is their connection to heroes? What is the influence of philosophy? What does archaeology tell us about the gods? In what ways do the gods of late antiquity differ from those of classical Greece? The aim of this book is to present a comprehensive view of the gods as they functioned in Greek culture until the triumph of Christianity.