Underworld Or Death-Related Divinities In Ancient Greece

My PhD examined major Underworld divinities in archaic and classical Greece, discussing select cults and myths associated with them. The thesis explores topics related to the study of Underworld or death-related divinities. This includes divine origins, how different divine personas were invoked for different purposes and the potential ubiquity of uses, death as an aetiological tool in ‘rites-of-passage’, and the connection between the Underworld and agriculture. I employed a model of thinly-coherence religious communities in interpret the source material. The thesis argued that cultic practices influenced by Underworld-related concepts permeate the religious landscape of the periods to a greater extent than explored in scholarship. I am

The largest body of evidence for religious practice in the ancient world come from individuals, including dedicatory inscriptions and votive offerings, and yet the study of individuals is limited. In part, this is because Greek religion is conceived of as public and orthopraxic, where the polis (‘city-state’) is the main facilitator of religion, following Sourvinou-Inwood’s influential ‘polis-religion’ approach. This presupposes societies where individuals are equally religious, with equal religious agency. Polis-religion has received criticism for not reflecting the religious landscape of early Greece, particularly regarding individuals and marginalised practices. While polis-religion acknowledges individuals as the ‘basic cult unit’, the polis is still the framework within which individuals operate. Far from simply being a member of a single political structure, the individual is both a distinct unit and a member of multiple overlapping religious, socials, and political communities. Several scholars are engaging with the individual in ancient religion, but much of this focuses on the Hellenistic and Roman periods. No study addresses the role of individual practitioners within the context of the communities in which they live and

This need not be an issue because the semiotic vocabulary of communities is similar enough to allow overlaps in beliefs and ideas; because communities operate with a level of ‘thin-coherence’, sharing some semiotic language. The signifier of one community could be translated, and understood, in another context, but with a subtly – or vastly – different meaning. For instance, an individual might invoke Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, while cursing his enemy, and the same goddess’s fecundity-focused maiden persona during fertility festivals. The individual may not consider the maiden while cursing, or the Underworld queen while praying for fertility, so these incongruous identities coexist without conflict. ‘Thin-coherence’ emphasises individual religious agency and recognises community impact on religious participation. ‘Thin-coherence’ allows individuals to belong to various sized units, ranging from a single person interacting with the divine to wider panhellenic participation, and can be public or private. Membership in each community would inform the individual’s approach to each other community they participated in, and participation would inform and change each religious