Terms. The first difficulty encountered in a discussion of Greek religion and philosophy from 800 to 323 B.C.E. is that there are no direct Greek equivalents for the modern notions of either philosophy or religion. There is no single Greek word for religion; the closest equivalents are phrases meaning "things having to do with the gods." The term philosophy was actually invented by the Pythagoreans in the late 6th century B.C.E. Before the invention of the term philosophy, someone who was considered wise or knowledgeable about the physical or human worlds was called sophos (wise). This category included statesmen, poets, and people who wrote about the natural, human, or divine worlds. Certain groups of thinkers, especially the followers of Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato, seem to have believed that true wisdom was difficult or impossible to obtain; they thus refused to call themselves wise, but instead called...