The Divine. The greatest difficulty in discussing Greek religion is that there is no Greek word with a meaning similar to the English term religion. The Greeks had gods, considered many things divine or sacred, and performed various actions intended to influence the behavior of the gods, but there was no clear distinction between sacred and secular, clergy and laity, god and hero, or religion and philosophy. Perhaps the best general statement that can be made about Greek religion is that it consists of those things associated with the divine or sacred about which most modern readers disagree with extant ancient authors. Gods, heroes, nymphs, curses, prophecy, divination, astrology, and magic are generally regarded skeptically by modern Western culture, and thus they are categorized as existing within a realm of irrational belief (religion) rather than knowledge (science). For ancient Greeks, especially outside the...