ABSTRACT
Athens, the city for which we have the best evidence, did not exploit Zeus as much as many other states, but even here we can see ways in which Zeus subtly orders society.
Heading out of Athens, across the River Kephisos, is an altar of Zeus Meilichios, ‘the gentle’, a worrying word in Greek religion, because what is at issue is purification and release from miasma, religious pollution. This altar is where the great hero of Athens, its king Theseus, was once cleansed of his killings (Pausanias 1.37.4) and it was the site of the Diasia, the major Zeus festival in Athens. The story goes (Thucydides 1.126) that Cylon had attempted a coup d’état around 632 BC and had been advised by the Delphic oracle, in one of those legendary ambiguous responses, that he should carry out his plans during the major festival of Zeus. It is remarkable that Cylon in this legend thinks not of his home Athens but of the Olympic Games, which is why his coup fails. The less obvious answer, closer to home, was that the Diasia, held on the 23rd of Anthesterion, in late March, was the major Athenian festival of Zeus. In this festival all the Athenian districts (‘demes’) united in worship. Most people made the so-called ‘local offerings’, namely baked animal shapes, but those that could afford them sacrificed real pigs, though they did not feast on the meat because in this case the whole animal was to be burnt; it was a ‘holocaust’ in the Greek technical sense, as was appropriate to gods of the underworld.
