고전기 아테네에서 여성과 종교

Abstract

This article is focused on examining the women and religions in the classical Athens. Greek religious activity was not divorced from human experience and the ordinary activities of everyday life. The gods were thought to be everywhere, able to see all human activities. The living religious practice of the Greeks is concentrated on the festivals, Which interrupt and articulate everyday. The Athenians are more devout about religion than anyone else. Festival were the single most important feature of classical Greek religion in its public aspect. The single most important festival celebrated in classical Athens was the Panathenaia, the state festival honoring the city’s patron deity, Athena Polias. The Thesmophoria also are the most widespread Greek festival and principal form of the Demeter cult. The festival of the Thesmophoria has agrarian functions. The Panathenaic festival both celebrates the goddess Athena and the city’s parthenoi. Parthenoi - unmarried virgins - had important religious roles at Athens. They were often the ones who in religious processions carried various items needed for cult rituals. In the period before marriage a girl might act as a arrephoros and kanephoros at a religious festival or at a sacrifice. The Panathenaia was the most important Athenian festival at which young unmarried women carried the baskets. In the Panathenaia festival their purity has served the virgin goddess Athena, just as a very few of them will once have served the goddess as arrephoroi and kanephoroi. Their role in the procession publicly affirmed their virginity. As well as, the woman priest of Athena polias was arguably the most important priest. The woman priest had to perform preliminary sacrificial rites. The rituals of the Thesmophoria originally promoted the fertility of the earth, but the significance of the ceremony as an official festival of the organized polis was its role in promoting the fecundity of the women of Athens in order to provide future citizens for the city. The women who preside over the Thesmophoria were citizen wives. The Thesmophoria are conventionally construed as an essential polis ritual in which citizen women of child-bearing age helped to ensure the survival of the polis through the production of food and the reproduction of legitimate heirs. The Tehsmophoria had the effect of re-forming and strengthening bonds among women. The polis festival emphasizes more the creation of solidarity in the role of the woman. In fact, the number of girls and citizen women in Athens who had such religious roles was small. Yet in a very real sense they symbolized all the Athens womanhood. The role which they played in maintaining the cohesion and stability of the family made them indispensable co-operators in its ritual activities, and this role was carried through into the sacred practices that helped to bind the community together. Therefore, religion was the one area of public life in which women played an acknowledged part.