In ancient tales such as Homer’s Odyssey , Euripides’s Medea , and Virgil’s Aeneas , the gods require that human beings honor them through the performance of properly performed prayers and rituals....

In ancient tales such as Homer’s
Odyssey, Euripides’s
Medea, and Virgil’s
Aeneas, the gods require that human beings
honor
them through the performance of properly performed prayers and rituals. When they do so, human beings can hope – or even expect – to receive the benefits they seek in return. By contrast, if human beings dishonor, slight, or somehow offend a god, they should fear or expect some kind of retribution from that god. What does this tell us about the purpose or meaning of religion in ancient western culture? Moreover, in what ways did this religious perspective on the world inform how people pursued their goals and treated one another?