The ancient Greek world knew no revelation, no sacred books, no priestly class, like the overwhelming majority of human cultures before the emergence of religions with a universal vocation and the common era that now marks the calculation of time. This " by default " definition of the Greek religious system is an almost obligatory part of any study of this subject. As a result, the question of religious norms arises less in terms of the specific characteristics of Greek polytheism than in terms of what it isn't, or what it doesn't have. When the question is asked in a positive light, the notion of "embeddedness " ( encastrement ) prevails, as it does in most so-called "traditional " societies, in a way neutralizing the specificities of the object, which is diluted in the various aspects of Greek culture. But, as Marcel Detienne writes, " the Greeks are not a tribe or ethnic group quite like any other ", and the durability of a religion " embedded " clashes head-on with the great civilizational narrative that makes Greece the crucible of rationality, philosophy, politics and science. This has led to talk of a form of " secularization ", which is said to have reduced the influence of religion.
Rather than associating the " Greek reason " with the retreat of an irrationality that would be the hallmark of all religion, we will be examining the place of divine powers, the representations of the world that are attached to them and the practices they induce in the structuring of norms and authority in cities. This year's lecture will explore this theme through a study of the vocabulary of sacredness and the lexicon of just behavior in archaic poetry.