Article on Ancient Greece
This paper explores the article, Hesoid: Theogony Excerpts. It tries to bring out the ethics, rituals, and the theology manifested in the ancient Greek tradition. Rituals, religious beliefs, ethics, and theological practices are common in every society practice.
Rituals, religious beliefs, ethics, and theological practices are common in every society practice. Human beings in the ancient world believed in various form of culture, religious and exercise. Different rituals. For instance, in the Ancient Greece people lived within their norms, rituals, ethics, and theology based and guide by the religious practices. This paper gives detailed analysis of Ancient Greece based on the religion material. The article majorly focuses especially on how ritual, ethics, and theology are manifested in the tradition. According to the Hesoid Theogony excerpts, Rheas story on the ancient Greece helps us to understand better about the past practices of the society. Through the chronological unfolding in the religious material it is seen how Rhea whom was the subject to love to Cronos and his family carried themselves in reinstating and passing on their religious and political practices to the next generation. First and foremost, rituals in the ancient Greece is shown when he was about to bear Zeus. Zeus was going to be the father of gods of men. He was the only one as he believed that that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods. The Ancient Greece performed the rituals guided by their religious beliefs and the family norms. It is seen in the article that, Rheas undertook various practices when he learnt that his daughter was about to bear father of Gods, he goes to an extent of beseeching her own parents. All this was due to his expectation of been overcome by force and might. He was to drive him from his honors by conquering his kingdom.
According to the article, just as the medicine for poverty is wealth, Zeus had been brought to this world to bring evil. In other words, Zeus was the epitome of evil. For instance, the author uses the example of bees to justify the above claims. The author claims that, since bees toil to get honey in the long run to the young bees, so does Zeus to make the world a place of evil. The author particularly states that Zeus’s thunder make women to be an evil to mortalmen. This illustrates the evil nature of Zeus.
In the article, there is a belief stated about the ancient Greece. The belief concerns the problems faced by women and marriage. The Greek society beliefs in marriage and amicable solutions to their problems, especially those affecting women. This implies that people have to have a decent marriage to get the blessings of the community. In the absence of marriage, the author claim that the concerned personnel will not lead good lives and their death comes very fast. Moreover, when people who fail to formally marry die, their possessions are divided amongst the remaining members of the society and his memory fade away quickly from the minds of the community members (Leeming). On the contrary, when a man chooses the right way of marriage, life becomes easy for him and his children will be a blessing to him. Evil will not come his way.
Ethically, the article shows what was morally accepted in Greece at the community level. The depiction of the Greek ethics gives good platform for the readers to liken it with their own traditions. According to the ethics manifested in the articles, it is clear that most ethical practices around the world are similar. What is good and evil is almost common around the world. For instance, the author claims that formal marriage was expected of people, who have decided to come together and whoever fails to follow the procedure would not be blessed by the community. The ethic-cum-ritual is something seen all over the world and is still practiced to now.
Theologically, the Greeks had many gods and believed that the gods were capable of anything. Different gods had different powers over what they were expected to do. Therefore, before carrying out activities that would offend gods, people had to seek for guidance from the gods.
Works Cited
Leeming, David A. The World of Myth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Print.
