Did Ancient Greeks Actually Believe in Their Gods?

One morning in 415 BCE, Athens woke up and found that almost every stone pillar outside almost every house in the city had been smashed in the night. The city went into a full institutional panic — and destroyed the career of its best general over it. Eight years earlier, that same public sat at a festival held in honour of Dionysus and watched a comedy in which Dionysus soils himself out of fear. They gave it first prize. So did they believe, or didn't they? This video goes deep on ancient Greek religion — the votive body parts, the lead curse tablets, the questions people asked an oracle about buying a farm, a verb that almost every translation gets wrong, and the trial that killed Socrates. And we're honest about where the record runs out. Chapters: 00:00 The herms are broken 02:30 The problem with the question 04:10 Foundation: a religion you did 06:02 The word that gets mistranslated 07:30 The receipts: what it cost 10:04 And then they put the god on stage 11:56 The trial, and what we can't quite read 14:00 The men who said it out loud 15:54 Now here's the part that changes the question 18:45 Let's take a step back Sources and further reading in the pinned comment. New video every few days. One civilization in depth — not a tour of the ancient world. #AncientGreece #GreekMythology #AncientHistory