What was religion like in ancient greece? what were their beliefs?

Question

what was their religion?

how strongly did people believe?

what did they do?

Answer 1

Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs and rituals practiced in ancient Greece in form of cult practices. It is therefore the practical counterpart of Greek mythology. Within the Greek world, religious practice varied enough so that one might speak of Greek religions. The cult practices of the Hellenes extended beyond mainland Greece, to the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor, to Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in the Western Mediterranean, such as Massalia (Marseille). Greek examples tempered Etruscan cult and belief to inform much of the Roman religion.

Greek peoples all recognize the 12 major Gods: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Demeter and Hestia. Different cities worshipped different deities, sometimes with epithets that specified their local nature; Athens had Athena; Hades, Nike and Artemis; Corinth was a center for the worship of Aphrodite; Delphi and Delos had Apollo; Olympia had Zeus, and so on down to the smaller cities and towns. Identity of names was not a guarantee of a similar cultus; the Greeks themselves were well aware that the Artemis worshipped at Sparta, the virgin huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted fertility goddess at Ephesus. When literary works such as the Iliad related conflicts among the gods these conflicts were because their followers were at war on earth and were a celestial reflection of the earthly pattern of local deities. Though the worship of the major deities spread from one locality to another, and though most larger cities boasted temples to several major gods, the identification of different gods with different places remained strong to the end.