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greek-customsfeatured in 10 works

Prayer and Hymn

The verbal address of the gods — petitionary prayer (standing, hands raised, often with a vow) and sung hymns of praise accompanying cult acts.

How it traveled

  1. Histories
    Thurii (Magna Graecia) · -425
    explains
  2. Cyropaedia
    Athens · -354
    explains
  3. Memorabilia
    Athens · -354
    explains
  4. Anabasis
    Athens · -354
    explains
  5. Symposium
    Athens · -354
    explains
  6. Economics
    Athens · -354
    explains
  7. Hellenica
    Athens · -354
    explains
  8. Quaestiones Graecae
    Chaeronea · 120
    explains
  9. Description of Greece
    · 180
    explains
  10. Deipnosophistae
    Naucratis · 230
    explains

Key passages(20)

Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

Very high

Now I don't know whether any one can detect in this any resemblance to a paean, when the author expressly states in it that Hermias is dead, when he says— And now for you Atarneus' pride, Trusting in

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Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

Very high

Demochares, then, has said all this about the adulatory spirit and conduct of the Athenians. And Duris the Samian, in the twenty-second book of his Histories, has given the very ithyphallic hymn which

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Quaestiones Graecae · Plutarch

Very high

Why is it that the women of the Eleans, when they sing hymns to Dionysus, call upon him to come to them with the foot of a bull ? The hymn runs as follows: Come, O hero Dionysus, To thy Elean holy Tem

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Very high

O Zeus, said Gadatas in prayer, I pray that the gods may grant many blessings to them and most of all to him who is responsible for their being so generous toward me. But, Cyrus, in order that we may

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Cyropaedia · Xenophon

Very high

Accordingly, he at once took victims and offered sacrifice in the high places to ancestral Zeus, to Helius, and to the rest of the gods, even as the Persians are wont to make sacrifice; and as he sacr

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Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

High

And since I now see your banquet, as Xeophanes the Colophonian says, full of all kinds of pleasure— For now the floor and all men's hands are clean, And all the cups, and since the feasters' brows Are

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Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

High

And after this, when we also were about to leave the party, the slaves came in bringing, one an incense burner, and another. . . . . . . . . . For it was the custom for the guests to rise up and offer

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High

To pray for blessings for himself alone is not lawful for the sacrificer; rather, he prays that the king and all the Persians be well; for he reckons himself among them. He then cuts the victim limb f

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Description of Greece · Pausanias

High

The oldest contest and the one for which they first offered prizes was, according to tradition, the singing of a hymn to the god. The man who sang and won the prize was Chrysothemis of Crete, whose fa

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Description of Greece · Pausanias

High

The traditional words spoken by them in the Town Hall at the libations, and the hymns which they sing, it were not right for me to introduce into my narrative. They pour libations, not only to the Gre

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Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

High

And it is on this account that the Lacedæmoians, who are a most valiant nation, go to war to the music of the flute, and the Cretans to the strains of the lyre, and the Lydians to the sound of pipes a

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Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

High

And of these Deipnosophists, one quoted one scolium, and one another. And these were those which were recited— I. O thou Tritonian Pallas, who from heaven above Look'st with protecting eye On this hol

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Deipnosophistae · Athenaeus of Naucratis

High

The whole populace of the Athenians, too, was very notorious for the height to which it pushed its flattery; accordingly, Demochares the cousin of Demosthenes the orator, in the twentieth book of his

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High

She was overjoyed at the feat and at the praise, so she stood before the image and prayed that the goddess might grant the best thing for man to her children Cleobis and Biton, who had given great hon

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High

and in his great and terrible grief at this mischance he called on Zeus by three names—Zeus the Purifier, Zeus of the Hearth, Zeus of Comrades: the first, because he wanted the god to know what evil h

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High

Then the Lydians say that Croesus understood Cyrus' change of heart, and when he saw everyone trying to extinguish the fire but unable to check it, he invoked Apollo, crying out that if Apollo had eve

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High

For the women collected gifts for them, calling upon their names in the hymn made for them by +Olen (lake), Orebro, Sweden, Europe Olen of +Lycia (region (general)), Turkey, Asia Lycia; it was from De

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High

At sunrise Xerxes poured a libation from a golden phial into the sea, praying to the sun that no accident might befall him which would keep him from subduing Europe (continent)Europe before he reached

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High

They could get no favorable omen from their sacrifices, and in the meanwhile many of them were killed and by far more wounded (for the Persians set up their shields for a fence, and shot showers of ar

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Description of Greece · Pausanias

High

In the front part of the temple, for it is built in two parts, is an altar of Eileithyia and an entrance for the public; in the inner Part Sosipolis is worshipped, and no one may enter it except the w

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