Greek religion was a predominant form of early Paganism and as a result, their religion during the eighth century was polytheistic. The Greeks had worshipped the divine, many of which had a connection to natural phenomenons for instance Zeus and lightening. Divinities were the most significant part of ancient Greek religion and emphasis was placed on pleasing the gods with sacrifices and prayers, processions, music, dancing, and hymn singing (Pomeroy et al. 82). The divine looked and acted exactly like humans and were unpredictable, but were revered by humans because of their powers, immortality and agelessness, according to Homer and Hesiod (Pomeroy et al. 84). Both mortals and the divine needed one another; connecting the lives of the Ancient Greeks and the divine. The Greeks perceived the gods as servers of justice and order, protectors, guides of their city-states, and the cause of all events. This is demonstrated through the significance of Agamemnon's death in Aeschylus's in The Oresteia, the perspectives of the cosmologists Anaximander and Hesiod, the role of Athena in The Odyssey, the effect of Demeter in The Homeric Hymn hymn2:to Demeter, and the creation of the universe. .
Many ancient Greeks speculated on the origin of our world, two of which were the cosmologist Anaximander and the Greek philosopher Hesiod both of whose differing perspectives. According to Hesiod, the ruler that is bestowed to draw the line of justice is Zeus, and, like the cosmologist Anaximander, he had the notion that the world's order was made just. Within Zeus' cosmos, there was absolute order and everything is put in its place for mortals (CLAS 1006 EL 10: Course Manual.80). The Greeks, like the philosopher Hesiod recognized Zeus as the enforcer of justice. They believed that, regarding divine, the individual and his entire ancestry, would suffer the consequences of the ancestors, which would ultimately conclude in the downfall of their descendants.
