These gifts varied from frankincense or a cake to large sacrifices of animals. There were also dedications of small statuettes or even large painted vases (Webster, p79). There was no class of priests nor any real religious teachings or texts. There were no real worship services as we think of them, with large gatherings of people. There were some festivals in recognition of the gods; for example, the Olympic games began as a festival to honour the god Zeus (Walker, p131). Christianity was also often practiced in secret but for a different reason. In the early days of Christianity, Christians were persecuted for their religion. Because of this, they were often forced to practice their religion in private and in small groups. They would meet in people's homes and sing praises to their God. It was very dangerous to worship or even pray in public because of the persecution. Worship was very simple though, small groups would meet together and simply sing songs and talk about their experiences. They would talk of who was being persecuted, pray for those in prison and being tortured. Later on in the Roman Empire things changed, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the entire Empire. Large churches were built and huge masses of people flocked to praise God. Worship stayed the same basically with singing and praying but in greater numbers. They could now worship in public without having fear. Soon there was an organized religion where before there was simply groups of believers. There were festivals and religious days recognized by the whole of Rome. The early church was like today's Catholic church and eventually developed into the Catholic Church we know today. Many of the rituals and customs that are observed came from things done in the early days of the church (Williams, p3). These three religions had different ideas of how to worship their God or Gods; this often affected other areas of religion.
