As I discuss in this article I wrote back in September 2019, animal sacrifice was a normal part of existence in the ancient world. Likewise, the ancient Greeks made sacrifices to their deities on an almost daily basis. People donвЂ™t usually put massive amounts of time, effort, and money into building colossal temples like this one to deities they donвЂ™t believe in. People donвЂ™t usually build massive, often extremely expensive temples to deities that the majority of them donвЂ™t even believe in.ДЄBOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, a massive ruined temple in Athens, Greece, which was begun in the Archaic Period and completed in the Roman Era. All of these were monumental structures dedicated as houses for the gods. Take, for instance, the Parthenon, the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, or the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. Many of these temples are colossal structures that were certainly extremely labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive to produce. People are described as praying to them and swearing oaths by them, which wouldnвЂ™t make much sense unless most people believed in them.ДЇurthermore, the ancient Greeks built countless temples to their deities. For one thing, the Greek deities are almost constantly mentioned in classical Greek texts as though they were actual beings. This is evidenced by countless pieces of evidence gathered from a vast array of different kinds of sources. There is no doubt that the vast majority of people in ancient Greece wholeheartedly believed in the existence of the Greek deities. Thus people have wondered, вЂњHow on Earth could a people so supposedly enlightened believe in such absurd stories?вЂќ As it turns out, though, believing in the Greek deities and believing in Greek myths are two different things many people in ancient times believed in the deities without necessarily believing in all the stories attached to them.

I think these questions are born from a strange discordance that people have noticed between the ancient GreeksвЂ™ reputation for rational skepticism and the stories we still tell about their gods and heroes-stories that-letвЂ™s face it-in most cases are pretty unbelievable to say the least. On Quora, I have noticed there seems to be an endless number of questions dealing with the same overall theme: вЂњDid the ancient Greeks and Romans really believe in their gods?вЂќ and вЂњDid the ancient Greeks really believe in their myths?вЂќ

Ancient greek question mark