Religion etc

I've been getting back to work from last week, by reading up on ancient Greek religion for now. This is in preparation for writing a paper for this conference I'm going to go to in late August. The paper is on the subject of social interaction and cooperation between citizens and foreigners in the religious life of Hellenistic Athens. Quite fascinating stuff, because when you think of 'religion' or 'religious life' in the context of Athens or the antiquity in general it means something different to the modern world. In our time, it is possible to separate the secular and sacred (or whatever is the opposite of secular in this sense) spheres of life. It's not possible in the context of the ancient Greek city state, because religion was intertwined, in one form or another, in every aspect of an individual's life from birth to death. Different rites were performed at every significant stage in a person's way from birth to adulthood. At home, appropriate rites were to be performed for home deities/spirits and for ancestors. People might have their own particular heroes (sort of semi-divinities, originally mortals who received divinity after death) and divinities they felt devotion to. In the deme level (administrative subdivisions of the city state) there was a sacred calendar for the entire year, including, for instance, appropriate rites in the occasion of introducing new citizens (male only) to the deme membership and local festivals. Similar sacred calendar existed for state administration, involving rites when new officials took office, when the assembly convened, numerous state festivals and so on. The religious functions and rites associated with the public life of the polis were not so much to do with piety or faith in the personal sense but rather something that was correct to do to ensure the successful day-to-day existence and future of the polis. All the cults had their own priests, but they did not have the authority to make theological statements nor did they advice people on matters of faith. They were officials who were appointed for a given time who took care of the precinct and performed ordained rites. In fact, especially in later times, selling of priesthoods was very common: they were purchased by the wealthy members of the society who were interested in the public prestige such offices brought and who took upon paying the expenses of maintaining the precinct and conducting the sacrifices etc. While the Greeks shared common deities - Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hephaistos, Hestia, Apollon, Aphrodite, Athene, Ares, Artemis, Hermes, Pan, Demeter and so on - all city states had their own personal forms of the cults. Thus the polis religion and the religious rites and functions were inherently part of the life and prerogative of its members = its citizens; therefore the right of participation of outsiders, those who were not citizens, was in many ways restricted.

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Other than that, I bought a new laptop on thursday (ordered it from a web store and it arrived at 8 am next morning, since I chose a special delivery). I decided for an Asus laptop, due to reading favourable reviews on its quality and durability. Came with Windows Vista. I didn't even look at it, just installed OpenSUSE Linux in its place. So, have taken quite a bit of time to setting up things just right - though I needed to install only a few programs and tweaks, because the OS comes with a full set of software. I am very pleased with it.