Thucydides identified the period of the Peloponnesian War as one in which a concern with divine engagement in the affairs of mortals was particularly intense. This chapter explores a variety of evidence for this heightened concern and asks what forms it took. On the one hand, we find extravagant investment in religious festivities and display. Faced with the uncertainty of war, states and individuals lean into these elements of cultic life and seek thereby to create or claim the sort of prosperity and ease of engagement with the gods chiefly possible in times of peace. On the other hand, we find dissenting voices and worries about the neat picture of prosperity and cohesion such festivities promote. The heightened stakes of the War, where divine favour or displeasure could bring victory or destruction, provide a particular impetus for divergent voices and divergent attitudes to how engagement with the gods should be approached and represented. The chapter explores these dynamics at three levels from the macro to the micro. First, it tackles interstate discourse and competition. Second, it examines the internal dynamics within a single city-state: Athens. Third and finally, it zooms in further to discuss a single cult: the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Following his victory, Thrasybulus proposed a decree granting citizenship to ‘all those who had come back together from Piraeus, some of whom were clearly slaves.’ Acting as a ‘good citizen,’ as Aristotle writes, Archinus sued him for ‘indictment for illegality’ (graphē paranomōn) and won the case. But the Athenian voted another decree in 401 to reward these virtuous noncitizens. It lists the name of several hundred combatants by distinguishing between two categories of individuals. The men present by Thrasybulus’ side in Phyle are granted the statute of citizen, probably without being integrated into the demes and the phratries. On the other hand, for those who joined the combat later, the Athenians granted only isoteleia (tax equality) and engguēsis (the right to marry a member of the Athenian community and produce legitimate offspring). These men, around 850 in all, were registered as members of the Athenian tribes, within which they enjoyed the privilege of being able to fight for the city. On the thirteenth line of the third column of this long inscription, one can easily decipher the name of a certain Gerys. This chapter tries to unroll a series of hypotheses to identify who he was: a soldier, a greengrocer, a privileged metic, and a Thracian.