Call for Papers for the CCC panel “Children of a Lesser God? Minor Divinities in Greek Religion: A Reassessment”, Maynooth University, Ireland, 14-17.07.2026. The organizers are especially looking forward to receiving proposals from PhD students and early career researchers.
Abstracts (250-300 words) should be sent by email to the organizers ([email protected] and [email protected]), by February 28, 2026, using the CCC template.
Here’s an abstract of our panel and a list of confirmed speakers:
Panel Abstract
In his classical manual Greek Religion (1985), W. Burkert has two separate chapters on the Olympian gods and minor deities respectively. This is a convenient strategy for an author of a reference book; it is a commonplace that such gods as Zeus, Athena, or Dionysus do not require the same introduction in a monograph for a contemporary reader interested in ancient Greek religion, as Enyalios, Leto, or Leucothea do. The question that follows is whether the distinction between what one may call major and minor gods is only a matter of readers’ convenience and scholarly practice, or whether it reflects a division that also ancient worshippers perceived, identified, and that created meaning for their understanding of the divine.
Parker (2011: 72) observes that, although ancient Greeks did not necessarily use such terms as major and minor divinities, the fact that they thought in terms of ‘more important’ gods that belonged to the dodekatheon as opposed to ‘less important’ ones shows that the idea of such a division was not foreign to them. He then goes on to problematize this issue by showing how blurred these distinctions were. In studying the gods of the Aegina, Polinskaya (2013: 368–370) takes this argument one step further, concluding that rather than distinguish between major and minor deities, we should seek how each deity functioned or was relevant in a specific environment.
At first glance, then, it may seem tempting to dismiss the category of minor gods as an etic category. Indeed, from our point of view, major gods are a category apart because their study requires different methods in order to handle the wealth of primary sources and may lead to different interpretations. While the idea of writing an exhaustive research monograph on such figures as Aphrodite or Dionysus could on the face of it seem unviable, research of the last twenty years (especially in the Routledge series Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World) also points to the exact opposite: i.e. that it is possible and even interesting to produce a running narrative about a single deity. In the case of minor gods, gathering and processing all the data related to a minor divinity is theoretically at least an easier task and a reconsideration of primary sources in seldom-studied gods (not because they are not interesting, but because they are so-called ‘minor’) may lead to thought-provoking results.
Among other things, our panel will ask what makes a minor divinity minor. Is this category merely related to the dearth of primary sources about said divinity, or might this also relate to their function, role, and realm of influence? Can a deity be major in one religious context and minor in another, and how would this variety influence our categorization? How should we consider the tension between major/minor gods in light of other distinctions, such as panhellenic/local? And do these categories change over time, or vary from place to place? Such an investigation may also throw new light on what makes a major divinity major. For instance, is the presence of a divinity in panhellenic poetry or in panhellenic sanctuaries a crucial factor? Would reassessing the primary sources allow an identification of specific characteristics attached to the group of minor gods? Or perhaps minor divinities do not share many common traits other than not being major? To which category does a goddess like Hestia belong? Burkert lists her under lesser deities though she is often part of the dodekatheon. Likewise with Hecate and Pan, are they indeed minor in their locals of worship and in their realm of influence? This brings us also to the question whether the distinction was important only for literary accounts or it was reflected in cult practice as well? Finally, what shall we think of heroes and heroines, daimones, ancestors, deified rulers, personifications, fictional divinities, philosophical creations, such as Socrates’ daimonion, marginal mythical figures, such as satyrs, nymphs, and centaurs, foreign gods in Greece and Greeks gods abroad, etc.?
This panel will continue work initiated at the Classical Association Annual Meeting in 2025 (University of St. Andrews). Our previous session consisted of a small selection of papers and a roundtable discussion, which revealed how controversial the categories briefly presented above may be. Building on that experience, we would like to propose a panel consisting of invited speakers and some other scholars from an open call for papers. It will consist of ca. twenty papers presented by speakers at various career stages, including PhD students and established scholars. Apart from the papers, we plan a series of roundtable discussions at the end of each day of the panel.
Ideally, then, the aim of our proposed panel is further to nuance the picture sketched above, by enlarging the scope we address. The ultimate goal of our meeting is an edited volume, which will discuss both theoretical problems and a number of particularly intriguing case studies.
Works cited
Burkert, W. (1985): Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Oxford.
Parker, R. (2011): On Greek Religion. Ithaka,NY, London.
Polinskaya, I. (2013): A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People, and the Land of Aegina, 800-400BCE. Leiden, Boston.
Confirmed speakers (in alphabetical order)
-Silvio Bär, University of Oslo
-Natasha Bershadsky, Bonn Universität
-Sandra Blakely, Emory University
-Diana Burton, Victoria University of Wellington
-Fátima Díez Platas, University of Santiago de Compostela
-Radcliffe Edmonds, Bryn Mawr College
-Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
-Michael Konaris, Academy of Athens
-Olga Levaniouk, University of Washington
-John McDonald, University of Missouri
-Emma Stafford, University of Leeds
-Kenneth Yu, University of Toronto
-Athanasia Zografou, University of Ioannina
Note: The CCC is an in-person event and participants are required to cover their own costs.
