Conclusion

Long before the rise of Christianity, soteria was already widely sought from the gods in ancient Greece; it was central and fundamental in the relationship between the Greeks and their gods. The impressive number of ‘saving’ divinities and their ubiquity all over the Greek world reflect the risks and dangers which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, and the fears and uncertainties associated with them in the minds of the Greeks. By contrast to the Christian, eschatological notion of ‘salvation’, soteria to the Greeks was strikingly this-worldly in nature. ‘Saviour’ gods and soteria in ancient Greece were almost without exception always concerned with immediate help, protection, deliverance, and well-being in this life rather than the next. The appeal of the Greek ‘saviour’ gods lies in their ability to provide ‘salvation’ on earth. To most ordinary Greeks, this pragmatic and down-to-earth nature of soteria in the here-and-now must have been much more important than some remote promise for the future.