“…During the Archaic and Classical periods, Greece was a conglomerate of largely autonomous city states with no overall political or administrative 2 While many works in the field are implicitly based on a characterisation of Greek religion as polis religion, the strengths and weaknesses of this model are rarely discussed. Exceptions (which will be discussed below) are the contributions of COLE (1994), BURKERT (1995), JAMESON (1997). In the field of Roman religion, however, the debate concerning the implications and the applicability of the polis model is much more advanced: see WOOLF (1997), BENDLIN (2000), p. 115 135, RÜPKE (2004), SCHEID (2005), p. 125 128.…”