The Pagan World: Ancient Religions Before Christianity

by Hans-Friedrich Mueller

In The Pagan Ancient Religions Before Christianity, you will meet the fascinating, ancient polytheistic peoples of the Mediterranean and beyond, their many gods and goddesses, and their public and private worship practices, as you come to appreciate the foundational role religion played in their lives. Professor Hans-Friedrich Mueller, of Union College in Schenectady, New York, makes this ancient world come alive in 24 lectures with captivating stories of intrigue, artifacts, illustrations, and detailed descriptions from primary sources of intriguing personalities.

In the ancient Mediterranean area, religion was not separate from daily life. To the contrary, religion was daily life. The many dozen gods of this ancient world were everywhere, with spirits inhabiting every crack and crevice of life. These polytheists believed they had a strict contract with their If they took care of their gods, their gods would take care of them (or at least not harm them). Consequently, they built extraordinary temples to honor their deities, brought food and wine to them, sacrificed animals for them, and held sacred meals with their gods. In fact, they followed numerous rules and regulations that circumscribed almost all aspects of life both inside and outside the home - anything and everything to keep the gods happy. Consequently, the religious practices of the ancient Mediterranean make a wonderful lens through which to develop a deeper understanding of their world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Audiobook, Mythology, Philosophy, Ancient History

355 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 25, 2023

About the author

Dr. Hans-Friedrich Mueller is the Thomas B. Lamont Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at Union College in Schenectady, New York. He earned his M.A. in Latin from the University of Florida and his Ph.D. in Classical Philology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to Union College, he taught at The Florida State University and the University of Florida. Professor Mueller won the American Philological Association's Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics at the College Level, as well as two awards for excellence in teaching at The Florida State University. At the University of Florida, he developed a graduate distance-learning program in classics for high school teachers. In addition to writing numerous articles, Professor Mueller is the author of Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus, the editor of an abridged edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the translator of Andreas Mehl's Roman Historiography: An Introduction to Its Basic Aspects and Development. He is also the author of Caesar: Selections from his Commentarii De Bello Gallico and coauthor of Caesar: A LEGAMUS Transitional Reader.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice overview of quite a few ancient religions.



I was less interested in the Greek and Roman stuff, but that's what makes up the lion's share of the last half of the lecture. I guess that's what's the most well-documented, so I can't fault Mueller for that at all. And it segues nicely into Christianity.



There were several religions mentioned here that I haven't done a deep dive into yet, and this really got me interested. Ancient Hindu, for one. I've been meaning to find out more for a long time and this was just the push I needed.



I enjoyed Mueller's sometimes silliness when discussing things, but your personal mileage may vary with that.
I would love to read more by him, though.

Recommended.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter was interesting, though I had hoped to get a more global view of paganism. This course primarily focused on the Greek/Roman pantheons. I expected more - maybe Celtic, Asian, Babylonian, Mesopotamian, Slavic, Germanic?

For me, the appeal of most Great Courses lies in the lecture. It's usually fluid, casual, and conversational. Professor Mueller, on the other hand, seemed to be reading from a script that he hadn't properly familiarized himself with - there was a distracting affectation about his narrative style that didn't bother me at first, but with each lecture, it became harder and harder to press on. At times he reminded me of a child asked to read a new text aloud to the class, pausing and over-emphasizing in very odd places as if simply sounding out the words on a page without a real understanding of what he's saying.

Ultimately I did finish the lectures and I found the information interesting, but this won't be one that I will listen to again. The included PDF supplement is a great resource.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series of lectures make up a fascinating look at religious practices in the classical world of, mainly, Greece and Rome.

We are familiar with the myths, but those were religions, filled with ceremonies, that informed the worldviews and everyday lives of people living back then.

I've read a lot of classical history myself and this does much to shed light on the events of those times.

This was worth my time.

[molosovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mueller is a very humble and entertaining lecturer. Only gripe I got: would have been interested in some themes that are not given a lot of space here. Religion & art, music, drugs.

But thumbs up for explaining the intricacies of Roman politics and (state) religion, especially concerning Julius Ceasar and his successors.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, so this is a bit of a hard one for me to rate.

On one hand, the subject being explained here is very interesting and the execution feels competent. The look at the myths many of us are already familiar with in a religious framework is illuminating and a very interesting listen for anyone who is interested in pre-christian religious history. The topics are generally a bit heavy on greece and rome for my taste, but i suppose that is mostly down to the lack of written evidence for other pagan religions of the time.

The reason i feel the need to subtract a star from my rating is Hans-Friedrich Müllers Narration. It's very noticable that he is not a professional narrator, he stumbles in his sentences, he pronounces words weirdly with emphasis on unnatural parts of the words and he often sounds kind of bored and out there, he makes it very obvious he's reading off a script. His motivation gets better over the course of the book and his eccentricity even grew on me a little bit, but he keeps messing up all the way to the end of the course and the fact that neither he nor whoever managed the composition bothered to re-record lines he messed up shows me that they didn't really care about how good the course sounded.

Despite the negative auditory points, this remains a very interesting course that contains information i've never really heard before, packaged in a digestible, understandable format.

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pagan World - Ancient Religion before Christianity (The Great Courses)

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

I liked this lecture series, but I found it something of a slog until Professor Mueller got to the sections on Caesar.

This course is a dive into the religious praxis of a broad swathe of history and territory. Mueller covers Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome. The focus is on the nitty-gritty of religious practices - auspices, sacrifices, temples, etc. Some of this is technical, which creates the "slog" aspect of the course.

On the other hand, the course redeemed itself for me in the section on Rome. After a discussion of priesthoods, auspices and auguries, we turn to Julius Caesar whose success involved harnessing his position as pontifex maxima to his political ambitions by deifying himself. This religious revolution brought stability to Rome for a long period of its subsequent history. Eventually, this paradigm was replaced by another religious revolution on the part of Constantine in the adoption of Christianity.

I enjoyed Professor Mueller's deliberate, baritone delivery. It was clear and understandable. I also enjoyed his corny jokes as both a relief from tedium and a way of remembering various points of the lecture.

[Yaaresse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a series of 24 half-hour lectures on pagan practices in pre-Christian
Mediterranean lands. Unlike a lot of material on this subject that approaches the material as "only" myth and legend, Dr. Mueller presents how polytheistic beliefs wee part of all aspects of life, domestic and public, and were taken as seriously as any modern religion is by current practitioners. The material is very well organized and covers a lot of ground given the allotted time.

For the first two lectures, my reaction was, "Is this guy for real?" I mean, he is a lot over the top in his mannerisms and delivery. He has the most memorable hair since Beethoven, the sartorial sense of Daniel Craig, and the presentation manner of a love child of Rod Serling and Boris Karloff. And then he really started to grow on me. Eccentric? Maybe. Brilliant? No doubt. Clearly this method of presentation works given his (well deserved) high ratings on the Great Courses site.

[Radim Sandr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offers a great amount of valuable information about many misconceptions of our modern age, while maintaining a well-balanced, light, entertaining and at times humorous atmosphere throughout the lectures. At the end of the book, Mueller left me with the most frustrating feeling of wanting to explore how the old Pagan ways of the ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian or Etruscan civilizations relate to the ancient ways of the Celtic, Slavic, Baltic or Germanic/Nordic Pagan tribes and how traditions and polytheism spread across those regions as well.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little more dense than some of the other Great Courses I've consumed recently, but some fascinating discussion here on pagan religions before Christianity. Was especially interested in the discussions of mystery cults, forms of divination, and changes in social religion over time.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mueller is an excellent narrator and lays out the scope of the course in the very beginning. A perfect blend of insight to home life and overarching themes. To my surprise my favorite chapter was about the calendar system.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Professor Mueller is very theatrical in his presentation. I found the theatricality too distracting and was unable to finish the course.

[Darbin O’Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as an audible freebee and it was fun in a 'I've always liked school and need more homework, please' type of way. I finished it forever ago and was cleaning my audible out when I saw that I never added it to my Read.

I recommend for those that wanted to be neo-pagans in jr. high.

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned a lot but the narration just wasn't that great.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and interesting but the narrative was boring and honesty irritating.

[Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was certainly interesting but not quite what I was looking for.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Great Course educational lecture on pagan religious practice prior to the rise of Christianity. Well researched. I enjoyed the educator's narration.

[Nerine Dorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of The Great Courses series of lectures that are available on Audible – they most certainly tickle my need for tertiary education while also providing me with a valuable source of research for my own world building as a fantasy author. The Pagan World – Ancient Religions Before Christianity by Hans-Friedrich Mueller is a hefty offering of lectures that covers a range of ancient civilisations, including ancient Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, Greece, and of course, Rome.

Perhaps the most important part of this lecture, I feel, goes to show how embedded the ancient religious practises were in the state. Having been raised in a primarily Christian community as the default setting, it was good for me to gain an appreciation of the structure of non-Christian religions within a functioning society – especially in terms of the law and morality. It's also fascinating to see how modern religions have been shaped by those that have gone before, and how even if the religions change, there's much that stays the same. Funny that...

Mueller structures his lectures with impeccable detail, including speculation about the various mystery cults, divination (I found the discussion on augury fascinating). Some might find him a bit long-winded, but I stepped away from this feeling highly enriched. I recommend this to anyone who wants a slightly deeper dive that will help understand the mind of ancient humans while offering a broader historical context for Indo-European culture.

[Kurt Douglass · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've studied the religions and cultures of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, so I thought this course would be more of a refresher for me. I was greatly mistaken! Not only did Professor Mueller present a lot of material that was new to me, but he gave new perspectives on what I already knew, as well as challenging traditional interpretations and debunking popular misconceptions. His knowledge is mind-boggling, but he teaches with warmth, wit, and wry humor - you can almost see him winking at you when he makes a tongue-in-cheek remark. He packs a lot of information into each lecture - so much so, I listened to several multiple times just to absorb it all, and there are some I want to revisit again. However, at times Prof. Mueller will go off on a tangent, and by the time he gets back to the main point, he has to rush through the rest of the content. He'll tease something at the beginning of the lecture, but then only briefly speak on it because he's running out of time. That is my only criticism, but it's one that stems from the time constraints imposed on the lecturers of the great courses series, not the lecturers themselves. Prof. Mueller is well aware of the time limitations, as he ends every lecture with an apology that the clock's run out. Regardless, I highly recommend this series for lovers of antiquity.

[think blue count two · Rating 4 out of 5]

i learned a lot from this one - admittedly i probably won't retain most of the details, but i think it helped to flesh out my idea of life in the distant past and that's what i had hoped for the most.
my image of classical life has always been pretty blurry and probably badly informed, but i think these lectures helped bring it more into conformity with reality, not just wrt religion but socio-cultural shit more generally (well, that's inseperable from religion, isn't it?)

i was sad when christianity won out in the end and rome became a christian identitarian police state. good thing nothing like that will ever happen again.

my stack of books to read is way too big right now but i'm feeling in the mood to re-read True To The Earth: Pagan Political Theology, which speculates about the cosmovision of archaic mediterranean people.

also, re: people commenting that the lecturer sounds unprepared/stilted:
you should have played it at 1.25x speed. sounds fine that way. maybe he has kind of a surfer/stoner cadence that way but i liked that.

(i gave four stars but this is probably as good as a historical lecture series could be- 5 is pretty much reserved for stuff that elicits a visceral response which i wouldnt ever expect from something like this. as far as college lectures go it's a 5, probably. beats the fucking hell out of the biology class i'm taking right now!)

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of these lectures generally, but this one was difficult to get through due to the professor. The material was generally good but focused so heavily on the Greece and Rome it should have new titles to reflect that. With only brief coverage of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and only slightly more for Egypt, I was disappointed in its narrow focus.

The professor was stilted and difficult. I could see how his quips and humor may appeal to some, but I found them tedious. Additionally his constant need to comment on the value systems of these civilizations based on todays perspective on the role of different groups, for example women in society, was tedious and unnecessary. It’s not necessary to comment on the negatives of these patriarchal societies every time something comes up on the roles of sex. We get it they were misogynists and patriarchal…move on. We can accept that as problematic without the need to constantly reference it. By the 20th lectures, I could tell if he really believed it or was merely trying to demonstrate his liberal bona fides. In total, I found his narrative style amateurish and tedious.

[Dave Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book (College Lecture) I was looking for
But now that I've found it, I'm not as interested.

What is this about? It's about religion as it was believed and practiced in the B.C. years.
This doesn't just tell you what those old gods were called, but how the people prayed and practiced their faith. While this stuff might be mythology to us, it was as real to them as Jesus or Mohamed. Yes they killed and died for their beliefs.

Next off, Professor Hans-Friedrich Mueller is younger and more fun than his name sounds. He does a lot to make the material more fun, and to keep his class awake. Some of his dramatic readings of old quotes can be a little over the top but better that than a droning voice that puts you to sleep. but lets say the Old Globe Theater won't be beating his door down.

The bad news? Most of the stuff I'd really like to know... there is no historical record for. But if you're interested in the Romans there will be no end of stuff for you. This book/lecture is like pork & beans with everything else being the pork, and the Romans being the beans.
Well... The Greeks might be a baked potato.

[Christine]

This is a Great Courses Audiobook, so it is essentially a college course condensed down into a series of lectures (without having to worry about a test at the end). I love Mueller's narrative style as well as his coverage of the topics at hand. He manages to cover the history of the pagan world, mostly euro-centric since that is his focus, in a way that is both entertaining as well as informative. His style manages to allow you to feel as though you are gaining a true understanding of the circumstances surrounding ancient religions as well as the impact that Christianity and other ancient religions had on the people involved. While it would be easy to be dismissive of these ancient religions, as so many people are wont to do, Mueller handles them with respect while explaining some of the possible reasoning behind them. I really enjoyed this look into our collective ancestral beliefs. If you do not mind college lectures and are interested in how people may have thought and did worship then this is a good read for you.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like this book except that he cannot stop apologizing for the practices of ancient peoples. This is a problem for me because it is always an error for a historian to view, ancient peoples, or other peoples with their own paradigm and social customs and Morray. Constantly apologizing for a patriarchal society just doesn’t do anything except show your own bias in the present. I don’t understand why he can’t simply report these practices as they were instead of apologizing or equivocating saying that somehow we wouldn’t do these things today. This is of course accurate, but it undermines his own credibility, because if he is looking at these things in his day, through that lens, it taints what he says, and how he says it to us.
Either way, we cannot go back 2000 or 3000 years to update their practices according to our own standards and it is always misguided to attempt to do so or to attempt to criticize them for those practices in their day and age. What will people 1000 years hence think of us today?

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I picked out this audio book, I did not pay enough attention to its contents. I wanted to learn about a wide range of early pagan religions around the world, while these lectures focus on the Roman and Greek gods. Slowly, over time, I did listen to all of it.

Fortunately, it is part of the Great Courses series, so I it was easy to stop every 30 minutes, at the end of a theme, or after one of the twenty four lectures.

Overall, the topic was interesting and added to my understanding of ancient history. I did find the content helpful when I was listening to Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. Lecturer, Hans-Friedrich Mueller was a competent narrator, but some of his unique phrases were irritating after awhile.

[Gerry Grenfell-Walford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hugely informative and, dare I say it, enjoyable series of lectures which fills in many blanks. If you've a passing familiarity with Homer and Ovid, Thesiod etc...then this will be able to put much of that ritual magic and sacrifice, as well as social attitudes etc into context. The emphasis here, after briefly touching on the legacies of Egypt and India, is mainly towards the later Roman republic through to the principate. The large-scale conversion to monotheism is covered in the final lecture.
Informative, but necessarily brief given the width of the subject matter, I found this an enjoyable and accessable listen, delivered by the restrained and charming Mueller, to be finished too soon.

***** Great
**** Good
*** Fair
** Poor
* Dire

[Aditya Sundararajan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting series of lectures on the pagan religions of the years BCE. I enjoyed studying the dynamics of everyday life at the time, and how the social norms and practices we've come to dismiss as superstitious today had dictated a great length of ancient history's course. This is especially good if you're keen on the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, and are satisfied with only a few glimpses into the ancient Indian and Egyptian mythos. I'll have to add that a few such glimpses into other folk religions of the time, perhaps from the central Americas or along the eastern Pacific, would have earned another star from me.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Great Courses text is the best I have yet read for helping the reader to understand how religion functioned and why it mattered in the Ancient World. Most of the text focuses on the Graeco-Roman world, but there are also useful chapters on earlier religious practices. The importance of ancestor worship and the religious significance of legitimate bloodlines was also quite interesting as was the way that religion influenced the ways in which Julius Caesar and Augustus carried out their acquisitions of power. But mostly, Muller's text helps the reader to understand how different the world was in ancient times and why it is difficult for us to think in the ways the ancients did.

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Pagan World: Ancient Religions Before Christianity by Hans-Friedrich Mueller is a great course, well within a tradition of great courses. He has a bit of idiosyncratic flair that may or may not be everyone's cup of tea, and the title of the course might not make it clear that he's referring mostly to Paganism in the Ancient Mediterranean, but after that point I have perilously few complaints or criticisms. The course is sweeping, and a great companion to the earlier and larger Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Give it a go if you're interested in socio-cultural history or ancient religions.

[Leigh Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. I read via Audible. The author has a dry sense of humor, and I laughed several times. Sometimes kind of repetitive, but probably due to the material. Overall enjoyed, and I did listen a couple of hours every day for at least two weeks-- so, it was that good. I was somewhat disappointed, and undoubtedly showing my ignorance, that the pagans described were largely Greek and Roman (and close areas nearby). I had a more broad expectation. Nevertheless, I have no regrets and I learned a lot.

[Desiree · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a ton of good and interesting information given however I felt it wasn't really so much about the paganism about mostly classic religion. It most touched on Egyptian, Greek and Roman empires. Barely any info on Norse beliefs and nothing to say on tribalism or druids. It mostly was a lecture on classical history and the religious and political views during that time and place. It was a good lecture but not what I was wanting to learn about and seemed to be missing topics. The lecturer himself was ok but sounded more like he was reading a dissertation than doing a lecture.