Did ancient religions include a moral code?

[Alive_At_Both_Ends]

By “ancient religions” I mean (for example) the ancient Greek belief system, with Zeus and all the rest on Mt. Olympus. Or the Roman state religion - pretty much the same, but the gods had different names. Or the ancient Egyptian religion.

It seems to me that these religions all consisted of a number of gods with specific responsibilities (god of war, goddess of love, god of the harvest, and so on) and if you wanted, for instance, to make someone fall in love with you, you prayed, or sacrificed, to Aphrodite in the hope she’d intercede. But this seems to be all there was to it - unlike modern religions, these gods didn’t make moral rules. There was, as far as I can figure out, no Ancient Greek equivalent to the Ten Commandments. The gods were just there, and could be appealed to, but they didn’t tell people how to live their lives.

Am I right in this? Were there any moral rules attached to these old religions? Or were religion and morality considered to be two separate and unrelated things?

[Will_Repair]

The Greek Gods did not provide man with a moral code, but only a reason for the whims of his fate as they shrugged at sin.

[Revenant_Threshold]

Considering the things some of them got up to, I’d be surprised if any moral code wasn’t very different to most religions today. God were more, ahem, earthy in those days.

[Can_Handle_the_Truth]

Well, I’ve been reading Homer’s Odyssey lately and several passages seem to imply that “God-fearing” people were moral people.

“Woe is me! to what men’s land am I come now? say, are they froward, and wild, and unjust, or are they hospitable, and of God-fearing mind?”

Tell me of the people and of their fair-lying cities, of those whoso are hard and wild and unjust, and of those likewise who are hospitable and of a god-fearing mind.

Thy fame goes up to the wide heaven, as doth the fame of a blameless king, one that fears the gods and reigns among many men and mighty, maintaining right, and the black earth bears wheat and barley, and the trees are laden with fruit, and the sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all out of his good guidance, and the people prosper under him.

Ye dogs, ye said in your hearts that I should never more come home from the land of the Trojans, in that ye wasted my house, and lay with the maidservants by force, and traitorously wooed my wife while I was yet alive, and ye had no fear of the gods, that hold the wide heaven, nor of the indignation of men hereafter. But now the bands of death have been made fast upon you one and all.

[jayjay]

Several myths seem to reinforce certain moral behaviors. The story of Baucis and Philemon has a definite moral of “be hospitable to those in need”. There are MANY stories about hubris, in which those whose sense of undeserved pride made them act above others (and especially the gods) and led to their downfall (Phaeton, Arachne).

The Greek underworld was divided into various areas. In Tarterus, the titans were imprisoned, Sisyphus rolled his rock eternally, and Tantalus hungered and thirsted amid plenty. In the Elysian fields, heroes and virtuous shades enjoyed eternal afterlife in a land of gentle weather and good company. Sounds like a morality to me.