Paralleling the many sacrileges committed at Olympia and Delphi, and in addition to the aforementioned "common" crimes, Greece itself hosted a variety of impious acts. Since Greek religion emphasized ritual rather than belief, in most cases, the offender's acts rather than thoughts were deemed the sacrilege. Furthermore, the Athenians believed that if the culprit was not punished for his impiety, the gods would show disfavor towards all Athenian people. For this reason, theft of sacred property inevitably resulted in the offender's death (MacDowell, 176). The historian Xenophon notes that the law for temple-robbers and traitors is the same in this respect ( Hellenica, 1.7.22). Interestingly, certain olive trees were also considered sacred and belonged to the state, so taking fruit from these trees was criminal. Historians relay the account of a man delivering a speech before the Aeropagos Council after being accused of destroying even the stump of a dead olive tree (MacDowell, 135)! Furthermore, patria, or sacred traditions, were expected to be upheld in certain festivals and rituals, like funerals. If a family failed to reclaim a deceased relative's body within a certain time period, the demarch of the place in which the person died fined the family twice the burial's cost (MacDowell, 109). Other cases of impiety were less clear. Much of Athenian law was traditionally accepted, so Athenian law did not always detail specific impious acts. In Socrates' trial, therefore, his accusers had to convince the jury that Socrates' lack of faith in the patron gods, and his introduction of new deities, were indeed crimes (Martin, 14.12).

Athenians also deemed homicide a sacrilege, believing that it brought spiritual pollution, miasma, on the offender. Athenians believed that the deceased avenged their own deaths through their killers' punishments. If a culprit remained unpunished, his or her spiritual pollution could spread to innocent Athenians, and any such polluted person "was considereed likely to suffer disease, shipwreck, or other disasters sent by the gods" (MacDowell, 110). Such calamities befell Oedipus, who unknowingly slayed his own father. Sometimes, though, homicide was legal, as in the cases of husbands killing adulterers or thieves in the night. In the cases for which homicide was barred, the killer's intentions were important in determining punishment, as was his or her role in the actual act of murder (Vinogradoff, 182). Antiphon's speech Against the Stepmother, for example, reveals that a woman could be charged with intentional homicide for wanting to kill another, even if she bore no part in effecting the death itself. Homicide, though, is one of the few sacrileges in which intent factored into verdicts (MacDowell, 115-116). Perhaps Greek law rarely considered an offender's intentions because upholding the law was imperative to the developing polis' stability.

(Olive picking)
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