An oft-heard view is that at the end of the fifth and the start of the fourth century B.C.,Athenian religion went through a crisis and lost its influence. The period was one marked by the Sophist movement, and more broadly by an intellectual peak at Athens and an outbreak of scepticism. And indeed, at the period in question deviations from the time-honoured worship of the Olympians has been observed, though faith in the Twelve Gods continued to operate.

The Eleusinian Mysteries are a case in point. Officially adopted by Athens, they attracted large numbers of people, by virtue of their philosophy. This was based on belief in life after death, and was addressed to all, whether free, slave, or metic. Initiates, for sure, went on believing in the Olympian gods. The search for a blissful life after death was specially intense during the crisis years of the Peloponnesian War. This element, via the Eleusinian Mysteries, complemented, it would seem, but did not replace, conventional religion .

There were frequent prosecutions for impiety at Athens in this period. The defendants were not only adherents of rituals deviating from the religious tradition in operation, but members of the intelligentsia - Socrates, to name but one, who was accused of introducing new gods, different from the ones the city recognized. There was, it seems, much disquiet about the 'atheistic' theories of physical science about the movement of the heavenly bodies, and about philosophers' conceptions of the nature of the divine, seen as an attempt to replace traditional religion.

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