The concept of impiety (ἀσέβεια) in ancient Greek religion is complex. Firstly, definitions provided by ancient authors themselves point out, as potential victims of an impious act, different actors whose connections with each other do not seem a priori obvious to us, such as gods and parents. It was similarly problematic for ancient authors to define piety as well as impiety, as is obvious in Plato’s Euthyphro. Moreover, modern scholarship has mostly focused on the legal treatment of impiety and on Athenian case studies, such as Socrates and other philosophers’ alleged trials for impiety. This focus has led to two assumptions: being impious could only bring an individual to be prosecuted in a court and, since most of the impious individuals studied by scholars would be philosophers, impiety was intrinsically linked to atheism or, at least, to a problem of νομίζειν τοὺς θεούς.
I am convinced that several essential aspects of impiety have been neglected through these approaches. This...

