Impiety
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Impiety is a lack of proper concern for the obligations owed to cult; that is, to the outward practices of a belief system. Impiety was a main Pagan objection to Christianity, for unlike other initiates into mystery religions, Christians refused to cast a pinch of incense before the images of the gods, among whom were the protective deified Emperors. Impiety was a civic concern, for it could bring down upon the whole res publica the wrath of the tutelary gods who protected the polis.
Socrates and Anaxagoras were put to death for impiety, and Aristotle was also charged with impiety after the death of Alexander the Great. According to the Vita Aristotelis Marciana, a much mutilated single manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale di San Marco in Venice, which was written about 1300, Aristotle left the city, saying, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy" (Vita Aristotelis, 41). The medieval Christian compiler has rendered the Athenians' crime as a "sin". Sin, however, was an alien concept to the Greeks and Romans. When Aramaic had to be translated into Greek in editing the New Testament, the Greek word hamartia came to be used. Hamartia ("missing the mark") is only very approximately translated as "sin."
