If Socrates was condemned for Asebia and seemed to have been rather distant towards traditional Greek cult, religion profoundly shaped the writings of his pupil Plato. Ironical in his beginnings, he later on, during his intellectual maturity, wanted to reform the cult in order to adapt it to the requirements of his philosophy, andfi nally ended up as an ardent apologist of a nearly reactionary conservatism, simultaneously providing us with numerous references to what he and his contemporaries considered the essential elements necessary to the exercise of religious cult.