why not daoism

Daoism is good in theory but in reality it's mixed with wacky chinese pagan stuff. Laozi and tao the king are good for sure.

eh, that's just the syncretic character, like how buddhism also blends in with local pagan stuff everywhere

it's a consequence of universalism of abrahamic religions that you don't see that much elsewhere and we in the west thus also don't know how to detach it since christianity leaves very little vernacular rites (especially once you get into reformation branches)

consider then how varro writes about how religion can be split into three different aspects, that can coexist and blend together as they deal with completely separate matters: civil theology (state cults, today the state holidays would fall into this matter though few view them as religious), natural theology (concerning the nature of the divine – here is where the philosophical stuff happens), and mythical theology (bible study happens here, also all the mystical rites)

similarly there were three types of religious participation in hellenistic religion as well: state cults (initially dedications to local city-state's patron deity, later roman imperial cult) and ethnic religion pertaining to more every day matters, with plethora of minor deities invoked; philosophical religions such as neoplatonism; and various mystery cults (e.g. eleusinian mysteries)

it's unfortunate that you don't get to see non-chinese daoism I guess, so we find it hard to disentangle that

You seem to have a flawed understanding of paganism. Maybe some neopagans do cringe things, but in Rome or Greece the pagan religion was a public thing and ethics and private matters were dealt with by philosophy. I wish we had such a system again.

No, you do. My understanding is based in actual self-records of what they did in Rome and Greece. Not in your romantic fantasies.

If my mention of "mysteries cults" bothers you so much: go read up on how the most famous cults, Eleusinian Mysteries and Dionysian Mysteries functioned. You might be surprised.

Fuck you Slovborg, get over your arrogance. Every classicist will agree with me, generally speaking.

You do understand what I said is that Greeks practiced public pagan religion and besides that some of them also participated in private mystery cults or private philosophical musings, right? It wasn't one or the other, they complemented each other. Same way as, say, how philosophical Buddhism is combined with public pagan Shinto in Japan (but there the combination is so deeply established that it's not really a mix-and-match situation anymore).

Varro's Res divinae is sadly lost (to chr*stians) but you can still find excerpts and citations in other works, e.g. Augustine's City of God (apparently the chr*stwoke-approved summary of the work in many ways)