{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_71402/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_71402","id":"gutenberg_71402","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71402","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Ancient","Category: History - Religious","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Greece -- Religion"],"text":"OUTLINE-HISTORY OF\n GREEK RELIGION\n\n BY\n LEWIS RICHARD FARNELL, M.A., D.Litt.\n RECTOR OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD; GIFFORD LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF\n ST. ANDREWS; FORMERLY WILDE LECTURER IN NATURAL AND COMPARATIVE\n RELIGION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD; HIBBERT LECTURER; HON. D.\n LITT. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, AND\n UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS; AUTHOR OF \u201cCULTS OF THE GREEK\n STATES,\u201d \u201cTHE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION,\u201d \u201cHIGHER ASPECTS\n OF GREEK RELIGION,\u201d \u201cGREECE AND BABYLON\u201d\n\n\n\n\n LONDON\n DUCKWORTH & CO.\n 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN\n\n\n\n\n [IMPRINT]\n\n_First issued 1920_\n\n_New Edition 1921_\n\n\n\n\n_All rights reserved_\n\n\n\n\n CONTENTS\n\n I. The Sources and the Evidence\n II. The Prehistoric Period\n III. The Second Period, 900-500 B.C.\n IV. The Third Period, 500-338 B.C.\n V. The Period after Alexander\n Literature\n Endnotes\n\n\n\n OUTLINE-HISTORY OF\n GREEK RELIGION\n\n{7}\n\n CHAPTER I.\n THE SOURCES AND THE EVIDENCE\n\nThe foundation of a serious and scientific study of Greek religion,\nas distinct from the mere mythology of Hellas, may almost be said to\nhave been an achievement of the last generation of scholars. And it is\nonly through recent research that the Hellenic spirit, so creative and\nimperial in the domains of literature, art and science, can be\nrecognised as manifesting itself not unworthily in the sphere of\nreligion.\n\nThe history of Greek religion means, partly, the account and the\ninterpretation of the various rites, cults and cult-ideas of the\nvarious Greek families, tribes and communities; partly the estimate of\nthe religious temperament, both of the masses and of the individuals\nwho emerged from among them and of whom some record has been\npreserved.\n\nNow as the Greek world in the long period of its independence was\nnever organised as a single State, the attempt to give a summary and\ngeneral account of its religion is confronted with the perplexity\narising from the often incalculable diversity of {8} religious forms\nand ideas in the different centres of its social life, which was in\nthe highest degree centrifugal. Nevertheless, as will be shown, we\nfind in the midst of manifold local variation certain uniformity of\nreligious psychology, making for uniformity of practice, which enables\nus to deliver certain general pronouncements about the whole.\n\n_Ancient Sources: Literary_.--Our real knowledge of any ancient\nreligion depends obviously on the copiousness and variety of our\nrecords. And it is likely to be more luminous, if the society in\nquestion expressed its religious life not only in surviving\nliterature, but also in surviving art. Of both these kinds the student\nof Greek religion has an unusually rich material.\n\nFor in spite of its secular freedom, which is its salient achievement,\nGreek literature in its highest and most popular forms, as well as in\nits narrower and more special, is deeply infused or preoccupied with\nreligion and religious myth. In fact, it reflects the vivifying\npenetration of religion into all parts of Greek activity and mental\nlife. This is obviously true of the epic period, which produced the\ntwo types of the chivalrous and the theologic epic, and which has left\nus most valuable material for the religious history of the tenth and\nninth centuries in the Homeric poems, and of the eighth and seventh\ncenturies in the poems of Hesiod and in the \u2018Homeric\u2019 hymns. It is\nnone the less true of the great lyric movement that followed upon\nthat, when the greatest poets devoted themselves to the composition of\nsongs for festal-religious occasions or of hymns for the service of\ntemple or altar; and besides these whose great names and fragments of\n{9} whose great works survive, there was another less distinguished\ngroup of special \u2018hieratic\u2019 poets, such as Pamphos and Mousaios, who\ncomposed hymns for the service of certain mystery-cults, and whose\ncompositions were preserved as liturgical documents by the priestly\nfamilies that administered them.\n\nThe sententious ethical-political poetry of the sixth century, the\nelegiacs of Theognis and Solon, is instinct with religious emotion and\nreflection. And the greatest product of the poetic genius of Hellas,\nthe tragic drama, is of a religious character, both in respect of its\norigin and much of its subject-matter. Finally, the later learned\npoetry of the Ptolemaic period, the Kassandra of Lycophron, the hymns\nand other works of Kallimachos, the epic poem of Apollonios Rhodios,\nare full of antiquarian religious lore.\n\nAt the same time, our knowledge is much indebted to the great\nprose-writers of Greece, the philosophers, historians and orators;\namong the philosophers, especially to Plato, who more copiously than\nany of the others reveals to us, however much he idealises, the\nreligious psychology and cult-phenomena of his period; among the\nhistorians, especially to Herodotus, who is the intellectual ancestor\nof the modern anthropologist and student of comparative religion and\nwhose presentation of the facts is coloured with religious conviction.\nThe works of the Attic orators are of special value for our purpose,\nfirst because the classical orator was far more apt than the modern to\ndilate on religious themes and appeal to religious sentiments, as\nreligion was far more closely interfused with political and social\nlife; secondly, because we are more sure of the orator than we can be\nof the poetic or philosophic {10} writer that his words are attuned to\nthe average pitch of popular belief and sentiment.\n\nIt is true then that all the great fields of Greek literature make\ntheir several contributions to the material of our subject. And\nbesides the works of the great masters, the student has to reckon with\nthe secondary and parasitic work of the later scholiasts, compilers\nand commentators, which is even more replete with the special\ninformation upon which the history of Greek religion can be built. The\nstudy of it is, in fact, almost coextensive with the whole study of\nGreek literature.\n\nBut amidst this profusion of material we must specially mark the works\nof those ancients who wrote direct treatises on the various religious\nphenomena, on the Gods, the cult-practices, the theologic and\nmythologic systems of the Hellenic societies. The earliest of such\nworks that have come down to us are the poems of Hesiod and the\nHesiodic school, the Works and Days and the Theogony, while of parts\nof the \u2018Homeric\u2019 hymns the special theme is the attributes and\nfunctions of the various divinities. But it was not till the period of\nscientific activity after Aristotle that definite treatises in prose\non different departments of the national religion began to be rife. A\nchapter on sacrifice by Theophrastos is mainly preserved for us by\nPorphyry. The writers of \u2018Atthides\u2019 or Attic history and antiquities,\nwho belonged mainly to the third century, were special workers in this\nfield; Philochoros, the chief of them, wrote \u2018on festivals,\u2019 \u2018on\nsacred days,\u2019 \u2018on divination,\u2019 \u2018on the Attic mysteries\u2019; Istros, the\nslave and friend of Kallimachos, on the \u2018manifestations of Apollo\u2019 and\non {11} \u2018the Cretan sacrifices\u2019; while the \u2018exegetic work\u2019 of\nKleidemos was, if we may judge from the fragments that remain,\noccupied with the problems of religion and mythology. Outside this\ncircle we hear of other contributions to the history of Greek\nreligion, such as the treatises of Herakleides, probably the pupil of\nAristotle, usually called \u2018Pontikos,\u2019 on \u2018the foundations of temples,\u2019\nand \u2018on oracles\u2019; and a work by an unknown Sokrates of Kos on the\nimportant subject of \u2018Invocation-titles of the Gods.\u2019 Lastly may be\nmentioned here a treatise of Apollodoros, \u2018\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9 \u0398\u03b5\u1ff6\u03bd,\u2019 which, if he is\nto be identified with the author of the \u2018Bibliotheca,\u2019 was probably a\nlearned account of the popular religion rather than a metaphysical\nenquiry.\n\nOf nearly all this scientific post-Aristotelian literature only\nisolated fragments survive in quotations by later writers,\nlexicographers, and scholiasts, who were no doubt more deeply indebted\nto it than they always acknowledged; but it is some compensation for\nour loss that the work last mentioned, the Bibliotheca of Apollodoros,\nhas been preserved, a rich storehouse of myth and folklore with some\ninfusion of actual cult-record. Among the later literature our subject\nis indebted to the geographer, Strabo, for many incidental\nobservations of local cults and ritual; still more to the philosophic\nmoralist and _litt\u00e9rateur_, Plutarch, a man of earnest religious\ninterest and some power of original thought, who knew the religion of\nhis country at first hand and at a time when it was yet alive, and who\ndevoted to it much attention and literary industry; hence we must rank\nhigh among our ancient authorities his _Qu\u00e6stiones Gr\u00e6c\u00e6_ and his\n{12} treatises \u2018on the Pythian Oracle\u2019 and on \u2018the cessation of\noracles.\u2019 Again, much desultory but varied information is afforded by\nthe compilers Athen\u00e6us, in his _Deipnosophist\u00e6_, and Stob\u00e6us, in\nhis _Florilegium_. But of higher value than all these, or in fact than\nany work that has been bequeathed to us from antiquity, is the\n_Descriptio Gr\u00e6ci\u00e6_, by Pausanias, composed about 180 A.D.; for he\ntravelled somewhat as a modern anthropologist, relying partly on\nearlier literature, yet using his own eyes and ears and his own notes;\nand his ruling passion was the study of the folk-religion and the\nreligious monuments; so that it is due mainly to him that we know\nsomething of the village-religion of Hellas as distinct from that of\nthe great cities, and can frame working theories of the evolution\nthrough immemorial ages of various growths of the polytheism.\n\nThe lexicographers Harpokration, Hesychios and Suidas contribute facts\nof value, especially in their citation of cult-appellatives, which\nowing to the magic value of the special name or title whereby the\ndeity was invoked throw a revealing light on the significance and\npower of many a worship, and help to frame our conception of the\ncomplex character of many a divinity. Again, the various collections\nof \u2018Scholia\u2019 on the classical texts are a rich quarry for our\nreconstruction of the fabric of Hellenic religion; and of chief value\namong these are the Scholia on Homer, Pindar, \u00c6schylus, Euripides,\nAristophanes and Theocritus, while Servius\u2019 _Commentary on Vergil_\ntells us even more about Greek cult and mythology than about Roman;\nand high in this class of our authorities we must rank a work of late\nByzantine {13} learning, the _Commentary of Tzetzes_ on Lykophron\u2019s\npoem, \u2018Kassandra,\u2019 for his scholia are charged with remote antiquarian\nlore derived from good sources.\n\nFinally, we gather much of our knowledge from the controversial\ntreatises of the early Christian Fathers, written with propagandist\nzeal in the heat of their struggle against Paganism. They reveal to us\nmuch of the religion that they strove to overthrow by the exposure of\nits viciousness and its absurdities. But their statements must be used\nwith cautious criticism. Their knowledge was by no means always at\nfirst hand, unless--which we rarely know to have been the case--they\nwere, like Clemens of Alexandria, converted Pagans who had been bred\nup in the Gr\u00e6co-Roman polytheism. Their statements, for instance,\nabout the Greek mysteries are often vague and unconvincing, while in\ntheir desire to include them all in one general condemnation they\nconfuse Anatolian rites with Eleusinian. And they are pardonably blind\nto the often beautiful ritual, the nobler ideas and the higher moral\nelements in the older Mediterranean religions. Nevertheless, if we\nmake due allowance for prejudice and exaggeration, works such as the\n_Protreptica_ of Clemens, the treatise of Arnobius, _Adversus Gentes_,\nof Firmicus Maternus, _De Errore Profanarum Gentium_, Eusebius\u2019\n_Pr\u00e6paratio Evangelica_, Augustine\u2019s _De Civitate Dei_, Athenagoras\u2019\n_Legatio_, must be ranked among the primary sources of our history.\n\nA special but very important chapter in the later history of Greek\nreligion is the account of the growth and diffusion of the religious\nbrotherhoods, especially the Orphic Dionysiac societies. For these we\nhave something of direct liturgical evidence in the {14} collection of\nOrphic hymns, mainly the products of the later theosophic period, but\nthrowing light on the theology and ritual of these sects. But our\nknowledge of this mystic religion which was engrafted upon Hellenism\nhas been in recent times enriched by the priceless discovery of an\nancient poetical Orphic liturgy engraved upon gold-leaf found in tombs\nof Crete and South Italy and probably a product of the fifth century\nB.C.\n\n_Monumental_.--The above is a sketch of our more important literary\nsources. The knowledge to be derived from them would, on the whole and\nin many important details, remain vague and uncertain, were it not\nsupplemented and secured by the evidence coming from another source\nwhich we may term semi-literary, the evidence from inscriptions. These\nhave been accumulated in vast profusion during the last thirty years,\nand have been, and are still being, reduced to order for our special\npurpose. The public inscriptions, being dry state-documents, do not\nreveal to us the heart of any mystery or the religious soul of the\npeople, but rather the State-organisation and the exact minuti\u00e6 of\nritual and sacrifice from which we can sometimes reconstruct an image\nof the inward religious thought. And many a local cult of value for\nour total impression that was unrecorded by any writer is revealed to\nus by these monuments. But the needs and aspirations of the private\nman are better attested by the private inscriptions attached to\nex-voto dedications or commemorating divine benefits received.\n\nYet amidst all this wealth of evidence there seems one thing lacking.\nOf actual temple-liturgies, of formal prayers proffered round the\naltars, of the {15} hymns chanted in the public service, of all that\nmight constitute a text of Greek church-service there is comparatively\nlittle preserved. One or two hymns and a few fragments of the\nreligious lyric of the seventh century--to which we may now add the\nimportant recent find of the p\u00e6ans of Pindar--a strophe of an ancient\nhymn to Dionysos sung by the Elean women, a fourth-century p\u00e6an to\nDionysos composed for the Delphic service, the newly discovered hymn\nof the Kouretes in Crete, a few formul\u00e6 of prayers quoted or\nparaphrased by later writers--all this appears meagre material when we\ncompare it with the profusion of documents of the public and private\nreligion that are streaming in from Babylon.\n\nBut in respect of another source of the history of religion, our Greek\nmaterial is unique, namely, the monuments of art. For the greatest art\nof Hellas was mainly religious, the greatest artists working for the\nreligious service of the State. And the surviving works of sculpture,\npainting and glyptic, wrought either for public or private purposes,\npresent us often not only with facts of religion and ritual unrecorded\nin literature, but also with an impression hard to gain otherwise of\nthe religious consciousness of the people and serve also as witnesses\nto the strength of the religious feeling. For instance, the knowledge\nand appreciation of Athena\u2019s personality that we derive from Attic\nmonuments is deeper and more vivid than any that we gain from the\nliterature. Therefore the study of Greek religion is concerned as much\nwith the art and arch\u00e6ology as with the literature.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER II.\n THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD\n\n{16}\n\nA summary sketch of so manifold a theme as that with which this\nshort handbook deals will be of more value if it can present the facts\nin some kind of chronologic sequence.\n\nWe may conveniently distinguish four periods: the first, the\nprehistoric, falling mainly in the second millennium B.C. and closing\nwith the epoch marked by the Homeric poems; the second, extending from\n900 to 500 B.C., beginning with the colonial expansion of Hellas and\nending before the Persian invasion; the third, from 500 to 338 B.C.,\nincluding the greatest century of Greek history and closing with the\nbattle of Ch\u00e6ronea and the establishment of Macedonian supremacy; the\nfourth and last, the Hellenistic and Gr\u00e6co-Roman period.\n\nThe chronologic statement is embarrassed by the absence of any record\nof date for the institution and diffusion of most of the cults and for\nthe growth of certain religious ideas; nor can we safely date a\nreligious fact by the date of the author who first mentions it; a\ndetail of ritual, a myth, a religious concept, only attested by\nPausanias or a late scholiast, may descend from an age centuries\nbefore the Homeric. And our earliest inscriptions do not {17} as yet\nreach back to a period earlier than the beginning of the seventh\ncentury.\n\nFor determining our view of Greek religion in the second millennium\nB.C., when Hellenism was in the making, the poems of Homer and Hesiod\nare of priceless value if they are used with cautious and trained\ncriticism. We depend greatly also on the general inductions of\ncomparative religion and anthropology, which may sometimes guide us\nrightly in this matter, especially if the anthropological comparison\nis drawn from more or less adjacent communities rather than from the\nAntipodes. We depend also on the evidence of the monuments of the\nMinoan-Mycen\u00e6an religion, revealing glimpses of the practices and\nfaith of a people of high culture, whom no one would dare now to call,\nat least in the earlier stage of their life, Hellenic, but from whom\nthe earliest Hellenes doubtless adopted much into their own religion.\n\n_Sketch of Homeric religion_.--The poems of Homer present us with an\nadvanced polytheism, a system in which the divinities are already\ncorrelated in some sort of hierarchy and organised as a divine family\nunder a supreme God. These divine beings are not mere \u2018daimones\u2019 or\n\u2018numina,\u2019 such as were in the main the old deities of Rome, vague and\ndimly outlined forces animate yet scarcely personal; but rather\nconcrete and individual \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03af of robust and sharply defined\npersonality, not spirits but immortal beings of superhuman substance\nand soul, conceived in the glorified image of man. The anthropomorphic\nbias is dominant in the poems, plastically shaping the figures of all\nthe divinities, except occasionally some of the lower grade, such as\n{18} the river-god Skamandros. Even the vague group of nymphs, female\n\u2018daimones\u2019 of the rill and the mountain, while lacking individual\ncharacterisation, bear the anthropomorphic name, \u2018Brides,\u2019 or \u2018young\nwomen,\u2019 which is the root-meaning of \u039d\u03cd\u03bc\u03c6\u03b7. Though the gods and\ngoddesses are shape-shifters and may manifest or disguise themselves\nin the form of any animal--birds by choice--yet their abiding type is\nhuman; nor has Homer any clear remembrance of a \u2018cow-faced\u2019 Hera,\nstill less of an \u2018owl-faced\u2019 Athena, since for him at least \u2018Hera\n\u03b2\u03bf\u1ff6\u03c0\u03b9\u03c2\u2019 was Hera \u2018of the large ox-eyes\u2019--the term is a complimentary\nepithet of women--and Athena \u03b3\u03bb\u03b1\u03c5\u03ba\u1ff6\u03c0\u03b9\u03c2, the goddess \u2018of the flashing\neyes.\u2019 Also his divinities are moralised beings with human passions\nand ethical as well as artistic emotions. The highest among them are\nnot imagined as Nature-powers, bound up with or immanent in the forces\nand departments of the natural world, for such a description applies\nonly to his wind-Gods and nymphs and gods of river and sea; also,\nthough more loosely, to his Helios, the God of the Sun; to beings in\nfact that count little in his religious world. It scarcely applies to\nPoseidon, for though his province is the sea, and some of his\nfunctions and appellatives \u2018the girdler of the earth,\u2019 \u2018the\nearth-shaker,\u2019 \u2018he of the dark blue locks\u2019 are derived from it, he is\nalso the builder of the walls of Troy, the family deity of the house\nof Nestor, and the God of horses. It does not describe at all his mode\nof imagining and presenting Apollo, Hera, Athena, Hermes and others.\nThere is no hint that these divinities were conceived by him as\nnature-powers or as evolved from any part of the natural world. {19}\nThe High God, Zeus, though specially responsible for the atmospheric\nand celestial phenomena, is not identified with the thunder or even\nwith the sky, though a few phrases may reveal the influence of an\nearlier animistic conception of the divine sky. His religious world,\nin short, is morphologically neither a system of polydaimonism nor one\nof pantheism in which a divine force is regarded as universally\nimmanent in the world of things; but is constructed on the lines of\npersonal theism.\n\nWe may observe also that the polytheism of the age of Perikles in\nregard to some of its leading divinities has not markedly advanced\nbeyond the Homeric. Athena, in the Homeric poems, is already the\nGoddess of war, arts, and counsel; and there are already hints in the\nHomeric presentation of her of the tender Madonna-like character that\nis beautifully developed in the later Attic monuments. The Homeric\nApollo is already the oracular God who delights in the music of the\nP\u00e6an, though his artistic and intellectual character is not yet fully\ndeveloped. Of Hermes and Hephaistos the later Attic conception is not\nnotably different from the Homeric.\n\nAgain, in spite of one or two frivolous and licentious passages, the\nreligious tone in the Homeric poems is serious and in many important\nrespects accords with an advanced morality. The deity, though jealous\nand revengeful of wrongs or slights to himself, is on the whole on the\nside of righteousness and mercy; his displeasure is aroused by those\nwho spurn the voice of prayer, who injure the suppliant, the guest, or\neven the beggar; and besides Zeus and the other \u2018Olympians,\u2019 who are\n{20} general guardians of the right, there loom the dark powers of the\nlower world, who are specially concerned with the sanctity of the\noath. Much also of the religious reflection in the poems strikes us as\nmature and advanced: notably that passage at the beginning of the\nOdyssey where Zeus declares that it is not the Gods who bring evil to\nmen, but that it is the wickedness of their own hearts that is the\ncause of all their evils.\n\nFinally, the Homeric ritual appears as on the higher level of theism.\nWe can detect it in no trace of savagery and but little contamination\nof the religion with magic. The sacrifice is more than a mere bribe;\nit is a friendly communion with the divinity; and the service is\nsolemn and beautiful with hymn and dance. The cult is furnished with\naltar and sometimes with temple and a priesthood, but not yet, as a\nrule, with the idol, though this is beginning to appear.\n\nThis slight sketch of Homeric theology is presented here in the belief\nthat the Homeric poems enable us to catch some glimmer of the religion\nof the centuries preceding the first millennium. This belief is based\non the conviction that the poems represent a Greek society existing\nnear the date of 1000 B.C. It is of course opposed to the view still\nmaintained by some scholars that they are, in their finished form, a\nproduct of a much later period, and that the religion which they\nenshrine may be such as was in vogue in Attica about the epoch of\nPeisistratos. But certain arguments drawn from ethnology and sociology\nare fatal to this theory, and still more so are the arguments that may\nbe drawn from the history of Greek religion; for at the period of\nPeisistratos certain {21} religious forces were rife, and certain\nreligious phenomena prominent, of which Homer is entirely silent.\n\nStill less reasonable is it to imagine that Homer constructs a\nreligious world out of his own brain. We must suppose that he reflects\nsomething real and contemporary. Only we must guard ourselves from the\nserious error of supposing that he reflects the whole. Much is\ndoubtless missing in his account which we may be able to supply from\nHesiod and other sources by means of reasonable hypotheses.\n\nThe assumption is, then, that the Homeric poems present us with a\npart-picture of the religion that prevailed among some of the leading\nGreek communities before the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese and\nthe Ionic colonisation of Asia Minor.\n\n_Pre-Homeric period of religion_.--Now when we consider how slow of\ngrowth and enduring are the forms and the moral and metaphysical\nconcepts of religion we have the right to believe that part of what\nHomer records on these matters is the inherited tradition of an age\nsome centuries earlier than his own. It is probable that those\nearliest Aryan immigrants from the north, Ach\u00e6ans, Dryopes, Minyai\nand others--who by mingling with peoples of aboriginal Mediterranean\nstock and of the Minoan-Mycen\u00e6an culture constituted the happy blend\nthat we call the Hellenic race--had already arrived at the stage of\npersonal theism; and that Hellenic religion proper does not start with\na \u2018godless period\u2019[21.1] when the unseen powers were only dimly\noutlined in the vaguer and more fleeting characters of what is {22}\ncalled animism. We now know from the valuable discovery of a cuneiform\ninscription that the Iranian people had evolved such personal deities\nas Mitra and Varuna before 1400 B.C.[22.1] And we have the right to\nsuppose that their western kinsfolk, who were forcing their way\nthrough the Balkans, probably only a century earlier, were at least at\nthe same level of religious imagination. We can best understand the\npicture of the religious world of Homer and also the later\ncult-records, if we believe that the kindred tribes coming from the\nnorth brought in certain personal deities, some of whom were common to\nmore than one stock, and one at least may have been common to them\nall. This would best explain the supremacy of Zeus, the Sky-God, the\ndiffusion of his name Olympios, derived from the mountain that\ndominates the northern frontier, near to which the people that were to\nlead the history of Greece had at one time temporary settlements and\nwhich they regarded as the throne of their high God. The wide\ngeographical area of his cult cannot be naturally explained on the\nassumption that at any period in Hellenic history he had been merely\nthe special deity of one particular tribe. Also as regards two other\nhigh Gods at least, Apollo and Poseidon, we may be reasonably sure\nthat already in the pre-Homeric period certain tribes other than the\nAch\u00e6ans had these cult-figures. In the Hyperborean ritual, which\nreflects at points the earliest days of Hellenism, we can follow the\ntrack of Apollo\u2019s invasion from the north; and the evidence is fairly\nclear that {23} Poseidon was equally a northern immigrant, being the\nspecial tribal deity of the Minyai.\n\nWe must not then apply to the pre-Homeric period of Greek religion the\nformula, \u2018one tribe one God,\u2019 but must imagine that religion had\nalready surmounted in some degree the tribal barriers; for though the\nspirit of tribal exclusiveness was strong throughout the earlier\nperiods of this polytheism, certain families and certain tribes having\nthe special prerogative of certain \u1f31\u03b5\u03c1\u03ac and jealously excluding\nstrangers, yet the fact of the common possession of certain worships\nby various tribes contained the germ of religious expansiveness.\n\nMoreover, at some age indefinitely earlier than the Homeric, the\nconception of the high God had expanded both cosmically and ethically.\nZeus had become more than a \u2018departmental God\u2019; the deity of the sky\nwas also in the first period--so far as we can reconstruct it--Zeus\n\u2018Chthonios,\u2019 the Lord of the life of earth and of the world under the\nearth, and it is likely that Hades was only an emanation from him.\nAlso, we may regard the Homeric appellation of Zeus, \u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u1f74\u03c1 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c4\u03b5\n\u0398\u03b5\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c4\u03b5, as a conventional and crystallised phrase descending from an\nolder poetic tradition. And we are justified in interpreting it as a\nphrase belonging to the higher plane of theism.[23.1]\n\nWe must also suppose that the anthropomorphic view of the personal\ndeity, of which Homer is so attractive a spokesman, had asserted\nitself in the period before his. Unlike the early Roman, the early\nHellenic divinities could be regarded as married, and ideas derived\nfrom the life of the {24} family could be applied to them; although we\ncan often discern that many of the myths concerning divine\nrelationships--the sisterhood of Artemis to Apollo, for instance--do\nnot belong to the earliest Hellenic epoch.\n\n_Minoan-Mycen\u00e6an religion_.--But any account of the Hellenic\npolytheism of the second millennium demands a critical study of the\nMinoan-Mycen\u00e6an religion as well, and before we can decide what part\nof the Homeric and later systems belongs to the aboriginal\nAryan-Hellenic tradition, we must know what the northerners found\nindigenous in the lands that they conquered or occupied. We know now\nthat they found in many centres a culture superior to their own and a\nreligion of an advanced theistic type with elaborate, though mainly\naniconic, ritual, devoted pre-eminently to a Great Goddess, by whose\nside a God was only the subordinate partner. It has been pointed\nout[24.1] that where we find in historic Greece the Goddess-cult\npredominant, and especially the prevalence of a virgin-goddess, we\nshould recognise the Minoan-Mycen\u00e6an tradition in antagonism to the\n\u2018Aryan,\u2019 the latter invariably maintaining the predominance of the\nGod. We may therefore believe the cults of Artemis in Arcadia and\nAttica, of Athena in Attica, the cult--though not the name--of Hera in\nArgos[24.2] and Samos, to have been inherited from the former rather\nthan to have been brought in by the latter. And sometimes linguistic\nscience will be able to assign the different personalities of the\npolytheism to its different {25} ethnic strains, by determining the\ngroup of languages to which the divine name in question belongs. Those\nthat can be explained with certainty or probability as of \u2018Aryan\u2019 or\nIndo-Germanic and may therefore be presumed to have penetrated Greece\nfrom the north, are Zeus, Hera, Ares, Demeter, Hestia, Dionysos,\nprobably Poseidon and Apollo. On the other hand, \u2018Athena,\u2019 \u2018Artemis,\u2019\n\u2018Aphrodite,\u2019 \u2018Hephaistos\u2019 defy explanation on these lines, and\nprobably belong to a primitive \u00c6gean language. We may be doubtful\nabout \u2018Hermes,\u2019 though elsewhere I have argued for his \u2018non-Hellenic\u2019\norigin. That philology has not yet brought us nearer to the solution\nof many of these problems is due to the lacun\u00e6 in our knowledge of\nthe pre-Hellenic Mediterranean languages, and especially to our\nignorance of the Minoan script for which we have masses of material\nbut as yet no interpreter. Finally, the evidence of the early\ngeographical area of a certain cult may sometimes be decisive in\nitself; this is the case in regard to the cults of the \u2018Mother of the\nGods\u2019 and of Aphrodite, who are aboriginally connected with Crete and\nCyprus respectively, that is, with the centres of the Minoan culture.\n\nWe assume then that the polytheism of the Greece of history was a\nblend of Northern and Mediterranean elements; and the poems of Homer\nmay reveal a reflection of the early Ach\u00e6an period when the fusion\nwas not yet fully accomplished. Thus we find there that Athena,\nHephaistos, Hermes and the Goddess of Argos had been already\n\u2018Ach\u00e6anised or Hellenised,\u2019 and are warm champions of the Hellenic\ncause; while Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, though genealogically linked to\nthe Olympian family, are {26} equally warm on the side of Troy and are\ntreated by the poet with irreverence and even contumely. The position\nof Apollo is different. There are overpowering reasons for regarding\nhim as of northern origin, a genuinely Ach\u00e6an deity, and the Ach\u00e6an\npoet treats him with deep respect. And we can only explain his\npro-Trojan sympathies by the assumption that when the poems were\ncomposed his cult had become dominant on the Trojan shore, which he\nwas therefore supposed to guard.\n\nBut the ethnic decision is at present impossible on a vast number of\ndetails in this composite polytheism, in respect both of ritual and of\nthe divine personalities; and the student of Hellenic religion must\noften abandon temporarily the quest of origins in his investigation of\nthe composite whole.\n\n_Proto-Hellenic period_.--The very high development of this\nMediterranean civilisation from which Hellenism drew so much of its\nown life is in itself sufficient reason for the belief that the\nadvanced picture that Homer presents of his contemporary polytheism\naffords us a true estimate of the progress that had been achieved in\nthe centuries before him. And this is corroborated by a careful\nanalysis of the later cult-records.\n\n_Family religion_.--Society in the latter half of the second\nmillennium had already reached the higher agricultural stage and had\nevolved the monogamic family. Demeter--whose Aryan descent is proved\nby her name--was generally recognised by the various Hellenic tribes\nas the Earth-Goddess of corn, and the very ancient festival of the\nThesmophoria was commonly associated with her. Certain forms of the\nreligion of the family, which was the life-source {27} of much of the\nprivate ethics of later Greece, can be traced back to the earliest\nperiod; the worship, for instance, of Zeus \u1f19\u03c1\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2, the God of the\ngarth, around whose altar in the courtyard of the old Aryan house the\nkinsmen gathered for worship. Another sacred centre of the family life\nin the pre-Homeric Society was doubtless the hearth and the\nhearth-stone in the middle of the hall; there are allusions to its\nsanctity in the Homeric poems, and the cult-records attest the great\nantiquity of this religious fact; although the development of the\npersonal goddess Hestia is a later phenomenon.\n\nAgain, the wider kinship-groups of the \u03c6\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03c1\u03af\u03b1\u03b9 and \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03b7 are obviously\npre-Homeric, and doubtless these had been consecrated by aboriginal\nreligion, though we cannot date precisely the emergence of such\ncult-forms as Zeus \u03a6\u03c1\u03ac\u03c4\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 and Athena \u03a6\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03c1\u03af\u03b1, the deities who were\nspecially concerned with the constitution and rights of the\nkindred-group.\n\n_Political religion_.--Further, it is fairly clear that already in\nthis first stage the religion had become closely interfused with the\nhigher political and social life. Although the greater part of the\npopulation lived still under the tribal system in scattered\nvillages--\u03ba\u03c9\u03bc\u03b7\u03b4\u03cc\u03bd--yet the \u2018polis\u2019 had already arisen; and in certain\ncases we may surmise for it a religious origin, where its name is\nderived from the personal name or the shrine of some divinity.\nExamples are \u2018Athenai,\u2019 Alalkomenai, Potniai, perhaps Megara. In these\ncases the temple must have been the nucleus around which grew up the\nsecular habitations; and the deity of the temple would become supreme\nin the political religion. {28} Athena had won this position at Athens\nand probably elsewhere in the immemorial pre-Homeric past; and this\nexplains her character in the Homeric poem as the divinity who more\nthan all others inspires political wisdom and counsel. Various\nindications point in fact to the belief that the earliest development\nof the city life was closely bound up with the cults of Zeus and\nAthena; for no other divinity was ever styled Polieus or Polias by any\nGreek State; and this agrees mainly with the presentation of them in\nthe Homeric poems. The unanimity of the tradition points back to the\nsecond millennium, as the period when this political characterisation\nof the two deities was determined. And this view is strikingly\nconfirmed by the records concerning the ritual and the establishment\nof the cult of Zeus \u2018Polieus\u2019 on the Athenian Akropolis, an\ninstitution attributed to Kekrops and marking probably the\nHellenisation of Attica; the singular features of the ritual and the\nassociation preserved in its legend of Attica with Crete indicate a\nhigh antiquity, when agriculture was the economic basis of the\npolitical as well as the religious life.\n\nWe may believe that other cults besides the two just mentioned played\ntheir part in the political growth of the pre-Homeric world. The\nmarketplace, the cradle of political oratory, had become sacred\nground, as Homer himself attests; and this consecration was probably\nmarked by the presence of some \u2018agalma,\u2019 a sacred stone of Hermes, for\ninstance. Apollo, also, had early divested himself of the aboriginal\ncharacter of the god of the wood and of the homeless migratory host,\nhad become a builder of cities, and had established himself in the\n{29} city\u2019s streets with a change in the meaning of his title,\n\u0391\u03b3\u03c5\u03b9\u03b5\u03cd\u03c2, once an appellative of the Way-God who guided the host\nthrough the wild, now of the deity who guarded the ways of the city.\nAnd already, before Homer, his shrine at Pytho was beginning to\nacquire wealth and political importance as an oracular centre of\nconsultation.\n\n_Ethical religion_.--The theistic system had been turned to good\naccount in other directions than the political before it appeared on\nthe canvas of Homer. The whole morality of early social life had been\nnurtured and protected by it; for we may maintain that the ethical\nreligious spirit of Homer--unless we regard him as a man or as a group\nof men to whom a special revelation had been made--must reflect in\nsome degree a tradition that had grown up in the centuries before him.\nWe see then that current conceptions about the Gods had ceased to be\ninspired merely by fear; a milder sentiment had come to tinge\nreligious thought; the Deity was regarded not only as a righteous God\nof vengeance, but as loving mercy and compassion and as a defender of\nthe weak and destitute. Only once, and only in regard to the wild\nsea-god Poseidon, does a Homeric phrase suggest that the deity might\nhave been regarded as in his own nature malevolent.[29.1] The cult of\nZeus \u039e\u03b5\u03af\u03bd\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2, the guardian of the stranger and the wanderer, had\nalready arisen. And the sanctity of the oath taken in the name of the\ndeities of the upper and the lower world was the basis of much private\nand communal morality.\n\n_Art an aspect of religion_.--And other parts of the higher activity\nof man had been consecrated by the {30} polytheism of which Homer\ninherits and develops the tradition. The earliest imagination of the\nHellenes appears to have perceived a daimoniac potency--a \u2018numen\u2019 as\nwe may say--in the arts of song and music; and this had sometimes\ncrystallised into the personal forms of divinities, into such\ninteresting embodiments as the Muses or the Charites, who must have\nbelonged to the pre-Homeric popular theism. The latter group had grown\nup at the B\u0153otian Orchomenos, an old centre of the Minoan-Mycen\u00e6an\nculture. It may be that at one time they had no other than the purely\nphysical significance of vegetation-powers; but we only understand\ntheir value for Homer if we suppose that before his time they had come\nto be associated with the arts and the delight of human life. We\ndiscern also that the higher deities, Apollo and Athena, though by no\nmeans merely \u2018functional\u2019 or departmental powers, had acquired the\nspecial patronage of song and art. It seems, then, that in the\nearliest as in the later periods of their history the religion of the\nHellenes idealised that sphere of human activity in which the Hellenic\nspirit was to achieve its highest, the sphere of art, and among higher\nand lower religions it was unique in this.\n\n_Proto-Hellenic ritual_.--It seems, then, that even in the earliest\nperiod the polytheism was no longer on the most primitive plane. And\nwe gather the same impression from what is revealed to us of the\nearliest forms of Greek ritual. The Homeric and Hesiodic poems are\nfull of information concerning the liturgy or cult-service with which\nthe poets were familiar; what they tell us avails first of all for the\nperiod of the eleventh to the eighth century. But {31} ritual takes\nlong to develop, and once fixed is the most abiding element in\nreligion. It is not too bold, then, to take the Homeric account as\nvouching for a tradition that goes back at least to the later\ncenturies of the second millennium.\n\nThe sacred place of worship might be a natural cave, or a \u2018temenos,\u2019 a\nfenced clearing in a grove, containing as the \u1f04\u03b3\u03b1\u03bb\u03bc\u03b1 of the deity a\ntree-trunk or holy pillar or heap of stones, whence gradually an\nartificial altar might be evolved; the latter had become, some time\nbefore Homer, the usual receptacle of sacrifice and was a prominent\nfigure in the Minoan-Mycen\u00e6an religion, which usually associated it\nwith a sacred tree or pillar, the token of the deity\u2019s presence or a\nmagnet for attracting it, but not with any iconic statue or idol.\nPersonal religion could content itself with such equipment, but, if\nthe anthropomorphic instinct is strong in it, it prompts the\nconstruction of the temple or the house of God. And temples must have\nbeen found in the land in the pre-Homeric period; the few that have as\nyet been revealed in the area of Minoan-Mycen\u00e6an culture were built,\nwith one exception,[31.1] within the royal palaces, and must be\nregarded as domestic chapels of the king, marking his sacred character\nas head of the religion of the State, the character with which the\nlegends invest King Minos and King Aiakos. The earliest that have been\nexcavated on free sites are the temples of Hera at Argos and Olympia,\nand these are now dated not earlier than the ninth century B.C. But\nthe traditions of the earliest temple at Delphi, and of that of Athena\non the {32} Athenian Acropolis, suggest a greater antiquity than this.\n\nWith the multiplication of temples special priesthoods must also have\nmultiplied. But the professional priest had already arisen in\npre-Homeric times; Homer knows of the brotherhood called the\nSelloi,[32.1] who tended the oracular oak of Zeus at Dodona, \u201cwho\nslept on the ground and never washed their feet,\u201d and he mentions\nothers who were attached to special deities, and two of these at least\nadministered cults without a temple, the priest of Zeus of Mount\nIda,[32.2] and the priest of the river Skamandros,[32.3] of each of\nwhom he says, \u201che was honoured like a god among the people.\u201d These\nwords suggest a high and sacrosanct position; yet these two priests\nare also warriors fighting in the ranks, which is the mark of a\nsecular priesthood; and there is no legend nor any hint of evidence\nsuggesting that a professional priesthood enjoyed a political and\nsocial power in the prehistoric that we know was never achieved by\nthem in the historic period of Greece. For the evolution of many of\nthe earliest Hellenic institutions evidence is almost wholly lacking.\nBut on general comparative grounds we can surmise that the religious\ncharacter of the monarchy was most prominent in the earliest times and\nthat as its secular power and functions developed, the priest-expert\nwas attached to him to assist in the national cults, over which the\nBasileus retained a general supervision. We have scarcely a hint,\neither in the earliest or later days of Greece, of any conflict\nbetween Church and State; we know that, at least, historic Greece\nescaped sacerdotalism; {33} and its earliest societies, whatever their\ndanger or their struggles may have been, had escaped it by the days of\nHomer.[33.1] Bearing on this point is the other negative fact, that\nfor this earliest age we have little or no evidence of the prevalence\nof what is called \u2018Shamanism,\u2019 divine seizures, ecstatic outbursts of\nwild prophesying, by which a society can be terrified and captured.\nThe professional \u2018Mantis,\u2019 the prophet or soothsayer, existed as\ndistinct from the priest; but his methods generally--so far as our\nearliest witness informs us--were cool and quasi-scientific.[33.2]\n\nThe ritual at the altar in the early period with which we are at\npresent dealing consisted of an oblation to the deity of an animal\nvictim or an offering of fruits and cereals; the sacrifice might be\naccompanied with wine or might be wineless, a \u2018sober\u2019 sacrifice which\nwas called \u03bd\u03b7\u03c6\u03ac\u03bb\u03b9\u03b1, the latter being perhaps the more ancient\ntradition. We may interpret the earliest form of Hellenic\nanimal-sacrifice as in some sense a simple tribal or family\ncommunion-meal with the deity, whereby the sense of comradeship and\nclan-feeling between man and God was strengthened and nourished. This\nis the view that Homer has inherited, and it endures throughout the\nlater history of the ritual; and it expresses the general genial\ntemper of Hellenic religion, a trait which Robertson Smith marked as\ncharacteristic of other religions of the same social type.[33.3]\nSimilarly the description given us by Theophrastos and Pausanias of\nthe ancient ritual of Zeus {34} Polieus on the Athenian Akropolis\nreveals to us a typical example of the civic communion feast.[34.1]\nSuch a sacrifice is merely a transference into the divine circle of\nthe practice of the common feast of the tribesmen. But we can also\ndiscern a mystic element in the Homeric ritual text, which is\nevidently based on a tradition indefinitely older than the poems; the\nsacrificial victim, usually the ox, is first consecrated by being\ntouched with the barley-stalks, which had been placed on the altar and\nwhich fill him by their contact with the altar\u2019s divine spirit: then\nwhen he has been immolated and cut up, the sacrificers are specially\nsaid \u201cto taste the entrails\u201d[34.2] invariably before the real sacred\nmeal begins; as the entrails are the inner seat of the life which has\nbeen consecrated by the hallowing contact of the altar, we are\njustified in supposing that the object of this solemn act was to\nestablish the real and corporeal communion of the worshipper with the\ndivinity.[34.2]\n\n_Chthonian worship_.--The important distinction which is well attested\nof the later ages between the \u2018chthonian\u2019 and the \u2018Olympian\u2019\nritual--to use these two conventional terms for convenience--may\nalready have been in vogue in the earliest period of the polytheism.\nIn the first type of sacrifice, where the offering was made to the\nnether divinities, the victim\u2019s head was held down above a hole in the\nground--a \u03b2\u03cc\u03b8\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2--and the blood from the severed throat was shed into\nit. In the second, where the upper powers, whose region was the air or\n{35} the sky, were the recipients, the victim was held up erect off\nthe ground, his face lifted towards the sky, and in this attitude his\nthroat was cut. Homer shows himself aware of this form of sacrifice;\nand that the other, the chthonian, was also in vogue in his time is to\nbe inferred from his account of the ritual performed by Odysseus in\nhonour of the shades, where he mentions the \u03b2\u03cc\u03b8\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2, the sacrifice of\nblack sheep, with their heads turned downwards towards the lower\nworld, and the triple libation of honey, wine and water.[35.1] For\nthe ritual of the dead in the Greek religious tradition was closely\nmodelled on the service of the nether divinities. The triple libation\nis known to have been part of Minoan-Cretan cult, as the altar table\nfound in the cave of Mount Dikte attests.[35.2] And a shrine with a\n\u03b2\u03cc\u03b8\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 in the middle of the cella has been found at Prini\u00e1 in Crete,\nconsecrated to a chthonian goddess, of which the foundation is\nascribed to the ninth century.[35.3]\n\nFrom these indications and from the prevalence of chthonian cults\nattested by later records, in which we can discern features of great\nantiquity, we can gather that the earliest period of Greek religion\nwas not wholly characterised by the brightness of ritual and the\ngeniality of religious feeling that appear on the surface of Homeric\npoetry. The Homeric sacrifice was often accompanied by a sense of\nsin,[35.4] though the poet shows no cognisance of any peculiar ritual\nof a specially piacular type. Also he was aware of the dark world of\npowers who avenged {36} the broken oath and punished sinners even\nafter death. Long before his time, we may suppose, gloomy worship,\nsuch as that of the \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1f76 \u039c\u03b5\u03b9\u03bb\u03af\u03c7\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9 described by Pausanias at Myonia in\nLokris,[36.1] of which the rites were performed by night, was in\nvogue in parts of Greece. Mother-Earth, prophesying through\nphantom-dreams, had held rule at Delphi before Apollo came, and that\nwas long before Homer\u2019s work began.[36.2]\n\nThere are strong reasons also for believing that the cult of\nhero-ancestors was already a part of the pre-Homeric religion, as it\nwas a prominent part of the post-Homeric. The elaborate tendance of\nthe dead attested of the Mycen\u00e6an period by the graves discovered at\nTiryns and Mycen\u00e6, could easily develop into actual worship if it was\nmaintained through many generations, as it was at Menidi in Attica.\nDoubtless, the common and promiscuous worship of the dead was a morbid\ndevelopment of the later polytheism. But Homer, who is generally\nsilent about such cults, and in a well-known passage about the\nTwin-Brethren[36.3] seems to ignore deliberately their divine or\nsemi-divine character, almost reveals his knowledge of the worship of\nHerakles,[36.4] and certainly was aware of the Attic cult of\nErechtheus, unless the passage that refers to it was the work of the\ninterpolator.[36.5]\n\nIt is a difficult question how we are to estimate and how far we can\ntrust the Homeric evidence on this important point of religion. Even\nif we trust it so far as to say that the Ach\u00e6ans at least practised\n{37} no real worship of the dead, it yet remains probable that they\nfound it existing here and there in the lands in which they settled.\n\nIt is important to emphasise this gloomier side of Greek religion; but\nit is detrimental to exaggerate it, as has been the tendency of some\nmodern writers in a pardonable revolt from the old shallow theories of\northodox classicism. We ought to recognise that at no period of his\nhistory was the ordinary Hellene ghost-ridden, worried and dismayed by\ndemoniac terrors, or by morbid anxiety about the other world or his\ndestiny after death; at least he will not appear so, when we compare\nhis religious and mythologic records with those of Babylon, Egypt, and\nChristendom.[37.1] Nor dare we affirm that the prehistoric Hellene\nwas weaker-minded and more timorous in respect of such matters than\nthe later. He may even have been stronger-minded, and at least as\nwilling to eat a sacramental meal in company with the \u2018Theoi\nMeilichioi\u2019 (shadowy powers of the lower world), or with the\nNether-Zeus, or the Nether Earth-Mother, and with his departed\nfamily-spirits, as were his later descendants at Lokris, Mykonos and\nother places.[37.2] The earliest myths have little of the goblin\nelement. Homer indeed himself was cognisant of such forms of terror as\na black \u2018Ker\u2019--Penelope likens Antinoos to one;[37.3] the ancient\nfolklore of Argolis was aware of a bad spirit that once ravaged its\nhomes.[37.4] The early popular imagination was sure to have inherited\nor to have evolved such creations of fear; and a black Earth-Goddess\nwith a horse\u2019s {38} head and snake-locks, who lived in a dark cave at\nPhigaleia, almost certainly in the pre-Homeric period, was a\nsufficiently terrifying personality.[38.1]\n\nBut happily for the Greek imagination, the divinities of the world of\ndeath, abiding below the earth, tended to take on the benign functions\nof the powers of vegetation. The God of the lower world is scarcely\ncalled by the ill-omened name of Hades in cult, but Plouton or\nTrophonios or Zeus Chthonios, names importing beneficence; for the\nHomeric and Hesiodic world Demeter is a goddess of blessing, not of\nterror. And although in the earliest period certain demoniac\npersonages such as Medousa--identical in form and perhaps in character\nwith the snake-locked horse-headed Demeter--may have loomed large and\nterrible in popular cult, and afterwards faded wholly from actual\nworship or survived in the lower strata of ineffectual folklore, yet\nthe more civilising imagination had also been operative in the\nreligion of the second millennium. The monuments of the\nMinoan-Mycen\u00e6an religion reveal scarcely an element of terror. And at\nsome period before Homer the kindly deity, Hermes, had assumed the\nfunction of the leader of souls. As regards the eschatological views\nof the prehistoric Greek we can say little, unless we believe that\nHomer was his spokesman; and such belief would be very hazardous. The\nearliest communities may have had no special hopes concerning the\ndeparted soul; we have no reason for thinking that the mysteries which\ncame to offer some promise of happiness in the world to come had as\nyet proclaimed such a doctrine; the earliest form of the Eleusinia may\nhave been that of a secret {39} society organised for agrarian\npurposes. But, on the other hand, there is no proof that the primitive\nmind of the Hellene brooded much on the problem of death, or was at\nall possessed with morbid feeling about it; and in pre-Homeric times\nhe must have been freer from care in this matter than he was in the\nlater centuries, if we accept the view of certain scholars that the\nelaborate ritual of \u2018Katharsis\u2019 or purification, which was mainly\ndependent on the idea of the impurity of death, ghosts and bloodshed,\nwas wholly the creation of post-Homeric days.\n\n_Earliest ritual of purification_.--It has been even said that the\nvery idea of the need of purification on special occasions was unknown\nto Homer. This is demonstrably false; it is enough to mention one\npassage alone: at the close of the first book of the _Iliad_, the\nAch\u00e6ans at Agamemnon\u2019s bidding, purify themselves from the plague,\nand throw the infected media of purification into the sea; this is a\nreligious lustration. And when Hesiod mentions the rule that a man\nreturning from an \u2018ill-omened\u2019 funeral could not without peril attempt\nto beget a child on that day,[39.1] he happens to be the first\nliterary witness to the Greek tabu of death; but we may be sure that\nhe is giving us a tradition of indefinite age, and that the \u2018Ach\u00e6an\u2019\nsociety, of which Homer is supposed to be the spokesman, had some of\nthe Kathartic rules and superstitions that are found broadcast in\nlater Greece. It may not have elaborated or laid marked stress on\nthem; it may have had no strong sense of the impurity of homicide nor\ndevised any special code for its expiation. But if it was entirely\nwithout any instinctive feeling for the {40} impurity of birth and\ndeath, and for the danger of the \u2018miasma\u2019 arising from certain acts\nand states, it was almost unique among the races of man. Only, a\nprogressive people does not overstrain such feelings.\n\nSuch a religion as has been sketched might accord with a high social\nand political morality. On the other hand, it would not be likely to\nfoster and consecrate certain mental moods, ennobled by Christian\nethic, such as \u2018fear of God,\u2019 humility, faith. Never in the free\nperiods of Greek history was \u2018deisidaimonia\u2019 (\u2018fear of divine powers\u2019)\nregarded as a virtue, but rather as a vice or weakness. The Hellene\nwas humble in his attitude to God only in the sense that he disliked\noverweening acts and speech of self-glorification; the phrase, \u03b4\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2\n\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6, \u2018slave of God,\u2019 common in early Christian documents, would\nbe as repugnant to the Hellene as would be the ecstasy of\nself-abasement congenial to the Babylonian and the Christian\nreligions. As for the Pauline use of the word \u03c0\u03af\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03c2, \u2018faith,\u2019 its\nvalue for religious morality would have been unintelligible for the\nearlier Greek.[40.1]\n\n_Cruder religious conceptions in the earliest period_.--So far, the\nreligious phenomena discoverable with some certainty or some\nprobability in the earliest period of Greek history indicate a\ntheistic system of a somewhat advanced type. But doubtless we must\nreckon with the presence of much else that was cruder and more savage.\nWhen we find in the later records ample evidence of the lower products\nof the religious imagination, the products of \u2018animism\u2019 or \u2018fetichism\u2019\nor \u2018theriomorphism\u2019 or \u2018polydaimonism,\u2019 {41} more inarticulate and\nuncouth embodiments of the concept of divinity, or darker and more\ncruel ritual than that which Homer describes, such as human sacrifice,\nthe driving out of the scapegoat, blood-magic for controlling winds or\nfinding water, no reasonable critic will call all these things\npost-Homeric because they may not be mentioned in Homer, or suppose\nthat the pure-minded Hellenes were seduced into borrowing them from\nthe Orientals, or that they were spontaneous products of a later\ndegenerate age. The view taken of them by those who have in recent\ntimes applied comparative Anthropology to the study of Hellenism is\nthe only one that is possible on the whole; these things are a\nsurviving tradition of a mode of religious thought and feeling proper\nto the aboriginal ancestors of the Hellenic race, or immemorial\nindigenous products of the soil upon which that race grew up. There is\nno cataclysm in the religious history of Greece, no violent breach\nwith its past, no destruction of primitive forms at the advent of a\nhigher enlightenment; no fanatic prophet arose, and the protests of\nphilosophy were comparatively gentle and ineffective. Only a few\nreligious forms of an undeveloped society that might shock a more\ncivilised conscience were gradually abandoned; most of them were\ntolerated, some in a moribund condition, under a more advanced\nreligion, with which they might be seen to clash if any one cared to\nreason about them. Therefore a chapter or a statement in Pausanias may\nreally be a record of the pre-Homeric age; and in this way we can\nsupplement the partial picture that has been given above.\n\n_Animal-Gods and Animal-worship_.--The anthropomorphic {42} principle,\nwhich is not necessarily the highest upon which a personal theism\ncould be constructed, is the main force of the higher life of Hellenic\npolytheism. We may believe that it had begun to work before Homer, but\nnot predominantly or with sufficient effect to produce a stable\nanthropomorphism in religion. Some worship of animals which is called\n\u2018theriolatry,\u2019 some beliefs in the animal-incarnations of the\ndivinity, were certainly in vogue. A few of the more ancient\ncult-titles would be evidence sufficient, apart from the later\nrecords. One of the most significant and oldest is \u039b\u03cd\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2, an epithet\nof Apollo marking his association with wolves; we find also that in\nmany legends and even occasionally in ritual the wolf appears as his\nsacred animal. These facts point back to a period when Apollo was\nstill the hunter-god of the wild wood, and was regarded as\noccasionally incarnate in the beast of the wild. We have also a few\nindications of direct reverence being paid to the wolf, apart from its\nconnection with any god.[42.1] Another salient example either of\ntheriolatry or theriomorphic god-cult is snake-worship, proved to have\nexisted in the earliest epoch of the Delphic religion, and in vogue\naccording to later records in Epirus and Macedonia. It may have been\nreverenced in its own right, or as the incarnation of some personal\ndivinity or hero, as we find it later attached to the chthonian\ndeities, to the Earth-Mother, Zeus \u039a\u03c4\u03ae\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 and \u039c\u03b5\u03b9\u03bb\u03af\u03c7\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2,[42.2]\nAsklepios, and to the buried hero or heroine, such as Erechtheus,\nKychreus. We have also reasons for assuming a very early cult of a\nBear-Artemis in {43} Attica[43.1] and Arcadia; and many other\nexamples of similar phenomena will be found in a treatise on the\nsubject by De Visser.[43.2] Later Arcadia was full of the products\nand of the tradition of this early mode of religious imagination;\nbesides the horse-headed Demeter at Thigaleia, we hear of the worship\nat the same place of a goddess called Eurynome, represented as\nhalf-woman, half-fish; and bronze figures, belonging to the Roman\nperiod, have been found at Lykosoura in Arcadia, apparently\nrepresentations of divinities partly theriomorphic.[43.3]\n\nThe first anthropologists who dealt with the primitive forms of\nHellenic religion read this special set of phenomena in the light of\ntotemism; but progressive students have now abandoned the totemistic\nhypothesis, on the ground that there is little or no trace of Totemism\nin any Greek or any Aryan Society, and that theriolatry, or the direct\nworship of animals, needs no such explanation. Also, as I have\nrecently pointed out elsewhere,[43.4] the theriomorphic concept of\ndivinity can and frequently does co-exist at certain periods and in\ncertain peoples with the anthropomorphic; nor can we say with\nassurance that in the mental history of our race the former is prior\nto the latter, or that generally the anthropomorphic was evolved from\nthe animal-god.\n\n_Functional Deities: polyd\u00e6monism_.--In attempting to penetrate the\npre-Homeric past, we have to reckon with another phenomenon which,\nthough {44} revealed in later records only, has certainly a primitive\ncharacter and has been regarded as belonging to an age when the\nconcept of definite complex personalities, such as \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03af, had not yet\narisen. It was Usener[44.1] who first called attention to a large\nnumber of local cults of personages unknown to myth or general\nliterature and designated, not by what are called proper names, such\nas Hermes, Apollo, Zeus, but by transparent adjectival names,\nexpressing a particular quality or function or activity, to which the\nessence of the divine power in each case was limited: such, for\ninstance, are \u1f1c\u03c7\u03b5\u03c4\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f18\u03c7\u03b5\u03c4\u03bb\u03b1\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f24\u03c1\u03c9\u03c2, \u039a\u03c5\u03b1\u03bc\u03af\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2, \u0395\u1f54\u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, being\nnothing more, respectively, than the hero of the ploughshare at\nMarathon, the \u2018hero who makes the beans grow\u2019 on the sacred way to\nEleusis, \u2018the hero who gives the good return of corn\u2019 at Tanagra; for\nthese he invented the term, \u2018Sonder-G\u00f6tter,\u2019 meaning deities of a\nsingle function only; and to those of them to whom only a momentary\nfunction and therefore only a momentary existence seemed to appertain,\nhe applied the term \u2018Augenblick-G\u00f6tter,\u2019 \u2018Momentary Gods\u2019; an\nHellenic example of this type might be \u2018\u039c\u03c5\u03af\u03b1\u03b3\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2,\u2019 \u2018Fly-chaser,\u2019 in\nArcadia, and Elis, who at the sacrifice to Athena or Zeus was called\nupon to chase away the flies that would worry the sacrificers, and who\nonly existed for the purpose and at the time of that call.\n\nWe may compare also, for vagueness and inchoateness of personality,\ncertain aggregates of deities having no definite single existence, but\ngrouped by some adjectival functional name, such as \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1f76 \u1f08\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03c1\u03bf\u03c0\u03b1\u1fd6\u03bf\u03b9,\n\u2018the deities that avert evil,\u2019 at Sikyon,[44.2] {45} \u03b8\u03b5\u03b1\u1f76\n\u0393\u03b5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03c5\u03bb\u03bb\u03af\u03b4\u03b5\u03c2, the goddesses of birth, in Attica,[45.1] the \u03b8\u03b5\u03b1\u1f76\n\u03a0\u03c1\u03b1\u03be\u03b9\u03b4\u03af\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9, the goddesses of just requital, at Haliartos.[45.2] Such\nforms seem to hover on the confines of \u2018polydaimonism,\u2019 and to be the\nproducts of an embryonic perception of divinity, cruder and dimmer\nthan the robust and bright creations of the Hellenic polytheism, to\nwhich so rich a mythology and so manifold a personality attached. And\nanother fact seems to fall into line with these; in some cult-centres\nthe deity, though personally and anthropomorphically conceived, might\nonly be designated by some vague descriptive title, like \u1f41 \u03b8\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2 and \u1f21\n\u03b8\u03b5\u03ac, as occasionally at Eleusis, or \u2018Despoina,\u2019 \u2018the Mistress,\u2019 the\nGoddess of Arcadia, or \u2018\u03a0\u03b1\u03c1\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2\u2019, the \u2018Virgin,\u2019 on the coast of\nCaria, and in the Chersonnese; even as late as the time of Pausanias\nthe men of Boulis in Phokis never called their highest God[45.3] by\nany other name than \u1f41 \u039c\u03ad\u03b3\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, \u2018the Greatest.\u2019 And it has been\nthought that the well-known statement of Herodotus that the Pelasgians\nhad no names for their divinities was based on some such facts as\nthese.\n\nThe importance of these phenomena would be all the greater if Usener\u2019s\ntheory were true that they represent the crude material out of which\nmuch of Greek polytheism has grown.[45.4] But in any case they claim\nmention here, because they are the products of a mental operation or\ninstinct that must have {46} been operative in the earliest period of\nHellenic religion.\n\n_Animism or animatism_.--In another set of facts, also attested by\nlater records, we may discern the surviving addition of an animistic\nperiod. A large part of the Hellenic, as of other religions, reflects\nman\u2019s relation and feeling towards the world of nature, his dependence\non the fruits of the earth, the winds, the waters, and the phenomena\nof the sky. The trend of the higher polytheism in the Hellenic mind\nwas to set the personal divinity above and outside these things, which\nhe or she directs as an intellectual will-power. But we have\nsufficient evidence of another point of view which is that of more\nprimitive religion, from which the deity is imagined as essentially\nimmanent in the thing, not as a distinct personality emerging and\nseparable from it. The Arcadians who worshipped \u2018Zeus\nKeraunos,\u2019[46.1] or \u2018Zeus-Thunder,\u2019 at Mantineia, or the people at\nGythion in Laconia, who called a sacred meteoric stone, \u2018Zeus\n\u039a\u03b1\u03c0\u03c0\u03ce\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2,\u2019[46.2] \u2018the fallen Zeus,\u2019 or the Athenians who worshipped\n\u2018Demeter \u03c7\u03bb\u03cc\u03b7,\u2019 \u2018Demeter Green Verdure,\u2019[46.3] reveal in these\nstrange titles an attitude of mind that is midway between \u2018animatism,\u2019\nthat religious perception of each striking thing or phenomenon in\nnature as in itself mysteriously alive and divine, and \u2018theism\u2019 which\nimagines it controlled by a personal deity. At the stage when Demeter\ncould be named and perceived as \u2018Chloe,\u2019 \u2018Verdure,\u2019 the\nanthropomorphic conception of divinity, though certainly existing, was\nnot yet stable or crystallised.\n\n{47}\n\nBut there are other cult-facts reported to us of a still cruder type\nthat seem to reveal animatism pure and simple and the infancy of the\nHellenic mind. The Arcadians,[47.1] always the most conservative and\nbackward among the Hellenes, in their colony of Trapezus, \u2018offered\nsacrifice to the lightning and thunder and storms\u2019; it seems that for\nthem these things were animate and divine directly, just as the\nAir--Bedu--was for the Macedonians. Again, through all the periods of\nHellenic religion, the worship of rivers and springs only at certain\npoints approached the borders of theism; sometimes offerings were\nflung directly into the water, and prayer might be made \u2018into the\nwater\u2019--we must not say \u2018to the river-god,\u2019 but to the divine\nwater.[47.2]\n\nWe discern these two different ways of imagining divinity in the\nworship and ideas attaching to Helios, \u2018Sun,\u2019 and Hestia, \u2018Hearth\u2019; as\nregards the former, we have reason to surmise that his religious\nprestige was higher in the pre-Homeric than in the later age, and that\nthe exalted position as a great political and cultured God which he\nenjoyed in the later history of Rhodes was a heritage from the Minoan\nreligious tradition.[47.3] In Homer\u2019s poems we find him personal and\nanthropomorphised; but we may well doubt if he was so for the average\nGreek, who merely kissed his hand to him every morning or bowed to him\non coming forth from his house, and who, regarding him merely as\nanimate, or \u2018Living Sun,\u2019 found it difficult to develop him {48} into\na free and complex individual person. As regards Hestia the facts are\nstill clearer.[48.1] In her worship, which belonged to the aboriginal\nperiod of Greek religion, she was at first, and in the main she\ncontinued to be, nothing more than \u2018Holy Hearth,\u2019 the Hearth felt as\nanimate, nor was the attempt to anthropomorphise into a free personal\nGoddess ever wholly successful.\n\n_Magic_.--Now that which is here called \u2018animatism\u2019 is a religious\nfeeling which may inspire real worship, but is more liable than pure\ntheism to be associated with magic; and it is reasonable to believe\nthat magic was in vogue in prehistoric Hellas, not necessarily in\nantagonism to religion, but practised for purposes of the community as\nwell as for private ends.\n\nIt is true that the records which tell us about these things are all\nof a period much later than Homer\u2019s, and that he is almost silent\nabout such matters.[48.2] But we know now how to appreciate Homer\u2019s\nsilences. And general anthropology compels us to believe that some of\nthose records reveal facts of immemorial antiquity in Greece. The\nThesmophoria, one of the most ancient of the Hellenic services, was\npartly magical; that is, it included rites that had a direct efficacy,\napart from the appeal to any divinity, such as the strewing the fields\nwith the decaying remains of the pigs that had been consecrated to the\nearth-Goddesses and thrown down into their vault.[48.3] So also in\nthe Thargelia of {49} Attica and other Greek communities, the\nceremonies connected with the scapegoat, the ritualistic whipping and\ntransference of sin, belong to the domain of magic rather than to\nreligion.[49.1]\n\nWe have also direct testimony of a magical dealing with the elements\nin the titles of officials at Athens called the \u2018Heudanemoi\u2019[49.2]\nand of those at Corinth called \u1f09\u03bd\u03b5\u03bc\u03bf\u03ba\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9,[49.3] both words denoting\n\u2018wind-lullers,\u2019 those \u2018who charmed the winds to sleep\u2019; and again in\nthe description of the rite performed by the magicians at Kleonai who\naccording to Clemens[49.4] \u201caverted the sky\u2019s wrath by incantations\nand sacrifices\u201d; or in Pausanias\u2019 account of the operations of the\npriest of the winds at Titane in Sikyon[49.5] who endeavoured to\nassuage their fierceness by \u201csinging over them the spells that Medea\nused.\u201d Doubtless these officials are only maintaining the practices of\nan indefinitely remote past. And these are also reflected in the\nlegend of the ancient Salmoneus of Thessalian and possibly Minyan\norigin, who drove about in a chariot imitating thunder and, while\nmerely practising a well-known type of weather-magic, was\nmisunderstood by the higher powers and later moralists.\n\nThe few records that may avail for an opinion concerning the early\nperiod with which we are at present concerned entirely fail to suggest\nany such prevalence of magic as might obstruct intellectual progress\nor the growth of a higher religion. They reveal generally a type that\nis harmless or even philanthropic.[49.6] Doubtless some black magic\n{50} existed in the earliest as in the later Hellas, directed against\nthe life or the property of individuals, and worked by evil means; the\nmore ancient literature is entirely silent about this; but a late\nrecord of Pausanias testifies to a barbarous magic practised by the\ncommunity of Haliartos to discover a water-supply[50.1]: a son of one\nof the chief men was stabbed by his own father, and as he ran bleeding\nabout the land springs of water were found where his blood dripped.\nBut at no time, we may judge, was the religion or the intellect of\nGreece so clouded with magic as was the case elsewhere in the ancient\ncivilisations, notably in Egypt and Mesopotamia.\n\n_Human sacrifices_.--This attempted presentation of the first era of\nGreek religion must raise the question as to the practice within it of\nthe ritual of human sacrifice. For we are apt to associate this with a\nprimitive society and with a crude or savage religion. But this\nassociation is not borne out by the religious history of mankind. The\npractice has been found in societies highly developed both in morality\nand civilisation; and the a priori argument is dangerous, whether we\napply it in one way or the other.\n\nIt has been said that the Homeric poems show no consciousness of the\nexistence of the cruel rite in the Greek world of the period; and it\nhas been argued on this ground that the Ach\u00e6an society of which they\nare the voice was innocent of it.[50.2] A doubt may arise concerning\nthe slaughter of the Trojan captives at the pyre of Patroklos,[50.3]\nan act of ferocity for which Homer outspokenly blames Achilles. The\npassage {51} certainly suggests that the poet was aware that such\nthings were occasionally done at contemporary funerals; in Mycen\u00e6an\ntombs at Argos and Mycen\u00e6 human remains have been found before the\nentrance-door that point to an offering of slaves or captives.[51.1]\nBut this need not have been an act of worship or strictly of religion.\nThe dead might be imagined as needing slaves; and to kill slaves to\naccompany the departed, just as to kill horses over the pyre, may only\nimply \u2018tendance\u2019 and no worship of the spirit. But Homer\u2019s silence\nconcerning human sacrifice as a rite of religion is of no value as\nevidence for our present question, as I have argued elsewhere.[51.2]\nHow are we to account for the fairly numerous records of actual human\nsacrifice, or of the semblance or reminiscence of it, in later Greek\nworship, records that are found sporadically among most of the leading\nGreek stocks? The old shift of attributing to Oriental influences\neverything in Hellenic religion that clashed with our ideal of\nHellenism was na\u00efvely unscientific. That the practice should have\nsprung up spontaneously and suddenly in the later society, when civic\nlife and morality were advancing, is hard to believe. It is more\nnatural to suppose that it was an immemorial and enduring tradition of\nthe race, which was only with difficulty abolished and which lingered\nhere and there till the end of paganism. It has been found among many\nother Aryan races, and it was especially in vogue among the\nThraco-Phrygian stock, of near kin to the Hellenic. These general\ngrounds for believing that {52} it was a feature of the earliest Greek\nreligion are confirmed by some special evidence derivable from the\nlegends and cult-records. It is generally impossible to date the birth\nof legends; but some can be discerned to belong to an earlier stratum\nthan others; such are the legends concerning the human sacrifice to\nZeus \u0391\u03cd\u03ba\u03b1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 on Mount Lykaion in Arcadia, to which is attached the\nstory of King Lykaon and the banquet that he offers to Zeus on the\nflesh of his own son;[52.1] the Ach\u00e6an or Minyan story of the\nsacrifice to Zeus Laphystios--Zeus the Ravening--of the king\u2019s son of\nthe house of Athamas;[52.2] Kyknos\u2019 sacrifice of pilgrims and the\ndedication of their skulls to Apollo on the Hyperborean pilgrims\u2019-way\nat the Ach\u00e6an Pagasos;[52.3] the sacrifice of a boy and a maiden to\nArtemis \u03a4\u03c1\u03b9\u03ba\u03bb\u03b1\u03c1\u03af\u03b1 by the Ionians on the southern shore of the Gulf of\nCorinth.[52.4] A careful study of the legends of these various rites\nwill convince one that they belong to the earliest period of Greek\nreligion. The last example is specially illuminating: the human\nsacrifice is here practised by the Ionians in their ancient\nsettlements in the land, afterwards called Achaia; and its cessation\nis connected with the arrival of the cult of Dionysos and the return\nof the heroes from Troy.\n\nThe purpose and significance of the rite differed probably in the\ndifferent cult-centres. In most cases we may interpret it as piacular,\nthe dedication to an offended deity of a valued life, the life of the\nking\u2019s son or daughter, as a substitute for the life of the people,\nsuch vicarious sacrifice being a common human institution; in some few\ncases we may {53} discern an agricultural motive, the blood being shed\nas a magic charm to secure fertility.[53.1] At certain cult-centres\nand at certain times the human victim may have been regarded as the\nincarnation of the deity or the \u2018daimon\u2019; and this idea might explain\nthe legends concerning the slaying of Iphigeneia the priestess of\nArtemis, or of the priests of Dionysos. Finally, in the ritual of Zeus\nLykaios, we may detect a cannibal-sacrament, in which the holy flesh\nof the victim, whose life was mystically one with the God\u2019s and the\npeople\u2019s, was sacramentally devoured. This ghastly practice is only\ndoubtfully disclosed by legends and by interpretation of later\nrecords; a faint reminiscence of it may also have survived in the\nArgive story of Harpalyke and Klymenos.[53.2] But a close parallel to\nit will be noted in the Thracian Dionysiac ritual.\n\n_Summary account of the first period_.--A detailed account of the\npre-Homeric religious age must at many points remain doubtful and\nhypothetical; but certain definite and important facts may be\nestablished. Anthropomorphism, in a degree not found in the earliest\nRoman religion, was already prevalent, even dominant; and nearly all\nthe leading personal divinities of the later polytheism had already\nemerged; only Dionysos had not yet crossed the border from Thrace;\nAsklepios, dimly known to Homer, was merely the local deity of a small\nThessalian community, Pan merely the daimon of flocks in remote\nArcadia. Cretan religion, also personal in its imagination and mainly\nanthropomorphic, had left its deep imprint on the mainland; and its\ndivine personalities, such as Rhea, the {54} Mother of the Gods, and\nAphrodite were soon adopted by the northern immigrants, but not at\nfirst into high positions. The deity was generally imagined not as a\nspirit or a vague cosmic force, but as glorified man, and therefore\nthe religion became adaptable to human progress in arts, civilisation\nand morality. But much in the animal world still appeared sacred and\nweird; and the deity might be at times incarnate in animal form. At\nthe same time the religious imagination was still partly free from the\nbias of personal theism, and produced vaguer divine forms, of some\nforce and power, but belonging rather to \u2018animatism\u2019 or polydaimonism\nthan to polytheism.\n\nFinally a study of all the facts and probabilities may convince a\ncareful student that the origin of Greek polytheism as a whole from\nsimpler forms cannot be found in this earliest period. In the second\nmillennium, which is the starting-point for Hellenic history proper,\nwe cannot discern the \u2018making of a God\u2019 (unless we mean the\nbuilding-up of his more complex character), nor do we start with a\ngodless period. We may well believe that in the history of mankind\ntheism was evolved from animism or polydaimonism; we may believe the\nmuch more doubtful theory that anthropomorphism arises from a previous\ntheriomorphism, and there may still be some who are convinced that\ntheriomorphism implies a totemistic society. But, at any rate, these\nvarious evolutions had already happened indefinitely before the two\nstrains--the Northern and the Mediterranean--had blended into the\nHellenic race. The higher and the lower, the more complex and the\nsimpler, forms of religious imagination {55} operate together\nthroughout Hellenic history; and the higher, though dominant, never\nwholly absorbs the lower, both being an intellectual tradition of an\nindefinite past. Much work on the origins of Greek religion has been\nwasted because its chronology is anachronistic. And the attempt to\nunlock many of its mysteries by the key of totemism has been abandoned\nby those who recognise that many of the views concerning this social\nphenomenon and its religious importance, prevalent in a former\ngeneration, were erroneous.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER III.\n THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.\n\n{56}\n\nWe can now pursue the enquiry nearer the borderline of the historic\nperiod, as it is conventionally termed.\n\n_Introduction of worship of Dionysos_.--As early as the tenth century\nB.C., and probably earlier, a new religion with a new and imposing\ndivinity was intruding itself into Hellenic lands from Thrace and\nMacedonia.[56.1] Dionysos and the Thracian ritual-legend of Lykourgos\nare known to Homer; but the poems suggest that he was not yet\ndefinitely received into the Hellenic pantheon. Yet there are reasons\nfor believing that B\u0153otia had received the alien worship in the\n\u2018Minyan\u2019 epoch, before the incoming of the \u2018Boiotoi\u2019; and Attica\nbefore the Ionic emigration; while in the Peloponnese the Argive\nlegend associates the advent of the god with the names of Perseus and\nthe Pr\u0153tid dynasty. In spite of local opposition and its natural\nantagonism to the nascent spirit of Hellenism, which was now tending\nto express itself in certain definite and orderly forms of mood,\nthought and feeling, the new religion won its way victoriously, taking\nThebes for its Hellenic metropolis, and some time afterwards securing\nits position at Delphi, where the priesthood and the Apolline oracle\nbecome its eager champions. {57} It was distinguished from the\ntraditional Hellenic in regard to its idea of divine personality, its\nritual and its psychic influence, that is to say, the mood that it\nevoked in the votary. In the first place, the figure of Dionysos\nbelonged indeed to personal theism, certainly in Hellenic cult and\nprobably in the Thracian; but he was less sharply defined as a\nconcrete individual than was, for instance, Apollo or Athena; he was\nvaguer in outline, a changeful power conceived more in accordance with\ndaimonistic, later with pantheistic thought, incarnate in many\nanimal-shapes and operative in the life-processes of the vegetative\nworld; and an atmosphere of nature-magic accompanied him.\n\nThe central motives of his oldest form of ritual were the birth and\ndeath of the God, a conception pregnant of ideas that were to develop\nin the religious future, but alien to the ordinary Hellenic theology,\nthough probably not unfamiliar to the earlier Cretan-Mycen\u00e6an creed.\nBut the death of this God was partly a fact of ritual; he was torn to\npieces by his mad worshippers and devoured sacramentally, for the bull\nor the goat or the boy whom they rent and devoured was supposed to be\nhis temporary incarnation, so that by this savage and at times\ncannibalistic communion they were filled with his blood and his spirit\nand acquired miraculous powers. By such an act and--we may suppose--by\nthe occasional use of intoxicants and other nervous stimulants the\npsychic condition that this worship evoked was frenzy and ecstasy,\nwhich might show itself in wild outburst of mental and physical force,\nand the enthusiastic feeling of self-abandonment in which the\nworshipper escaped the limits of his own {58} nature and achieved a\ntemporary sense of identity with the God; and such union with divinity\nmight avail him even after death. This privilege of ecstasy might be\nused for the practical purposes of vegetation-magic, yet was desired\nand proclaimed for its own sake, as a more intense mood of life. This\nreligion preached no morality and could ill adapt itself to civic\nlife; its ideal was supranormal psychic energy. The process whereby it\nwas half captured and half tamed by the young Hellenic spirit forms\none of the most interesting chapters in Hellenism.\n\nIt is convenient for the purposes of religious study to mark off the\nperiod between the ninth and the sixth centuries as the second period\nof Greek religion, in which we can observe the working of new forces\nand the development of older germs into new life. By the beginning of\nthis period the fusion of the Northerners and the Mediterranean\npopulation was mainly complete, and the Hellenic spirit had acquired\nits definite instincts and bias. The ninth and the eighth centuries\nwitnessed the diffusion of epic literature, the rise of lyric poetry,\nthe emergence of the \u2018eikon\u2019 or idol in religious art, and generally\nthe development of cities and civic life; and it is essential to\nestimate the religious influence of these forces.\n\n_Influence of epic and lyric poetry_.--That the contribution of\nHomeric and of the later Hesiodic literature to the shaping and fixing\nof Hellenic religion was most fruitful and effective cannot be\ndoubted. Only we must not accept the exaggerating view of\nHerodotus[58.1] that these two poets were really {59} the founders of\nthe anthropomorphic religion, creating the orthodox Hellenic theogony\nand determining the names and functions and shapes of the special\ndivinities. By such a statement some scholars have been misled into\nregarding the Homeric poems as a kind of Greek Bible, which in respect\nto religious matters it might be heresy to disbelieve. But we know\nthat local temple-legend and local folklore could always maintain its\nindependence of Homeric, or Hesiodic authority, in respect to the\ntitles of the Gods, their relationships and genealogies. Artemis was\nnot everywhere reputed to have the same parentage or Zeus the same\nspouse. The early epic poets gathered many of the \u1f31\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u1f76 \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9 of\nshrines, but there was much that they did not gather and which yet\nsurvived. There was a noticeable particularism in Greek theology, and\nno orthodoxy and no heterodoxy in the sense that it was moral to\nbelieve or immoral to disbelieve any sacred book.\n\nThe chief religious achievement of Homer and his fellows was to\nintensify the anthropomorphic trend in Greek religion, to sharpen and\nindividualise the concepts of divinity, and to diffuse throughout the\nHellenic world a certain uniformity of religious imagination. To their\nwork partly, as well as to the higher synthetic power of the Greek\nmind, we may ascribe the fact that in spite of local varieties of myth\nand cult-title, in spite of the various elements that the divine\npersonality may have absorbed from earlier cult-figures and cult-forms\nin the various cult-centres, yet the sense of the individual unity of\nperson was not lost so long as the same name was in vogue; hence\nApollo Lykeios of Argos could not be a {60} different person from the\nApollo Patro\u00f6s of Athens, nor could hostility arise between them.\nThat is to say, the higher religious literature imprinted a certain\nprecision and definiteness upon the personal names of the leading\ndivinities and endowed them with a certain essential connotation; for\nexample, the dogma of the virginity of Athena and Artemis, always\npresented in the higher poetry, prevailed so far as to suppress the\nmaternal character that may have attached to them in the prehistoric\nperiod and of which we can still discern a glimmering in certain local\ncults.[60.1] And to this task of shaping the divine characters the\nrising lyric poetry, which was growing up with the decay of the epic,\nand which in obedience to the Hellenic passion for disciplined form\nwas developing fixed types of song and music appropriate to special\nfestivals and worships, must have contributed much. The \u2018spondaic\u2019\nmetre was adapted to the invocation or hymn sung at the libation--the\n\u03c3\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd\u03b4\u03ae--to Zeus, and the solemn gravity of the spondaic fragment\nattributed to Terpander fittingly expresses the majesty of the high\nGod, \u201cthe primal cause of all things, the Leader of the world.\u201d[60.2]\nThe p\u00e6an and the \u2018nomos\u2019 became instinct with the Apolline, the\nDithyrambos with the Dionysiac spirit,[60.3] the spirit of order and\nself-restraint on the one hand, the spirit of ecstasy and passion on\nthe other. The earlier Greek lyric was in fact mainly religious, being\ncomposed for public or private occasions of worship; its vogue was\ntherefore wide and in some communities, as in Arcadia, the singing\n{61} of these compositions formed part of the national training of the\nyoung.[61.1]\n\n_Idolatry_.--Another phenomenon of importance at the beginning of this\nsecond period is the rise of idolatry, the prevalence of the use of\nthe \u2018eikon\u2019 in actual worship in place of the older aniconic \u2018agalma,\u2019\nwhich had sufficed for the Minoan and the Homeric world as a token of\nthe divine presence or as a magnet attracting it to the worshipper.\nThis important change in the object of cult may have been beginning in\nthe tenth century, for we have one indication of it in the Homeric\npoems, and recently on one of a series of vases of the early geometric\nstyle found in a grave near Knossos of the post-Minoan period the\nfigures of an armed God and Goddess are depicted on low bases,\nevidently idols, and perhaps the earliest surviving of any Hellenic\ndivinity.[61.2] Henceforth, although the old fetich-object, the\naniconic \u2018agalma,\u2019 lingered long in certain shrines and holy places,\nthe impulse towards idolatry became imperious and almost universal,\nexercising a mighty influence on the religious sentiment of the\nHellenes both before and after the triumph of Christianity. The\nworship before the idol intensified the already powerful\nanthropomorphic instinct of the polytheism; and was at once a source\nof strength and a cause of narrowness. It brought to the people a\nstrong conviction of the real presence of the concrete and individual\ndivinity; and, as it gave its mandate to the greatest art of the\nworld, it evolved the ideal of divinity as the ideal of humanity,\nexpressible in forms of beauty, strength, and majesty. On the other\nhand, it was a force {62} working against the development of a more\nmystic, more immaterial religion, or of a consciousness of Godhead as\nan all-pervading spirit, such as might arise out of the vaguer\nreligious perception of those half-personal \u2018daimones\u2019 or \u2018numina,\u2019\nwhich never wholly faded from the popular creed.\n\n_Progress of anthropomorphism_.--It is interesting to mark within this\nsecond period the various effects of the now regnant anthropomorphism.\n\nThose functional \u2018daimones\u2019 mentioned above tend to leave the\namorphous twilight of religious perception, in which the Roman\n\u2018Indigitamenta\u2019 remained, and to be attracted into the stronger life\nof personal theism. \u2018Kourotrophos,\u2019 once perhaps only a vague\nfunctional power that nurtured children, becomes identified with\nArtemis or Ge;[62.1] \u2018\u03a7\u03bb\u03cc\u03b7,\u2019 \u2018Divine verdure,\u2019 when the cult was\nintroduced from the Marathonian Tetrapolis to the Akropolis of\nAthens--if this indeed is a true account of its career, could only\nmaintain herself as Demeter \u03a7\u03bb\u03cc\u03b7.[62.2]\n\nAgain the name \u1f2d\u03c1\u03c9\u03c2 comes to be applied to even the most shadowy of\nthese functional powers, to \u039c\u03c5\u03af\u03b1\u03b3\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2, the Fly-chaser, the most limited\nand momentary of them all, to Eunostos, the daimon of good harvest,\nabout whom a very human tale is told, and to call them \u2018Heroes\u2019\nimplies that they were imagined as semi-divine men who once lived on\nthe earth. Even the most immaterial forces, some of those which mark\nmental phases or social conditions, such as \u1f18\u03c1\u03c9\u03c2 Love, \u03a6\u03b9\u03bb\u03af\u03b1\nFriendship, \u0395\u1f30\u03c1\u03ae\u03bd\u03b7 Peace, became often for the religious imagination\npersonal individuals with human relationships;[62.3] thus Eirene {63}\nemerges almost as a real goddess with the traits of Demeter, \u03a6\u03b9\u03bb\u03af\u03b1 on\na relief in the Jacobsen Collection is individualised as the mother of\nZeus Philios, in defiance of the traditional theogony.[63.1] Others\nsuch as \u2018\u0391\u1f30\u03b4\u03ce\u03c2\u2019 \u2018Compassion\u2019 remained in the borderland between\nanimating forces and personal deities.\n\nBut we observe in many cases that the name itself was an obstacle to\nthe emergence of a convincingly personal God or Goddess; and where\nthis is the case the personality never could play a leading part in\nthe advanced religion. Thus \u1f19\u03c3\u03c4\u03af\u03b1 bore a name that denoted nothing\nmore than \u2018the Hearth,\u2019 considered as animate and holy; Greek\nanthropomorphism did its utmost for her, but never or rarely succeeded\nin establishing her as a fully formed personal goddess. The same\nphenomenon is observable in regard to Ge, Helios and Selene; it was\neasy to regard them as animate substances or powers and as such to\nworship them; such worship they received throughout all periods of\nGreek religion, but no direction of the moral, social and spiritual\nprogress of the race, for their names connoted so obviously substances\nunlike and alien to man that they could not with conviction be\nimagined as glorified men or women.[63.2] It was otherwise with such\nnames as Apollo, Hera, Athena, which could become as real and\nindividual as Miltiades or Themistokles; and it is these humanised\npersonalities that alone dominate the higher religion of Greece. The\nspiritual career of Demeter only began when men forgot the original\nmeaning of her name and half forgot that she was {64} only Mother\nEarth. The \u2018Anemoi\u2019 being mere \u2018Winds,\u2019 were scarcely fitted for civic\nlife; but Boreas, having a personal name, could become a citizen and\nwas actually worshipped as \u03a0\u03bf\u03bb\u03af\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 \u2018the Citizen\u2019 at Thourioi.[64.1] A\ncurious and unscientific distinction that Aristophanes makes between\nthe religions of the Hellenes and the Barbarians[64.2] has its\njustification from this point of view.\n\n_Influence of the Polis on religion_.--The spirit of the Polis, the\ndominant influence in Greek religion throughout this second period,\nworked in the same direction as the anthropomorphic instinct; giving\ncomplexity, varied individuality and an ever-growing social value to\nthe idea of Godhead. The deities of the wild enter the ring-wall of\nthe city and shed much of their wild character. Apollo Lykeios the\nWolf-God, enters Argos and becomes the political leader of the State,\nin whose temple a perpetual fire was maintained, symbol of the\nperpetual life of the community.[64.3] And the advanced civic\nimagination tended to transform the primitive theriolatry or\ntheriomorphic ideas that still survived. Proofs of direct animal\nworship in the later period are very rare and generally doubtful; for\nthe ancient writers apply the term \u2018worship\u2019 carelessly, applying it\nto any trivial act of reverential treatment.[64.4] In the few cases\nwhere we can still discern the animal receiving cult, we find the\nanomaly explained away by some association established between the\nanimal and the anthropomorphic deity or hero. Thus the wolf became no\nlonger sacred in {65} its own right--if indeed it ever was--but might\nbe reverenced here and there as the occasional incarnation of Apollo\nor as his guide or companion.\n\nThe primitive population of the Troad may once have \u2018worshipped\u2019 the\nfield-mouse, though the authority that attests it is a late and\ndoubtful one; but when Apollo becomes in this region the civic\nguardian of the \u00c6olians and the protector of their crops, he takes a\ntitle from the mouse (\u03a3\u03bc\u03b9\u03bd\u03b8\u03b5\u03cd\u03c2 from \u03c3\u03bc\u03b9\u03bd\u03b8\u03cc\u03c2), and the mouse is carved\nat the side of the anthropomorphic image as a propitiatory hint to the\nrest of the species not to injure the corn, or as a hint to the God\nthat mice needed regulating.[65.1]\n\nThe serpent worshipped in the cavern, or in some hole or corner of the\nhouse--vaguely, in \u2018Aryan\u2019 times, as the Earth-daimon or\nHouse-genius--became interpreted as the embodiment of the ancestor\nErechtheus of Athens, or Kuchreus of Salamis, or Zeus \u039a\u03c4\u03ae\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2, the\nguardian of the household possessions, or of Zeus Meilichios, the\nnether God. When the very human Asklepios came to Athens towards the\nend of the fifth century, he brought with him certain dogs who were\nministers of healing; and the Athenians offered sacrificial cakes both\nto the God and to his dogs who partook of his sanctity.[65.2] This\nmay appear a strange imbecility; but at all events we discern in these\nfacts the prevalent anthropomorphism dominating and transforming what\nit could not abolish of the old theriolatry; just as we see the\ncoin-artist of Phigaleia transforming the uncouth type of the\nhorse-headed Demeter into a beautiful human form of a goddess {66}\nwearing a necklace with a horse-hoof as its pendant. The sacred animal\nnever wholly died out of Hellas; but it could only maintain its\nworship by entering the service of the human gods.\n\nThe expansion of the civic system in this second period, due to\nextended colonisation and commerce, induced a development of law and\nan expansion of moral and religious ideas. One of the most vital\nresults of the institution of the Polis was the widening of the idea\nof kinship. For in theory the city was a congregation of kinsmen, a\ncombination of tribes, phratries, and families, wider or narrower\nassociations framed on a kin-basis; and it gradually evolved the\nbelief, pregnant of legal and moral developments, that every citizen\nwas of kin to every other.\n\nIn consonance with the conception of the State as an extended family,\nwe find certain ancient family-cults taken over into the religion of\nthe Polis. As the private family was knit together by the worship of\nthe Hearth in the hall and of Zeus \u1f19\u03c1\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2, \u2018the God of the Garth,\u2019 in\nthe courtyard of the house, so the City has its common Hestia or Holy\nHearth, upon which often a perpetual fire was maintained in its\n\u2018Prytaneion\u2019 or Common Hall; and the Cult of Zeus \u1f19\u03c1\u03ba\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03c2 was\nestablished in ancient days on the Akropolis of Athens. The\norganisation of the \u2018phratries\u2019 was consecrated to the high deities,\nZeus Athena and--among some Ionic communities--to Aphrodite; and the\ndecisions of the \u2018phrateres\u2019 or \u2018Brothers\u2019 on questions of adoption\nand legitimacy of citizens were delivered from the altar of Zeus\nPhratrios; while the union of the local districts or \u2018demes\u2019 was\nsanctified by the cult of Zeus or {67} Aphrodite Pandemos, the God or\nGoddess of \u2018all the demes.\u2019 Also, the Polis organised and maintained\nthe kindred-festivals of commemoration proper to the family or gens or\nphratria, the All-Souls celebration of the dead which was held at the\nend of the Anthesteria; the \u03b3\u03b5\u03bd\u03ad\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1, the funeral feasts of the \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03b7;\nthe \u2018Apatouria,\u2019 the joint festival of the phratries; while the great\nachievement of the consolidation of the scattered groups into the\nsingle city was celebrated at Athens by the festival of the\n\u03a3\u03c5\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u03ba\u03ad\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1, the \u2018Union of all the Houses,\u2019 and the Panathenaia, the\nall-Attic feast of Athena.\n\nThe picture that these facts present of a State-religion based on the\nidea of the family and of kinship is mainly drawn from Athens, of\nwhich the religious record is always the richest; but it reflects\nundoubtedly the system of the other Hellenic states as well. Many of\ntheir records attest the belief that some one of the high divinities\nwas the ancestor or ancestress of the whole people, and this ancestry\nwas understood in the physical and literal sense. Thus Apollo\n\u2018Patro\u00f6s\u2019 was the divine ancestor, being the father of Ion, of the\nIonic population of Attica, and even the non-Ionic stock of that\ncommunity, desired for political purposes to affiliate themselves to\nthis God.[67.1] In the same sense he was called \u0393\u03b5\u03bd\u03ad\u03c4\u03c9\u03c1, \u2018the Father\u2019\nin Delos.[67.2] Zeus was the father of Arkas, the eponymous hero of\nthe Arcadians, and was worshipped as \u03a0\u03b1\u03c4\u03c1\u1ff6\u03bf\u03c2 at Tegea[67.3]; Hermes\nalso was ancestral God of part of {68} the Arcadian land and\nidentified with the ancestor Aipytos.[68.1] These religious fictions\ncame to exert an important influence on morality and also to develop\na certain spiritual significance which will be considered later.\n\n_Hero-cult_.--This aspect of the public religion is further emphasised\nby the prevailing custom of hero-worship which appears to have\ngathered strength in this second period. The hero in the technical\nsense was one whose tomb was honoured with semi-divine rites and who\nwas regarded either as a glorious man of the past or as the mortal\nancestor of the State or the tribe or the clan. The first clear\nevidence of this in literature is in the poem of Arktinos of Miletos\ncalled the \u2018Aithiopis,\u2019 that may belong to the end of the eighth\ncentury, in which the apotheosis of Achilles was described. But there\nis, as has been said, strong reason for believing that the practice of\n\u2018heroising\u2019 the dead descended from the pre-Homeric age. Nevertheless,\nof the multitude of hero and ancestor cults recorded in ancient\nHellas, the greater number are probably post-Homeric. We find the\nDelphic oracle giving vigorous encouragement to the institution of\nthem, and in the sixth century cities begin to negotiate and dispute\nabout the possession of the relics of heroes. Some of these in the\nolder cults may have been actual living men, dimly remembered, some\nwere fictitious ancestors, like Arkas and Lakedaimon, some may have\nbeen faded deities, such as were Eubouleus at Eleusis and Trophonios\nat Lebadeia. But all were imagined by the worshipper to have been once\nmen or women living upon the earth. This, {69} then, becomes a fact of\nimportance for the religious thought of the world, for it engenders,\nor at least encourages, the belief that human beings might through\nexceptional merit be exalted after death to a condition of blessed\nimmortality, not as mere spirits, but as beings with glorified body\nand soul. Furthermore, certain ancient heroes, long endeared to the\npeople as the primeval parent or the war-leader of their forefathers,\nbecome raised to the position of the high God and merged in his being;\nErechtheus shares the altar and even the title of Poseidon and Zeus,\nAipytos of Arcadia becomes Hermes, Agamemnon in Laconia at last is\nfused with Zeus.[69.1]\n\nNor in this second period were such heroic honours reserved for the\nremote ancestor or the great king or warrior of old, but were\nsometimes paid to the recently dead, to the men who had served the\nState well by arms or by counsel. On the assumption that Lykourgos of\nSparta was a real man--and no other theory that bears scrutiny has\nbeen put forward about him--his case is the earliest recorded instance\nof the \u2018heroising\u2019 of a personage of the historic period. A great\nstimulus about this time was given to this practice by the expansion\nof Greek colonisation, the greatest world-event of the period, which\nreacted in many ways on religion. As the new colonists could not take\nwith them the tombs or the bones of the aboriginal hero of their\nstock, they must institute a new hero-cult, so as to bind the new\ncitizens together by the tie of heroic kinship. The {70} most natural\nperson to select for this high honour was the founder or leader of the\ncolony, the \u03ba\u03c4\u03af\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 or \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03b7\u03b3\u03ad\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2 as he was called; and we may regard\nit as the usual rule that, when he died, he would be buried within the\ncity and his tomb would become a \u2018\u1f21\u03c1\u1ff6\u03bf\u03bd\u2019 and would be visited yearly\nwith annual offerings.\n\nThat the ordinary head of the private household in this period\nreceived posthumous honours amounting to actual worship cannot be\ndefinitely proved. The tendance of the dead had become indeed a matter\nof religion, and at Athens was attached to the ritual of the state by\nthe commemorative feast of All Souls, the \u03c7\u03cd\u03c4\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9, or \u2018Feast of Pots,\u2019\nthe last day of the Anthesteria. But nothing that is recorded of this\nghost-ceremony convicts it of actual worship; the ghosts are invited\nto spend the day with the household that holds them in affection; they\nare offered pots of porridge, and then at sunset are requested or\ncommanded to depart. Prayers are proffered in their behalf to the\npowers of death, but not directly to the ghosts themselves; no cult is\noffered them as to superior beings endowed with supernatural power\nover the lives of individuals and states.[70.1] Nevertheless, the\npassionate service of lamentation and the extravagant dedication of\ngifts which marked the funeral ceremonies of the eighth and seventh\ncenturies and which certain early legislation was framed to check,\nreveals a feeling about the dead bordering on veneration and such as\nmight inspire actual worship.\n\nWe may safely assume that the growing interest of the States in\nhero-cult intensified the family {71} aspect of the State-religion;\nthe hero as the glorious kinsman is invited to the sacrifices of the\nhigher deities, and to the hospitable ritual known as the \u2018theoxenia\u2019\nin which the God himself is the host.\n\nIt is important for the student of religion to mark the consequences\nof this close association of the civic religion with the idea of\nkinship that held together the family and tribe. These have been\nestimated more at length elsewhere[71.1] and only a few general\nobservations are possible here. Where a family bond exists between the\ndeity and the city, the spirit of genial fellowship is likely to\nprevail in the ritual and religious emotions, and the family meal\nmight become the type of the public sacrificial meal with the god.\nSuch a religion is adverse to proselytism; for as it is the sacred\nprerogative of certain kindred stocks, its principle means the\nexclusion of the stranger. Its religious and moral feeling is\nnaturally clannish; the whole group must share in the moral guilt of\nthe individual, and the sins of the fathers will be visited on the\nchildren. It affords a keen stimulus to local patriotism and quickens\nan ardent life within the wall of the city; it has at the same time\nthe natural defects of narrowness of view. Yet, in the course of\nreligious evolution, we must regard the old Hellenic conception of the\nGod the Father of the tribe or the city as pregnant of the larger idea\nof God as the Father of mankind, an idea which had already dawned upon\nHomer at a time when the tribal spirit of religion was still at its\nheight.\n\nA further result of such a system is that the {72} State-divinities\nbecome also the patrons and guardians of the family morality, Zeus and\nHera, for instance, the supervisors of the human marriage and of the\nduties of married life; and copious records present the High God as\nthe protector of the father\u2019s right; of the tie that binds together\nthe brethren, the sisters, the kinsmen. While such a religion was a\nliving force, it was not likely that the family could assert itself as\nagainst the State; to marry healthfully and early, to beget vigorous\nchildren as defenders of the State and the family graves, to cherish\nand honour one\u2019s parents, to protect the orphan, these were patriotic\nreligious duties that were inspired by the developed State-religion\nand strenuously preached by the best ethical teachers of Greece. The\nState being the family \u2018writ large,\u2019 private morality and public could\nnot clash. The brutal action of Kreon in the Antigone is equally an\nattack on the religion of the State as on that of the family; and it\nwas not till the fifth century that the claim of private conscience as\nagainst the family and the State could arise or that the question\ncould be asked \u201cWhether the good man was really the same as the good\ncitizen.\u201d\n\n_Influence of political religion on law_.--Of still greater interest\nis an important advance in criminal law, discernible as early as the\neighth century, which may be traced partly to the growth of the City,\nwith its extended idea of kinship, partly to the growing intensity of\nthe belief in the power and significance of the spirits of the dead.\n\nIn the most primitive period of Hellas, the shedding of kinsman\u2019s\nblood was already a heinous sin; but the slaying of one outside the\nkindred {73} circle was neither a sin against God nor a social crime.\nBut as the public mind of Greece became penetrated with the feeling\nthat all the citizens of the Polis were in some sense akin, the\nslaying of a citizen became a criminal act of which the State, and no\nlonger merely the clan of the slain man, would take cognisance. And\nthis expanded concept of law is reflected in the expansion of an\nancient and most significant cult, the cult of Zeus Meilichios.[73.1]\nThis was the underworld God, who was angered and must be appeased when\nkindred blood was shed; as the idea of kinship was enlarged, any civic\nmassacre might arouse his wrath and rites of atonement might be\noffered to him. This keener sensitiveness concerning the sanctity of\nhuman life was accompanied by a feeling that bloodshed might imprint a\nstain on the slayer that rendered him ritualistically unclean, that\nis, temporarily unfit to approach the Gods or men; it was also\nfortified by the growing fear of the ghost-world, which seems to have\nlain more heavily on the post-Homeric society than on Homer\u2019s men. It\nis hard to give the dates for this section of the mental history of\nHellas. The first record of the thought, which is nowhere explicit in\nHomer, that homicide in certain circumstances demands purification is\nderived from the Aithiopis of Arktinos, the epic poet of Miletos in\nthe eighth century.[73.2] Achilles, having slain the worthless\nThersites, must retire from the army for a while to be purified in\nLesbos by Apollo and Artemis; we mark here that the slain man was no\nkinsman of the slayer in any true sense {74} of the word, but was a\nmember of the same Ach\u00e6an community, and therefore his slaying\nbrought a religious impurity upon the hero; and we may believe that\nthe narrative reveals the early religious law of Miletos. But we must,\nin passing, recognise the possibility that these apparently new\nmanifestations may be only a revival of immemorial thought and\nfeeling, common in the older non-Hellenic societies, and only for a\ntime suspended.[74.1]\n\n_Influence of Delphi and Crete_.--In this post-Homeric development of\na system of purification from bloodshed, the legends suggest that\nCrete and Delphi played a momentous part. In the great island, the\ncradle of European culture, the cult of Zeus had early attached to\nitself certain Cathartic ideas, probably of Dionysiac origin. And\nprobably in the pre-Homeric period the influence of Crete had reached\nDelphi; while the legend of the migration of Apollo Delphinios from\nCrete to Delphi, and the story that the God himself must go to this\nisland to be purified from the blood of Python, belong to the second\nperiod with which we are dealing.\n\nWe have reason to believe that the Delphic God--through the agency of\nhis politic priesthood--was asserting his claim in the eighth and\nseventh centuries to be the dictator in the matter of purification\nfrom homicide, and thus to satisfy the cravings of an awakening\nconscience. This claim may have been suggested partly by the fear of\ncompetition with the spreading Dionysiac religion, which also brought\nwith it a \u2018Kathartic\u2019 message, and with which the Delphic priesthood\nwere wise enough to agree quickly; partly also by the aboriginal\nnature of {75} Apollo, who was immemorially \u03c6\u03bf\u1fd6\u03b2\u03bf\u03c2 or \u2018pure.\u2019 Though\nthe claim was not universally admitted and the Apolline jurisdiction\ncould not obliterate the function of other divinities in this matter,\nyet it was powerful and effective of much that was vital both to law\nand religion. Of the early procedure at Delphi we know nothing. If the\ngod exercised discretion in his grant of purification, if he refused,\nfor instance, to purify the deliberate and cold-blooded murderer, here\nwas the opportunity for the emergence of a civilised law of homicide.\nIt may not have been until the seventh century that any Hellenic state\ncould express in a legal establishment its consciousness of the\ndifference between the act of murder and the act of justifiable or\naccidental homicide. The earliest that we know of was the law-court,\n\u1f10\u03c0\u03af \u0394\u03b5\u03bb\u03c6\u03b9\u03bd\u03af\u03c9, \u201cnear the image [or shrine] of the\nDolphin-God\u201d--established at Athens under the patronage of the\nCretan-Delphic God to try cases where the homicide was admitted and\njustification was pleaded. In this, as in other Attic courts that\ndealt with the same offence, rites of purification were often an\nessential adjunct of the ceremony. The typical legend that enshrines\nthe early ideas of \u2018Katharsis\u2019 and turns on the question of\njustifiable homicide is the legend of Orestes, which had spread around\nthe Peloponnese and penetrated Attica as early as the eighth century,\nand later became Pan-Hellenic. Apollo, as a divine agent, appears in\nit first, as far as we have any literary record, in the lyric of\nStesichoros, and at some indeterminate date in this period undertook\nthe purification of the matricide.\n\n_Influence of Delphi on colonisation_.--These {76} Cathartic functions\nand the general demand for their exercise must have greatly enhanced\nthe influence of Delphi in the earlier part of the post-Homeric\nperiod. It was doubtless strengthened even more by the great secular\nmovement of Greek colonisation. With wise foresight the God had\nundertaken the guidance and encouragement of this already in the\nearliest days when the Hellenes were pushing across the sea; for it\nseems as if the first Greek settlements on the Asia Minor coast, the\nLycian and the \u00c6olic, were due to his leadership if not to his\ninspiration. The legends that associate him with the Dorian migration\ninto the Peloponnese are too powerful to be rejected. And after this\nevent, when light begins to shine on Greek history and the Hellenic\nrace was rapidly establishing that chain of colonies across and around\nthe Mediterranean which were to diffuse Greek culture through the\nworld, the power of Delphi and the Delphic oracle reached its zenith.\nFor it is clear that it was the prevailing fashion to consult the\nPythian Apollo as to the choice of a site. Hence it came about that in\nso many Greek cities Apollo was worshipped as \u1f08\u03c1\u03c7\u03b7\u03b3\u03ad\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2, that is, as\nthe divine founder, and that the flourishing communities of the West\nsent back tithe-offerings to his shrine.[76.1] Was it by some\naccident or by something essential in his early cult and character\nthat the God was able to play this momentous political part, such as\nno other deity has ever played in the secular history of his people?\nThe cause may lie far back in the dim antiquity of the Apolline cult,\nwhen he was specially \u1f08\u03b3\u03c5\u03b9\u03b5\u03cd\u03c2, a god \u2018of the road,\u2019 the leader of the\nmigratory host. And {77} in pre-Homeric times, if not aboriginally, he\nwas already an oracular God; nor was any occasion so urgent for a\nconsultation of the local oracle as when the people were setting forth\non their perilous path to find a new home.[77.1]\n\n_The Delphic oracle_.--The spiritual history of the Hellenic race in\nthe early history period, when we mark a growing consciousness of\nnationality and of kinship in the various stocks, is very much a\nrecord of the career and activity of the Delphic oracle; and this is\ntoo complex and lengthy a theme to be more than adumbrated\nhere.[77.2] Due partly to the local position and the immemorial\nsanctity of the oracle, partly to the devotion and the grateful\nremembrance of the powerful Dorian states in the Peloponnese, the\nPythian worship came to overshadow the Delian, and provided the chief\nreligious centre and the strongest bond of spiritual unity in the\nHellenic world. For political unity it could do little, owing to the\ncentrifugal bias of Greek politics; yet the Delphic Amphiktyony, the\nmost powerful of these religious confederations that are recorded here\nand there in the early history of Greece, contained within it the\ngerms of intertribal morality and concord. Its members were not indeed\npledged to perpetual amity, but at least to a certain mutual\nforbearance even in their warlike dealings with one another. But the\nchief regulative functions of the oracle were concerned with questions\nof the institution and administration of cults, with the domains of\nlegislation, colonisation, public and even private morality and\nconduct. In the sphere of religion it doubtless {78} emphasised the\nnecessity of purification from bloodshed; otherwise it had no high\nreligious message to deliver; but it was enthusiastic for the\npropagation of the cult of Dionysos, and it authorised and sometimes\nencouraged the growing tendency towards the posthumous worship of\ndistinguished men. In the sphere of morality its standard was\ngenerally high and its influence beneficent, especially--if we can\ntrust the record--in the later period when it played the part of a\nState-Confessional and in its utterances reflected generally the\nprogress of Greek ethics and the spirit of an enlightened\nhumanitarianism.\n\nBut its chief religious achievements were to bring some principle of\nunity and authority into the complex and shifting aggregate of Greek\npolytheism, and to deepen the impression on the Hellenic mind of the\ndivine ordering of the world; and the fruits of this teaching we\ngather in the works of Attic tragedy and in the history of Herodotus.\n\nIn view of the history of other temple institutions of like power\namong other peoples--the Mesopotamian, for instance--we may be\nsurprised that the Delphic priesthood made no attempt to impose Apollo\nas the supreme God upon the Hellenic states. The author of the Homeric\nhymn, composed partly under Delphic influences, exalts Apollo as high\nas he dares; but neither in this nor in any Delphic utterance is\nApollo presented as more than the minister of Zeus, the mouthpiece of\nthe supreme Father-God, the tradition of whose supremacy among the\nAryan Hellenes had been fixed fast by Homer and the Homeridai.\n\nNor did the Delphic Apollo succeed in achieving a monopoly of\ndivination; for the spirit of local {79} independence was opposed to\nany divine monopoly in any department of life. And other oracles, such\nas some of those on the Asia Minor shore, acquired considerable\nprestige, especially in the later period when the influence of Delphi\nhad declined. But from the eighth till the beginning of the fifth\ncentury, the Pythian is the only one of the many mantic institutions\nthat is to be regarded as a vital force of Pan-Hellenism.\n\n_The games of Greece_.--As another important phenomenon belonging to\nthe earlier part of this second period we note the emergence and\ndevelopment of the great Hellenic games. Some recent theorists have\nsupposed that all the public athletic contests in Greece arose\ndirectly from some religious ritual belonging to the cult either of\nthe gods or of the dead hero. The evidence is faulty and the\nritualistic origin of these institutions is unproven. But a common\ntemple-worship undoubtedly gave the opportunity and the occasion to\nthe development of the four Great Games, and from the beginning they\nwere placed beneath the \u00e6gis of religion. And these must be reckoned\nas among the strongest Pan-Hellenic influences, evoking and\nstrengthening the consciousness of nationality. For in the sixth\ncentury the whole of Hellas, eastern and western, was represented at\nOlympia, Pytho, the Isthmus and Nemea; here was maintained the \u2018truce\nof God\u2019 between the jealous or hostile communities; and at Olympia\nonce in every four years the Pan-Hellenes offered a common homage to\ntheir aboriginal Father-God.\n\nWe must then regard the great games and the Pythian establishment as\nmomentous factors in the {80} religious national life, as tending to\nevolve a religion of a broader compass than the narrow tribal type of\nthe remote past. And they concern the higher mental history of the\nrace because most of them, and notably the Pythian, included\ncompetitions of art and literature; and thus they assisted in\nestablishing the specially Hellenic theory of the divine character of\nthe artistic and intellectual life.\n\nThere were other festal and public meetings of a more exclusively\nreligious purpose that also served to deepen in the various states the\nconsciousness of spiritual unity, and often, where the great lyric\npoets composed hymns for the occasion, to exalt and illuminate the\nideal conception of the divinity; the Pan-Ionic Delian festival of\nApollo, for instance, of which the splendour developed in the early\npost-Homeric age and with the growing prosperity of the new Ionic\ncolonies, must have contributed much to the building up of the\npeculiarly Hellenic ideal of Apollo; and the Homeric hymn, inspired by\nthis occasion, is the earliest record of the national consciousness of\nthe Ionic race.\n\n_Diffusion of Dionysos-worship_.--Another religious phenomenon,\npregnant of consequences for the spiritual history of Hellenism, is\nthe diffusion of the worship of Dionysos. Faint, though indubitable\ntraces of this can be discerned in the prehistoric period, but it only\nbegins to be palpable and important in the early historic. Its\nsignificance has already been indicated in general outlines.[80.1]\n\nHaving entered Attica from B\u0153otia and been adopted into the Attic\nstate-religion some time before the Ionic migration to the Asia Minor\ncoast, {81} it gradually, in the eighth and seventh centuries captured\nmost of the States of the Peloponnese, of the islands and the more\ndistant colonies.\n\nThe Hellenic culture of Dionysos forms one of the most interesting\nchapters in the spiritual career of Hellenism; for the taming of the\nwild Thracian God, the transformation of him into a civic deity, the\ndisciplining and the adaptation of the thiasoi of the Maenads to the\nuses of an orderly state-religion, were not the least among the\nachievements of the Hellenic genius. And as the state-religion of\nthese centuries had no eschatologic theory, so it seems to have\ndiscarded everywhere whatever eschatologic promise the Dionysiac\nreligion proclaimed on its entrance into Greece. Yet, in spite of the\nchastening influence of the civic spirit, the worship preserved much\nof its distinctive tone and religious power; evoking a special mood\nunknown in the other cults; while even the savage form of sacrament,\nin which the God was devoured in his human or animal-incarnation,\nsurvived with some modifications in Tenedos and Chios down to a late\nperiod. The history, then, of the Dionysiac religion concerns the\naccount of the development of the sacramental idea in the\nMediterranean. It concerns also the history of Hellenic culture; for\none of its modes of expression was a peculiar type of emotional music,\naccompanying the Dionysiac hymn known as the dithyramb, which has been\nregarded, though probably erroneously, as the parent of Attic tragedy.\nIts main contribution to the polytheism of Greece was its stimulation\nof a warmer and stronger religious faith; and its special later\nservice to popular religious theory was the refining and {82}\nbrightening of men\u2019s thoughts and sentiments concerning the life after\ndeath and the powers of the lower world, with whom the mild and genial\nGod was generally identified or associated.\n\n_Orphic thiasoi_.--But its highest importance is found rather in the\nesoteric than in the external or popular domain of Hellenic religion.\nFor, perhaps as early as the seventh century, the cult of Dionysos was\nraised to a higher power by the rise and diffusion of the Orphic\nbrotherhoods or \u2018thiasoi\u2019 who worshipped this deity under various\nmystic names. The study of Orphism is of the highest interest and\ncomplexity; and it is only possible here to indicate its general\nfeatures and significance. The preachers of the Orphic doctrines are\nthe first propagandists or missionaries that we can discover in the\npre-Christian Mediterranean world. For they had a definite message,\nand ignoring the gentile and civic barriers of the old political\nreligion, they preached it, if not to all mankind, at least to all the\nHellenes. It was a message fraught with some new and momentous ideas,\nwhose real import we have been able to gather in part from the now\nfamous gold-tablets found in the graves of Crete and South Italy, and\ncontaining parts of a metric Orphic liturgy and creed that is a\nproduct at latest of the fifth, if not the sixth, century B.C.\nCombining these with some passages in Pindar\u2019s Odes and Plato\u2019s\nDialogues, we can recover in outline the doctrine of early Orphism. It\nproclaimed a theory, unfamiliar to native Greek mythology and\nreligion, that the soul of man is divine and of divine origin; that\nthe body is its impure prison-house where it is in danger of\ncontracting stain; that by elaborate purifications and {83}\nabstinences the soul might retain its purity, and by sacramental and\nmagic methods the pure soul might enjoy in this life and in the next\nfull communion with God. Preoccupied with the problem of the life\nafter death, the Orphic mystics evolved the concept of Purgatory, a\nmode of posthumous punishment temporary and purificatory; also, if we\ncan trust certain indications in Pindar and Plato, the dogma of\nreincarnation or more specially of a triple cycle of lives both in\nthis world and the next. Students of religious philosophy have noted\nhere the striking resemblance to Buddhistic thought; and have\nconsidered whether Indian speculation could have cast its influence so\nfar westward at so early a time.\n\nIt is of more immediate importance for the religious history of the\nGreek people to determine--if we could--the measure of success that\nthese missions achieved, how far they succeeded in capturing the\nmasses or the \u00e9lite of the people. They certainly did not succeed in\npenetrating the inner circle of the Eleusinian mysteries; there is no\nevidence that they even tried, though it is likely that they did; but\nwe may surmise that their influence was at one time strong at Athens,\nas Aristophanes proclaims as a generally accepted tradition that\nOrpheus was the apostolic founder of all mysteries. They were\nevidently powerful in Crete; but the chief arena of their activity and\nthe chief scene of their secular and political influence was \u2018Western\nHellas\u2019 or Magna Gr\u00e6cia, where Pythagoras was their greatest convert\nand the Pythagorean clubs their militant orders. The career of these\nforms a page of general Greek history. Their downfall relieved Hellas\nfrom the danger of the establishment {84} of Orphism as a secular\npower, which threatened the Hellenic spirit with a bondage to\nsacerdotalism and the pharisaic formalism of the purist. Henceforth,\nthe Orphic religion was a private influence only, and we have no\nevidence to determine precisely how great it was at any particular\nepoch. Pindar was deeply touched by it. \u00c6schylus and Sophocles, so\nfar as we can see, remained unmoved, while Euripides may have been at\ntimes attracted and at times repelled but was in no sense its\nchampion. Plato in a well-known passage[84.1] protests strongly\nagainst the Orphic mystery-mongers as spiritual quacks destitute of\nany real morality, who dealt in magic and traded in promises and\nthreats concerning the other world. Whether this moral estimate of\nOrphism was just or not, there is no doubt that Plato\u2019s theory of the\nsoul as expressed in the Ph\u00e6drus was indebted to the Orphic\nmetaphysic. And the part played by these preachers of purity and\nsalvation in the later spiritual history of Greece was certainly of\nhigh importance. They mark the beginning of a new era of individualism\nand of what is called \u2018otherworldliness\u2019 in religion; for their\nconcern was with the personal soul and its destiny.\n\n_Eleusinian mysteries_.--The Eleusinia or Mysteries of Eleusis were a\nmore national and Pan-Hellenic institution than the Orphica, but of\nsomewhat similar influence and purpose. Originally they may have been\nmerely the tribal mysteries of an agrarian society to which only the\nadult members of the Eleusinian community were admitted. But when our\nearliest record reveals them, namely, the Homeric hymn to Demeter\nwhich cannot be later {85} than the close of the seventh century, they\nhave already enlarged their borders and their scope. For they appear\nthere as appealing to the whole Hellenic world, and their special\npromise to the initiated is the happiness of the soul after death.\nHaving once transcended the tribal limits, they seem to have imposed\nno conditions on the aspirants for admission except the possession of\nHellenic speech and purity from actual stain; the initiation was open\nto women and occasionally to slaves. Nor does their influence and the\npower of their appeal appear to have waned until the introduction of\nChristianity. Many scholars have laboured to solve the problems\nconcerning their ritual, their doctrine and their inner significance.\nIt has been thought that their chief attractiveness may have lain in\ntheir preservation of a higher sacramental conception of the sacrifice\nthat had died out in the ordinary public ritual; that the initiate\ndrank of a sacred cup in which were mystically infused the very life\nand substance of the kindly Earth-Mother, with whom their own being\nwas thus transcendentally united. But more careful criticism shows\nthat, though a simple form of sacrament was part of the preliminary\nservice, the real pivot of the mystery was not this but a solemn\npageant in which certain sacred things fraught with mystic power were\nshown to the eyes of the initiated, who also were allowed to witness\nmimetic performances showing the action and passion of a divine drama,\nthe Abduction of the Daughter, the sorrow and long search of the\nMother, the Holy Marriage of reconciliation, possibly the birth of a\nholy infant.\n\nTo imagine the thrill and the force of these rites, one must imagine a\nmedi\u00e6val passion-play {86} performed with surpassing stateliness and\nsolemnity. Those who saw these things in the Hall of the Mysteries at\nEleusis may have carried away with them an abiding sense of a closer\ncommunion with the benign powers of the nether world and a resulting\nhope of a happier posthumous lot. We must regard them as the highest\nand most spiritual product of the pure Hellenic religion, investing it\nwith an atmosphere of mystery and awe that was generally lacking in\nthe public cult, and which was unperturbed at Eleusis by any violence\nof morbid ecstasy such as marked the Phrygian and some of the Orphic\nrites. We may believe that they exercised a healthful influence on the\nmoral and spiritual temperament of the Hellene; but it is not clear\nthat they definitely proclaimed any higher moral theory, nor do they\nappear like the Orphica to have preached any dogma of metaphysic or\ntheology. But, like the Orphica, they tended to widen the horizon of\nthe religious spirit; for they appealed to a far larger public than\nthe ordinary cults of the city; and while being Pan-Hellenic in this\nsense they belong to the domain of personal religion, for they\nsatisfied the personal craving of the individual for closer fellowship\nwith the deity and they soothed the troublous apprehensions that were\ngrowing up in this second period concerning the individual destiny of\nthe soul. Yet as regards Attica and Athens at least and probably as\nregards Hellas, they are not to be ranked, as the Orphica may be,\namong the disruptive forces of individualistic religion, undermining\nthe social fabric of public worship. For the Athenian State\nadministered them--by the help of Eleusinian officials--in its\ncorporate capacity; and one of the catechumens--the {87} \u03c0\u03b1\u1fd6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c6\u1fbd\n\u1f11\u03c3\u03c4\u03af\u03b1\u03c2--was initiated, according to the most probable view, in behalf\nof the whole youth of the city.[87.1]\n\nIn the great mysteries the agrarian significance, though discoverable\nand associated with simple agrarian magic, was overshadowed by higher\nand more spiritual religion. And elsewhere in the State-festivals we\nnote this same phenomenon of progress in this second period. Old-world\nutilitarian rites of agriculture and fertility were often taken over\nby the expanding Polis and received an artistic elaboration that\ndisguised their original significance for the primitive peasant and\nraised them to a higher plane of social religion. This interesting\nprocess can be best studied in following the detailed records of the\nLaconian Karneia and Hyakinthia, the Delphic Pythia, the Attic\nPanathenaia: we can feelingly appreciate in these the potent influence\nof the lyric poetry, the music, and the art of early Greece, shaping\nand elevating men\u2019s imagination of divinity.\n\nBy the close of this second period--_c._ 500 B.C.--the Hellenic\nnational consciousness had realised itself in respect of intellectual\nculture, ethics and religion. Zeus Hellanios, the tribal God, is\nbecoming Panhellanios. The age of the tyrants contributed much to the\ngrowth of Pan-Hellenism; Peisistratos something to the idea of a\nnational religion, in that he seems to have worked zealously for the\norganisation and expansion of the Eleusinian mysteries. The cult of\nDionysos has penetrated the leading communities and most of the byways\nof Greece; and nearly everywhere he has been partially tamed and the\nM\u00e6nads either suppressed or disciplined to the more sober purposes of\ncivic worship. {88} But the two most striking phenomena in the\nspiritual history of the sixth century were, first, the rise and\nexpansion of Ionic philosophy and physical speculation, and, secondly,\nthe development of a new form of literature that came to be known as\nthe Attic Drama. And both must be reckoned with among the forces\naffecting the life of the popular religion.\n\n_Sixth-century philosophy_.--The relations of Greek philosophy to\nGreek religion is a great and complex subject, the theme of many\nmodern treatises; and in this slight sketch of the whole history of\nthe polytheism there is no room for more than a few most general\nobservations. So far as the new speculation, which gave birth to the\nfree secular science of Europe, was preoccupied with questions of the\nphysical origins of things and elemental theories of cosmogony, it\nwould not necessarily clash with any orthodox prejudice of the average\nHellene. For he had no sacred books which dictated to him any views\nconcerning the origin of the world or the constitution of nature, and\nwhich he would have considered it immoral to disbelieve. In fact when\nHerakleitos boldly declared that \u201cneither God nor man made the\nKosmos,\u201d there was no authoritative Greek myth or theologic dogma to\ngainsay him. But the great philosophers of the sixth century,\nPythagoras, Empedokles, Xenophanes and Herakleitos were also directly\nconcerned with the philosophy of religion, with speculations on the\nnature and with the true definition of Godhead; and some of the\nsurviving fragments of their works express ideas and sentiments in\nsharp antagonism to the concepts and ritual of the contemporary\npolytheism. The main trend of their {89} speculations ran counter to\nthe anthropomorphic theory of divinity; and they tend to define God\nnot as a person, but rather as the highest spiritual or metaphysical\nor even physical power or function of the universe; and there is a\ncommon tendency in this sixth-century thought away from the theistic\nto the pantheistic view. Pythagoras is said to have explained the\nconception of God in terms of mathematics and to have been willing to\naccept the personages of the popular polytheism on condition of\nfinding their true mathematical equation.[89.1] But this philosopher\nstands apart from the other leaders of this first period of Hellenic\nfree thought. The mathematical mind is often a prey to mysticism. And\nPythagoras was the most powerful champion and apostle of Orphism, the\nfounder of those secret societies that threatened the secular and the\nintellectual freedom of Hellas. Equally on its mystic as on its\nrationalistic side the Pythagorean teaching was in tendency inimical\nto the public religion of Greece, though the members of this sect\nappear always to have compromised with it. In the fragments of\nXenophanes we find the most severe protests against the current\nreligious conceptions of Hellas; his verses quoted by Clemens[89.2]\npolemise strongly against the folly of anthropomorphism, which is the\nmaster-passion of Greek polytheism; and if one or two of his quoted\nutterances seem to proclaim monotheism, it is clear that for his\nhigher thought Godhead was not a person, but a cosmic principle or a\nnoetic idea. On the whole the same account may be given of the\nreligious theory of Herakleitos so far as this is revealed at all in\nthe {90} fragments. It has indeed been recently maintained that he\ntolerated and found a place in his system for the contemporary\npolytheism;[90.1] but it is probably a truer view that he regarded it\nwith half-disguised contempt and only used its terms and figures on\noccasion as literary expressions; while three of his fragments are\nscornful exclamations against the excesses of the Bacchic ritual, the\nmethods of purification from blood, and the folly of idolatry.[90.2]\n\nYet in this early speculation of the sixth century the parting of the\nways has not yet been reached for physical science and religion; the\ncosmic theory is expressed in spiritual and animistic rather than in\nmaterialistic terms; for Empedokles Love and Strife are creative\nprinciples, in the view of Thales the magnet has a soul and all things\nare full of divine potencies. The great movement of Ionic thought was\nindeed adaptable to a high pantheistic or animistic creed, but not to\nthe personal polytheism of the Hellenes, though most of the\nphilosophers do not appear to have been vehement protestants. And at\nfirst their protests could have influenced only the minds of a few;\nnot before the fifth century was the popular State-religion obliged to\ntake notice of it.\n\n_Rise of tragedy_.--The other phenomenon referred to above as marking\nthe close of this period was the rise of tragedy. The question of its\ninfluence on the whole popular religion belongs to the history of the\nfifth century. What concerns us chiefly at this point is its close\nassociation with Dionysos-cult. The traditional view that it actually\noriginated in some {91} mimetic form of Bacchic ritual is in the\nopinion of the present writer still the most reasonable, although this\nis now denied by some scholars.[91.1] But even if its connection with\nDionysos-worship is a secondary or accidental fact, it is still a fact\nof importance for the history of Greek polytheism. The records\nconcerning Thespis of the Attic village Ikaria, a place dominated by\nancient Dionysiac legend, the statement of Herodotus concerning\nKleisthenes, the tyrant of Sikyon, who gave to Dionysos the tragic\nchoruses that hitherto had been devoted to the hero-cult of Adrastos,\nare sufficient proofs that this greatest of all the literary\nachievements of post-Homeric Hellas was dedicated to the God already\nin the sixth century; and throughout the glorious career of the Attic\nstage Dionysos remained its patron-God.\n\nHis worship, then, must have received a strong stimulus from this new\nform of literature which rapidly achieved popularity and appealed\ndirectly to a larger public than the other. And his character thus\nundergoes a singular transformation; the wild God of barbaric origin\ncomes to take rank by the side of Apollo and the Graces as a divinity\nof culture and education, the inspirer of one of the greatest of\nHellenic arts. Here again, as in the cults of Apollo, Athena and the\nMuses, we mark the characteristically Hellenic fusion of art and\nreligion; and the history of the dithyramb, the Dionysiac hymn which\nmay have been the parent of the drama and which was wedded to a\npeculiar mode of music and rhythm, is an important chapter in the\nhistory of European music.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IV.\n THE THIRD PERIOD, 500-338 B.C.\n\n{92}\n\nThe third period of Greek religion may conveniently include the\nfifth century and that part of the fourth that ends with the downfall\nof the system of civic autonomy at the battle of Chaironeia. For the\nhistory of Greek religion as of Greek culture, it is of the highest\ninterest, being the richest in respect of religious monuments and\nliterature and the most forceful and momentous in regard to the\ninfluences at work. In the sphere of external history it witnessed\nsuch world-crises as the struggle of Hellenism against barbarism, the\nrise and fall of the Imperial City-State, and the emergence of Macedon\nas a world-power; in the sphere of culture it witnessed the\nculmination of the greatest art of the world, the bloom and maturity\nof the Attic drama and Pindar\u2019s lyric, the diffusion of education and\nthe spirit of enquiry through the activity of the Sophists, and the\nhigher development of philosophy and science. To show how the\nreligious practice and theory of the higher and lower members of\nHellenic society were affected by the great events and achievements of\nthis greatest period of human history is a necessary but a difficult\ntask.\n\n_Fifth-century religion contrasted with the Homeric_.--If we take\nAthens as the typical religious community of the fifth century and\ncompare the {93} structure and forms of her state-polytheism with\nthose of the old Homeric world, we find the personalities of the\nprehistoric pantheon still worshipped and cherished; no prehistoric\ncult of that epic world has as yet fallen into desuetude; nor had the\nmost civilised city of Hellas discarded the immemorial rites of the\nsimple peasant religion, the worship of rivers and streams, nor some\nof the most na\u00efve practices of animism. And it is clear that this\nconservatism was no hieratic convention, but a living faith,\nexpressing a religious intuition of the people, who were as yet\nuntouched by the cooling influences of science and philosophic\nscepticism. In fact, for the greater part of the fifth century, the\nlife of the polytheism was probably stronger than it had been ever in\nthe past. It was strengthened by the admission of a few new figures\nand by the development of some of the old.[93.1]\n\nIt is rather in respect to its spirit, tone and outlook that the\nreligion of the fifth century presents some striking contrasts to the\nHomeric. Its anthropomorphism is even more pronounced, thanks to its\ngreat art-power, but it reveals a deeper conviction concerning the\npart played by moral agencies and powers in the affairs of men. The\nwritings of Herodotus expound a religious view of history of which\nonly faint indications were found in the earlier epic literature. The\nhistorian of the fifth century regards the momentous contest of Greece\nwith Persia as a conflict of moral forces, the issue being worked out\nby unseen powers, such as Nemesis, Violence and Justice, with Zeus as\nthe {94} righteous Judge. And in weaving into his narrative the\nstories of \u00c6acid heroes and the Eleusinian deities speeding to the\nhelp of the Hellenes at Salamis, he doubtless represents the faith of\nthe average Greek. A similar view was also impressed on the religious\nimagination of the people by oracular utterances, such as that which\nwas imputed to the prophet Bakis--\u0394\u1fd6\u03b1 \u0394\u03af\u03ba\u03b7 \u03c3\u03b2\u03ad\u03c3\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9 \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u1f78\u03bd \u039a\u03cc\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd,\n\u1f59\u03b2\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c5\u1f31\u03cc\u03bd,[94.1] \u201cJustice divine shall quench fell Koros, the child\nof Insolence,\u201d Koros standing for Persia, the tyranny born of satiety.\nIt is expressed pictorially on the famous vase at Naples, representing\nHellas and Asia pleading their cause before the High God with \u1f08\u03c0\u03ac\u03c4\u03b7,\nas a tempting demon, standing by Asia.[94.2] In this scene we trace\nalso the influence of the famous tragedy of \u00c6schylus, the \u2018Pers\u00e6,\u2019\nwhich in more than one passage of deep religious conviction pronounces\nmoral judgment on the great event.[94.3] The same view is expressed\nand the same tone heard in the striking poem of Pindar\u2019s eighth\nPythian ode, where he exults over the triumph of \u2018Hesychia,\u2019 the armed\nPeace of Hellas, who has cast Insolence into the sea, even as Zeus\nquelled the monster Typh\u0153us.\n\n_Pan-Hellenism_.--The Hellenic confederate effort against Persia was\nthe nearest approach ever made by the Hellenic race to Pan-Hellenic\naction; and in a striking chapter of Herodotus, eulogising the loyalty\nof the Athenians to the cause of Greece, emphasis is laid on the name\nof Zeus Hellenios.[94.4] This is the highest political title of the\nHigh God; {95} and its history is interesting. Originally the narrow\ntribal name of the God of the Hellenes, a small Thessalian group under\nthe leadership of the Aiakidai, it was transported to Aigina by a\nmigration of the same tribe, whose ancestor Aiakos was the high-priest\nof Zeus Hellanios; already in the sixth century, when the denotation\nof Hellas was enlarged, the title may have taken on a wider meaning.\nBut it was the danger of the Persian wars, and the part played in\nthem--we may believe--by the men and the old heroes of Aigina that\nbrought the cult into prominence, investing the cult-name with a wider\nsignificance and a more potent appeal. Here, then, was Hellenic\nreligion giving voice to an ideal that might be realised by the poet,\nthe artist, and the thinker, but never by any statesman or state.\n\nAnother cult belonging to the same range as this was that of Zeus\nEleutherios, the God of Hellenic freedom. \u201cHaving driven out the\nPersian they raised an altar to Zeus, the God of the free, a fair\nmonument of freedom for Hellas.\u201d[95.1] These lines of Simonides\ncommemorate the dedication of the Greeks after the victory at Plat\u00e6a,\nwhen they had purified the land and its shrines from the polluting\npresence of the barbarian by means of sacred fire brought from Delphi.\nThe significance of this has been pointed out elsewhere[95.2] by the\npresent writer; the fight for liberty was prompted by more than a mere\nsecular passion, but by an idea inherent in the civic religion. The\ntitle \u0395\u03bb\u03b5\u03c5\u03b8\u03ad\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 is only known before the Persian wars in the\nZeus-worship of Laconia; henceforth it was widely diffused,\ncommemorating not only the deliverance of Greece from {96} the\nbarbarian, but, in Sicily for instance, emancipation from the domestic\ntyrant.\n\nIn contrast with the deterioration of the old Roman religion, caused\nby the Hannibalic wars, the successful struggle of Greece against\nbarbarism in the east and the west undoubtedly quickened for a time\nthe fervour and devotion inspired by the national cults. The\nsufferings of Hellas were easily repaired; the Gods in whom they had\ntrusted had not failed them, and much of the spoils won from the\nbarbarian were gratefully dedicated to the embellishment of the\nshrines. The vacillating and time-serving policy of Delphi at the hour\nof the greatest peril was condoned or unnoted by the victors, and\nApollo received an ample share of the fruits of victory. The champions\nof Hellenism in the West, Gelo and Hiero, commemorated their victories\nover the Carthaginian and Etruscan powers at Himera and Kyme by\nthankofferings sent to Apollo at Delphi and Zeus at Olympia. The\nbronze helmet found at Olympia, and now in the British Museum,\ninscribed with the simple dedication, \u201cHieron the son of Deinomenes\nand the Syracusans send Tuscan spoils to Zeus from Kyme,\u201d is an\nepoch-marking monument of Pan-Hellenic history and religion. The\ngratitude of Hellas was paid in the first instance to the High God\nZeus; to him was consecrated the \u2018feast of freedom\u2019 at Plat\u00e6a, which\nwas still commemorated with pathetic fervour even in the last days of\nHellenic decay;[96.1] to him, under the national title of Olympios,\nwas dedicated the mighty temple at Akragas, from the spoils won by\nGelo at Himera. But the outflow of national {97} thankfulness was\ndirected to other divinities as well; notably and naturally to the\nWar-Goddess of the Athenians, and the spoils of Persia at Athens and\nPlat\u00e6a were partly devoted to the erection of two striking statues of\nAthena. Nor were the lesser powers of the elements forgotten; the\nwinds that assisted the Greek fleet at Artemision and the nymphs of\nthe soil on which the battle of Plat\u00e6a was fought; the grateful\nAthenians instituted a cult of Boreas, their kinsman, in their\nrestored city and assisted in the worship of the Nymphs at Kithairon.\nThe Arcadian goatherd-God, the rustic Pan, was admitted into Athens\nshortly before the battle of Marathon, and the story to which the\nAthenians gave currency of the help he rendered them at the great\nbattle contributed something no doubt to the subsequent diffusion of\nhis cult.\n\nA further religious consequence of these great events was the stimulus\ngiven to hero-worship; Gelo, the victor at Himera, and some of the\nHellenes who fell at Thermopyl\u00e6, Marathon and Plat\u00e6a received heroic\nhonours. This \u2018heroising\u2019 of the recently defunct had its moral value\nas a strong stimulus to patriotism, when they had died in the service\nof their country; and though it was degraded in the fifth century to\nthe exaltation of the useless athlete, yet it must be reckoned among\nthe life-forces of later polytheism and as a momentous factor of\nhigher religious history.\n\nFinally, we may with probability ascribe to the triumph of Hellas and\nto the expanding glory and greatness of Athens a marked increase in\nthe Hellenic popularity of the Eleusinian mysteries. For this the\nAthenians might thank Herodotus and his thrilling {98} narrative of\nthe vision of a heavenly host seen moving from Eleusis towards\nSalamis, for the salvation of Hellas; they might also thank their own\nfar-sighted policy of encouraging the whole Hellenic world to take\npart in the worship at Eleusis, aspiring thus to make the Hall of the\nMysteries, a recent architectural work of the Periclean\nadministration, the centre of a Pan-Hellenic faith.[98.1] And their\nattempt in great measure succeeded.\n\n_Influence of religious art_.--The study of the polytheism of this\ncentury is essentially also a study of the great religious art which\nculminated in the handiwork of Pheidias, but which continued forceful\nand prolific till the age of Alexander. The general effect of the\niconic art upon Greek religion has been briefly indicated above; and\nlong before this century the religious bias of the race was committed\nto idolatry;[98.2] the people craved an image that they could love\nand cherish, though here and there they might retain the uncouth\nfetich, the block of wood or rudely hewn stone, because of the\nimmemorial magic which it had acquired through ages of shy half-savage\nveneration. The achievement of Pheidias and his contemporaries was\nonly the culmination in a process of ideal anthropomorphism that began\nwith Homer and was helped forward by the lyric poetry and music of the\npost-Homeric age and by the art of the sixth century. Strictly\nestimated and studied in all its fullness, in the marvellous products\nof vase-painting, glyptic and sculpture that even the shattered fabric\nof antiquity presents to us, the art of the fifth and early fourth\ncentury must be called the most perfect religious art {99} of the\nworld. A more spiritual or more mystic religion could not have\nproduced or could not have borne with such an art. But it was the best\nand most satisfying expression of the best that the religious spirit\nof Hellenism admitted; for this polytheism had been built up by the\nteachers of the people, poets and artists obeying the race-instinct,\nnot on vague conceptions of infinite Godhead ineffable for art and\ninexpressible in clear speech, but on vivid perceptions of concrete\ndivine personages, distinct in form, attributes and character robust\nand very real. The Greek artist, with his miraculous cunning of hand,\ncould deal with such types as he could not have dealt with \u2018the Word\u2019\nor with the \u2018Buddha.\u2019 Nor was he merely the exponent of the highest\npopular imagination, but, unconsciously perhaps and in obedience to a\ntrue art-tradition, at times a reformer and in any case a creator. For\nus his works have this value among others that, even more than the\npoetic literature, they reveal to us how the people at their best\nimagined their deities. But they also helped the people to imagine\nthem better and more nobly. Perhaps the earliest art of Hellas that\ntakes rank among the works of high religious inspiration are the Attic\nvase-paintings produced near to 500 B.C. that portray the thiasos of\nDionysos. The strong spirit of that religion that lifted the votary\nabove the conventional moral human life, the wild joy of\nself-abandonment, the ecstasy of communion with the God, all are here\nmore startlingly expressed than even in the lyrics of the Bacch\u00e6 of\nEuripides or in the single perfect Bacchic ode of Sophocles\u2019 Antigone.\nIt was not till the time of Skopas in the fourth {100} century that\nGreek sculpture could so deal with this orgiastic theme. The plastic\nwork of the fifth century dealing with divine forms is mainly\ntranquil, majestic, ethical, intellectual; the physical perfection of\nthe divinities sculptured on the Parthenon impresses us not merely and\nnot so much with the sense of physical beauty and strength, but rather\nwith the sense of a higher and nobler vital power; so instinct is the\nbeauty with that quality that the Greeks called \u03c3\u03b5\u03bc\u03bd\u03cc\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2, a quality\npartly ethical, partly spiritual, but palpable in material forms that\nhint at a tranquil reserve of strength. The expressive power of such\nan art can show benignity and mildness of mood without sentimentality,\nbecause without voluptuousness, intellectual thought without\nmorbidness, majesty without self-display.\n\nThe gentle and tranquillising spirit of the Eleusinian mysteries\nspeaks in the famous Eleusinian relief showing the mother and the maid\ngiving his mission to Triptolemos. The Pheidian Athena Parthenos was a\nmore deeply conceived ideal than the Athena of the poets, for it\nshowed her as the Madonna of the Athenian people, with a softer touch\nof maternal gentleness in the face. The Zeus Olympios of Pheidias\ntranscended the portrait of the High God as given by Homer or even by\n\u00c6schylus; for the chryselephantine statue impressed the later Greeks\nas the ideal of the benign and friendly deity, the divine patron of a\nHellas united and at peace with itself; an image that appeared \u201cto add\nsomething to the traditional religion,\u201d[100.1] embodying, as Dio\nChrysostom says, a conception of the God so {101} convincing and\ncomplete that \u201chaving once seen it one could not imagine him\notherwise.\u201d[101.1]\n\nNor had any of the poets presented Hera in forms so winning and\ngracious as those in which the best art of this age embodied her, as\nthe Argive Goddess \u2018of good works\u2019 \u201cin whose face and person\nbrightness appeared by the side of majesty.\u201d[101.2] The poetic\npresentation of Apollo is blurred and incomplete compared with such\nplastic types as the Apollo of the Parthenon frieze and the Pheidian\nstatue in the Museo delle Terme. The older poetic ideal of Aphrodite\nwas shallow and trite compared to the Aphrodite of the Pheidian type,\nsuch as we see presented by the Laborde head in the Louvre; here is\nsomething of the majesty of the great cosmic goddess imagined by\n\u00c6schylus in his Danaides, but combined with an emotion of human love\nin the countenance and a winning appeal that the verses of the great\npoet do not clearly convey. And we may surmise that the \u2018Ourania\u2019\nAphrodite of Pheidias had some influence on the theory of Plato and\nhis distinction between the heavenly and the sensual love. The full\nimagination of the personality of Kore would combine the radiance and\nthe grace of the young cornfield with the awe and mystery of the lower\nworld; the former is masterfully presented by a coin[101.3] of\nLampsakos that shows her rising from among the cornstalks with\nuplifted yearning face; the unknown artist of the great Syracusan\nmedallion struck towards the close of the fifth century combines this\naspect of her, in a type of surpassing {102} loveliness, with a touch\nof melancholy that hints at the character of the Goddess of\ndeath.[102.1]\n\nAnd yet this triumphant anthropomorphic art must have failed, and\njudged by the fragments that survive did fail, when it tried to reveal\nin clear outline and full light the half-shrouded forms of the nether\nworld, the Chthonian Goddesses and the Eumenides whose nature appealed\nto the sense of religious awe, to what the Greeks called \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c6\u03c1\u03b9\u03ba\u1ff6\u03b4\u03b5\u03c2,\nand did not brook to be wholly revealed. We may doubt therefore if\neven the statues of the Holy Ones, the Semnai, carved by Kalamis and\nSkopas, were types so expressive of the real moral-religious\nimagination that fashioned these figures of cult as were certain\nawestruck verses of Sophocles in the \u0152dipus Coloneus. Nevertheless,\nthis ideal Greek art, by expressing in palpable forms of benign beauty\nthe half-palpable personages of the lower world, did one service to\nreligion and the religious imagination; it banished the uncouth and\nthe terrible and helped to purge and tranquillise the Greek mind by\ninvesting the Chthonian powers with benevolence and grace. We discern\nhere the influence of the Bacchic and Demeter mysteries working upon\nthe artist and of the artist upon the popular faith. That the average\nGreek of the classic period was saved from the vampire terrors that\nMr. Lawson has discovered in modern Greece[102.2] was due equally to\nthe religion and to the art that he saw around him.\n\nApart from this special fact, a phenomenon so momentous in the\nspiritual world as the flowering of this religious art in the fifth\ncentury claims {103} prominent notice even in the slightest sketch of\nthe whole history of Greek religion; for it must have worked an effect\nwhich no student of insight would be tempted to belittle upon the\nreligious mood and thought of the people. Greek records sufficiently\nattest its religious working; even the alien Roman, \u00c6milius Paulus,\nwhen he approached the Pheidian masterpiece of Zeus Olympios felt the\nthrill of the \u2018real presence\u2019[103.1]; when Aristophanes fervently\ncalls on Athena as \u201cthe Maiden who holdeth our city in her hand and\nalone hath visible power and might and is called the Warder of the\nGate,\u201d[103.2] he is thinking of the bronze statue carved by Pheidias\nand set to guard the entrance to the Akropolis.\n\nIt is impossible, then, that this beautiful idolatry, against which\nthe philosophers might occasionally protest,[103.3] could have\nweakened the popular faith in the native deities. Introduced suddenly\ninto Rome it helped to destroy the old Roman animistic religion. But\nthe religious instinct and history of Greece was wholly different from\nthat of Rome. Greek polytheism would probably have perished or been\ntransformed by alien systems of cult far sooner than it was, if Greek\nart had not fortified and ennobled it, rooting it deeply in the\n\u00e6sthetic-religious emotions and perceptions of the people. By\nestablishing so convincingly the individuality of the Greek\ndivinities, it preserved them from a too rapid absorption into the\npersonalities of Oriental religions, when the fusion of west and east\nhad been achieved by Alexander and his successors.\n\n{104}\n\n_Influence of Literature: Pindar, \u00c6schylus, Sophocles_.--More\nfamiliar and apparently more answerable is the question concerning the\ninfluence of the poetic masterpieces of this period, the works of\nPindar and the Attic drama, on the general history of Greek religion.\nThe subject is obviously too complex for the scope of this summary,\nand has been handled by many scholars in large treatises. There is\nonly room here for the most general statement of facts, tendencies and\neffects. As exponents of the highest contemporary religious thought\nthe names of Pindar, \u00c6schylus, Sophocles and Euripides are those of\nprimary authority. It is easy and interesting to collect religious\ncitations from their works, to compare these one with another and with\nthe current polytheism. It is far more difficult to decide generally\nand in regard to any special point how far any one of them could have\ninfluenced or modified the popular religion. Nor are all these four on\nthe same footing in respect of opportunity. For Pindar writes for\ndynasts and aristocrats and, being a hireling, might be thought\nfettered in the free expression of his sentiments; and in any case his\npublic was more limited than that which the three dramatists\naddressed. Therefore their message was likely to reach further and to\npenetrate the Greek mind more deeply than anything that Pindar had to\nsay; and that this was actually the case can be proved. Nevertheless,\nPindar must be reckoned with as an original thinker who spoke words of\npower; in spite of his profession, his mind remained imperial and\nfree; and in his attitude to the public religion he is to be grouped\nwith \u00c6schylus and Sophocles; and all three stand together and apart\n{105} from Euripides. All three show the virility, the mental\ntranquillity combined with imagination and audacity, that marked the\ntypical character of the greatest age of Hellas. And all three\ngenially and without querulous protest, though with some freedom of\ncriticism, accept the existing religious order, desiring to ennoble\nit, not to destroy it. Pindar himself was the establisher of certain\nnew cults, and the first great literary preacher in Greece of Orphic\neschatology, and, we may say, the first great poet in Europe who\nraised the theme of Paradise to the level of the highest poetry. Such\na marvel of song on the mysteries of life and death as the second\nOlympian ode was a new voice in Hellas; how far it echoed, and with\nwhat influence on the faith of the people, is impossible to measure\nwith accuracy. For the progress of this new eschatology, which is a\nweighty subject for the history of later Hellenism, we have some\nimportant negative evidence in the fact that neither \u00c6schylus nor\nSophocles show any knowledge of Orphism or interest in it, or any\npreoccupying concern with the state of the soul after death; nor in\ntheir occasional utterances concerning posthumous judgment do they go\nbeyond the popular traditional view: though the thoughtful refinement\nof Sophocles suggested to him that there might be forgiveness of sins\nand reconciliation after death.[105.1] Nor do we find anywhere in the\nworks of the two dramatists any hint of that pregnant Orphic doctrine\nto which Pindar gives voice, that humanity is of divine origin--\u1f13\u03bd\n\u1f00\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f13\u03bd \u0398\u03b5\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b3\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2--a doctrine which passed into the higher thought\nof later Greece.\n\n{106}\n\nLeaving aside this special question, we find a certain general\nresemblance in the religious view of these earlier poets of the fifth\ncentury. All three preach the supremacy of Zeus, his omnipotence and\nperfect justice, while Sophocles lays stress on his mercy. The effect\nof this poetic message was probably great and certainly timely; for\nthe growing power and frequency of hero-cult, which Pindar himself and\nthe dramatists indirectly encouraged, was a danger to the higher\nreligion; and the backward and less cultured Hellenes were doubtless\nliable to the propensity of the savage mind to prefer the worship of\nthe local daimon to that of the high God. Against such degeneracy the\nworks of the greatest fifth-century poets, like the masterpiece of the\ngreatest fifth-century sculptor, served at least as an enduring\nprotest in Hellas.\n\nAnd it would be of interest to consider how far the sculptor, in\nregard to the general conception of his mighty theme and in the choice\nof mystic bywork whereby he made it articulate, drew certain\nsuggestions from the poetry of \u00c6schylus.\n\nThese poets also deal with the question of Fate and Destiny. The\npersonal, or half-personal, \u039c\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c1\u03b1 was an old but insignificant figure\nof the popular religion and mythology, and Homer is aware of her and\nhas to reckon with her. She might become more formidable under the\nphilosophic conception of \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b5\u1f31\u03bc\u03b1\u03c1\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd which appeared in the\nphilosophy of Herakleitos; and we know that later philosophy and\ncultivated thought was much perplexed over the problem of the\nreconciliation of Fate with the idea of a free divine Providence. The\ngreat Attic poets, taking their cue from Homer, \u201cfollow a short {107}\ncut,\u201d interpreting Moira as the voice or agent or emanation of the\npower of Zeus.[107.1] And the pupil of Pheidias, Theokosmos of\nMegara, was working out the same idea when he carved the Fates with\nthe Hours as subordinate adjuncts to the great form of Zeus.[107.1]\nWe may say, then, that both the poetry and the art of this period\nworked for the deliverance of the polytheism from the burden of\nfatalism, which tends to lower the value and sap the force of all\npersonal religion.\n\nThe Prometheus Vinctus of \u00c6schylus expresses indeed a view of Zeus\nthat conflicts with the higher religious thought of the poet. But\n\u00c6schylus has here taken up a crude story that he cannot wholly\nmoralise. On the other hand, his handling of the idea of the curse in\nthe house of Pelops is not worked out on the lines of mechanical\nfatalism; one is made to feel it as a spiritual atmosphere which\nengenders a bias towards evil, but does not overpower the freedom of\nthe individual.\n\nAgain, each of these poets, while accepting and in certain points\npurifying the traditional polytheism, was capable of religious thought\nthat worked on other lines than anthropomorphism. The High God, Zeus,\nis generally for them a definite personal Being; but once at least\n\u00c6schylus transcends this apprehension of him and defines Zeus\npantheistically as a supreme cosmic force; a fragment of his\n\u2018Heliades\u2019 speaks of him thus: \u201cZeus is air, earth, heaven; Zeus is\nthe whole of things, and whatsoever is higher still than these.\u201d\nMoreover, the other divine forces that shape our lives are presented\nby him and his fellow-poets, not always as \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03af, but as moral {108}\npowers that are only half-personal, not as concrete individual\ndeities, but as emanations of the divinity. We may call them\n\u2018personifications of moral ideas,\u2019 and some are no more than what this\nphrase implies, such as those for instance with which Euripides\ncapriciously plays. But some may be rather described as the\nSoul-powers of the High God, like, in some ways, to the Persian\nFravashi; such are Pindar\u2019s \u03a3\u03ce\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03b1 \u0394\u03b9\u1f78\u03c2 \u039e\u03b5\u03bd\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u0398\u03ad\u03bc\u03b9\u03c2,[108.1] the\nDike of \u00c6schylus, \u201cJustice, the Maiden Daughter of God,\u201d[108.2] who\n\u201cshines in the poor man\u2019s smoke-dimmed cabin\u201d;[108.3] Mercy in the\nverse of Sophocles,[108.4] \u201cMercy shares the throne of God to deal\nwith all the deeds of men.\u201d While Pindar\u2019s genius inclines to the\nbrighter of these emanations, \u00c6schylus broods rather over the gloomy\nforces of the shadowy world, which he might at times be constrained to\npresent in palpable concrete form for stage purposes and yet his own\ndeeper thought could grasp as half-outlined spiritual powers, not the\nless real because impalpable. The ordinary Hellene in his religious\nperceptions laid too much stress on personal individuality, as if this\nwere the only criterion of ideal reality; from his point of view if\nEros was to be a real power of the divine world, then Eros must be\nimagined as a beautiful youth. But Kypris or Aphrodite in a striking\nSophoclean fragment is no longer presented as a personal goddess, but\nas a diffused pantheistic force.[108.5] And the Attic drama may have\nenlarged the mental outlook of the succeeding generations in this\nmatter; for the author of the speech against Aristogeiton in the\nfourth {109} century must have been sure that his audience would\nunderstand him when he said, \u201call mankind have altars dedicated to\nJustice, Law-abidingness and Pity, the fairest and holiest (being\nthose) in the very soul and the nature of each individual.\u201d[109.1]\nThis is just how Euripides might speak.\n\nThe great fifth-century poets were all moralists each in his own way.\nThe history of Greek ethics only concerns us at the several points\nwhere it touches religion; and to this history, both generally and on\nits religious side, the works of Pindar and the three dramatists make\nimportant contributions. Of special interest is their attitude to\nGreek mythology which, in spite of its general brightness and beauty,\nseriously needed in parts the puritanical reformer, if it was to be\nharmonised with the higher religious thought. But none of these poets,\nnot even the grave \u00c6schylus, was willing to undertake such a r\u00f4le.\nPindar of all the three comes nearest to preaching, for his _m\u00e9tier_\nallowed him more personal freedom of comment. While following, on the\nwhole, the beaten path of tradition, he could innovate or invent if a\nmoral purpose was to be gained; for instance, he preaches to a friend\nthe doctrine of forgiveness of injuries and confirms it by the example\nof Zeus, who forgave and released the Titans, a myth for which he is\nthe sole authority.[109.2] We find him anticipating Plato in his\nprotest against some grotesque and repulsive stories, such as the\ncannibalism of the Gods in the myth of Pelops, or blasphemous stories,\nsuch as the theomachies and the combats of heroes against divinities:\n\u201clet all war and strife stand far apart from the immortals\u201d[109.3]\n{110} is a good sententious maxim for the expurgation of Greek\nmythology and for the enrichment of Greek ethico-religious thought.\nBut neither Pindar nor the two older dramatists protest against the\nmore licentious myths, and they accept at need various legends about\nthe amours of the Gods. In fact, the axiom that sexual purity was an\nessential attribute of all divinity was not yet accepted by the higher\nthought of Greece.\n\nPindar\u2019s freedom and sense of irresponsibility in regard to myths has\na certain value in that it shows that the futilities and improprieties\nof mythology--the \u201cunhappy stories of bards\u201d--were not necessarily a\nburden on the stronger religious minds of Hellas, and that they could\nbe greatly excised from the polytheism without endangering the popular\nworship and faith, which in the main was independent of them.\n\nAs for the two dramatists, his contemporaries, mythology was their\npublic business, and they accepted it genially because they were not,\nin the first place, moral teachers, but dramatists; it did not\ntherefore occur to them to protest or violently to reform. But they\nmight select, discard and reshape; they could take the great legends\nof the past, legends of Thebes, the story of the Niobids, of\nPrometheus, the death of Ajax, all of them irreconcilable in parts\nwith higher morality and religion, and invest them with as much\nmorality as the tradition admitted. This they did with force and\nsubtlety. And generally the moral spirit and imagination of \u00c6schylus\nand Sophocles must be counted among the spiritual facts of this period\nwith which the history of Greek ethics and religion must {111} deal.\nDoubtless the older and robuster poet was the stronger moral and\nreligious force; his protests against the non-moral doctrine of\nNemesis, his profound utterances concerning moral responsibility and\nthe moral continuity that links our lives and actions, his discovery\nthat suffering brings moral wisdom--these are landmarks in the ethical\nstory of Greece; while with Sophocles the conviction is no less deep\nof the eternity and divinity of the moral law.\n\nThey were the last spokesmen of a civic-imperial system with a civic\nreligion and morality that had not yet passed its zenith.\n\n_Euripides_.--The part played by Euripides in this spiritual history\nof Hellas was wholly different. Younger contemporary of Sophocles as\nhe was, he seems to belong to a different age. In his work and thought\nis reflected far more vividly than in the older poets of the same\ncentury the new mental life which was fostered by the philosophers and\nthe sophists. The influence of the physical speculations of the sixth\ncentury and of those of Demokritos and Anaxagoras of the fifth, which\nat some points advanced further in materialism, has had time to\npenetrate the more gifted minds and to compel the public to a certain\nattention. The paid \u2018Sophist,\u2019 the pioneer of modern education and the\nfirst champion of the critical spirit, was travelling around. And\nafter 470 B.C. the imperial greatness of Athens had begun to attract\nthe greatest teachers and thinkers of the age. It was of great moment\nfor Euripides that such men as Anaxagoras and Protagoras were active\nin Athens for many years, and that he had enjoyed familiar intercourse\nwith them {112} as he also enjoyed with Sokrates. It is clear that the\npoet imbibed deeply their teaching and their spirit; he was also\nlearned in Orphism, antiquarianism and remote folklore. Being by\nnature a great poet, he has also something of the weakness of the\n\u2018polymath\u2019 or the \u2018intellectual\u2019; he had not the steadiness of brain\nor strong conviction enough to evolve a systematic philosophy or clear\nreligious faith; his was, in fact, the stimulating, eager, critical\nspirit, not the constructive. His mental sympathies and interests\nshift and range from pole to pole. He is a secularist in his view of a\nphysical universe, and he foreshadows a secular treatment of ethics\nbased on ideas of \u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 and heredity, though a chorus of his maidens\nmay praise chastity as \u201cthe fairest gift of the Gods.\u201d It was\ntherefore possible, though most unjust, that Aristophanes should call\nhim an atheist. On the other hand, he is capable of profound religious\nsentiment and exalted religious utterance, and strikes out flashes of\nlight that might kindle and illuminate a higher religion. Therefore it\nwas possible for Clemens of Alexandria to find in some of his words a\nforeshadowing of Christ.[112.1] He remains for us an enigma, and\nprobably no final judgment will ever be pronounced upon him, in which\nwe shall all agree.\n\nBut the student of Greek religion must confront these two questions\nabout him: (_a_) What was his real sentiment concerning the popular\nreligion? (_b_) What were his contributions to religious thought, and\nwhat was likely to be his influence on the religious temperament? To\nmake up one\u2019s mind on these questions demands a long and critical\nstudy, {113} also a tactful sense of the distinction between Euripides\nthe playwright and Euripides the thinker. It is the confusion of this\ndistinction that leads, for instance, to the strangely erroneous views\nheld concerning the religious significance of his \u2018Bacch\u00e6.\u2019 A\nsympathetic reading of many of the plays must convey the impression\nthat certain cult-figures and legends of the polytheism filled the\npoet with scorn and loathing; and at times he seems to compose as if\nhe had a personal hatred of Apollo and Aphrodite in particular, for\ninstance, in the Ion and Hippolytus. When he can interpret Aphrodite\nas a cosmic force he can dilate on this as beautifully and ardently as\nLucretius; if he could have believed that Apollo was merely the Sun,\nas he tells us \u2018the wise\u2019 were well aware, he might have forgiven him.\nBut it is the real personal Aphrodite of Homer and Helen, the personal\nApollo, the father of Ion, the seducer of Kreusa, and the beloved\nancestor of the Athenians, that rankled in his mind. When he handles\nthe story of the madness of Herakles and brings madness on the stage,\nhe uses her first as his mouthpiece to convey to the Athenians what he\nthought of Hera;[113.1] just as he puts into the mouth of Amphitryon\nhis own mordant criticism of the action of Zeus.[113.2] Yet with\nother parts of the polytheism he seems at times in the most glowing\nsympathy; in the Hippolytus, for instance, where he expresses for the\nfirst time in literature the religious rapture of purity; in the\nBacch\u00e6 where he discovers the necessary phrase for the expression of\nthe Bacchic communion, for the ecstasy of the M\u00e6nad-revel on the\nmountain, in verses that tingle with the nature-magic {114} which was\nat the root of this wild cult. Yet no one should be deceived into\nthinking that he is preaching the cause of Dionysiac worship; for the\nBacch\u00e6 closes with that depressing anti-climax, where Dionysos plays\nthe sorriest part, and Euripides\u2019 own sour dislike of the personal\ntraditional God gives an unpleasant flavour to the last scene. It is\nthis bitterness of protestantism and criticism in this poet that\nstrikes a new note in Greece; and Euripides may be regarded as the\nfirst in European history to be possessed with the theologic temper.\nIt cannot be said that he preached a new religion; he was no votary\neven of Orphism, for though, as the Bacch\u00e6 and the fragment of his\n\u2018Cretans\u2019 attest, he felt something of its spell, he was not of that\ncast of mind that could be deceived by its pharisaic ritual and laws\nof diet, and he certainly cherished no mystic belief concerning the\nlife after death; for even in the \u2018Bacch\u00e6\u2019 there is no reference to\nthis attractive dogma, which was the main anchor of the Orphic faith.\nNor can he be truly described as a zealous reformer of the people\u2019s\nfaith and practice; for the reformer must have some belief in that\nwhich he wishes to reform; and that Euripides firmly believed in any\npart of the polytheism is hard to maintain; his final attitude is\ngenerally a doubt. Nevertheless, his protests might have been of value\nto the more cultured citizen who still clave to his civic worship.\nThey are directed mainly and most forcibly against the stories of\ndivine vindictiveness and divine licentiousness. He is evidently\ntouched with the new idea that vengeance is alien to the perfect\nnature of God; this was still more insistently proclaimed by Plato and\nby the Pythagoreans and {115} later philosophers.[115.1] On the\nsecond count his protest is suggested by the notion that was dawning\nin him that purity in every sense was essential to the divine nature;\nhe is then the herald in literature of a thought which Orphism may\nhave prompted and which was to play a leading part in later religion\nand religious speculation, but which was unfamiliar to his\ncontemporaries either in Hellas or anywhere in the Mediterranean\nexcept in Israel. His leading principle of criticism in all these\nmatters is expressed in the Iphigeneia in Tauris, namely, that the\nevil in religious practice and legend arises from men imputing their\nown evil nature to God.[115.2] We owe much to the man who first\nuttered this warning against a debasing anthropomorphism.\n\nThe immoral elements in Greek mythology, which have been constantly\nreprobated by ancient and modern writers, have often blinded them to\nthe fact that Greek religion in its forms of worship and sacred\nformul\u00e6 was mainly pure and refined. The stories about the Gods,\noften of the type natural to savage folklore, did not constitute\nancient religion; and they were the less able to choke the growth of a\nhigher ethical-religious spirit in that they were not enshrined in\nsacred books that could speak with authority to the people. Yet we\nhave not infrequent proofs in Greek literature, notably in Plato\u2019s\n_Euthyphron_, that they might exercise at times an immoral influence\non men\u2019s conduct. Meantime the educational movement in the sixth and\nfifth centuries had awakened men\u2019s minds to the importance of the\nmoral question in literature. And the protests of Euripides are\ndeveloped by Plato in his {116} scheme of education in the _Republic_,\nand the same point of view prompts him to his puritanical legislation\nagainst poets. Such moral movements in the polytheistic societies of\nGreece are interesting to mark, though their effect is often difficult\nto estimate. The new puritanical spirit had probably a wholesome\ninfluence on the more cultured minds; it had little influence on the\nmass of the people, nor does the later poetry of the Hellenistic\nperiod show much trace of it.\n\nAs regards the actual forms of Greek ritual and worship, Euripides has\nnothing revolutionary to say. He appears to have a strong dislike for\nprophets, and in this he was in some accord with \u00c6schylus, Sophocles,\nand the Athenian people. He shows great distrust for Delphi; and its\ninfluence was doubtless impaired at Athens during the Peloponnesian\nwar. He protests against human sacrifice as a barbaric and\nnon-Hellenic institution[116.1]--though he appears fond of it as a\ndramatic motive--and on one occasion the speaker argues that the Gods\nneed nothing from mortals at all;[116.2] the thought was suggested\nmerely by dramatic exigencies; and Euripides nowhere attempts a\ncrusade against the value of sacrifice in general. He has only one\nimportant thing to say about it, namely that the small sacrifice of\nthe pious often outweighs the hecatomb.[116.3] This thought implies a\nmore spiritual view of the divine nature and is not infrequently\nexpressed in the later literature; according to Theophrastos and\nTheopompos this higher view of sacrifice was even encouraged by the\nDelphic oracle.[116.4]\n\n{117}\n\nThere is much indeed in the sententious poetry of Euripides that might\nhave elevated and cleared the religious thoughts of his age; but it is\ndoubtful if his ultimate conception of Godhead, as it tends towards\npantheism, could have been reconciled with the anthropomorphic\npolytheism of the people or if those most conversant with his tone and\ninspired by his spirit could have remained long in sympathy with\northodoxy. And there is an instinct in Euripides which enhances his\nvalue for the modern man, but which was to be subversive in the\nlongrun of the old civic religion, namely, the humanitarian or\ncosmopolitan instinct; that which allowed him to sympathise with\nTrojans, women, children and slaves, which inspired him with the\nbeautiful thought that \u201cthe whole earth is the good man\u2019s fatherland,\u201d\nwhich also prompted him to despise the life of civic duty and activity\nand to recommend, as Aristotle does, the secluded and contemplative\nlife. The further development of this cosmopolitan spirit and its\neffect on the old civic religion will be noted below.\n\nIt has been necessary to dwell so long on Euripides, not only for the\nreasons mentioned above, but also because owing to the vogue that he\nwon in his lifetime and that was greatly to increase after his death,\nhe more than any other of the great men of letters must be regarded as\nthe populariser of the new enlightenment.\n\nWhether he individually exercised any immediate religious influence\nupon the popular religious mind, for good or for harm, is not easy to\ndecide with precision; for there were other exponents than he of the\nsame freer and more advanced thought, which {118} began to express\nitself early in the sixth century. As a result we are able to discern\nthe religious view of human life and conduct, becoming what we should\nterm more spiritual, more inward. The moral judgment begins to look to\nthe soul or the inner principle; the doctrine begins to be proclaimed\nthat God as a spiritual power can read the heart of man and judges him\nby that; that sin lies not in the external act alone; that external\nritualistic purity is of less avail than purity of soul. Such thoughts\nas these which could serve as the foundation-stones of a new religion\nand which helped to shape the later religious history of Europe were\nmainly a heritage from the speculation of the sixth century and were\nin the air of the fifth. We cannot think that they were confined to\nthe philosophic circles until Euripides gave them publicity; for the\nnotable oracle quoted and commented on by Herodotus had proclaimed to\nthe people the novel view that a sinful purpose was the same in the\nsight of God as a sinful act;[118.1] Epicharmos, the Sicilian poet of\nthe earlier fifth century, had preached the higher ideal of\npurity--\u201cif thou art pure in mind, thou art pure in thy whole body.\u201d\nIt was probably in the latter part of the same century that some\nrhetorician of the school of Gorgias interpolated the proem of\nHesiod\u2019s _Works and Days_, which reveals an exalted view of the High\nGod.[118.2]\n\nWe may believe, then, that this higher religious ethic had a certain\nelevating influence on the popular imagination. The question of\nimmediate interest is whether we can trace any effects of this in\nactual worship. Did the new enlightenment, for instance, {119} lead to\nthe abolition or reform of cruel or impure or absurd forms of ritual?\n\n_Human sacrifice_.--This question involves the consideration of the\npractice of human sacrifice, which had been certainly prevalent in\nprehistoric and early historic Greece, as in other Mediterranean\ncommunities. We have evidence that in the fifth and fourth centuries\nthe practice was of rare occurrence in the Greek societies and was\nrepugnant to the religious morality of all but the most backward. The\nfeeling about the sacrifice of Iphigeneia manifested in the Agamemnon\nof \u00c6schylus, the story about the B\u0153otian generals and the sacrifice\nof a maiden before the battle of Leuktra are sufficient proof.[119.1]\nThe Platonic dialogue of the Minos contrasts the Greeks with the\nbarbarians in this matter,[119.2] yet implies that the Arcadians in\nthe cult of Zeus Lykaios and the men of Halos in that of Zeus\nLaphystios[119.3] continued the cruel offerings that disgraced their\nHellenism. Euripides attests that the human sacrifice once customary\nin the rites of Artemis, near Brauron, had been, before his day,\ntransformed to a mere fiction,[119.4] and at some time earlier than\nthis the Athenians must have ceased to immolate human scapegoats,\ncalled \u03c6\u03b1\u03c1\u03bc\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03af, in their Thargelia.[119.5] The Rhodians eased their\nconsciences and at the same time maintained their immemorial rite by\nchoosing a malefactor who had been condemned to death as a human\nvictim to Kronos.[119.6] According to Porphyry the practice {120}\nsurvived here and there under the Roman Empire until the time of\nHadrian.[120.1] And Plutarch[120.2] declares that the yearly custom\nof exposing the two Locrian maidens to the chance of a cruel death on\nthe shore of Ilium, in expiation of the sin of Aias the Less against\nAthena Ilias, had been abandoned not very long before his time.\n\nBut the better sentiment of Greece in respect of such rites had\nprobably begun to work as early as the time of Homer, for certain\nlegends concerning the abolition of this ritual and the substitution\nof the animal for the human life point back to the prehistoric period;\nand the merciful reform was ascribed to the High God himself in a\nLaconian legend that closely resembles the story of the sacrifice of\nIsaac.[120.3] The humanitarian spirit, then, had asserted itself\nbefore the sixth century; but doubtless the higher teaching and\nthinking of this and the succeeding age quickened its influence.\n\n_Phallic ritual_.--As regards that element in Greek ritual which the\nmodern taste pronounces impure, there is little trace of any attempt\nat reform in any period of the polytheism. The element was indeed but\nslight. The forms of worship were, on the whole, decorous, often\nstately and beautiful; ancient legend reveals the anxious care of the\nearly Hellenes to preserve their temples from any sexual defilement;\nwhere a \u1f31\u03b5\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b3\u03ac\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2, or Holy Marriage, was enacted in any of the\nshrines, there is no need to suspect any licentiousness;[120.4] no\nsuch feature is discernible in the Eleusinian or other Hellenic\nmysteries, although {121} the Christian fathers are eager in their\ninsinuations; the Hellenic[121.1] cults of the Oriental Aphrodite\nwere generally innocent of that ritual of temple-prostitution which\nwas found in certain Anatolian cults and which scandalised the Greek\nas much as the Christian writers; the few impure titles attaching to\nthis goddess may well have arisen in the later period of the decadent\npolytheism.[121.2] In the early ages, it is clear, the wholesome and\ntemperate influence of the Hellenic spirit had worked upon the forms\nof the polytheism. Nevertheless, in the ritual of a few divinities,\nDemeter, Hermes, Dionysos, and even of Artemis herself,[121.3] sexual\nemblems were occasionally in vogue, dances of a more or less\nlicentious character are mentioned, though these were very rare; while\nin the Thesmophoria and other services of Demeter, what was called\n\u03b1\u1f30\u03c3\u03c7\u03c1\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03af\u03b1, indecent and scurrilous badinage, was indulged in by the\nwomen among themselves or more rarely with the men also. We note that\nsuch ritual is practically confined to vegetation-cults, and in some\nit is merely vegetation magic hardly attaching to the divinity, nor\naffecting his or her moral aspect. The phallic emblem and the\nprocession called the \u03c6\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03b1\u03b3\u03c9\u03b3\u03af\u03b1 or \u03c6\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03c6\u03bf\u03c1\u03af\u03b1 were specially\nassociated with Dionysos and Hermes; and Plutarch, a man of more than\nthe average culture and refinement and strikingly susceptible to the\nspiritual influences of the more mystic religions, describes it as a\nharmless adjunct of the ancestral and cheerful ritual of the {122}\nB\u0153otian peasant.[122.1] Now it is worth noting that against this\nelement in Greek ritual there is scarcely a word of protest in all the\nethical and philosophic literature of Greece. The exception is only a\nfragmentary utterance of Herakleitos, in which he seems to rail\nagainst the phallic procession of Dionysos; but the exact sense of his\nwords is not quite clear.[122.2] The higher moral thought of Greece\non this matter is probably more nearly represented in the utterance of\nAristotle in the Politics,[122.3] where he lays down austere rules\nfor the training of the young: \u201cNo impure emblem or painting or any\nrepresentation of impropriety is to be allowed by the archons, except\nin the cults of those divinities to whom the law attaches the ritual\nof scurrility (\u03c4\u03c9\u03b8\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03cc\u03c2): in their case the law allows those of more\nadvanced age to perform the divine service in behalf of themselves,\ntheir children and their wives.\u201d Even in the last three centuries\nbefore Christ, when greater stress was continually being laid upon\npurity in cult, no protest is heard against these old-world forms,\nwhich have maintained themselves in many parts of Europe down to the\npresent day in spite of the denunciations of Christianity. The seeming\nparadox is explained when we reflect that the idea of purity changes\nits content in the different generations; and secondly that the\nHellenic, like all the other Mediterranean religions, except the\nHebraic, regarded the physical procreative power as belonging to the\ndivine character and as part of his cosmic creative force; therefore\nan emblem that was secularly impure might be made holy by cult and\nconsecration. It is in this respect that the modern {123} ideas of\nrefinement differ most markedly from the classic.\n\n_Survival of other primitive ritual_.--There is much besides in old\nGreek ritual that appears to us harmless but uncouth and irrational;\nstrange and na\u00efve things were done that primitive ideas of magic and\nanimism inspired; and one may be surprised to find that the higher\nculture of the fifth and succeeding centuries is not known to have\nsuppressed a single one of these. Still, in the time of Theophrastos,\nand indefinitely later, the Athenians were capable of the quaint\nold-world ritual of the Bouphonia, that strange medley of worship and\nmagic and dramatic make-belief[123.1]; still in the time of\nDemosthenes[123.2] they were capable of bringing up to judgment in\nthe law court an axe or any other inanimate thing that had caused the\ndeath of a man or of the sacred ox and solemnly condemning it to be\nthrown into the sea; the driving out of sin or famine, incarnate in a\nhuman being, was a ceremony in vogue at Massilia[123.3] and probably\nalso at Athens long after the beginning of our era. Nor did the higher\nanthropomorphism, powerful as its working was, entirely obliterate the\nworship or half-worship of animals in the later centuries.[123.4]\nEven Zeus might still be conceived by the men of the fourth century as\noccasionally incarnate in the snake; and in a ritual law regulating\nthe cult of Asclepios at Athens, composed shortly after 400 B.C., a\nsacrifice was ordered to certain sacred dogs; the pious votary would\ncomply, however the act might awaken the laughter of a comic poet.\nHerakleitos protested against the {124} absurdity of praying to idols;\nbut no voice of the new enlightenment is heard against these far more\nirrational and backward ceremonies. The average public thought of the\nfifth century did not repudiate the use of magic; in fact, it is not\ntill the fifth century that its efficacy is known to have been\nrecognised by legislation.[124.1] And Plato,[124.2] speaking about\nit in his Laws, a work of his declining years and intellect, is not\nsure whether he believes or disbelieves in its power. There is nothing\nmore conservative than ritual; and Greece produced no ardent\nProtestant reformer. Therefore, the average educated Athenian even of\nthe fourth century would doubtless agree with the orator Lysias, that\n\u201cit is prudent to maintain the same sacrifices as had been ordained by\nour ancestors who made our city great, if for no other reason, for the\nsake of the city\u2019s luck.\u201d[124.3]\n\n_Strength of the traditional religion in the fifth century_.--The\nquestion naturally occurs--were the mass of the citizens touched at\nall in their inward theory of things by the spirit of modernism which\nbreathed from Ionia and inspired the sophists? The culture that was\nthe stock-in-trade of the latter was only offered to those who could\npay; and upon these the poorer Athenian looked askance. He heard of it\nat first with a dislike that might become dangerous. Fanaticism, as we\nare familiar with it in the pages of European and Semitic history, was\nhappily alien to the Greek temperament. But the banishment of\nAnaxagoras and Protagoras, and the execution of Sokrates by the city\nthat was to become {125} the schoolmistress of Greece, might seem to\nsavour somewhat of this temper of mind. These acts, indeed, were not\ninspired solely by religious feelings; but they are clear proofs that\nthe polytheism was by no means moribund and could be dangerous in its\nown defence. Nothing is more erroneous than the view which is\nsometimes expressed, that the popular devotion to the old religion was\nabating and its divine personalities and forms losing life and value\ntowards the close of the fifth century. In their dark days the\nAthenians bided truer to their old faith than did Rome in her time of\nterror. We do not find a prostrate Athens turning desperately for aid\nto alien Oriental cults. We hear indeed of the beginnings of\nAdonis-cult in the latter part of the Peloponnesian war, the first\nripple of a wave of Orientalism that was to surge westward later. But\nthis feminine excess was unauthorised, and Aristophanes hates it and\nmocks at it. And the shallow view mentioned above would be\nsufficiently refuted by his comedy of \u2018the Clouds,\u2019 in which he, the\ngreatest literary genius of his time, poses as the champion of the\nreaction against modernism. It is refuted also by other incidents in\nAthenian history that fall within the last decades of this century;\nfor the rage of the people at the mutilation of the Hermai, at the\nsupposed insult to the Eleusinian mysteries, at the neglect of the\ndead after the battle of Arginousai, may be evidence of morbid\nreligiosity, and is surely inconsistent with a general prevalence of\nscepticism. In these episodes the whole people reveal a passionate\nattachment to their holy mysteries, to their quaint phallic\nHerme-images on which the luck and the life of the State depended, to\n{126} the duties of the loving tendance of the dead. Even their\nanimistic beliefs concerning the common phenomena of the physical\nworld had not yet been extirpated or purged by the physical philosophy\nof Ionia; for according to Plato it was still a dangerous paradox,\nwhich his Sokrates disclaims before the jury, to maintain with\nAnaxagoras that the Sun and the Moon were merely material bodies and\nnot in themselves divine. Intellectually Nikias appears inferior to\nHomer\u2019s Hektor. It was Athens that produced in the fourth century the\n\u2018superstitious man\u2019 of Theophrastos; but it is right to bear in mind\nthat she also produced the man who could so genially and tolerantly\nexpose that character.\n\n_Influence of comedy_.--Those who believed that the faith in the\npolytheism was falling into rapid decay by 400 B.C. sometimes quote by\nway of evidence the astonishing licence of Attic comedy in dealing\nwith the divine personalities; the notorious example is the ludicrous\nfigure and part of Dionysos in the Frogs of Aristophanes. Yet the\npeople who enjoyed the humour of the play were more devoted to\nDionysos than to most of the other persons of their pantheon. If the\n\u2018excellent fooling\u2019 of Aristophanes is a proof of popular unbelief,\nwhat shall we say of that Attic terra-cotta of the sixth century that\nrepresents him half asleep and half drunk on the back of a mule and\nsupported by an anxious Seilenos?[126.1] The present writer has\nsuggested that \u201cthis is some peasant\u2019s dedication, who feared his god\nlittle but loved him much and treated him _en bon camarade_.\u201d\nEpicharmos in Sicily had been beforehand with Aristophanes in\nventuring on the burlesque of divine actions, Hephaistos and Herakles\n{127} specially lending themselves to ridiculous situations. Even in\nthe epic period the same gay irreverence had occasionally appeared, as\nin the Homeric hymn to Hermes. These things do not necessarily arise\nfrom an anti-religious spirit, but they may be taken as indication of\na certain vein in the Hellenic character, a light-heartedness and a\nreckless freedom in dealing on certain occasions with things divine\nthat is markedly in contrast to the Oriental spirit. Nevertheless, it\nis not improbable that comedy at Athens and elsewhere did gradually\nexercise a weakening or a debasing influence on the popular faith. For\nthe other poets of Attic comedy took greater liberties than even\nAristophanes; Kratinos and Telekleides of the fifth century, Amphis of\nthe fourth, did not shrink from introducing the High God himself on\nthe stage in ridiculous and licentious situations. There probably was\nsome reserve and no gross indecency in the presentation of these\nplots. And much is conceded to the spirit of the carnival, especially\nwhen a certain \u03b1\u1f30\u03c3\u03c7\u03c1\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03af\u03b1 was sanctified by custom and ritual.\nNevertheless, the more earnest-minded of the Athenians may have agreed\nwith Plato\u2019s condemnation of such a handling of divine\npersonages,[127.1] and though the popular faith may have been robust\nenough to endure such shocks, one cannot but suspect that the people\u2019s\nreligious imagination suffered a debasement in moral tone. A few\nSouth-Italian vases of the fourth century, on which are scenes that\nappear to have been inspired by such comedies, are the worst examples\nof Hellenic vulgarity.\n\nThe history of Greek religion, then, must reckon with Attic comedy as\namong the possible causes of {128} religious corruption and decay; but\nat the worst this is only one side of the picture, for the fragments\nof the comedies of Menander, as will be shown, contain many a striking\nexpression of the higher religious spirit and advanced ethical\nsentiment.\n\n_Waning of the political value of Delphi_.--There are certain external\nevents in the history of Greek religion towards the close of the fifth\ncentury that must be noted in a general sketch of its career. One is\nthe waning of the political influence of the Delphic oracle; its\nsecular mission appeared to have been accomplished when the era of\nGreek colonial expansion had closed; at the first terror of the\nPersian invasion the great states anxiously resorted to Delphi for\nguidance, but the priesthood failed to rise to the Pan-Hellenic\noccasion and played a double game. During the Peloponnesian war it was\nobvious that they were \u2018Laconising\u2019; nor were they ever given again an\nopportunity of leading _la haute politique_ of Hellas, and in the\nmiddle of the fourth century Demosthenes could speak contemptuously of\n\u2018the shadow at Delphi,\u2019 although the Amphictyonic League, as the only\nfederal council of Hellas, still retained a nominal value sufficient\nto induce Philip to scheme for admission. Generally, in the fourth,\nthird and second centuries, the oracle retained influence only in the\nspheres of religion and morality. Plato still regards the Delphic God\nas the natural director of the religious institutions of the State.\nAnd we have interesting examples in the later literature of\nconsultation of the oracle by individuals whose minds were troubled by\nreligious terrors and remorse. In fact, it came to serve the purposes\nof a private confessional, giving advice on {129} questions of\nconscience; and its advice was generally sane and often enlightened\nand shows the priests as possessed with the progressive spirit of\nGreek ethical philosophy.[129.1]\n\n_Spread of Asklepios-worship_.--Another event of importance is the\ndiffusion of the cult of Asklepios and the growing influence on the\nHellenic mind of this once obscure hero or earth-daimon of the\nThessalian Trikka. It was thence that sometime probably in the sixth\ncentury he had migrated to Epidauros, where his power expanded through\nhis union with Apollo. His cult-settlement in Kos was connected with\nthe Epidaurian; and already in the fifth century the Asclepieion of\nthis favoured island had reared the great Hippokrates and was thus the\ncradle of the later medical science of Europe. Towards the close of\nthis century Asklepios and his daughters came even from Epidauros to\nAthens, and according to a well-founded tradition the poet Sophocles\nwas his first apostle; in the next generation we find the Athenian\nstate regulating his worship, which was soon to conquer the whole\nHellenic world. And in the survey of the Hellenistic age it must be\nreckoned with as one of the main religious forces of later Hellenism.\nWe may note in passing a striking divergence between the European\nspirit of Hellenic religion and the Oriental spirit of Mesopotamia:\nthe Babylonian God practises magic, the Hellenic Asklepios, though he\nworked miracles enough, came in a later day at least to foster\nscience, and even his cases at Epidauros were not all merely of the\nLourdes type.\n\n_Growth of the Thiasoi_.--Another interesting phenomenon that begins\nto arrest our attention in {130} the latter part of the fifth century\nis the growth of private \u03b8\u03af\u03b1\u03c3\u03bf\u03b9 or voluntary religious associations\nindependent of the public religion and devoted to a special divinity\nwho might be an alien. The most interesting testimony is the title of\na comedy by Eupolis called the \u2018Baptai,\u2019 which we may interpret as\n\u2018the Baptisers,\u2019 satirising a society devoted to the Thracian goddess,\nKotytto, whose initiation-rites must have included a ceremony of\nbaptism, of which this is the earliest example within the Hellenic\narea. It will be more convenient to estimate the importance of\nreligious significance of these \u03b8\u03af\u03b1\u03c3\u03bf\u03b9 in the survey of the next\nperiod of our history. Meanwhile, it is well to mark certain evidence\nthat the most powerful and appealing of these, the Orphic mystery,\nhaving failed in the sixth century to capture the States of Magna\nGr\u00e6cia, was increasing its private influence in Eastern Greece in the\ncentury before the rise of Alexander. Plato\u2019s attack is itself a\nwitness of this. And when Aristophanes[130.1] and an Attic orator\ncontemporary with Demosthenes[130.2] openly acknowledge Orpheus as\nthe apostle to the Hellenes of the most holy mysteries, and the\nteacher of a higher way of life, we must conclude that the spirit of\nthe Orphic brotherhoods had touched the imagination of the general\npublic outside the circle of the initiated.\n\n_Religion in first half of fourth century B.C._--Yet it is hazardous\nand probably false to say that the public religion of Greece was\ndecaying visibly throughout the first half of the fourth century.\nAthens is as usual our chief witness. The restored democracy was all\nthe more strenuous in matters of religion as scepticism was considered\na mark of the {131} new culture of the oligarchically-minded. The\ntrial of Socrates is an indication of this temper. We have also\nevidence from this period of the occasional severity of the Athenian\npeople against those who tried to introduce unauthorised and\nun-Hellenic cults. The Hellenic tradition is still strong against the\ncontagion of the orgiastic spirit of the Anatolian religion, and it\nwas with difficulty that the Athenian public could tolerate the wild\nritual of Sabazios and the Phrygian Mother, nor even in the time of\nDemosthenes were the participants in it secure from danger. The early\nfourth-century art still exhales the religious spirit and serious\nethos of the Pheidian school; and it created the type, and almost\nsucceeded in establishing the cult, of the new Goddess of Peace,\nEirene, for whose presence among them the wearied Athenians might well\nyearn; it also perfected the ideal of Demeter, the Madre Dolorosa of\nGreek myth, whose Eleusinian rites with their benign promise of\nsalvation added power and significance to the later polytheism. The\nliterature of this period attests the enduring vitality of the popular\nreligion. The Attic oratory of the fourth century was more religious\nin its appeal than any modern has been, as might be expected of a time\nwhen there was yet no divorce conceivable between Church and State. It\nis not a question of the religious faith of the individual orator, but\nof the religious temper of the audience which is attested by many\nstriking passages in the speeches. According to Antiphon, the\npunishment of sinners and the avenging of the wronged is specially the\nconcern of the deities of the nether world[131.1]; Andokides avers\n{132} that foul misconduct was a more heinous sin in a man who had\nbeen in the service of the Mother and the Maid of Eleusis[132.1]; the\nspeech against Aristogeiton is almost as much a religious as a\njuridical utterance. Demosthenes may have been a sceptic at heart,\nbelieving in chance--as he once says--as the governing force of our\nlife; but otherwise he is glowingly orthodox in respect of Attic\nreligion and mythology, and the greatest of his speeches closes with a\nfervent and pious prayer.[132.2] And again it is well to remind\nourselves that the political or forensic orator is a truer witness to\nthe average popular belief than the poet or the philosopher.\n\n_Plato\u2019s attitude towards the popular religion_.--A consecutive\nhistory of Greek religious thought as embodied in the surviving\nwritings or records of the philosophic schools of Hellas is far too\nlarge a subject even to be adumbrated here. And a general survey of\nthe religion can only notice shortly the leading thinkers whose works\nthere is reason to suppose had popular vogue and lasting influence\nupon the religious world.\n\nAmong these the primacy belongs to Plato; and the full account of\nGreek religion, both in the period that precedes the downfall of Greek\nindependence and in the periods that follow, must include a critical\nestimate of his religious speculation. This is no place for an\nelaborate consideration of the metaphysic of his ideal theory, or the\nrelation of his ideas to a theistic system; but only the most general\nobservations may be allowed for the purpose of this sketch. To\nunderstand his main attitude towards the popular cults, and his\ninfluence upon the later {133} educated world of Greece, we must\nrecognise at once that, idealist and reformer as he was, he was no\nrevolutionary or iconoclast in matters of religion; he would reform\nGreek mythology, purging it of stories of divine conflicts, divine\nvengeance, divine amours; and, as these fortunately were enshrined in\nno sacred books, he feels that this might be done gently and easily\nwithout disturbance to the established forms of worship. He does not\ndesire to abolish sacrifice or idolatry, but inculcates simplicity in\nthe offerings.[133.1] In one passage he even maintains that the\nlegislator will not change a single detail of the ritual, if only for\nthe reason that he does not know anything of the inner truth that may\nlie behind such outward forms.[133.2] Even in his most advanced\nphysical and metaphysical speculations he finds a place for the\npopular pantheon;[133.3] in the hierarchic scale of things the\nOlympians are ranged somewhere below the supreme transcendental God of\nthe Universe. The \u2018Tim\u00e6us\u2019 dialogue presents some interesting\ntheologic dogma; here[133.4] in the scale of Divine creation the\nOlympian Pantheon, which seems to be accepted rather for the sake of\nancient tradition, is given the third place after the planets and the\nSun which are the second works of the Supreme Creator, the first being\nthe cosmic Heaven. These deities of the polytheism, then, are not\nimmortal in their own nature, but are held together for all eternity\nby the will of the highest God. And it was to them that he committed\nthe formation of man, and lent for this purpose a portion of his own\nimmortality; the mortality of man is thus accounted {134} for; which\nwould have been inexplicable had he sprung directly from the immortal\nSupreme Being.\n\nIt is interesting for our present purpose to note that this esoteric\nand transcendental system, devised by the great master and parent of\nGreek theosophy, would leave the established religion more or less\nunimpaired; it even accepts its data at certain points, namely, the\nnativity of its Gods, and draws the logical conclusion that Gods, who\nwere born could not be by essence immortal; therefore Zeus could not\nbe accepted as the Absolute and Supreme Being of the Cosmos. Also it\nproclaims the idea of an immortal element in man, which, again, is in\naccord not only with Orphic teaching, but also with the contemporary\npopular faith in the survival of some part of our being after death.\nBut the work which reflects most vividly the popular religion and\nbetrays the strongest sympathy with it is the Laws, a work of his old\nage in which the conservative spirit of the religious reformer is no\nless striking than the intellectual decay of the philosopher. He\naccepts the greater part of the civic political religion, merely\npurifying the mythology and some of the ideas concerning divinity; and\nit is striking how easily he finds in it materials ready to his hand\non which he can build an exalted ethical-religious system of rights\nand duties, especially those which concern the life of the family and\nthe groups of kinship.[134.1] In fact, the background of the thought\nin this lengthy treatise is almost always the Greek Polis, though\nglimpses may here and there break through of a wider vista. He\nexpresses the prejudices of the Greek citizen against new forms of\nprivate or foreign orgiastic cult which {135} were dangerously\nenticing to women;[135.1] any doubtful question that might arise\nconcerning rite or cult he would leave to the decision of the oracles\nof Delphi or Dodona or of Zeus Ammon.[135.2] We feel generally that\nPlato did not assume the part of an apostle of a new order of\nreligion, but that both in his philosophy and religious theory he\nfound a sufficient _point d\u2019appui_ in the old, of which he tried to\nstrengthen the moral potentialities.\n\nThe later sects which attached themselves to his name or to his school\nwere deeply interested in religious speculation, which degenerates at\nlast into the mystic superstition of Neoplatonism. Therefore, as the\nwork of Aristotle belongs to the history of European science, so the\nphilosophy of Plato concerns the later history, both of pre-Christian\nand Christian religious thought. To estimate exactly how his influence\nworked on the better popular mind in the centuries before Christ is\nimpossible. But we may naturally and with probability surmise that he\ncontributed much to the diffusion of the belief in the spiritual\nnature and perfection of God, to the extirpation of the crude notions\nof divine vindictiveness and jealousy, to the interpretation of the\nexternal world in terms of mind and spirit as against any\nmaterialistic expression, to the acceptance of the belief in the\ndivinity of the human soul and its affinity with God and in the\nimportance of its posthumous life, which was partly conditioned by the\nattainment of purity. These latter ideas constitute the faith of the\nOrphic sects, from whom Plato may have silently borrowed them. But\nwhether through Plato or the thiasoi many of them {136} came to appeal\nstrongly to the popular mind of later Hellas.\n\n_Religious art in the fourth century_.--Our general survey is now\napproaching that period of world-change brought about by the rise of\nMacedon. But before leaving the scene of the free City-State, we\nshould remember to estimate the religious work done by the great\nfourth-century masters of sculpture before the power of Alexander\nreached its zenith. The fiery imagination of Skopas found plastic\ntypes for the forms of Dionysos and his thiasos, and his work rivalled\nat least, if it did not surpass, in inspiration of tumultuous life the\nmasterpieces of the older Attic vase-painters noticed above.\nPraxiteles, the master of the gentler moods of the soul, in the\nreligious sphere consummated the types of Aphrodite and Demeter; the\nalmost perfect embodiment of the latter goddess, the Cnidian Demeter\nof the British Museum, a work of his school, combines something of the\ntearful expression of the Madre Dolorosa with the blitheness of the\nCorn-Goddess. We are conscious indeed of a change in the\nrepresentation of divinity. The works of this later generation have\nlost the majesty and awe, the \u03c3\u03b5\u03bc\u03bd\u03cc\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2, as the Greeks called it, of\nthe fifth-century art; nor can the Greek states command any longer the\ncreation of the chryselephantine colossal statues of temple-worship.\nIn these later types, though still divine, there is more infusion of\nhuman passion, of the personal experience, the struggles and yearning\nof the individual soul. Anthropomorphism is pursuing its path, and\nthough still fertile in works of high spiritual value, may come to\nweary and weaken the religious sense.\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER V.\n THE PERIOD AFTER ALEXANDER\n\n{137}\n\nThe establishment of the Macedonian Empire wrought momentous changes\nin the civic-political religion of Hellas; and some of these were in\nthe direction of loss and decay, while others worked for the birth of\nnew religious life. The political significance of Apollo of Delphi, of\nZeus and Athena, the divine leaders of the Polis in its counsels and\nambitions, was doomed to pass away. Athena, as the warder and\ncounsellor, was of less avail for Athens than were the Samothracian\nsea-deities for the victorious Demetrios.\n\nCertainly in the first centuries of the Hellenistic age there were few\nexternal signs of decay; we do not yet hear of ruined shrines or the\ndecline of great festivals such as the Delia; Athena, though no longer\nthe goddess of a civic Empire, was still and for ages yet remained the\nbenign Madonna for the Athenian, to whose care the boy-athlete and the\nmarriageable girl were dedicated; we have record from the island of\nTenos[137.1] of the abiding hold that even such a deity as Poseidon\nstill exercised on the affections of his people, as late as the second\nand first centuries B.C.; and if we had continuous chronicles of each\ncult-centre we should probably find similar evidence showing that the\ndominant {138} figures of the old polytheism were still able to fulfil\nin some degree the religious wants of the individual worshipper. And\nscholars who have been tempted to ante-date the decay of Hellenic\npolytheism have ignored, among other evidence, this important historic\nfact that in the fourth century it was still vital enough to make\nforeign conquests, to penetrate and take possession of Carthage, for\ninstance, and that in the third century it began to secure for itself\na new lease of life within the city and the growing Empire of Rome; in\nfact, the last chapter of Greek religion falls within the Roman\nimperial period.\n\n_Growing force of personal religion_.--Yet the Hellene in the fourth\ncentury and in the early days of Macedonian ascendancy began to crave\nother outlets for his religious emotion than the traditional cults of\nhis phratry or tribe or city. Personal religion was beginning to be a\nmore powerful impulse and to stimulate a craving in the individual for\na more intimate union with the divinity, such, for instance, as was\noffered freely by the Great Mysteries of Eleusis. And we have fairly\nsufficient evidence that the fourth century witnessed a great\nextension of their influence.[138.1] The mysteries of Megalopolis\nwere instituted and those of Andania were reorganised by their aid;\nand the first Ptolemy is said to have invited an apostle from Eleusis\nto assist in some religious institutions of his new city of\nAlexandria.[138.2]\n\n_The religious brotherhoods_.--The same aspiration was also satisfied\nby the private \u03b8\u03af\u03b1\u03c3\u03bf\u03b9, the guilds of brethren devoted to the special\ncult of one {139} divinity. These unions belong to the type of the\nsecret religious society which is found in all parts of the world at\nvarying levels of culture. In Greece we have evidence of them as early\nas the time of Solon; it was probably not till the fifth century that\nany of them were instituted for the service of foreign divinities; we\nhear then of the thiasos of the Thracian Goddess, and in the earlier\nhalf of the fourth century of the orgiastic fraternity devoted to\nSabazios, with which \u00c6schines in his youth was associated. But it is\nnot till the Macedonian period that the epigraphic record of them\nbegins; henceforth the inscriptions are numerous and enlightening\nconcerning their organisation and their wide prevalence throughout the\nHellenic world.[139.1] Their importance for the history of religion\nis great on various grounds.\n\nThey show the development of the idea of a humanitarian religion in\nthat they transcend, in most cases, the limits of the old tribal and\ncivic religion and invite the stranger; so that the members, both men\nand women, associate voluntarily, no longer on the ground of birth or\nstatus, but drawn together by their personal devotion to a particular\ndeity, to whom they stand in a far more intimate and individual\nrelation than the ordinary citizen could stand to the divinities of\nhis tribe and city. This sense of divine fellowship might sometimes\nhave been enhanced by a sacrament which the members partook of\ntogether; we know that this was the bond of fellowship in the\nSamothracian mysteries, which were beginning to appeal widely to the\nearly Hellenistic world. A common meal at {140} least, a love-feast or\n\u2018Agape,\u2019 formed the chief bond of the \u2018thiasotai,\u2019 and this was\nsometimes a funeral-feast commemorative of the departed brother or\nsister. There was nothing to prevent the thiasos choosing as its\npatron-deity some one of the leading divinities of traditional\npolytheism, to which they must not be supposed, as Foucart supposed\nthem, to stand in any natural antagonism; therefore, for instance,\nthere were local reasons why Greek merchants whose central\nmeeting-point was Rhodes should form \u03b8\u03af\u03b1\u03c3\u03bf\u03b9 under the protection and\nin the name of Zeus Xenios, the God who protects the stranger, or of\nAthena Lindia, the ancient and powerful divinity of Lindos, or of\nHelios, the prehistoric Sun-God whose personality pervaded the whole\nisland. So far, then, the religious importance of these societies\nconsists in their quickening influence on personal religion, in the\ngratification that they afforded to the individuals craving for\npersonal union with the Godhead, also in their organisation which\naroused a keener sense of religious fellowship between the members,\nand which later served as a model to the nascent Christian community.\nBut in the history of the Hellenic religion their significance is even\ngreater on another ground, namely, that they bear a most striking\ntestimony to that fusion of East and West which it was the object of\nAlexander, and the mission of his successors, to effect; for many of\nthese religious brotherhoods, whose members and organisation were\nHellenic, were consecrated to foreign deities, Sabazios, Adonis,\nXousares, the Syrian Goddess; so that they played undesignedly the\npart of missionaries in the momentous movement sometimes called the\n{141} \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1, the blending of Eastern and Western religions and\ndivine personalities, of which the significance will be considered a\nlittle later.\n\n_Menander_.--The student who is tracking the course of the religious\nlife and experience of Hellas through the Hellenistic period should\nendeavour to gather beforehand a vivid impression of the spirit of the\nMenandrian comedy. For Menander, the friend of Epicurus and the\ndevoted admirer of Euripides, was the favoured heir of the\nhumanitarian spirit that had gleamed fitfully even in the Homeric\nperiod and had gathered strength and articulate expression in the\ncentury before Alexander opened the gates of the East. Patronised and\ncourted by Demetrios Phalereus and Ptolemy, admired by the scholars\nand reading public of Alexandria and the Hellenistic world even more\nthan he had been by his own contemporaries, Menander was eminently in\na position to give a tone to the religious sentiment of this period;\nand the Anthologies of his works prove that he was actually reverenced\nas an ethical-religious teacher.[141.1] Therefore, for the general\nexoteric history of Greek religion he counts for more than any of the\nphilosophers, for he addressed a far larger public. Yet the message\nthat he has to deliver has come to him from the philosophers and from\nthe inspiration of the humanised Attic spirit, of which he appears\n{142} the most delicate and final expression. While writing and\nthinking pre-eminently as the cultured Athenian of the close of the\nfourth century, he is the mouthpiece of cosmopolitanism in ethics and\nreligion--\u201cno good man is alien to me; the nature of all is one and\nthe same (\u03bf\u1f50\u03b4\u03b5\u03af\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03af \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u03cc\u03c4\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f02\u03bd \u1f96 \u03c7\u03c1\u03b7\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2\u00b7 \u1f21 \u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 \u03bc\u03af\u03b1\n\u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd)\u201d[142.1]; the Terentian formula--\u2018homo sum, humanum nil a me\nalienum puto\u2019--is only an extension of this, losing something of its\nethical colouring. Many of the fragments, showing striking\napproximations to New Testament teaching, are of vital importance for\nthe history of Greek ethics. As regards religion, they may contain\nprotests against superstition and the extravagance of sacrifice\nproffered as a bribe[142.2]; but they exhibit no real or veiled\nattack on the popular polytheism as a whole. On the other hand, they\nhave preserved many memorable sentences that bear witness to the\ndevelopment of a religion more personal, more inward and spiritual\nthan had hitherto been current, save perhaps in Platonic circles. God\nis presented as a spirit and as spiritually discerned by the mind of\nman; and a high ideal of Platonic speculation is delivered to the\npublic in the beautiful line, \u03c6\u1ff6\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u1f76 \u03c4\u1ff7 \u03bd\u1ff7 \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03bd \u03b2\u03bb\u03ad\u03c0\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd \u1f00\u03ad\u03b9,\n\u201cthe light of the mind is to gaze ever upon God.\u201d[142.3] The sense of\nclose and mystic communion between man and the divine omnipresent\nspirit is strikingly attested in the passage of one of his unknown\ncomedies: \u201ca guardian spirit [\u03b4\u03b1\u03af\u03bc\u03c9\u03bd] stands by every man, straightway\nfrom his birth, {143} to guide him into the mysteries of life, a good\nspirit, for one must not imagine that there is an evil spirit injuring\ngood life, but that God is utterly good.\u201d[143.1]\n\nIn attempting to grasp what is most elusive, the inner religious\nsentiment of any period, it is important to remember that the author\nof such expression was dear to at least the cultivated public of the\nHellenistic age.\n\n_The_ \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1.--The tolerant humanitarianism of Menander, of which\nwe catch the echo in certain formul\u00e6 inscribed on the Delphic and\nother temples, is reflected in that which is perhaps the most striking\nreligious phenomenon of this period, namely, the \u2018theocrasia,\u2019 the\nfusion of divinities of East and West. As regards religious theory\nthis is not to be regarded as a new departure. Herodotus shows how\nnatural it was to the Hellenic mind to interpret the deities of\nforeign nations in terms of its native pantheon; and it was easy for\nEuripides to commend Kybele as Demeter.[143.2] But it was by no means\neasy, in fact it was exceedingly dangerous, before the time of\nAlexander, to introduce any unauthorised foreign cult into the\nCity-State. We hear vaguely of the death-sentence inflicted or\nthreatened on those who did so. Nevertheless, as we have seen, such\nforeigners as Sabazios and Attis were intruding themselves into Athens\nat the time of the Peloponnesian war, trailing with them the orgiastic\natmosphere of Phrygia; and at some indefinite time before this the\nimpure ritual of certain Oriental Goddess-cults had invaded the\nCorinthian worship of Aphrodite. But after the establishment of the\nkingdoms of the Diadochi, the gentile barrier in {144} religion loses\ngradually its force and significance. It was, in fact, a far-sighted\nmeasure of policy on the part of some of the kings to establish some\ncommon cult that might win the devotion of the Hellenic and Oriental\npeoples alike. Such was the intention of Ptolemy when he founded at\nAlexandria the cult of the Babylonian god, Sarapis, whom the Egyptians\nwere able owing to a similarity of name to identify with their\nOsiris-Apis, and the Hellenes with their Plouton, owing to the\naccidental fact that an image of this underworld-god happened to be\nconsecrated to the cult at its first institution. Similarly, when the\nSyrian city of Bambyke was resettled as Hierapolis by Seleukos\nNikator, the personality of the great goddess, Atargatis, was blent\nwith that of Artemis, Hera, Aphrodite and other Hellenic goddesses;\nand the treatise of Lucian, _de Dea Syria_, gives us the most\ninteresting picture presented by antiquity of the working of the\n\u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c3\u03af\u03b1 in the domain of religion and religious art.\n\nThe spirit of syncretism grows stronger and more pervading through the\nlater Greek and Gr\u00e6co-Roman periods, and dominates the later Orphic\nand Gnostic thought; and the inscriptions, usually the best record of\nthe popular religious practice, attest its wide diffusion. We find the\ndeities of diverse lands--Egypt, Syria and Greece--linked together in\nthe same formula of thanksgiving and the same offering dedicated to\nthem all. And the name Zeus is applied to so many gods of the East\nthat in the cult-formul\u00e6 it seems often to have lost all its personal\nand concrete value and acquired the vaguer meaning of \u2018God.\u2019 The\nJewish Jahiv\u00e9 himself--under the name \u1f38\u03ac\u03c9--was occasionally {145}\nidentified with him and at times, it seems, even with\nDionysos.[145.1]\n\nThe importance of this movement for religious thought was of the\nhighest. Varro\u2019s view, recorded by Augustine.[145.2] that the name of\nthe deity made no difference, so long as \u2018the same thing is\nunderstood,\u2019 and that therefore the God of the Jews was the same as\nJupiter, is a great idea that has been bequeathed to the world by\nGreek tolerance and Greek sanity. Only a nation could attain to this\nfreedom of religious imagination that was not held captive by the\nmagic spell of names[145.3] which made it so difficult for the Jew to\nshake off the tribal spirit of the religious blood-feud. This Hellenic\nexpression of religious enlightenment prepared the way for monotheism\nand thus indirectly for Christianity. It also could induce the\npantheistic idea of a diffused omnipresent spirit of divinity, such as\nis expressed in the lines of Aratos, the scientific poet of the third\ncentury B.C., \u201call the ways are full of (the spirit of) God, and all\nthe gathering-places of men, the sea and harbours; and at every turn\nwe are all in need of God,[145.4] for we are of kin to him.\u201d\n\n_Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism_.--This pantheistic speculation\ninspires some of the dogmas of Stoicism; and for most of the Stoic\nwriters and thinkers the concept of divinity was less that of a\npersonal concrete Being than of a spiritual force or soul-power\nimmanent in things; therefore while some of them tried to find a place\nin their {146} metaphysical system for the creations of the polytheism\nand even a justification for augury and divination, the impression\nleft on our minds by the fragments that have come down to us of the\nreligious speculation of the Stoa is as of a system alien and\nantipathetic to the popular theistic point of view and especially to\nthe social religion of kin-group and city; and Zeno the founder is\nsaid to have protested against shrines and idols.[146.1] His protest\nwas in vain; nor is there any clear indication that Stoicism had any\ninfluence on the religious thought and practice of the average man of\nthe people; unless, indeed, the emergence of the cult of \u0391\u03c1\u03b5\u03c4\u03ae,\nVirtue, in the second century B.C. at Pergamon and Smyrna was\nsuggested by the strong theologic colouring that the Stoics gave to\nmorality.[146.2]\n\nAs for Epicureanism, it cannot be regarded normally as a religious\nforce; if it touched the popular mind at all its influence must have\nbeen generally in the direction of atheism or indifferentism; the only\nsigns that it did are occasional grave-inscriptions that breathe the\nEpicurean spirit of unperturbed quiescence in regard to the posthumous\nfate of the soul.\n\nThe philosophic school that was most aggressively protestant against\nthe popular creeds and cults appears to have been the Cynic, mordant\nand outspoken criticism being characteristic of this sect. We have\nrecord of Diogenes\u2019 contempt for the Eleusinian mysteries, of\nAntisthenes\u2019 disdain for the Great Mother of Phrygia and her mendicant\npriests; and the fragments in a newly discovered papyrus of {147} a\ntreatise by Kerkidas,[147.1] the Cynic philosopher and statesman of\nMegalopolis in the third century B.C., contain a theory which reduces\npersonal deities to impotent instruments of Fate and would substitute\nfor Zeus and his colleagues certain divinised abstractions, such as\nNemesis and \u039c\u03b5\u03c4\u03ac\u03b4\u03c9\u03c2; the latter term, if the reading is sound, seems\nto denote the Spirit of Unselfishness or Sacrifice, an interesting and\npotentially valuable idea, but at this time still-born.\n\n_Asclepios-Cult and later mysteries_.--The philosophic sectarians of\nthis later age do not appear to have made a serious attempt to capture\nthe mind of the public; and the popular religious movements for the\nmost part ignored them and their teaching. The Hellenistic religions\nare as convincedly theistic and idolatrous as the older were. The\nchief change lay in this, that a man now might to some extent choose\nhis own divinity or--what was even of more import--be chosen by him or\nher; he was no longer limited to the cults into which he was born.\nThis freedom had already for some time been offered by the \u2018thiasoi\u2019;\nand now in the Hellenistic world, especially through the powerful and\nwide influence of the cult of Asklepios, the idea was developed of a\ndeity who as Healer and Saviour called all mankind to himself; and it\nwas this significant cult-phenomenon that induced Kerkidas in the\nabove-mentioned passage to include \u03a0\u03b1\u03b9\u03ac\u03bd, the \u2018Healer,\u2019 among the true\ndivinities whose worship ought to supplant that of the older gods. In\nthe treatise called \u2018Asclepios\u2019 of the pseudo-Apuleius a long address\nand prayer to this deity are preserved of which the tone is strikingly\n{148} Christian.[148.1] \u201cWe rejoice in thy divine salvation, because\nthou hast shown thyself wholly to us; we rejoice that thou hast\ndeigned to consecrate us to eternity, while we are still in these\nmortal bodies.\u2026 We have known thee, oh, true life of the life of man.\u2026\nAdoring thy goodness we make this our only prayer\u2026 that thou wouldst\nbe willing to keep us all our lives in the love of thy knowledge.\u201d\n\n_Non-Hellenic mysteries_.--The phenomenon here indicated attests the\nstronger vitality at this period of personal or individual, as\ndistinct from tribal or political religion; and this was quickened\nalso by the growth of certain non-Hellenic mysteries in the\nMediterranean area in the latter centuries of Paganism, notably by the\nSamothracian, those of Attis and the Great Mother, the Egyptian Isis,\nand finally in the last period of all of Mithras. In most of these the\nrecords allow us to discover many interesting ideas that reappear in\nearly Christianity, such, for instance, as communion with the divinity\nthrough sacrament, the mystic death and rebirth of the Catechumen, the\nsaving efficacy of baptism and purification. These rites could satisfy\nthe craving of the mortal to attain to the conviction of immortality\nand to the ecstatic consciousness of complete or temporary\nself-absorption in God. But in the mysteries of Sabazios and Cybele\nand possibly in others this sense of divinity was conveyed to the\n\u2018mystes\u2019 by the simulation of a holy marriage or sex-communion with\nthe God or Goddess; and for this reason the Pagan mysteries were\ngenerally attacked by the Christian Fathers as obscene; the {149}\ncharge was unjust on the whole, though the psychic effect of the\nspecial act of ritual just alluded to was probably detrimental to the\nmoral imagination.\n\n_Hermetic literature_.--The strangest and most interesting\nmanifestation that the ancient records have preserved for us of this\nfusion of Hellenic culture and Oriental religious sentiment is\npresented by the Hermetic literature. The origins of this fantastic\nproduct of the human mind are traced by Professor Petrie[149.1] back\nto the sixth or fifth centuries B.C. But, though much of it is\npre-Christian, its philosophic diction proves that it cannot be\nearlier than 300 B.C., and the bulk of it is probably later.[149.2]\nA frequent Hermetic formula, addressed to the deity--\u1f10\u03b3\u03ce \u03b5\u1f30\u03bc\u03b9 \u03c3\u1f7a \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76\n\u03c3\u1f7a \u1f10\u03b3\u03ce, \u201cI am Thou and Thou art I\u201d--may be taken as the master-word of\nthese hieratic writings. This unnatural alliance between Greek\nphilosophy and Oriental mystic theosophy is a momentous phenomenon of\nlater Paganism; and the study of the origins of Christian metaphysic\nis much concerned with it.\n\nSuch theosophy had a natural affinity with magic; and magic, always a\npower in an age of intellectual decay, begins to be most powerful in\nthis latest age of Hellenism. It is a just reproach that Augustine\nbrings against Porphyry, the most notable of the Neoplatonists that he\n\u2018wavered between philosophy and a sacrilegious curiosity,\u2019 that is, a\nvicious interest in the black art.[149.3]\n\nIn these strange forms of faith and speculation the clearness and\nsanity of the pure Hellenic intellect appear clouded and troubled, the\nlineaments of the {150} old types of the Hellenic thought and\nimagination almost effaced. And the learning and science of the\nHellenistic age stood mainly aloof from the religious forces that\nmoved the masses of the people.\n\n_Daimonism_.--The mystic and theosophic literature of the Hellenistic\nand Gr\u00e6co-Roman period was markedly \u2018daimonistic,\u2019 being infected\nwith the polydaimonism of the East and positing the existence of good\nand evil \u2018daimones\u2019 as a metaphysic dogma. We can trace a\ncorresponding change in the popular Hellenic imagination. In the\nearlier period, as has been shown, the native Hellene was, as compared\nwith other races, fairly strong-minded in respect of the terrors of\nthe demon-world; but the later people of the Greek area were certainly\ntainted in some degree with this unfortunate superstition of the East,\nand various forms of exorcism, conjuration and evocation became more\nprevalent. The modern Greek temperament appears to be morbidly\npossessed with this disease[150.1]; and we may suppose that the germs\nhave been inherited and developed from this last period of the old\ncivilisation.\n\n_Eschatology_.--But another feature that we mark in these mystic\nworships and mystic societies of the Hellenistic world indicates a\nhigher aspect of religion and marks an epoch in religious aspiration.\nMost of them, if not all, proclaimed the immortality of the soul, a\nhappy resurrection, a divine life after death. The Hellene who had\nbeen initiated into the Osiris faith hoped to attain immortal\nhappiness in and through Osiris, availing himself of Egyptian ideas\nand Egyptian spell-formul\u00e6. The priest of certain {151} mysteries,\nprobably of Attis, comforts the congregation of the faithful,\nsorrowing over the death of their God, with words that aver the\ncertainty of his resurrection and by implication the hope of their\nown--\n\n \u03b8\u03b1\u03c1\u03c1\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c4\u03b5 \u03bc\u03cd\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c3\u03b5\u03c3\u03c9\u03c3\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\n \u1f14\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u1f21\u03bc\u1fd6\u03bd \u1f10\u03ba \u03c0\u03cc\u03bd\u03c9\u03bd \u03c3\u03c9\u03c4\u03b7\u03c1\u03af\u03b1.[151.1]\n\n\u201cBe of good cheer, ye of the mystery of the saved God, for after our\ntroubles there shall be to us salvation.\u201d\n\nThe mysteries of Mithras embodied much the same eschatologic ideas and\nhopes; but these came to the Gr\u00e6co-Roman world only in the latest\nperiod before the establishment of Christianity, and had little hold\non Hellenic society proper. Doubtless the most attractive mystery for\nthe Hellenes was the Orphic, and we have many proofs of its activity\nand life in the two centuries before and after the beginning of our\nera; and we can well understand the causes of its popularity. Its\ndeity had become Hellenised long ago; the Orphic formul\u00e6 were free\nfrom barbarous jargon and admitted the familiar divine names; the\ninsistence on purification was congenial to many Hellenic\ntemperaments; there was probably nothing surviving in the ritual that\nwas objectionable to the cultivated Hellene; and finally its picture\nof Paradise seems to have accorded with the trend of the Hellenic\nimagination. The numerous grave-inscriptions of these centuries rarely\nexpress any definite Orphic sentiment or allude to any specially\nmystic faith; but we know that the {152} sacred hymn of the votaries\nwas buried with them from the fourth century down to the Roman\nImperial period; and we have the evidence of Plutarch attesting the\nprevalence of these societies and their power of appeal, for, when he\nis consoling his wife for the death of their child, he reminds her of\nthe promises of future happiness held out by the Dionysiac mysteries,\ninto which they have both been initiated.[152.1]\n\n_Hero-worship and apotheosis_.--The idea that was common to many of\nthese mystic brotherhoods, that the mortal might achieve divinity, is\nillustrated by another religious phenomenon which stands out in this\nlatest period, namely, the worship of individual men and women either\nin their lifetime or immediately after death. To appreciate the full\nsignificance of this, one must be familiar with the usages of the\nearlier Hellenes as also of the Oriental peoples who became subjects\nof the Diadochi. We have observed that the Greek of the sixth and\nfifth centuries was willing to concede heroic honours to certain\ndistinguished individuals after death; in this there was nothing\ninconsistent with the principles of higher polytheism; and in the\nearlier cases the grounds of canonisation were usually good and\nreasonable. It becomes a more serious question about the religious and\nmoral character of a people when divine worship is proffered to a\nliving person. Of this the first example is the cult of Lysander as a\nGod, which, as Plutarch seems to imply, arose even in his\nlifetime.[152.2] The same writer records the story of the apotheosis\noffered by the people of Thasos {153} to Agesilaos and his sarcastic\nrefusal.[153.1] The same kind of adulation was lavished by the\ndegenerate Athenians on Alexander and Demetrios Poliorketes. The most\nsalient examples are derived from the records of the Seleukidai and\nthe Ptolemies, the kings of these dynasties usually enjoying divine\nhonours after death, and sometimes bearing divine titles, such as\n\u03a3\u03c9\u03c4\u03b7\u03c1, Saviour, \u0398\u03b5\u03cc\u03c2, or God, in their lifetime. Is this merely the\ngross servility of a decadent age that had lost all real sense of\nreligion? This is no doubt the true account of it in some degree; Dio\nChrysostom exclaims against the quackery and vanity of it;[153.2] and\nthe sharp-witted Athenians and the educated Greek generally would be\nunder no illusion when they prostrated themselves before these\nhuman-Gods. It is natural to suppose that the effect upon the life of\nthe old religion was corrosive when a queen or a courtesan could be\npublicly recognised as Aphrodite, and that the general belief in\nApollo and Dionysos would tend to collapse when the one was identified\nwith the Seleukidai, the other with Attalos. Yet the faith in Dionysos\nat least was able to survive the strain. And what seems to us mere\nhypocrisy and blasphemy would appear to many of the Hellenistic\ncommunities in another light. It seems that the uncultured Greek in\nthe time of Herodotus was capable of believing in all seriousness that\nXerxes might be a real incarnation of Zeus upon earth;[153.3] and\nsuch an idea would be familiar, as an old tradition in the popular\nestimate of kingship, to the {154} natives of Syria and still more to\nthe Egyptians. When the Rosetta stone proclaims the Ptolemy as \u2018the\nliving image of God,\u2019 the average Greek might smile in secret, but the\nnative Egyptian would instinctively assent to this assumption of\ndivinity by the heir of the ancient Pharaohs.\n\nThis apotheosis of the mortal, so rife in this later period, may be\nregarded as a moral and religious evil. Yet it must not be taken too\nhastily as a proof of the unreality of the prevailing polytheism. And,\nfor better or worse, it was a momentous fact belonging to the higher\nhistory of European religion; for it familiarised the Gr\u00e6co-Roman\nworld with the idea of the incarnation of the Man-God.\n\n_Signs of decay and of new life in later Paganism_.--The Hellenistic\nperiod cannot be severed by any sharp dividing line from the\nGr\u00e6co-Roman; but it belongs rather to the student of Roman religion\nand the Roman Empire to pursue the history of Hellenic polytheism\nthrough the first centuries of our era down to the establishment of\nChristianity. The religious phenomena of the period that has just been\nsketched present, on the one hand, the signs of decay, the decay of\nthe old civic and political religion which fostered the growth of the\nGreek Polis, the intrusion from the East of demonology and magic, and\non the other hand the working of new religious forces which prepare\nthe way for Christianity. The cults of Apollo, Zeus and Athene were\namong the first to wither; yet a living and personal religious sense\nwas in all probability more diffused through the Greek world under the\nEpigoni and the Roman Empire than it had been in the earlier\ncenturies. Contact with the Oriental spirit brought to many a stronger\n{155} intensity of religious life; religion is no longer preoccupied\nwith the physical and political world, but its horizon lies beyond the\ngrave and its force is \u2018other-worldliness.\u2019 Men flock to the\nmysteries, seeking communion with the divinity by sacrament, and\nsustaining their faith by mystic dogmas. The religious virtue most\nemphasised is purity, of which the influence is often anti-social;\nthis was no longer always understood in a pharisaic sense, but its\nspiritual significance was proclaimed to the people and penetrated the\nsphere of temple-ritual. An inscription from a temple in Rhodes of the\ntime of Hadrian contains a list of rules concerning righteous entrance\ninto the shrine, \u201cthe first and greatest rule is to be pure and\nunblemished in hand and heart and to be free from an evil\nconscience.\u201d[155.1] Something similar was inscribed on the temple of\nAsklepios at Epidauros.[155.2] The _objective_ of the earlier\nHellenic polytheism was the city, the tribe, the family; that of the\nlater was the individual soul; the earlier religious morality looked\nrather to works and practice, the later rather to purity and personal\nintimacy with God, which gave the cue to the later \u2018gnosis\u2019 and\ntheosophy. The gradual divorce of religion from political life was a\nloss which was not repaired for many centuries; but it was compensated\nby the rise of a humanitarian spirit which was to be infused into a\nnew cosmopolitan religion.[155.3]\n\nThe above is only a panoramic sketch indicating the various elements\nof a singularly manifold religious system. It has been impossible to\ntouch {156} on all the special points of interest, such as divination\nand the minuti\u00e6 of ritual and of the festivals; for these the student\nmust consult special treatises. The object of this monograph has been\nto present the main essential features in a chronologic survey and to\nassign to each its significance and relative importance. The history\nhas been adumbrated of a religion that maintained itself for nearly\ntwo thousand years on the higher plane of polytheism; a religion\nwhich, while lacking the sublimity and moral fervour of some of the\nOriental creeds, made certain unique contributions to the evolution of\nsociety and the higher intellectual life of man.\n\nBy the side of the higher growths many of the products of lower and\nsavage culture were maintained which were mainly obliterated by\nChristianity. It is necessary to note and appreciate these lower\nfacts; but there is a risk of overestimating their importance and\nvitality. Many of these are found in all higher religions, usually in\na moribund state. It is its higher achievement that makes any\nparticular religion of importance in the history of civilisation; and\nwe are now aware that Greek religion can claim this importance. Nor\ncan the lower elements as a whole be shown to be the germs of the\nhigher within the Hellenic period proper. We cannot show the evolution\nof the personal anthropomorphic deities of Greece from magic ritual or\ntotemism or theriomorphism without transcending the chronologic limits\nof the period within which it is allowable to speak of a Hellenic\npeople at all. The emergence of personal Gods, from whatever region or\nby whatever influence they emerged, is an event of very primitive\nhistory. At least we know that of {157} the two populations whose\nblending made Hellenism, the indigenous Mediterranean and the Northern\nor Central European invader, the former possessed a personal theism of\ndateless antiquity; while all the evidence points to the conviction\nthat the Aryan tribes entered Greece with certain personal deities\nalready evolved or acquired.\n\nWe find that anthropomorphism was the strongest bias of the Hellenic\nreligious imagination; and with this we associate his passion for\nidolatry and hero-worship. It is interesting for the student of\nHellenic Christianity to note the influence of these tendencies on the\nlater history of the Greek Church; and generally it has been the\nresult of much modern research to reveal the truth that the\nindebtedness of Christian dogma and ritual to the later Hellenic\npaganism was far greater than used to be supposed.\n\n\n\n\n LITERATURE\n\n{158}\n\nOlder works, such as _Welcker\u2019s Griechische G\u00f6tterlehre_ (3 vols.,\n1857-1863), and _Preller\u2019s Griechische Mythologie_ (2 vols., 4th ed.,\nby C. Robert, 1887), are only useful now for their collection of\nfacts.\n\nRecent literature: O. Gruppe, _Griechische Culte und Mythen in ihren\nBeziehungen zu den orientalischen Religionen_, 1887; _Griechische\nMythologie und Religionsgeschichte_, 1906; L. R. Farnell, _Cults of\nthe Greek States_, 5 vols. (1896-1910); Chantepie de la Saussaye,\n_Lehrbuch der Religiongeschichte_ (Greek section, 1906); Jane\nHarrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_ (1903),\n_Themis, a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion_ (1912) (both\nworks dealing mainly with special questions and the more primitive\naspects of the religion).\n\nTreatises on special cults and special questions: Roscher,\n_Ausf\u00fchrliches Lexikon der griechischen und r\u00f6mischen Mythologie_\n(1884, in progress); Paulz-Wissowa, _Real Encyclop\u00e6die_ (1894, in\nprogress); and Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des Antiquit\u00e9s_\n(1873-1917); Showerman, _The Great Mother of the Gods_ (Wisconsin,\n1901); Frazer, _Attis, Adonis, Osiris_ (2nd ed., 1910); A. Dieterich,\n_Mutter Erde_ (1905); Eitrem, _Hermes und die Toten_ (Christiania,\n1909); Immerwahr, _Kulte und Mythe Arkadiens_ (1891); S. Wide,\n_Lakonische Kulte_ (1893); Usener, _G\u00f6tternamen_ (1896); cf. paper on\nhis theory in _Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor_, \u201cThe\nPlace of the Sonderg\u00f6tter in Greek Polytheism,\u201d by L. R. Farnell\n(1907); De Visser, _De Graecorum Diis non referentibus speciem\nhumanam_ (Leyden, 1900); E. Fehrle, _Die Kultische Keuscheit im\nAlterthum_ (Giessen, 1910); cf. L. R. Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_\n(1905), Lect. iii, \u201cThe Ritual of Purification\u201d; {159} Th. W\u00e1chter,\n_Reinheitsvorschriften im grieschischen Kult_ (Giessen, 1910); C.\nAusfeld, _De Graecorum precationibus quaestiones_, in Fleckeisen\u2019s\nSupplement (1903); cf. L. R. Farnell, _op cit._, Lect. iv, \u201cThe\nEvolution of Prayer\u201d; S. Reinach, various articles on Greek cults and\nmyths in _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, 3 vols. (1904-1908).\n\nFor Eschatology, Mysteries, Thiasoi, Hero-worship: A. Lobeck,\n_Aglaophamus_, 2 vols. (1829); E. Rohde, _Psyche_ (2nd ed., 1898); A.\nDieterich, _Nekyia_ (1893); also _Eine Mithras-Liturgie_ (1903); Jong,\n_Das Antike Mysterien-Wesen_ (Leiden, 1909); Goblet d\u2019Alviella,\n_Eleusinia_ (Paris, 1903); Foucart, \u201cLes Grands Myst\u00e8res d\u2019Eleusis\u201d\n(1900), in the _M\u00e9moires de l\u2019Acad\u00e9mie des Inscriptions et\nBelles-lettres_, xxxvii; Pringsheim, _Arch\u00e4ologische Beitr\u00e4ge zur\nGeschichte des Eleusinischen Kults_ (Munich, 1905); Foucart,\n_Associations religieuses chez les Grecs_ (1873); L. Weniger, _Ueber\ndas Collegium der Thyiaden_ (1876); Article on \u201cH\u00e9ros,\u201d by Deneken,\nin Roscher\u2019s _Lexikon_; Pfister, _Der Reliquien-kult im Alterthum_\n(1910).\n\nGreek ritual and festivals: A. Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen_\n(1898); P. Stengel, \u201cDie griechischen Sacral-alterth\u00fcmer,\u201d in Iwan\nvon M\u00fcller\u2019s _Handbuch_ (vol. v, 1898); _id. Opferbra\u00fcche der\nGriechen_ (1910); Fritze, _Die Rauchopfer bei den Griechen_ (1894); L.\nR. Farnell, \u201cSacramental Communion in Greek Religion,\u201d _Hibbert\nJournal_ (1903); M. P. Nillson, _Griechische Feste_ (1906), also\n_Studia de Dionysiis Atticis_ (1900); Foucart, _Le culte de Dionysos\nen Attique_ (1904); A. Thomsen, \u201cDer Trug des Prometheus,\u201d in _Archiv\nf\u00fcr Religions-Wissenschaft_ (1909); Rouse, _Greek Votive Offerings_\n(1902); Bouch\u00e9-Leclerq, _Histoire de la divination_ (4 vols.\n1879-1881); Deubner, _De Incubatione_ (1900); E. Samter, _Geburt\nHochzeit und Tod_ (1911).\n\nGreek religious thought and speculation: L. Campbell, _Religion in\nGreek Literature_ (1898); Caird, _Evolution of Theology in the Greek\nPhilosophers_ (2 vols., 1900-1902); J. Adam, _The Religious Teachers\nof Greece_ (1908); Decharme, _La critique des traditions religieuses\nchez les Grecs des origines au temps de Plutarque_ (1904).\n\n{160}\n\nEpigraphic material: _Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum_ (passim);\nspecial collections of inscriptions bearing on Greek religion:\nDittenberger, _Sylloge_ (vol. 2), \u201cRes Sacrae\u201d; J. von Prott and L.\nZiehen, _Leges Graecorum sacrae e titulis collectae_ (1896-1906, in\nprogress).\n\nReligious monuments: Overbeck, _Griechische Kunst Mythologie_\n(1871-1887, unfinished); L. R. Farnell, _Cults_; J. Harrison, op.\ncit.; Baumeister, _Denkm\u00e4ler des klassischen Alterthums_ (1885-1888);\nRoscher, op. cit.; Daremberg-Saglio, op. cit.; C. B\u00f6tticher, _\u00dcber\nden Baumkultus der Hellenen und R\u00f6mer_ (1856).\n\n _The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England_. William Brendon & Son\n\n\n\n\n ENDNOTES\n\n [21.1]\n As Karsten assumes in his _Outlines of Greek Religion_, p. 6.\n\n [22.1]\n Vide E. Meyer, \u201cDer erste auftreten der Aryer in der Geschichte,\u201d\n _Sitzungsb. d. K\u00f6nig. preuss. Akad. Wissensch._, 1908, p. 14.\n\n [23.1]\n Vide my _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 93.\n\n [24.1]\n Vide my _Greece and Babylon_, pp. 95-99.\n\n [24.2]\n The name Hera is probably Aryan-Hellenic, but applied in Argolis to\n the pre-Hellenic Goddess.\n\n [29.1]\n _Od._, 13, 174.\n\n [31.1]\n At Gournia. Vide Hawes\u2019 _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_, pp.\n 101-102.\n\n [32.1]\n _Il._, 16, 234.\n\n [32.2]\n _Il._, 16, 605.\n\n [32.3]\n _Il._, 5, 77.\n\n [33.1]\n He is aware, however, that a \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f40\u03bc\u03c6\u03ae, an oracular mandate, might be\n delivered against the royal house. _Od._, 3, 215.\n\n [33.2]\n Vide my _Cults_, 4, p. 190.\n\n [33.3]\n _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 236-245.\n\n [34.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 1, pp. 88-92.\n\n [34.2]\n Vide my _Greece and Babylon_, p. 236; also my article on \u201cSacrificial\n Communion in Greek Religion\u201d in _Hibbert Journal_, 1904: on\n \u201cSacrifice\u201d (Greek), in Hastings\u2019 _Encyclop\u00e6dia of Religion and\n Ethics_.\n\n [35.1]\n _Od._, 10, 517-520, 528.\n\n [35.2]\n Vide Evans\u2019 \u201cMycen\u00e6an Tree and Pillar Cult,\u201d _Hell. Journ._, 901, p.\n 191.\n\n [35.3]\n _Arch. Anzeig._, 1909, p. 98.\n\n [35.4]\n e.g. _Il._, 9, 500.\n\n [36.1]\n 10, 38, 8.\n\n [36.2]\n _Cults_, 4, pp. 180, 193.\n\n [36.3]\n _Il._, 3, 243: but the poet of the Nekyia is well aware of the heroic\n or divine honours paid them, _Od._, 11, 300-304.\n\n [36.4]\n _Od._, 11, 602.\n\n [36.5]\n _Il._, 2, 548.\n\n [37.1]\n Vide _Greece and Babylon_, pp. 206-207.\n\n [37.2]\n Vide v. Prott, _Leges Gr\u00e6corum Sacr\u00e6_, n. 4. Cf. _Arch. f\u00fcr\n Religionsw._, 1909, pp. 467, 482-485.\n\n [37.3]\n _Od._, 17, 500.\n\n [37.4]\n Paus., 1, 43, 7.\n\n [38.1]\n _Cults_, 3, pp. 50-62.\n\n [39.1]\n _Op._, 735.\n\n [40.1]\n Vide my _Greece and Babylon_, pp. 192-194.\n\n [42.1]\n _Cults_, 4, pp. 113-116.\n\n [42.2]\n Vide Nillson, in _Athen. Mitth._, 1908, p. 279.\n\n [43.1]\n _Cults_, 2, pp. 434-449.\n\n [43.2]\n _De Gr\u00e6corum deis non referentibus speciem humanam_, 1900.\n\n [43.3]\n _Bull. Corresp. Hell\u00ean._, 1899, p. 635.\n\n [43.4]\n _Greece and Babylon_, pp. 66-80. Vide Schrader\u2019s article, \u201cAryan\n Religion,\u201d Hastings\u2019 _Encyclop\u00e6dia_, vol. 2, p. 38.\n\n [44.1]\n _G\u00f6tternamen_, 1896.\n\n [44.2]\n Paus., 2, 11, 2.\n\n [45.1]\n Paus., 1, 1, 5.\n\n [45.2]\n Paus., 9, 33, 3.\n\n [45.3]\n Paus., 10, 37, 3.\n\n [45.4]\n I have criticised this theory of evolution in _Anthropological Essays\n presented to E. B. Tylor_, 1907, \u201cThe place of the Sonderg\u00f6tter in\n Greek Polytheism,\u201d where I have taken the view that some of them are\n products of the same religious instinct that produces theism or\n polytheism and that some appear to be late offshoots of the\n polytheistic system.\n\n [46.1]\n _Bull. Corr. Hell._, 1878, p. 515.\n\n [46.2]\n Paus., 3, 22, 1.\n\n [46.3]\n _Id._, 1, 22, 3; for other references vide _Cults_, 3, p. 312, R.9.\n\n [47.1]\n Paus., 8, 29, 1.\n\n [47.2]\n Paus., 8, 38, 3. \u1f41 \u1f31\u03b5\u03c1\u03b5\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u039b\u03c5\u03ba\u03b1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5 \u0394\u03b9\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03b5\u03c5\u03be\u03ac\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f72\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78 \u1f55\u03b4\u03c9\u03c1.\n Cf. Hesiod., _Op._, 737; for the general facts vide _Cults_, 5, pp.\n 420-424.\n\n [47.3]\n Vide _Cults_, 5, pp. 417-420.\n\n [48.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 5, pp. 345-365.\n\n [48.2]\n Agamede of Ephyra seems to have practised harmless magic, _Il._, 14,\n 740; and the poet may have regarded the Elean Ephyra as the special\n home of magic. Vide _Od._, 2, 328.\n\n [48.3]\n _Cults_, 3, p. 85-93; Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena_, pp. 120-136.\n\n [49.1]\n _Cults_, 4, p. 268, etc.\n\n [49.2]\n Arrian, _Anab._, 3, 16, 8.\n\n [49.3]\n Hesych., _s.v._\n\n [49.4]\n _Strom._, p. 755.\n\n [49.5]\n 2, 12, 1.\n\n [49.6]\n In the earliest versions of her legend, the magic of Medea is not\n black but benevolent.\n\n [50.1]\n 9, 33, 4.\n\n [50.2]\n Andrew Lang, _The World of Homer_, pp. 210, 216.\n\n [50.3]\n _Il._, 23, 174.\n\n [51.1]\n Vide Tsountas in _Ephem. Archaiol._, 1888, pp. 130-131, and\n Vollgraff, in _Bull. Corr. Hell._, 1904, p. 370.\n\n [51.2]\n Vide _Hibbert Lectures_, \u201cHigher Aspects of Greek Religion,\u201d pp. 19,\n 20.\n\n [52.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 1, p. 40-42.\n\n [52.2]\n _Ib._, p. 42.\n\n [52.3]\n _Ib._, 4, p. 272; Schol. Pind., _Ol._, 10, 19.\n\n [52.4]\n 7, 19, 1-9.\n\n [53.1]\n e.g. vide _Cults_, 3, 93.\n\n [53.2]\n _Cults_, 3, p. 22.\n\n [56.1]\n Vide _Cults_, vol. 5, pp. 85-118. Cf. generally chs. iv and v.\n\n [58.1]\n 2, 53.\n\n [60.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 2, pp. 442-449.\n\n [60.2]\n Bergk, _P\u0153t\u00e6 Lyrici Gr\u00e6ci_, vol. III, Fr. 1.\n\n [60.3]\n Philochoros Frag., 21, M\u00fcller, F. H. G., vol. i.\n\n [61.1]\n Athen\u00e6., p. 626 B.\n\n [61.2]\n Vide _Arch. Anzeig_, 1908, p. 122.\n\n [62.1]\n _Cults_, 3, pp. 17-18.\n\n [62.2]\n _Ib._, 3, pp. 33-34.\n\n [62.3]\n _Cults_, 5, p. 443-447.\n\n [63.1]\n Vide Furtw\u00e4ngler, in _M\u00fcnchener Sitzungsber._, 1897, 1, p. 401;\n Nillson, in _Athen. Mittheil._, 1908, p. 284.\n\n [63.2]\n The striking exception to this rule is the great cult of Helios at\n Rhodes. _Vide supra_, p. 29.\n\n [64.1]\n Ael., _Var. Hist._, 12, 61.\n\n [64.2]\n \u201cThey worship Sun and Moon, we worship real Gods such as Apollo and\n Hermes,\u201d _Pax_, 410.\n\n [64.3]\n Schol. Soph., _Elec._, 6.\n\n [64.4]\n Vide my _Greece and Babylon_, pp. 77-80.\n\n [65.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 4, pp. 163-166.\n\n [65.2]\n Prott-Ziehen, _Leg. Saer._, n., 18.\n\n [67.1]\n Plat., _Euthyd._, p. 302 C; Demosth., 18, \u00a7 141, 57, \u00a7 54, 67;\n Arist., _Ath. Polit._, 55.\n\n [67.2]\n Diog. Laert., 8, 1, 13; Macrob., 3, 6, 2.\n\n [67.3]\n _Bull. Corr. Hell._, 1893, p. 24.\n\n [68.1]\n Paus., 8, 47, 4.\n\n [69.1]\n The other view, still held by some, that Zeus-Agamemnon is the\n earlier fact, and Agamemnon the hero the later, does not bear\n criticism.\n\n [70.1]\n _Cults_, v, pp. 219-221; J. Harrison, _Prolegomena_, ch. ii.\n\n [71.1]\n Vide \u201cHigher Aspects of Greek Religion,\u201d _Hibbert Lectures_,\n pp. 73-91.\n\n [73.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 1, pp. 64-69; for the religious evolution of the Greek\n laws concerning homicide, vide my _Evolution of Religion_, pp.\n 139-152. _Cults_, IV, pp. 295-306.\n\n [73.2]\n _Epic. Gr\u00e6c. Frag._, Kinkel, p. 33.\n\n [74.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 4, p. 299.\n\n [76.1]\n Vide _Cults_, IV, pp. 200-202.\n\n [77.1]\n Vide _Cults_, IV, pp. 161-162, 200-202.\n\n [77.2]\n A fuller account will be found in _Cults_, IV, pp. 179-218.\n\n [80.1]\n Vide _supra_, pp. 34-35.\n\n [84.1]\n _Republ._, pp. 364-365.\n\n [87.1]\n For more detailed discussion, vide _Cults_, 3, pp. 126-198.\n\n [89.1]\n Plut., _Mor._, p. 881 E; Porphyr., _Vit. Pyth._, 19, 20.\n\n [89.2]\n _Strom._, V, p. 714.\n\n [90.1]\n Vide Gilbert, \u201cSpeculation und Volksglaube in der Ionischen\n Philosophie,\u201d in _Arch. Relig. Wiss._, 1910, p. 306.\n\n [90.2]\n _Frag._, CXXVI, CXXVII, CXXX (Bywater).\n\n [91.1]\n Vide Ridgeway\u2019s _Origin of Tragedy_; his theory is criticised in\n _Hermathena_, 1912.\n\n [93.1]\n Pan, the daimon-god of flocks, came in from Arcadia at the beginning\n of this century (vide _Cults_, V, p. 431); Asklepios, with his circle\n from Epidauros, at the close.\n\n [94.1]\n Herod., 8, 77.\n\n [94.2]\n Heydemann, _Die Vasensammlungen des Museum Nazionale zu Neapel_,\n 3253.\n\n [94.3]\n Vide specially l. 805-808, 822-824.\n\n [94.4]\n 9, 7, 4.\n\n [95.1]\n Bergk, _Frag._, 140.\n\n [95.2]\n _Hibbert Lectures_, 83-84.\n\n [96.1]\n Plut., _Vit. Arist._, 20; Paus., 9, 2, 5.\n\n [98.1]\n Vide _Cults_, III, pp. 156-157.\n\n [98.2]\n Vide _supra_, pp. 36-37.\n\n [100.1]\n Quintil., _Inst. Orat._, 12, 10, 9.\n\n [101.1]\n _Or._, 53, p. 401.\n\n [101.2]\n Vide _Cults_, 1, p. 231.\n\n [101.3]\n _Cults_, Vol. III, Coin Pl. No. 2; Gardner\u2019s _Types of Greek Coins_,\n Pl. 10, 25.\n\n [102.1]\n Vide _Cults_, III, pp. 271-272, Coin Pl. No. 18.\n\n [102.2]\n _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion_.\n\n [103.1]\n Livy, 45, 28.\n\n [103.2]\n _Thesmoph._, 1136.\n\n [103.3]\n Xenophanes\u2019 protest in the sixth century is the most noticeable,\n Clem., _Strom._, 5, pp. 714-715 P. The Stoic theory of Zeno condemned\n the erection of temples as well as idols, _ib._, p. 691 P.\n\n [105.1]\n _Antig._, 521.\n\n [107.1]\n Paus., 1, 40, 4.\n\n [108.1]\n _Ol._, 8, 28.\n\n [108.2]\n _Sept. c. Theb._, 662.\n\n [108.3]\n _Agam._, 776.\n\n [108.4]\n _Oed. Col._, 1268.\n\n [108.5]\n _Trag. Gr\u00e6c. Frag._ (Nanck), 855.\n\n [109.1]\n \u00a7 35.\n\n [109.2]\n _Pyth._, 4, 517.\n\n [109.3]\n _Ol._, 9, 60.\n\n [112.1]\n _Strom._, p. 688.\n\n [113.1]\n _Herc. Fur._, l. 847-858.\n\n [113.2]\n _Ib._, 339-347.\n\n [115.1]\n Vide my _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 114.\n\n [115.2]\n l. 391.\n\n [116.1]\n _Iphig Taur._, l. 391.\n\n [116.2]\n Clem., _Strom._, p. 691 P.\n\n [116.3]\n Vide Stob\u00e6, _Flor._, Vol. IV (Meineke), p. 264.\n\n [116.4]\n Vide _Cults_, Vol. IV, p. 210.\n\n [118.1]\n 6, 86.\n\n [118.2]\n Vide Ziegler, in _Archiv. f. Religionswiss_, 1911, p. 393-405.\n\n [119.1]\n Plut., _Vit. Pelop._, C. 21, 22. Cf. Eur., _Iph. Taur._, l. 391.\n\n [119.2]\n p. 315 B-C.\n\n [119.3]\n Cf. Herod., 7, 197, who shows that the human sacrifice in this cult\n was rare and conditional.\n\n [119.4]\n _Iph. Taur._, l. 1458.\n\n [119.5]\n Vide _Cults_, 4, pp. 276-279.\n\n [119.6]\n Porphyry, _De Abstin._, 2, 54.\n\n [120.1]\n _Ib._, 2, 56.\n\n [120.2]\n De ser. num. vind., 12, p. 557 C-D.\n\n [120.3]\n Plut., _Parallela_, 35. Vide _Cults_, 1, 95.\n\n [120.4]\n Vide my _Greece and Babylon_, p. 267.\n\n [121.1]\n The exceptions are the cults of Aphrodite at Corinth and among the\n Lokri Epizephyrii. Vide _Cults_, 2, pp. 635-636.\n\n [121.2]\n _Cults_, 2, p. 667.\n\n [121.3]\n e.g., in the cult of Artemis \u03ba\u03bf\u03c1\u03b4\u03ac\u03ba\u03b1 in Elis, said to be of Lydian\n origin (_Cults_, Vol. II, p. 445).\n\n [122.1]\n p. 527 D.\n\n [122.2]\n Bywater, _Frag._, CXXVII.\n\n [122.3]\n 7, 17, p. 1336 _b._\n\n [123.1]\n _Cults_, I, pp. 56, 88-92.\n\n [123.2]\n 23, \u00a7 76.\n\n [123.3]\n Serv. ad Verg., _\u00c6n._, 3, 57.\n\n [123.4]\n Vide my _Greece and Babylon_, pp. 76-81.\n\n [124.1]\n Vide fifth-century inscription of Teos containing a law threatening\n with penalties those who used magic against the State or against\n individuals (R\u0153hl, _Inscr. Gr\u00e6c. Antiq._, 497).\n\n [124.2]\n p. 932 E-933 E.\n\n [124.3]\n _Or._, 30, \u00a7 18.\n\n [126.1]\n _Cults_, 5, p. 264.\n\n [127.1]\n _Rep._, 378 C., where he seems to glance at Epicharmos.\n\n [129.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 4, pp. 211-214.\n\n [130.1]\n _Frags._, 1032.\n\n [130.2]\n \u03ba. \u1f08\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03b3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c4, \u00a7 11.\n\n [131.1]\n _Or._, 1, p. 31.\n\n [132.1]\n _De Myster._, \u00a7 125; cf. \u00a7 31.\n\n [132.2]\n _De Cor._, \u00a7 324.\n\n [133.1]\n _Laws_, 956 A-B.\n\n [133.2]\n _Ib._, 985 D.\n\n [133.3]\n e.g. _ib._, 984 D.\n\n [133.4]\n p. 34-41.\n\n [134.1]\n For particulars vide _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 37, 46-48, 103, 117.\n\n [135.1]\n _Laws_, p. 909 E.\n\n [135.2]\n 738 C.\n\n [137.1]\n _Bull. Corr. Hell._, XXVI, pp. 399-489.\n\n [138.1]\n Vide _Cults_, 3, pp. 199-202.\n\n [138.2]\n _Ib._, p. 199.\n\n [139.1]\n Vide Foucart, _Des Associations religieuses_.\n\n [141.1]\n A paper by Pierre Waltz in the _Revue des \u00c9tudes Grecques_,\n 1911--\u2018sur les sentences de M\u00e9nandre\u2019--aims at discovering or\n imagining the dramatic setting of each fragment and at disproving\n the view that Menander was posing as an original ethical teacher.\n Accepting his theory, we can still assign high value to the\n \u2018sentences\u2019 for the purpose of Greek ethical history, whether we\n regard them as original and earnest utterances of Menander or\n commonplaces which he uses lightly for dramatic purposes; for if the\n latter view of them is the truer, they show at least what was in the\n air.\n\n [142.1]\n Kock, _Com. Att. Frag._, 602.\n\n [142.2]\n e.g., quotation by Clemens, _Strom_, p. 720 P. Cf. fragment of the\n \u1f39\u03ad\u03c1\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1, Kock, 245.\n\n [142.3]\n \u0393\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 \u039c\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03c7\u03bf\u03b9 589, Meineke, 4, p. 356.\n\n [143.1]\n _Fab. Incert._, Kock, _Frag._, 550.\n\n [143.2]\n Helene, 1300-1365.\n\n [145.1]\n Vide A. B. Cooke, _Zeus_, pp. 232-234.\n\n [145.2]\n _De Consensu Evangelistarum_, 1, 30 (xxii); cf. _De Civ. Dei._, IV,\n 9.\n\n [145.3]\n Vide my _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 104-106.\n\n [145.4]\n Phainomen, 1, 2-5.\n\n [146.1]\n Clem., _Strom._, p. 691.\n\n [146.2]\n Vide _Cults_, 5, pp. 446, 745 R, 221.\n\n [147.1]\n _Oxyrhynch. Papyri._, viii, p. 31.\n\n [148.1]\n Vide _Archiv, f\u00fcr Relig. Wiss._, 1904, p. 395; my _Evolution of\n Religion_, p. 207.\n\n [149.1]\n _Personal Religion in Egypt_, p. 40.\n\n [149.2]\n Vide Reitzenstein, _Poimandres_.\n\n [149.3]\n _De Civ. Dei._, 10, 9.\n\n [150.1]\n Vide J. C. Lawson, _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek\n Religion_, 1910.\n\n [151.1]\n Firm. Mat., _De Err._, 22; cf. Dieterich, _Eine Mithras-Liturgie_, p.\n 174.\n\n [152.1]\n _Consol. ad uxor._, 10, p. 611 D.\n\n [152.2]\n Vit. Lysandr., 18. Cf. Athenag, p. 51 (Lechair).\n\n [153.1]\n p. 210 D, _Apoth. Lacon_; he advised them to begin with making\n themselves Gods if they felt equal to making him one.\n\n [153.2]\n _Or._, 64 R, 338 (Dind, 2. p. 213).\n\n [153.3]\n 7, 56.\n\n [155.1]\n _C.I.G. Ins. Mar. \u00c6g._, 1, 789.\n\n [155.2]\n Vide my _Evolution of Religion_, p. 138.\n\n [155.3]\n Vide my _Hibbert Lectures_, Lect. VI, \u201cPersonal Religion in\n Greece.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n TRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES\n\nThis book is first in the _Duckworth\u2019s Student Series_.\n\nPage numbers are given in {curly} brackets.\n\nPlain text version only: endnote markers are given in [square]\nbrackets.\n\nAdd the book title and author\u2019s name to the cover image.\n\nMinor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ ethical-religious/ethical\nreligious, Maenads/M\u00e6nads, etc.) along with the use of both Arabic\nand Roman numerals to indicate volume numbers in the endnotes have\nbeen preserved.\n\n(p. 142, note 3) The last character(s) of the word beginning with\n\u201c\u039c\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03c7\u201d are illegible in the source text. \u039c\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03c7\u03bf\u03b9 is used until\nthe proper word can be determined.\n\nAlterations to the text:\n\nConvert footnotes to endnotes, relabel note markers (append the\noriginal note number to the page number), and add a corresponding\nentry to the TOC.\n\n[Chapter IV]\n\nChange \u201cor _\u03c6\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03c6\u03bf\u03c1\u1f31\u03b1_ were specially associated with Dionysos\u2026\u201d to\n_\u03c6\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03c6\u03bf\u03c1\u03af\u03b1_.\n\n[Chapter V]\n\n\u201cabstractions, such as Nemesis and \u2018\u039c\u03b5\u03c4\u03ac\u03b4\u03c9\u03c2; the latter term\u2026\u201d delete\nleft single quotation mark.\n\n[Endnotes]\n\nA couple of trivial punctuation corrections.\n\n(p. 49, note 6) \u201cthe magic of _Media_ is not black but benevolent\u201d to\n_Medea_.\n\n[End of text]","title":"Outline-history of Greek religion","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":42873}