Plato’s attitude towards the popular religion.—A consecutive history of Greek religious thought as embodied in the surviving writings or records of the philosophic schools of Hellas is far too large a subject even to be adumbrated here. And a general survey of the religion can only notice shortly the leading thinkers whose works there is reason to suppose had popular vogue and lasting influence upon the religious world.
Among these the primacy belongs to Plato; and the full account of Greek religion, both in the period that precedes the downfall of Greek independence and in the periods that follow, must include a critical estimate of his religious speculation. This is no place for an elaborate consideration of the metaphysic of his ideal theory, or the relation of his ideas to a theistic system; but only the most general observations may be allowed for the purpose of this sketch. To understand his main attitude towards the popular cults, and his influence upon the latereducated world of Greece, we must recognise at once that, idealist and reformer as he was, he was no revolutionary or iconoclast in matters of religion; he would reform Greek mythology, purging it of stories of divine conflicts, divine vengeance, divine amours; and, as these fortunately were enshrined in no sacred books, he feels that this might be done gently and easily without disturbance to the established forms of worship. He does not desire to abolish sacrifice or idolatry, but inculcates simplicity in the offerings.133.1In one passage he even maintains that the legislator will not change a single detail of the ritual, if only for the reason that he does not know anything of the inner truth that may lie behind such outward forms.133.2Even in his most advanced physical and metaphysical speculations he finds a place for the popular pantheon;133.3in the hierarchic scale of things the Olympians are ranged somewhere below the supreme transcendental God of the Universe. The ‘Timæus’ dialogue presents some interesting theologic dogma; here133.4in the scale of Divine creation the Olympian Pantheon, which seems to be accepted rather for the sake of ancient tradition, is given the third place after the planets and the Sun which are the second works of the Supreme Creator, the first being the cosmic Heaven. These deities of the polytheism, then, are not immortal in their own nature, but are held together for all eternity by the will of the highest God. And it was to them that he committed the formation of man, and lent for this purpose a portion of his own immortality; the mortality of man is thus accountedfor; which would have been inexplicable had he sprung directly from the immortal Supreme Being.
It is interesting for our present purpose to note that this esoteric and transcendental system, devised by the great master and parent of Greek theosophy, would leave the established religion more or less unimpaired; it even accepts its data at certain points, namely, the nativity of its Gods, and draws the logical conclusion that Gods, who were born could not be by essence immortal; therefore Zeus could not be accepted as the Absolute and Supreme Being of the Cosmos. Also it proclaims the idea of an immortal element in man, which, again, is in accord not only with Orphic teaching, but also with the contemporary popular faith in the survival of some part of our being after death. But the work which reflects most vividly the popular religion and betrays the strongest sympathy with it is the Laws, a work of his old age in which the conservative spirit of the religious reformer is no less striking than the intellectual decay of the philosopher. He accepts the greater part of the civic political religion, merely purifying the mythology and some of the ideas concerning divinity; and it is striking how easily he finds in it materials ready to his hand on which he can build an exalted ethical-religious system of rights and duties, especially those which concern the life of the family and the groups of kinship.134.1In fact, the background of the thought in this lengthy treatise is almost always the Greek Polis, though glimpses may here and there break through of a wider vista. He expresses the prejudices of the Greek citizen against new forms of private or foreign orgiastic cult whichwere dangerously enticing to women;135.1any doubtful question that might arise concerning rite or cult he would leave to the decision of the oracles of Delphi or Dodona or of Zeus Ammon.135.2We feel generally that Plato did not assume the part of an apostle of a new order of religion, but that both in his philosophy and religious theory he found a sufficientpoint d’appuiin the old, of which he tried to strengthen the moral potentialities.
The later sects which attached themselves to his name or to his school were deeply interested in religious speculation, which degenerates at last into the mystic superstition of Neoplatonism. Therefore, as the work of Aristotle belongs to the history of European science, so the philosophy of Plato concerns the later history, both of pre-Christian and Christian religious thought. To estimate exactly how his influence worked on the better popular mind in the centuries before Christ is impossible. But we may naturally and with probability surmise that he contributed much to the diffusion of the belief in the spiritual nature and perfection of God, to the extirpation of the crude notions of divine vindictiveness and jealousy, to the interpretation of the external world in terms of mind and spirit as against any materialistic expression, to the acceptance of the belief in the divinity of the human soul and its affinity with God and in the importance of its posthumous life, which was partly conditioned by the attainment of purity. These latter ideas constitute the faith of the Orphic sects, from whom Plato may have silently borrowed them. But whether through Plato or the thiasoi many of themcame to appeal strongly to the popular mind of later Hellas.
Religious art in the fourth century.—Our general survey is now approaching that period of world-change brought about by the rise of Macedon. But before leaving the scene of the free City-State, we should remember to estimate the religious work done by the great fourth-century masters of sculpture before the power of Alexander reached its zenith. The fiery imagination of Skopas found plastic types for the forms of Dionysos and his thiasos, and his work rivalled at least, if it did not surpass, in inspiration of tumultuous life the masterpieces of the older Attic vase-painters noticed above. Praxiteles, the master of the gentler moods of the soul, in the religious sphere consummated the types of Aphrodite and Demeter; the almost perfect embodiment of the latter goddess, the Cnidian Demeter of the British Museum, a work of his school, combines something of the tearful expression of the Madre Dolorosa with the blitheness of the Corn-Goddess. We are conscious indeed of a change in the representation of divinity. The works of this later generation have lost the majesty and awe, the σεμνότης, as the Greeks called it, of the fifth-century art; nor can the Greek states command any longer the creation of the chryselephantine colossal statues of temple-worship. In these later types, though still divine, there is more infusion of human passion, of the personal experience, the struggles and yearning of the individual soul. Anthropomorphism is pursuing its path, and though still fertile in works of high spiritual value, may come to weary and weaken the religious sense.
Theestablishment of the Macedonian Empire wrought momentous changes in the civic-political religion of Hellas; and some of these were in the direction of loss and decay, while others worked for the birth of new religious life. The political significance of Apollo of Delphi, of Zeus and Athena, the divine leaders of the Polis in its counsels and ambitions, was doomed to pass away. Athena, as the warder and counsellor, was of less avail for Athens than were the Samothracian sea-deities for the victorious Demetrios.
Certainly in the first centuries of the Hellenistic age there were few external signs of decay; we do not yet hear of ruined shrines or the decline of great festivals such as the Delia; Athena, though no longer the goddess of a civic Empire, was still and for ages yet remained the benign Madonna for the Athenian, to whose care the boy-athlete and the marriageable girl were dedicated; we have record from the island of Tenos137.1of the abiding hold that even such a deity as Poseidon still exercised on the affections of his people, as late as the second and first centuries B.C.; and if we had continuous chronicles of each cult-centre we should probably find similar evidence showing that the dominantfigures of the old polytheism were still able to fulfil in some degree the religious wants of the individual worshipper. And scholars who have been tempted to ante-date the decay of Hellenic polytheism have ignored, among other evidence, this important historic fact that in the fourth century it was still vital enough to make foreign conquests, to penetrate and take possession of Carthage, for instance, and that in the third century it began to secure for itself a new lease of life within the city and the growing Empire of Rome; in fact, the last chapter of Greek religion falls within the Roman imperial period.
Growing force of personal religion.—Yet the Hellene in the fourth century and in the early days of Macedonian ascendancy began to crave other outlets for his religious emotion than the traditional cults of his phratry or tribe or city. Personal religion was beginning to be a more powerful impulse and to stimulate a craving in the individual for a more intimate union with the divinity, such, for instance, as was offered freely by the Great Mysteries of Eleusis. And we have fairly sufficient evidence that the fourth century witnessed a great extension of their influence.138.1The mysteries of Megalopolis were instituted and those of Andania were reorganised by their aid; and the first Ptolemy is said to have invited an apostle from Eleusis to assist in some religious institutions of his new city of Alexandria.138.2
The religious brotherhoods.—The same aspiration was also satisfied by the private θίασοι, the guilds of brethren devoted to the special cult of onedivinity. These unions belong to the type of the secret religious society which is found in all parts of the world at varying levels of culture. In Greece we have evidence of them as early as the time of Solon; it was probably not till the fifth century that any of them were instituted for the service of foreign divinities; we hear then of the thiasos of the Thracian Goddess, and in the earlier half of the fourth century of the orgiastic fraternity devoted to Sabazios, with which Æschines in his youth was associated. But it is not till the Macedonian period that the epigraphic record of them begins; henceforth the inscriptions are numerous and enlightening concerning their organisation and their wide prevalence throughout the Hellenic world.139.1Their importance for the history of religion is great on various grounds.
They show the development of the idea of a humanitarian religion in that they transcend, in most cases, the limits of the old tribal and civic religion and invite the stranger; so that the members, both men and women, associate voluntarily, no longer on the ground of birth or status, but drawn together by their personal devotion to a particular deity, to whom they stand in a far more intimate and individual relation than the ordinary citizen could stand to the divinities of his tribe and city. This sense of divine fellowship might sometimes have been enhanced by a sacrament which the members partook of together; we know that this was the bond of fellowship in the Samothracian mysteries, which were beginning to appeal widely to the early Hellenistic world. A common meal atleast, a love-feast or ‘Agape,’ formed the chief bond of the ‘thiasotai,’ and this was sometimes a funeral-feast commemorative of the departed brother or sister. There was nothing to prevent the thiasos choosing as its patron-deity some one of the leading divinities of traditional polytheism, to which they must not be supposed, as Foucart supposed them, to stand in any natural antagonism; therefore, for instance, there were local reasons why Greek merchants whose central meeting-point was Rhodes should form θίασοι under the protection and in the name of Zeus Xenios, the God who protects the stranger, or of Athena Lindia, the ancient and powerful divinity of Lindos, or of Helios, the prehistoric Sun-God whose personality pervaded the whole island. So far, then, the religious importance of these societies consists in their quickening influence on personal religion, in the gratification that they afforded to the individuals craving for personal union with the Godhead, also in their organisation which aroused a keener sense of religious fellowship between the members, and which later served as a model to the nascent Christian community. But in the history of the Hellenic religion their significance is even greater on another ground, namely, that they bear a most striking testimony to that fusion of East and West which it was the object of Alexander, and the mission of his successors, to effect; for many of these religious brotherhoods, whose members and organisation were Hellenic, were consecrated to foreign deities, Sabazios, Adonis, Xousares, the Syrian Goddess; so that they played undesignedly the part of missionaries in the momentous movement sometimes called theΘεοκρασία, the blending of Eastern and Western religions and divine personalities, of which the significance will be considered a little later.
Menander.—The student who is tracking the course of the religious life and experience of Hellas through the Hellenistic period should endeavour to gather beforehand a vivid impression of the spirit of the Menandrian comedy. For Menander, the friend of Epicurus and the devoted admirer of Euripides, was the favoured heir of the humanitarian spirit that had gleamed fitfully even in the Homeric period and had gathered strength and articulate expression in the century before Alexander opened the gates of the East. Patronised and courted by Demetrios Phalereus and Ptolemy, admired by the scholars and reading public of Alexandria and the Hellenistic world even more than he had been by his own contemporaries, Menander was eminently in a position to give a tone to the religious sentiment of this period; and the Anthologies of his works prove that he was actually reverenced as an ethical-religious teacher.141.1Therefore, for the general exoteric history of Greek religion he counts for more than any of the philosophers, for he addressed a far larger public. Yet the message that he has to deliver has come to him from the philosophers and from the inspiration of the humanised Attic spirit, of which he appearsthe most delicate and final expression. While writing and thinking pre-eminently as the cultured Athenian of the close of the fourth century, he is the mouthpiece of cosmopolitanism in ethics and religion—“no good man is alien to me; the nature of all is one and the same (οὐδείς ἐστί μοι ἀλλότριος ἂν ᾖ χρηστός· ἡ φύσις μία πάντων)”142.1; the Terentian formula—‘homo sum, humanum nil a me alienum puto’—is only an extension of this, losing something of its ethical colouring. Many of the fragments, showing striking approximations to New Testament teaching, are of vital importance for the history of Greek ethics. As regards religion, they may contain protests against superstition and the extravagance of sacrifice proffered as a bribe142.2; but they exhibit no real or veiled attack on the popular polytheism as a whole. On the other hand, they have preserved many memorable sentences that bear witness to the development of a religion more personal, more inward and spiritual than had hitherto been current, save perhaps in Platonic circles. God is presented as a spirit and as spiritually discerned by the mind of man; and a high ideal of Platonic speculation is delivered to the public in the beautiful line, φῶς ἐστὶ τῷ νῷ πρὸς θεὸν βλέπειν ἀέι, “the light of the mind is to gaze ever upon God.”142.3The sense of close and mystic communion between man and the divine omnipresent spirit is strikingly attested in the passage of one of his unknown comedies: “a guardian spirit [δαίμων] stands by every man, straightway from his birth,to guide him into the mysteries of life, a good spirit, for one must not imagine that there is an evil spirit injuring good life, but that God is utterly good.”143.1
In attempting to grasp what is most elusive, the inner religious sentiment of any period, it is important to remember that the author of such expression was dear to at least the cultivated public of the Hellenistic age.
TheΘεοκρασία.—The tolerant humanitarianism of Menander, of which we catch the echo in certain formulæ inscribed on the Delphic and other temples, is reflected in that which is perhaps the most striking religious phenomenon of this period, namely, the ‘theocrasia,’ the fusion of divinities of East and West. As regards religious theory this is not to be regarded as a new departure. Herodotus shows how natural it was to the Hellenic mind to interpret the deities of foreign nations in terms of its native pantheon; and it was easy for Euripides to commend Kybele as Demeter.143.2But it was by no means easy, in fact it was exceedingly dangerous, before the time of Alexander, to introduce any unauthorised foreign cult into the City-State. We hear vaguely of the death-sentence inflicted or threatened on those who did so. Nevertheless, as we have seen, such foreigners as Sabazios and Attis were intruding themselves into Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war, trailing with them the orgiastic atmosphere of Phrygia; and at some indefinite time before this the impure ritual of certain Oriental Goddess-cults had invaded the Corinthian worship of Aphrodite. But after the establishment of the kingdoms of the Diadochi, the gentile barrier inreligion loses gradually its force and significance. It was, in fact, a far-sighted measure of policy on the part of some of the kings to establish some common cult that might win the devotion of the Hellenic and Oriental peoples alike. Such was the intention of Ptolemy when he founded at Alexandria the cult of the Babylonian god, Sarapis, whom the Egyptians were able owing to a similarity of name to identify with their Osiris-Apis, and the Hellenes with their Plouton, owing to the accidental fact that an image of this underworld-god happened to be consecrated to the cult at its first institution. Similarly, when the Syrian city of Bambyke was resettled as Hierapolis by Seleukos Nikator, the personality of the great goddess, Atargatis, was blent with that of Artemis, Hera, Aphrodite and other Hellenic goddesses; and the treatise of Lucian,de Dea Syria, gives us the most interesting picture presented by antiquity of the working of the θεοκρασία in the domain of religion and religious art.
The spirit of syncretism grows stronger and more pervading through the later Greek and Græco-Roman periods, and dominates the later Orphic and Gnostic thought; and the inscriptions, usually the best record of the popular religious practice, attest its wide diffusion. We find the deities of diverse lands—Egypt, Syria and Greece—linked together in the same formula of thanksgiving and the same offering dedicated to them all. And the name Zeus is applied to so many gods of the East that in the cult-formulæ it seems often to have lost all its personal and concrete value and acquired the vaguer meaning of ‘God.’ The Jewish Jahivé himself—under the name Ἰάω—was occasionallyidentified with him and at times, it seems, even with Dionysos.145.1
The importance of this movement for religious thought was of the highest. Varro’s view, recorded by Augustine.145.2that the name of the deity made no difference, so long as ‘the same thing is understood,’ and that therefore the God of the Jews was the same as Jupiter, is a great idea that has been bequeathed to the world by Greek tolerance and Greek sanity. Only a nation could attain to this freedom of religious imagination that was not held captive by the magic spell of names145.3which made it so difficult for the Jew to shake off the tribal spirit of the religious blood-feud. This Hellenic expression of religious enlightenment prepared the way for monotheism and thus indirectly for Christianity. It also could induce the pantheistic idea of a diffused omnipresent spirit of divinity, such as is expressed in the lines of Aratos, the scientific poet of the third century B.C., “all the ways are full of (the spirit of) God, and all the gathering-places of men, the sea and harbours; and at every turn we are all in need of God,145.4for we are of kin to him.”
Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism.—This pantheistic speculation inspires some of the dogmas of Stoicism; and for most of the Stoic writers and thinkers the concept of divinity was less that of a personal concrete Being than of a spiritual force or soul-power immanent in things; therefore while some of them tried to find a place in theirmetaphysical system for the creations of the polytheism and even a justification for augury and divination, the impression left on our minds by the fragments that have come down to us of the religious speculation of the Stoa is as of a system alien and antipathetic to the popular theistic point of view and especially to the social religion of kin-group and city; and Zeno the founder is said to have protested against shrines and idols.146.1His protest was in vain; nor is there any clear indication that Stoicism had any influence on the religious thought and practice of the average man of the people; unless, indeed, the emergence of the cult of Αρετή, Virtue, in the second century B.C. at Pergamon and Smyrna was suggested by the strong theologic colouring that the Stoics gave to morality.146.2
As for Epicureanism, it cannot be regarded normally as a religious force; if it touched the popular mind at all its influence must have been generally in the direction of atheism or indifferentism; the only signs that it did are occasional grave-inscriptions that breathe the Epicurean spirit of unperturbed quiescence in regard to the posthumous fate of the soul.
The philosophic school that was most aggressively protestant against the popular creeds and cults appears to have been the Cynic, mordant and outspoken criticism being characteristic of this sect. We have record of Diogenes’ contempt for the Eleusinian mysteries, of Antisthenes’ disdain for the Great Mother of Phrygia and her mendicant priests; and the fragments in a newly discovered papyrus ofa treatise by Kerkidas,147.1the Cynic philosopher and statesman of Megalopolis in the third century B.C., contain a theory which reduces personal deities to impotent instruments of Fate and would substitute for Zeus and his colleagues certain divinised abstractions, such as Nemesis and Μετάδως; the latter term, if the reading is sound, seems to denote the Spirit of Unselfishness or Sacrifice, an interesting and potentially valuable idea, but at this time still-born.
Asclepios-Cult and later mysteries.—The philosophic sectarians of this later age do not appear to have made a serious attempt to capture the mind of the public; and the popular religious movements for the most part ignored them and their teaching. The Hellenistic religions are as convincedly theistic and idolatrous as the older were. The chief change lay in this, that a man now might to some extent choose his own divinity or—what was even of more import—be chosen by him or her; he was no longer limited to the cults into which he was born. This freedom had already for some time been offered by the ‘thiasoi’; and now in the Hellenistic world, especially through the powerful and wide influence of the cult of Asklepios, the idea was developed of a deity who as Healer and Saviour called all mankind to himself; and it was this significant cult-phenomenon that induced Kerkidas in the above-mentioned passage to include Παιάν, the ‘Healer,’ among the true divinities whose worship ought to supplant that of the older gods. In the treatise called ‘Asclepios’ of the pseudo-Apuleius a long address and prayer to this deity are preserved of which the tone is strikinglyChristian.148.1“We rejoice in thy divine salvation, because thou hast shown thyself wholly to us; we rejoice that thou hast deigned to consecrate us to eternity, while we are still in these mortal bodies.… We have known thee, oh, true life of the life of man.… Adoring thy goodness we make this our only prayer… that thou wouldst be willing to keep us all our lives in the love of thy knowledge.”
Non-Hellenic mysteries.—The phenomenon here indicated attests the stronger vitality at this period of personal or individual, as distinct from tribal or political religion; and this was quickened also by the growth of certain non-Hellenic mysteries in the Mediterranean area in the latter centuries of Paganism, notably by the Samothracian, those of Attis and the Great Mother, the Egyptian Isis, and finally in the last period of all of Mithras. In most of these the records allow us to discover many interesting ideas that reappear in early Christianity, such, for instance, as communion with the divinity through sacrament, the mystic death and rebirth of the Catechumen, the saving efficacy of baptism and purification. These rites could satisfy the craving of the mortal to attain to the conviction of immortality and to the ecstatic consciousness of complete or temporary self-absorption in God. But in the mysteries of Sabazios and Cybele and possibly in others this sense of divinity was conveyed to the ‘mystes’ by the simulation of a holy marriage or sex-communion with the God or Goddess; and for this reason the Pagan mysteries were generally attacked by the Christian Fathers as obscene; thecharge was unjust on the whole, though the psychic effect of the special act of ritual just alluded to was probably detrimental to the moral imagination.
Hermetic literature.—The strangest and most interesting manifestation that the ancient records have preserved for us of this fusion of Hellenic culture and Oriental religious sentiment is presented by the Hermetic literature. The origins of this fantastic product of the human mind are traced by Professor Petrie149.1back to the sixth or fifth centuries B.C. But, though much of it is pre-Christian, its philosophic diction proves that it cannot be earlier than 300 B.C., and the bulk of it is probably later.149.2A frequent Hermetic formula, addressed to the deity—ἐγώ εἰμι σὺ καὶ σὺ ἐγώ, “I am Thou and Thou art I”—may be taken as the master-word of these hieratic writings. This unnatural alliance between Greek philosophy and Oriental mystic theosophy is a momentous phenomenon of later Paganism; and the study of the origins of Christian metaphysic is much concerned with it.
Such theosophy had a natural affinity with magic; and magic, always a power in an age of intellectual decay, begins to be most powerful in this latest age of Hellenism. It is a just reproach that Augustine brings against Porphyry, the most notable of the Neoplatonists that he ‘wavered between philosophy and a sacrilegious curiosity,’ that is, a vicious interest in the black art.149.3
In these strange forms of faith and speculation the clearness and sanity of the pure Hellenic intellect appear clouded and troubled, the lineaments of theold types of the Hellenic thought and imagination almost effaced. And the learning and science of the Hellenistic age stood mainly aloof from the religious forces that moved the masses of the people.
Daimonism.—The mystic and theosophic literature of the Hellenistic and Græco-Roman period was markedly ‘daimonistic,’ being infected with the polydaimonism of the East and positing the existence of good and evil ‘daimones’ as a metaphysic dogma. We can trace a corresponding change in the popular Hellenic imagination. In the earlier period, as has been shown, the native Hellene was, as compared with other races, fairly strong-minded in respect of the terrors of the demon-world; but the later people of the Greek area were certainly tainted in some degree with this unfortunate superstition of the East, and various forms of exorcism, conjuration and evocation became more prevalent. The modern Greek temperament appears to be morbidly possessed with this disease150.1; and we may suppose that the germs have been inherited and developed from this last period of the old civilisation.
Eschatology.—But another feature that we mark in these mystic worships and mystic societies of the Hellenistic world indicates a higher aspect of religion and marks an epoch in religious aspiration. Most of them, if not all, proclaimed the immortality of the soul, a happy resurrection, a divine life after death. The Hellene who had been initiated into the Osiris faith hoped to attain immortal happiness in and through Osiris, availing himself of Egyptian ideas and Egyptian spell-formulæ. The priest of certainmysteries, probably of Attis, comforts the congregation of the faithful, sorrowing over the death of their God, with words that aver the certainty of his resurrection and by implication the hope of their own—
θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωσμένουἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία.151.1
θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωσμένου
ἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία.151.1
“Be of good cheer, ye of the mystery of the saved God, for after our troubles there shall be to us salvation.”
The mysteries of Mithras embodied much the same eschatologic ideas and hopes; but these came to the Græco-Roman world only in the latest period before the establishment of Christianity, and had little hold on Hellenic society proper. Doubtless the most attractive mystery for the Hellenes was the Orphic, and we have many proofs of its activity and life in the two centuries before and after the beginning of our era; and we can well understand the causes of its popularity. Its deity had become Hellenised long ago; the Orphic formulæ were free from barbarous jargon and admitted the familiar divine names; the insistence on purification was congenial to many Hellenic temperaments; there was probably nothing surviving in the ritual that was objectionable to the cultivated Hellene; and finally its picture of Paradise seems to have accorded with the trend of the Hellenic imagination. The numerous grave-inscriptions of these centuries rarely express any definite Orphic sentiment or allude to any specially mystic faith; but we know that thesacred hymn of the votaries was buried with them from the fourth century down to the Roman Imperial period; and we have the evidence of Plutarch attesting the prevalence of these societies and their power of appeal, for, when he is consoling his wife for the death of their child, he reminds her of the promises of future happiness held out by the Dionysiac mysteries, into which they have both been initiated.152.1
Hero-worship and apotheosis.—The idea that was common to many of these mystic brotherhoods, that the mortal might achieve divinity, is illustrated by another religious phenomenon which stands out in this latest period, namely, the worship of individual men and women either in their lifetime or immediately after death. To appreciate the full significance of this, one must be familiar with the usages of the earlier Hellenes as also of the Oriental peoples who became subjects of the Diadochi. We have observed that the Greek of the sixth and fifth centuries was willing to concede heroic honours to certain distinguished individuals after death; in this there was nothing inconsistent with the principles of higher polytheism; and in the earlier cases the grounds of canonisation were usually good and reasonable. It becomes a more serious question about the religious and moral character of a people when divine worship is proffered to a living person. Of this the first example is the cult of Lysander as a God, which, as Plutarch seems to imply, arose even in his lifetime.152.2The same writer records the story of the apotheosis offered by the people of Thasosto Agesilaos and his sarcastic refusal.153.1The same kind of adulation was lavished by the degenerate Athenians on Alexander and Demetrios Poliorketes. The most salient examples are derived from the records of the Seleukidai and the Ptolemies, the kings of these dynasties usually enjoying divine honours after death, and sometimes bearing divine titles, such as Σωτηρ, Saviour, Θεός, or God, in their lifetime. Is this merely the gross servility of a decadent age that had lost all real sense of religion? This is no doubt the true account of it in some degree; Dio Chrysostom exclaims against the quackery and vanity of it;153.2and the sharp-witted Athenians and the educated Greek generally would be under no illusion when they prostrated themselves before these human-Gods. It is natural to suppose that the effect upon the life of the old religion was corrosive when a queen or a courtesan could be publicly recognised as Aphrodite, and that the general belief in Apollo and Dionysos would tend to collapse when the one was identified with the Seleukidai, the other with Attalos. Yet the faith in Dionysos at least was able to survive the strain. And what seems to us mere hypocrisy and blasphemy would appear to many of the Hellenistic communities in another light. It seems that the uncultured Greek in the time of Herodotus was capable of believing in all seriousness that Xerxes might be a real incarnation of Zeus upon earth;153.3and such an idea would be familiar, as an old tradition in the popular estimate of kingship, to thenatives of Syria and still more to the Egyptians. When the Rosetta stone proclaims the Ptolemy as ‘the living image of God,’ the average Greek might smile in secret, but the native Egyptian would instinctively assent to this assumption of divinity by the heir of the ancient Pharaohs.
This apotheosis of the mortal, so rife in this later period, may be regarded as a moral and religious evil. Yet it must not be taken too hastily as a proof of the unreality of the prevailing polytheism. And, for better or worse, it was a momentous fact belonging to the higher history of European religion; for it familiarised the Græco-Roman world with the idea of the incarnation of the Man-God.
Signs of decay and of new life in later Paganism.—The Hellenistic period cannot be severed by any sharp dividing line from the Græco-Roman; but it belongs rather to the student of Roman religion and the Roman Empire to pursue the history of Hellenic polytheism through the first centuries of our era down to the establishment of Christianity. The religious phenomena of the period that has just been sketched present, on the one hand, the signs of decay, the decay of the old civic and political religion which fostered the growth of the Greek Polis, the intrusion from the East of demonology and magic, and on the other hand the working of new religious forces which prepare the way for Christianity. The cults of Apollo, Zeus and Athene were among the first to wither; yet a living and personal religious sense was in all probability more diffused through the Greek world under the Epigoni and the Roman Empire than it had been in the earlier centuries. Contact with the Oriental spirit brought to many a strongerintensity of religious life; religion is no longer preoccupied with the physical and political world, but its horizon lies beyond the grave and its force is ‘other-worldliness.’ Men flock to the mysteries, seeking communion with the divinity by sacrament, and sustaining their faith by mystic dogmas. The religious virtue most emphasised is purity, of which the influence is often anti-social; this was no longer always understood in a pharisaic sense, but its spiritual significance was proclaimed to the people and penetrated the sphere of temple-ritual. An inscription from a temple in Rhodes of the time of Hadrian contains a list of rules concerning righteous entrance into the shrine, “the first and greatest rule is to be pure and unblemished in hand and heart and to be free from an evil conscience.”155.1Something similar was inscribed on the temple of Asklepios at Epidauros.155.2Theobjectiveof the earlier Hellenic polytheism was the city, the tribe, the family; that of the later was the individual soul; the earlier religious morality looked rather to works and practice, the later rather to purity and personal intimacy with God, which gave the cue to the later ‘gnosis’ and theosophy. The gradual divorce of religion from political life was a loss which was not repaired for many centuries; but it was compensated by the rise of a humanitarian spirit which was to be infused into a new cosmopolitan religion.155.3
The above is only a panoramic sketch indicating the various elements of a singularly manifold religious system. It has been impossible to touchon all the special points of interest, such as divination and the minutiæ of ritual and of the festivals; for these the student must consult special treatises. The object of this monograph has been to present the main essential features in a chronologic survey and to assign to each its significance and relative importance. The history has been adumbrated of a religion that maintained itself for nearly two thousand years on the higher plane of polytheism; a religion which, while lacking the sublimity and moral fervour of some of the Oriental creeds, made certain unique contributions to the evolution of society and the higher intellectual life of man.
By the side of the higher growths many of the products of lower and savage culture were maintained which were mainly obliterated by Christianity. It is necessary to note and appreciate these lower facts; but there is a risk of overestimating their importance and vitality. Many of these are found in all higher religions, usually in a moribund state. It is its higher achievement that makes any particular religion of importance in the history of civilisation; and we are now aware that Greek religion can claim this importance. Nor can the lower elements as a whole be shown to be the germs of the higher within the Hellenic period proper. We cannot show the evolution of the personal anthropomorphic deities of Greece from magic ritual or totemism or theriomorphism without transcending the chronologic limits of the period within which it is allowable to speak of a Hellenic people at all. The emergence of personal Gods, from whatever region or by whatever influence they emerged, is an event of very primitive history. At least we know that ofthe two populations whose blending made Hellenism, the indigenous Mediterranean and the Northern or Central European invader, the former possessed a personal theism of dateless antiquity; while all the evidence points to the conviction that the Aryan tribes entered Greece with certain personal deities already evolved or acquired.
We find that anthropomorphism was the strongest bias of the Hellenic religious imagination; and with this we associate his passion for idolatry and hero-worship. It is interesting for the student of Hellenic Christianity to note the influence of these tendencies on the later history of the Greek Church; and generally it has been the result of much modern research to reveal the truth that the indebtedness of Christian dogma and ritual to the later Hellenic paganism was far greater than used to be supposed.
Olderworks, such asWelcker’s Griechische Götterlehre(3 vols., 1857-1863), andPreller’s Griechische Mythologie(2 vols., 4th ed., by C. Robert, 1887), are only useful now for their collection of facts.
Recent literature: O. Gruppe,Griechische Culte und Mythen in ihren Beziehungen zu den orientalischen Religionen, 1887;Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, 1906; L. R. Farnell,Cults of the Greek States, 5 vols. (1896-1910); Chantepie de la Saussaye,Lehrbuch der Religiongeschichte(Greek section, 1906); Jane Harrison,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion(1903),Themis, a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion(1912) (both works dealing mainly with special questions and the more primitive aspects of the religion).
Treatises on special cults and special questions: Roscher,Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie(1884, in progress); Paulz-Wissowa,Real Encyclopædie(1894, in progress); and Daremberg et Saglio,Dictionnaire des Antiquités(1873-1917); Showerman,The Great Mother of the Gods(Wisconsin, 1901); Frazer,Attis, Adonis, Osiris(2nd ed., 1910); A. Dieterich,Mutter Erde(1905); Eitrem,Hermes und die Toten(Christiania, 1909); Immerwahr,Kulte und Mythe Arkadiens(1891); S. Wide,Lakonische Kulte(1893); Usener,Götternamen(1896); cf. paper on his theory inAnthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, “The Place of the Sondergötter in Greek Polytheism,” by L. R. Farnell (1907); De Visser,De Graecorum Diis non referentibus speciem humanam(Leyden, 1900); E. Fehrle,Die Kultische Keuscheit im Alterthum(Giessen, 1910); cf. L. R. Farnell,Evolution of Religion(1905), Lect. iii, “The Ritual of Purification”;Th. Wáchter,Reinheitsvorschriften im grieschischen Kult(Giessen, 1910); C. Ausfeld,De Graecorum precationibus quaestiones, in Fleckeisen’s Supplement (1903); cf. L. R. Farnell,op cit., Lect. iv, “The Evolution of Prayer”; S. Reinach, various articles on Greek cults and myths inCultes, Mythes et Religions, 3 vols. (1904-1908).
For Eschatology, Mysteries, Thiasoi, Hero-worship: A. Lobeck,Aglaophamus, 2 vols. (1829); E. Rohde,Psyche(2nd ed., 1898); A. Dieterich,Nekyia(1893); alsoEine Mithras-Liturgie(1903); Jong,Das Antike Mysterien-Wesen(Leiden, 1909); Goblet d’Alviella,Eleusinia(Paris, 1903); Foucart, “Les Grands Mystères d’Eleusis” (1900), in theMémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, xxxvii; Pringsheim,Archäologische Beiträge zur Geschichte des Eleusinischen Kults(Munich, 1905); Foucart,Associations religieuses chez les Grecs(1873); L. Weniger,Ueber das Collegium der Thyiaden(1876); Article on “Héros,” by Deneken, in Roscher’sLexikon; Pfister,Der Reliquien-kult im Alterthum(1910).
Greek ritual and festivals: A. Mommsen,Feste der Stadt Athen(1898); P. Stengel, “Die griechischen Sacral-alterthümer,” in Iwan von Müller’sHandbuch(vol. v, 1898);id. Opferbraüche der Griechen(1910); Fritze,Die Rauchopfer bei den Griechen(1894); L. R. Farnell, “Sacramental Communion in Greek Religion,”Hibbert Journal(1903); M. P. Nillson,Griechische Feste(1906), alsoStudia de Dionysiis Atticis(1900); Foucart,Le culte de Dionysos en Attique(1904); A. Thomsen, “Der Trug des Prometheus,” inArchiv für Religions-Wissenschaft(1909); Rouse,Greek Votive Offerings(1902); Bouché-Leclerq,Histoire de la divination(4 vols. 1879-1881); Deubner,De Incubatione(1900); E. Samter,Geburt Hochzeit und Tod(1911).
Greek religious thought and speculation: L. Campbell,Religion in Greek Literature(1898); Caird,Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers(2 vols., 1900-1902); J. Adam,The Religious Teachers of Greece(1908); Decharme,La critique des traditions religieuses chez les Grecs des origines au temps de Plutarque(1904).
Epigraphic material:Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum(passim); special collections of inscriptions bearing on Greek religion: Dittenberger,Sylloge(vol. 2), “Res Sacrae”; J. von Prott and L. Ziehen,Leges Graecorum sacrae e titulis collectae(1896-1906, in progress).
Religious monuments: Overbeck,Griechische Kunst Mythologie(1871-1887, unfinished); L. R. Farnell,Cults; J. Harrison, op. cit.; Baumeister,Denkmäler des klassischen Alterthums(1885-1888); Roscher, op. cit.; Daremberg-Saglio, op. cit.; C. Bötticher,Über den Baumkultus der Hellenen und Römer(1856).
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England. William Brendon & Son
21.1As Karsten assumes in hisOutlines of Greek Religion, p. 6.
22.1Vide E. Meyer, “Der erste auftreten der Aryer in der Geschichte,”Sitzungsb. d. König. preuss. Akad. Wissensch., 1908, p. 14.
23.1Vide myHibbert Lectures, p. 93.
24.1Vide myGreece and Babylon, pp. 95-99.
24.2The name Hera is probably Aryan-Hellenic, but applied in Argolis to the pre-Hellenic Goddess.
29.1Od., 13, 174.
31.1At Gournia. Vide Hawes’Crete the Forerunner of Greece, pp. 101-102.
32.1Il., 16, 234.
32.2Il., 16, 605.
32.3Il., 5, 77.
33.1He is aware, however, that a θεοῦ ὀμφή, an oracular mandate, might be delivered against the royal house.Od., 3, 215.
33.2Vide myCults, 4, p. 190.
33.3Religion of the Semites, pp. 236-245.
34.1VideCults, 1, pp. 88-92.
34.2Vide myGreece and Babylon, p. 236; also my article on “Sacrificial Communion in Greek Religion” inHibbert Journal, 1904: on “Sacrifice” (Greek), in Hastings’Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.
35.1Od., 10, 517-520, 528.
35.2Vide Evans’ “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,”Hell. Journ., 901, p. 191.
35.3Arch. Anzeig., 1909, p. 98.
35.4e.g.Il., 9, 500.
36.110, 38, 8.
36.2Cults, 4, pp. 180, 193.
36.3Il., 3, 243: but the poet of the Nekyia is well aware of the heroic or divine honours paid them,Od., 11, 300-304.
36.4Od., 11, 602.
36.5Il., 2, 548.
37.1VideGreece and Babylon, pp. 206-207.
37.2Vide v. Prott,Leges Græcorum Sacræ, n. 4. Cf.Arch. für Religionsw., 1909, pp. 467, 482-485.
37.3Od., 17, 500.
37.4Paus., 1, 43, 7.
38.1Cults, 3, pp. 50-62.
39.1Op., 735.
40.1Vide myGreece and Babylon, pp. 192-194.
42.1Cults, 4, pp. 113-116.
42.2Vide Nillson, inAthen. Mitth., 1908, p. 279.
43.1Cults, 2, pp. 434-449.
43.2De Græcorum deis non referentibus speciem humanam, 1900.
43.3Bull. Corresp. Hellên., 1899, p. 635.
43.4Greece and Babylon, pp. 66-80. Vide Schrader’s article, “Aryan Religion,” Hastings’Encyclopædia, vol. 2, p. 38.
44.1Götternamen, 1896.
44.2Paus., 2, 11, 2.
45.1Paus., 1, 1, 5.
45.2Paus., 9, 33, 3.
45.3Paus., 10, 37, 3.
45.4I have criticised this theory of evolution inAnthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907, “The place of the Sondergötter in Greek Polytheism,” where I have taken the view that some of them are products of the same religious instinct that produces theism or polytheism and that some appear to be late offshoots of the polytheistic system.
46.1Bull. Corr. Hell., 1878, p. 515.
46.2Paus., 3, 22, 1.
46.3Id., 1, 22, 3; for other references videCults, 3, p. 312, R.9.
47.1Paus., 8, 29, 1.
47.2Paus., 8, 38, 3. ὁ ἱερεὺς τοῦ Λυκαίου Διὸς προσευξάμενος ὲς τὸ ὕδωρ. Cf. Hesiod.,Op., 737; for the general facts videCults, 5, pp. 420-424.
47.3VideCults, 5, pp. 417-420.
48.1VideCults, 5, pp. 345-365.
48.2Agamede of Ephyra seems to have practised harmless magic,Il., 14, 740; and the poet may have regarded the Elean Ephyra as the special home of magic. VideOd., 2, 328.
48.3Cults, 3, p. 85-93; Miss Harrison,Prolegomena, pp. 120-136.
49.1Cults, 4, p. 268, etc.
49.2Arrian,Anab., 3, 16, 8.
49.3Hesych.,s.v.
49.4Strom., p. 755.
49.52, 12, 1.
49.6In the earliest versions of her legend, the magic of Medea is not black but benevolent.
50.19, 33, 4.
50.2Andrew Lang,The World of Homer, pp. 210, 216.
50.3Il., 23, 174.
51.1Vide Tsountas inEphem. Archaiol., 1888, pp. 130-131, and Vollgraff, inBull. Corr. Hell., 1904, p. 370.
51.2VideHibbert Lectures, “Higher Aspects of Greek Religion,” pp. 19, 20.
52.1VideCults, 1, p. 40-42.
52.2Ib., p. 42.
52.3Ib., 4, p. 272; Schol. Pind.,Ol., 10, 19.
52.47, 19, 1-9.
53.1e.g. videCults, 3, 93.
53.2Cults, 3, p. 22.
56.1VideCults, vol. 5, pp. 85-118. Cf. generally chs. iv and v.
58.12, 53.
60.1VideCults, 2, pp. 442-449.
60.2Bergk,Pœtæ Lyrici Græci, vol. III, Fr. 1.
60.3Philochoros Frag., 21, Müller, F. H. G., vol. i.
61.1Athenæ., p. 626 B.
61.2VideArch. Anzeig, 1908, p. 122.
62.1Cults, 3, pp. 17-18.
62.2Ib., 3, pp. 33-34.
62.3Cults, 5, p. 443-447.
63.1Vide Furtwängler, inMünchener Sitzungsber., 1897, 1, p. 401; Nillson, inAthen. Mittheil., 1908, p. 284.
63.2The striking exception to this rule is the great cult of Helios at Rhodes.Vide supra,p. 29.
64.1Ael.,Var. Hist., 12, 61.
64.2“They worship Sun and Moon, we worship real Gods such as Apollo and Hermes,”Pax, 410.
64.3Schol. Soph.,Elec., 6.
64.4Vide myGreece and Babylon, pp. 77-80.
65.1VideCults, 4, pp. 163-166.
65.2Prott-Ziehen,Leg. Saer., n., 18.
67.1Plat.,Euthyd., p. 302 C; Demosth., 18, § 141, 57, § 54, 67; Arist.,Ath. Polit., 55.
67.2Diog. Laert., 8, 1, 13; Macrob., 3, 6, 2.
67.3Bull. Corr. Hell., 1893, p. 24.
68.1Paus., 8, 47, 4.
69.1The other view, still held by some, that Zeus-Agamemnon is the earlier fact, and Agamemnon the hero the later, does not bear criticism.
70.1Cults, v, pp. 219-221; J. Harrison,Prolegomena, ch. ii.
71.1Vide “Higher Aspects of Greek Religion,”Hibbert Lectures, pp. 73-91.
73.1VideCults, 1, pp. 64-69; for the religious evolution of the Greek laws concerning homicide, vide myEvolution of Religion, pp. 139-152.Cults, IV, pp. 295-306.
73.2Epic. Græc. Frag., Kinkel, p. 33.
74.1VideCults, 4, p. 299.
76.1VideCults, IV, pp. 200-202.
77.1VideCults, IV, pp. 161-162, 200-202.
77.2A fuller account will be found inCults, IV, pp. 179-218.
80.1Videsupra, pp.34-35.
84.1Republ., pp. 364-365.
87.1For more detailed discussion, videCults, 3, pp. 126-198.
89.1Plut.,Mor., p. 881 E; Porphyr.,Vit. Pyth., 19, 20.
89.2Strom., V, p. 714.
90.1Vide Gilbert, “Speculation und Volksglaube in der Ionischen Philosophie,” inArch. Relig. Wiss., 1910, p. 306.
90.2Frag., CXXVI, CXXVII, CXXX (Bywater).
91.1Vide Ridgeway’sOrigin of Tragedy; his theory is criticised inHermathena, 1912.
93.1Pan, the daimon-god of flocks, came in from Arcadia at the beginning of this century (videCults, V, p. 431); Asklepios, with his circle from Epidauros, at the close.
94.1Herod., 8, 77.