GREEK SERIES FOR COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS EDITED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF HERBERT WEIR SMYTH, PH.D. ELIOT PROFESSOR OF GREEK LITERATURE IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY VOLUMES OF THE SERIES GREEK GRAMMAR. By the Editor. BEGINNER'S GREEK BOOK. Prof. Allen R. Benner, Phillips Academy, An- dover; and the Editor. $1.25. BRIEF GREEK SYNTAX. Prof. Louis Bevier, Jr., Rutgers College. $0.90. GREEK PROSE READER. Prof. F. E. Woodruff, Bowdoin College, and Prof. J. W. Hewitt, Wesleyan University. GREEK PROSE COMPOSITION FOR SCHOOLS. Clarence W. Gleason, Volkmann School, Boston. $0.80. GREEK PROSE COMPOSITION FOR COLLEGES. Prof. Edward H. Spieker, Johns Hopkins University. $1.30. AESCHYLUS. AGAMEMNON. Prof. Paul Shorey, University of Chicago. AESCHYLUS. PROMETHEUS. Prof. J. E. Harry, University of Cincinnati. $1.50. ARIS rOPH ANES. CLOUDS. Dr. L. L. Forman, Cornell University. DEMOSTHENES. ON THE CROWN. Prof. Milton W. Humphreys, University of Virginia. EURIPIDES. IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS. Prof. William N. 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Hewitt, Wesleyan University. XENOPHON. HELLENICA (Selections). Prof. Carleton L. Brownson, College of the City of New York. $i .65. GREEK ARCHAEOLOGY. Prof Harold N. Fowler, Western Reserve University, and Prof. James R. Wheeler, Columbia University. $2.00. GREEK LITERATURE. Dr. Wilmer Cave Wright, Bryn Mawr College. $1.50. GREEK PUBLIC LIFE. Prof. Henry A. Sill, Cornell University. GREEK RELIGION. Prof. Arthur Fairbanks, Director of the Boston Museum o f Fine Arts. GREEK SCULPTURE. Prof Rufus B. Richardson, late Director of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens. INTRODUCTION TO THE GREEK DRAMA. Prof. William Fenwick Harris, Harvard University. BEGINNER'S NEW TESTAMENT GREEK BOOK. Prof. William H. P. Hatch, General Theological Seminary, New York. Others to be announced later. A HANDBOOK OF GREEK RELIGION BY ARTHUR FAIRBANKS NEW YORK-:. CINCINNATI.:- CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON. FAIRBANKS. GREEK RELIGION. W. P. 2 PREFACE ALTHOUGH the mythology of Greece is a familiar subject, and Greek religious antiquities have long been studied, Greek re- ligion, as such, is a comparatively unknown field. In the pres- ent volume, religious antiquities, forms of revelation, and worship and belief are discussed in Part I. from the standpoint of their religious significance. It may be that readers who are more interested in the content than in the form of Greek religion will pass from the Introduction directly to Parts II and III, but Part I has been left in its logical place. Greek mythology, on the other hand, finds no place in the discussion. If too much emphasis has been laid on the difference between mythology and religion, it may be regarded as a natural reaction from the usual identification of two quite different interests of the Greek mind. For various reasons Greek religion is not, like Greek my- thology, an easy subject to handle. There is one mythology, or at least a tendency to one mythology, as over against many almost unrelated forms of worship. Moreover, mythology lent itself to literary treatment, while many of the data for Greek religion come in fragmentary form from late authors. As to other sources, inscriptions are very important, but they deal only with detail ; while archaeological remains are often difficult to interpret. Although no complete picture is possible, it is hoped that this presentation of the subject will give a point of view which will be helpful in understanding Greek authors as well as in determining the contribution of Greece to the religious conceptions and forces of the later world. ARTHUR FAIRBANKS. April, 1910. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 13 Was there a Greek religion? Mythology and religion. The local shrine. What did religion mean to the Greeks? PART I FORMS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND PRACTICE IN ANCIENT GREECE CHAPTER I. REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 39 The Greek conception of revelation. Theophany in the Ho- meric poems. Signs in the ordinary course of nature. Signs in nature : birds. Minur signs in nature : chance words, etc. Divi- nation by means of sacrificial victims. Inspiration : (a) dreams ; (3) prophets. Oracles. II. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 65 Sacred places. Sacred times. Sacred persons; priests and attendants. Forms of worship : () votive offerings, processions, athletic contests ; (c) the sacrificial meal ; (.... 206 'E. 'Apx- 1889, pi. 10, 35. 65. Thin Gold Placque from Mycenae 207 Photograph. 66. Faience Figure from Cnossos 208 Brit. School Ann. 9 (1902) 75, fig. 54. 67. Gold Ring from Mycenae . . . . . . . 209 Schuchhardt, Schliemanns Ausgrabungen, p. 313. 68. Marble Relief from the Peiraeus (Berlin) ..... 212 Harrison, Prolegomena to the ^tudy of Greek Religion, 19, fig. 2. 69. Athenian Red-figured Vase Painting (Kylix by Hieron, Berlin) . 235 Boetticher, Baumkultus, Taf. 42. 70. Terra Cotta Relief from Campania ....... 246 Baumeister, Denkmaier, i. 449, fig. 496. 71. Figure of Isis with Sistron ........ 276 Baumeister, Denkmaler, i. 761, fig. 812. 72. Athenian Black-figured Vase Painting (Loutrophoros from Cape Colias) 287 Mon. Inst. Tav. 8. 5. 73. Coin of Naxos (about 460 B.C.) 301 Hill, Greek and Roman Coins, pi. 6. i. 74. Marble Statue of Dionysus from Tivoli (Terme Museum, Rome) 302 Photograph. 75. Athenian Red-figured Vase Painting 308 Rochette, Mon. inedit. Tav. 36. 76. Marble Relief in Athens . . . . . . . . . 318 Photograph. INTRODUCTION 1. Was there a Greek Religion? The rich and varied mythology of Greece is studied by the historian, by the poet, by every reader of the ancient classics, and it has been studied with more or less interest ever since the Homeric poems were composed ; but the question whether these gods were worshipped is rarely asked. Such a strange condition of affairs is due partly to the nature of these gods, partly to a narrow conception of what religion is, partly to the fact that the Greeks had no religious dogma and left no sacred writings. The picture of the Greek gods in myth certainly does not inspire religious sentiments or suggest worship. And it is not difficult to see that myths have become so familiar as quite to overshadow any religious side which the gods may have had for their worshippers. Not only Greek poetry, but the poetry of Rome and of every later European literature as well, has constantly drawn its inspiration from these myths. The question remains whether worship and the religious sentiment expressed in worship were really an important factor in ancient Greek life. The answer to this question depends on our definition of religion. Religion to-day lays emphasis on one God, ever present in the world, but something more than the world itself, a god whose wisdom and love are manifested with increasing clearness. Moreover religion rests on the revelation of this god to man, and the revelation is stated, however imperfectly, in creeds and dogmas. A god of absolute holiness, the human soul with eternal possibilities of blessedness or woe, a conscience stamping every act as right or wrong, divine love as a constant ally of the good, such, perhaps, we understand to be the ultimate factors of religion. 13 i 4 GREEK RELIGION They were not present in Greece. The gods were not holy, nor did religion judge human life from the ethical standpoint. That a god should care for men as men is a thought which belongs only to later periods of Greek religion. There was no religious dogma, no revelation of the divine will except in particular cases. But if religion is the belief in a personal being or beings, higher than man and interested in his welfare, if it is the yearning of the human heart for the protection and sympathy of its gods, if prayer and sacrifice and the effort to please the gods are religion, we find it in Greece. A Greek city was dotted with shrines where men worshipped, as few cities are supplied with churches to-day. The calendar was primarily a device for locating festivals to the gods, sacred days which numbered quite as many in the year as our Sundays. When St. Paul found at Athens not only temples for many gods, but also an altar " to the Unknown God," erected to correct any possible omission, he might well call the Athenians a " very religious " people. 1 From the earliest effort to win aid from vaguely conceived spirits up to the ideal of Zeus the father-god and of Apollo who reveals his will, we may trace a development continuous if irregular. And in rites of feasting and dance and sacred drama, to us strange indeed, were formed conceptions religious enough to affect our Christianity profoundly. A superficial investigation is sufficient to establish the fact that religious practices wre as numerous and as far-reaching in Greece as among any known people. That religion rested somewhat lightly on men's shoulders, that religious rites were for the most part occasions of joy and gladness, is no reason for refusing to recognize their genuine meaning. It only remains to ask whether the meaning they did have is sufficient to justify an investigation of the facts. And to this question also the answer is not difficult. The greater thinkers of Greece, as well as the greater artists, found deep and important meaning in the re- ligion of the people. No reader of Sophocles and of Plato fails to be impressed with their insight into religious truth ; and our i Acts 17. 23. INTRODUCTION copies of great temple statues, imperfectly as they reproduce the originals, yet are sufficient to show how the artist found and inter- preted a real religious sentiment. As Aristotle remarks, 1 the name of father applied to Zeus is equivalent to "paternal ruler" and includes the idea of his loving care for men. The inherent like- ness of man and god, the human-ness of god and the divine-ness of man, has rarely been grasped more clearly than by the Greeks. It was recognized that the idea of communion under- lies worship, and that in the service of a god man grows like him. We may frankly acknowledge that such conceptions were not explicitly recognized by the people, and still claim that there is a Greek religion deserving of study. Nor was this religion without its continuing po- tency in later Europe. It will appear later in the discussion that Greek life was so shot through with these religious threads that no phase of it would have been the same, if its religious side had been neglected. The Greek conceptions and ideals which reappear in modern life are not free from this stamp. Further, it will also appear in the later discussion that Christianity itself was modified and its forms at least were enriched by much material from Greek religious rites. Indeed one might claim that 1 Aristotle, Polit i. 12. FIG. i. ZEUS FROM MYI.ASA (Boston) The head is perhaps closer than any other marble copy to the statue of Zeus at Olym- pia by Pheidias. 16 GREEK RELIGION Greek religion has exercised about as much influence, though in- directly, on various phases of modern life, as Greek mythology has exercised on modern literature. And if Greek religion is to be studied for the influence it has had on modern life, as well as for its immediate influence on other phases of Greek life, the interest of the study will be much in- creased by its connection with " comparative religion " so-called (z>. the history of other worships and beliefs as compared with Christianity). It is strange indeed that the religions of India and China, and even of savage races, should have been studied dili- gently to the neglect of religion in Greece and Rome. This latter branch of study, however, may profit by one tenet which has been established by the study of religion in other fields, viz., that in considering the Greek gods and their worship the student is not to search for Christian conceptions in another field, but rather to investigate the facts and interpret them in the light of the highest religious experience he knows. In the brief presentation of the subject here attempted, first, the attention of the reader is asked to the phenomena of religion at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. ; secondly, the main periods in the history of Greek religion are sketched ; and thirdly, questions as to the influence and significance of Greek religion receive further consideration. So varied are the details of religious worship that ordinarily the usages of Athens alone have been pre- sented ; it is only in the effort to reconstruct the religious history of earlier ages that a broader outlook is imperatively necessary. In order to secure the proper standpoint for such a study as is here proposed, a few general topics are treated in the following pages of the introduction. 2. Mythology and Religion. It has been assumed in the pre- ceding section that Greek religion is something quite different from Greek mythology, yet the fact remains that they are often confused. And inasmuch as every reader first becomes acquainted with the Greek gods through myth, it is essential for the student of religion to seek a clear-cut conception of the relation between INTRODUCTION 17 religion and mythology. Myths I have defined elsewhere 1 as "stories of the acts of superhuman beings, often improbable to us, but believed to be true by those who related them." The beings which appear in myths are inevitably personal, for the myth tells of their actions ; and the myth as inevitably assumes the story form. Some of the tales appear to us weird, immoral, hardly " true to life " ; yet they were believed as distinctly as the child believes in his Santa Claus. Nor was it till they had really become an ele- ment of literature that any one could think of taking license with them. Myths, thus conceived, stand close to philosophy and to poetry : to philosophy, for problems of nature and of human life are treated in these stories ; to poetry, for it is the nai've poetic imagination which conceives the forces of the world as personal beings. Their existence depended on their power to satisfy the intelligence and gratify the aesthetic sense of those who repeated them. But while myths often expressed deep truths and were ordinarily accepted as true statements of facts, the myth proper was never an article of dogma. Among other races the so-called myths were sometimes codified, sometimes created, by the priests. In Egypt, for instance, and in India, the stories of the gods bore this hieratic stamp. The nature of the priesthood in Greece, 2 however, was such that myths were kept comparatively free from the artificial influence of any organized theology. In contrast with mythology, religion is primarily a matter of practice (worship) and of emotions expressed in worship (such as reverence and the sense of dependence). It certainly includes belief also, but in Greece the intellectual element remained rather in the background, for belief was not definitely formulated from the religious standpoint. It is a most natural error, and an error involving some measure of truth, to hold that Greek belief about the gods was expressed in the form of myth. The differences between the gods of mythology and the gods of worship may be discussed under three headings : (i) Religion and mythology represent the gods from vitally dif- 1 The Mythology of Greece and Rome U97), p. i. 2 Cp. infra, p. 76 f. GREEK RELIGION 2 i8 GREEK RELIGION ferent standpoints. Most of the superhuman beings in myths are fundamentally the same as the gods to whom men look for help in worship ; in myth, however, the imagination is absolutely untram- melled' by any considerations of religion or morality. The Athena springing full-armed from the brain of Zeus, or (in the Iliad) seeking to block her father's plans, is far enough from the goddess whom Pheidias represented in gold and ivory, that spirit of wis- dom who stood for all that was best in the Athenian people. In the Homeric poems the Apollo worshipped by Chryses (Iliad, 2) and the Apollo wounding Patroclus from behind on the battlefield (Iliad, 16) have little in common; nor does Apollo slaying the Python while a babe in arms suggest the sage spirit of Delphi to whom the Greek world looked for guidance. Mythology is not a peculiar form of theology in poetic guise ; myths were originally believed to be true, but they were never a religious creed ; they were often incorporated in hymns of worship, but in themselves they had little enough to do with worship. (2) It appears, further, that the supernatural beings of religion by no means coincide with the supernatural beings of myth. The greater gods appear in both lists ; in addition mythology includes all manner of inferior beings, such as nymphs, satyrs, centaurs, which rarely or never are worshipped, and a long list of heroes very few of whom are worshipped. On the other hand the lesser spirits who receive worship in some one locality, are rarely heeded by myth ; or if the name appears in myth it may mean a person radically different from the one worshipped. At Athens such divine beings as Adrasteia, Alcon, Ariste, Dexion, Eirene, Eucleia, Hesychos, Nemesis, Tritopatreis, received worship but had no direct place in myth. It has often been assumed that the origin of religion is to be explained by means of mythology. So far as Greece is concerned the indebtedness seems on the whole to be reversed. Mythology really derived much of its content from religious ritual, while beings which originated in myth did not ordinarily come to be worshipped. The gods of myth and religion form two groups which overlap but are not identical, a fact which INTRODUCTION 19 seems simple enough when the difference of standpoint is once fully grasped. If there were no other proof that myth is not the religious doctrine of the Greek gods, it would be sufficient to point out that these two groups of gods do not coincide. (3) And where the same names appear in both lists their sig- nificance is by no means the same. For worship the gods are located at definite shrines, where they bear specific names (epithet) ; in myth they are as universal as the known world, and their local relations are no more than favorite haunts. In myth the functions of each god are sharply defined and his personal character corresponds to his specific functions ; the god of wor- ship has widespread power to bless, a power by no means limited to his function in myth. The process by which myths arose has left the gods, some in a non-moral form, some in a form distinctly at variance with human standards of morality. Worship did not always make of them moral beings, but inasmuch as the relation between god and worshippers is of a moral nature, and further, inasmuch as the Greek gods (like men) were members of the moral universe, the tendency in Greece is toward an ultimate union of religion and morality. Finally, mythology exists by mak- ing its gods very human, and as it develops into a system the gods acquire definite personal characters. For the worshipper a god never loses that vague mysterious side which stirs the emotion of awe, for there is no limiting influence in worship to define the divine nature. Even the sense that gods are akin to man is often blunted in religious ritual. That the gods handled by myth should remain gods at all, that real worship should be possible when chil- dren were brought up on these stories of Aphrodite and Poseidon and Ares, is a lasting tribute to the religious spirit of the Greeks. While the differences between religion and mythology are such that the two must be studied separately and with very different aims, the fact remains that the more important gods do appear both in myth and in worship. More than this, there can be no question that myths were passed on from mouth to mouth at the only international gatherings in Greece, the greater religious festi- 20 GREEK RELIGION vals. The influence of these gatherings would be most marked on that class of myths which recite the story of a particular shrine. Much of the Homeric hymn to Demeter (cp. Part I, Chap, ii, p. 135) describes in mythical form the origin of her worship at Eleusis, and the practices of worship were the influence shaping the myth as to the origin of the cult. So the marvellous birth of Athena and FIG. 2. LATE GREEK RELIEF Apollo is represented as a victorious musician at Delphi, receiving a libation from Nike. the contest of Athena with Poseidon are connected with the wor- ship of the goddess on the Acropolis. There is no evidence that priests ever had much to do with these myths. The popular demand created an explanation for the existence of the shrine, its importance, and the character of its worship. As the shrine grew in influence its myths would be carried far and wide by pilgrim visitors from different parts of the country, till they found a place in the generally accepted Greek mythology. The practice of holding musical contests at religious festivals increased the oppor- tunity for the development of these myths, for the poet's theme was almost inevitably chosen from the legend of the shrine where he sang. At Delphi it was Apollo's birth, or his coming to Delphi, INTRODUCTION 21 or his victory over the dragon perhaps all three themes at once which was celebrated in these contests. In this way a myth might find its way into actual hymns of worship, though here there would be occasion only for the bare outline of the story. The mythical account of Hera's marriage to Zeus is apparently derived from religious practices in the worship of the goddess of marriage, though in this instance the rites were somewhat widely prevalent instead of belonging to one great festival. So the story of the second birth of Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus seems to be a poetic statement of the fact that Dionysus worship was introduced into Greece under the protecting aegis of Zeus. In- terpreted thus, it states in poetic form an important fact in the history of Greek religion. Although myths did not in Greece receive a hieratic stamp to mark them as sacred legend, the two classes of myths just noted myths which give facts of religious history, and myths which arise in the effort to explain religious prac- tice are not to be neglected by the student of religion itself. Again, it appears that after myths have been taken up into literature they are employed by the poets to teach deep religious lessons. Pindar and Simonides feel quite free to modify tales of the gods to accord with their own religious ideas ; while tragedy consistently handles the great problems of life under the form of myth. On the other hand, we have no indication that officials of religion, priests or prophets, recognized sacred story as within their province. Where myth becomes a vehicle of religious teach- ing, its real nature as myth is essentially modified before it can serve a dogmatic purpose. It is unreasonable, however, to suppose that the beliefs con- nected with worship were not modified, often radically modified, under the influence of myths. The characteristics of the greater gods in myth as enumerated above (pp. 18-19) affected the concep- tions of the worshipper both directly and through the medium of worship. When the Athenians worshipped Athena as Itonia, or Hippia, or Skiras, or Hygieia, and every cult had some such distinctive epithet the picture of Homer's Athena, one Athena tt who embodied all these forms and who was honored in all the Greek world cannot have been wholly absent from their minds. And it is inconceivable that the idea of gods human enough to sympathize with the needs and desires of men, as they appear in the literary handling of myth, should not often have lent new meaning to ritual. This human side of the gods of myth found its noblest expression in art ; certainly art as well as literature was a medium through which myth affected ritual. So far, then, as the present discussion of Greek religion is con- cerned, myth as such is definitely excluded ; it is, however, appar- ent to the reader that myths will come into consideration at many points because of the light they throw on ritual itself and on the religious ideas associated with ritual. 3. The Local Shrine. The contrast between religion and myth appears most sharply in connection with a conception which is fundamental to the whole structure of Greek religion, the concep- tion of the local shrine. All Greek worship centres about these various shrines ; each shrine (temple or altar) is independent of any other religious authority, and the god of each shrine is ordi- narily treated as if he were independent of gods worshipped else- where. The local nature of Greek religion meant that there were as many religions as there were cities, or rather as many as there were individual shrines all over Greece. The first task of the student is to grasp the meaning of that multiform centre of Greek religion, the local shrine. We may consider the local shrine first in connection with the god there worshipped. At the hundreds of points where Athena was worshipped in Greece, the goddess was never twice con- ceived in exactly the same manner. Even where the epithet at- tached to her name is the same, we have no assurance that it is really the same goddess. For instance, the Athena Itonia of one shrine is by no means identical with the Athena Itonia of another shrine. At Athens Apollo Pythios, Apollo Patroos, Apollo Agyieus, Apollo Thargelios, are practically independent beings for worship. At the one festival of the Panathenaea separate sacrifices are offered INTRODUCTION 3 to Athena Polias, to Athena Nike, and to Athena Hygieia, as if they were independent gods. 1 This principle is diametrically opposed to the pictures of the gods in myth, and it is by no means easy to grasp ; yet it is fundamental for the knowledge of Greek religion. Our problem, moreover, is not to determine how the gods of myth were split into these different forms, but rather to investigate how the gods of worship were brought under a few names and in myth were made definite, personal beings. 2 The same facts may be considered from the standpoint of the city. The cults of any one city or tribe or family belong to that one social unit, and make no appeal to outsiders. In the mind of her worshippers Hera of Argos is almost as independent of Hera worshipped elsewhere, as Trophonius at Lebadeia is inde- pendent of other earth-spirits. Each cult centre in Athens is theoretically separate from every other ; its forms of worship, its times of worship, its priests, are peculiar to itself. A few cult centres, it is true, are branches of important cults elsewhere, 3 but by far the greater number have no such connections. The wor- shippers at these shrines are indeed composed of much the same people; the priests are appointed and accounts audited by the same state; myth suggests that much the same gods are found elsewhere. Except for these somewhat external bonds of union, each cult stood alone and by itself. We may go farther and say that each god or goddess was treated in worship much as if no other gods existed. The third book of the Odyssey illustrates this statement. At the sacrifice to Posei- don there is no thought of any other god ; and the next day, when sacrifice is offered to Athena, there is no mention of Poseidon's existence. With another sort of animal for the sacrifice and a slightly different ritual, the entire attention of the worshipper is absorbed in another god. This state of mind may be better under- 1 " Whether Aphrodite is one person or two, i.e. Ourania and Pandemos, I do not know ; for even Zeus, who seems to be one and the same, has many epithets added to his name." Socrates in Xenophon, Symp. 8. 9. 2 Cp. Rohde, Die Religion der Griechen, 8-9. Cp. infra, p. 68. 24 GREEK RELIGION stood by comparison with the worship of saints in some Catholic countries ; in the worship of some one saint the other saints are forgotten and at times the thought of the Supreme Deity is ob- scured in the mind of the worshipper. So at Athens the different cults were mutually exclusive, while they existed amicably side by side. When Dionysus was worshipped, Athena and Artemis and FIG. 3. SECTION OF THE FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON (Athens) Three gods (Poseidon, Apollo, and Artemis?) are represented as " guests " at the Panathenaic festival of Athena. Poseidon may sometimes have been mentioned in prayers; at some festivals gods other than the one worshipped may have been invited to join the repast ; l nevertheless the worshipper's atten- tion was concentrated on one god just as truly as if no other gods existed. Without interfering at all with the polytheism of belief, worship was essentially monotheistic ; or to use the term invented to describe just this state of affairs, worship was " henotheistic." The connection of the state with these local centres of worship 1 Compare the gods at the Panathenaic festival, as represented on the Parthenon frieze. INTRODUCTION 25 may better be considered along with the general question as to the connection between religion and the state. It is enough to say here that the Greeks found it a practical necessity as well as a convenient and natural procedure to supervise the temples and shrines through the state. All these centres of worship belonged to the people as a whole (or to some group of the people which the state recognized), and the benefits of worship came to the people as a whole rather than to individuals. Voluntary religious associations for the benefit of individuals were unimportant until after the fifth century B.C. So it came about that priests were appointed, temples built, and the finances supervised by the people as a whole acting through the state. Similarly religious law was administered in courts established by the state and main- tained by its authority. Thus each local cult maintained the bond between the state and some one point in the world of the gods. A more important result of the facts now under discussion was the absence of any central religious authority for belief or for practice. It is characteristic of Greek religion that its gods were accepted, not defined. The ritual of each shrine was something definite, prescribed in form, celebrated at particular times ; the gods, considered as universal beings, were simply powerful spirits who demanded such worship at the different cult centres. Were it not for mythology we should know little of the gods, but perhaps we should know as much as the Greeks themselves. And it has already been pointed out that the myths were in no sense theolog- ical dogma. They contain no definitions either of the gods or of any religious truth ; they were not intended to edify or to instruct ; even though they were accepted as true, they were not a state- ment of belief. It is for this reason that the myths were free to develop along poetic lines. Nowhere else than in Greece were myths of the gods such pure products of the untrammelled imagi- nation, nowhere else can they be studied simply as artistic pro- ductions. The greater poets of the fifth century were not entirely content to treat the gods in this manner. In their writings we find some 26 GREEK RELIGION attempt to define the nature of god, and the relation of man to god. More exactly there is some effort to purify myth that it may better accord with religious sentiment. Yet this end is always subordinated to the demands of the poetical ideal. Moreover, a poetic theology may have considerable influence, but it is binding not even on its creator. The attempts of philosophy to deal with theological problems belong to a much later date, and have still less significance for Greek religion. Religious phenomena were among the last to receive philosophical criticism ; it is in the early history of Christian thought, rather than in Greek religion, that the reaction of philosophy on religion and the consequent develop- ment of theology may be traced. Greek religion remained to the end a religion without theology. The real reason for the absence of dogma is found in the Greek conception of authority in religious matters. Where a priestly caste existed, it was for their interest to develop belief in their own authority or in the authority of sacred writings which were wholly in their 'charge. Accordingly priest-religions come to be based on an authoritative revelation of the divine will through the priests. Or even without conscious interposition by a priestly caste sacred books may gain an authority only to be explained by assuming that they are a direct revelation of the divine will. The emphasis laid on the Bible as a religious authority at the time of the Reformation has made this conception of revelation entirely familiar to the modern reader. But in Greece there was neither a class of priests nor any sacred book to serve as an authority on religious matters. That the Greek conception of revelation differed in toto from the conception in priest-religions and in book-religions was a necessary result (see Part I, Chap, i) ; we must look elsewhere to find the standard of authority for Greek religion. The only authority for ritual or for belief in Greece was the tra- dition of each particular local shrine. 1 Ritual was the habit of worship at any one shrine, not codified in any rules, but passed on l Tyler, Theology of the Greek Poets, 208 f.; cp. Schoemann, Griech. Alt. 2. 169 and references. INTRODUCTION 27 with the authority of an immemorial antiquity ; similarly, the only theology was the habit of thought about the god of that shrine, which was developed in its worshippers. A particular form of worship was observed primarily because such had always been the form of worship. If a reason were asked, it was readily found in the statement that what had gratified the god in the past was most likely to gratify him again. And if any change in ritual occurred, it could be justified by the claim that the expedient was success- ful in gratifying the god, for he continued to show his favor. Ordinarily no reason was asked ; it was enough to carry on the worship as it had been carried on ; in other words, the authority of religious tradition was recognized without question. The counterpart to this proposition, however, must be stated at once. Tradition never was absolutely binding so as to preclude any change ; it had authority only as a good and useful custom. In the course of time Greek thought of the gods changed, and the change was gradually reflected in the belief and practice at each shrine where they were worshipped. Quite commonly, however, these changes consisted in additions to practices already in vogue. The result is that we may detect at many cult centres the different strata of traditional practices, continuing long after their original meaning had been forgotten. The task of the student of Greek religion is at once revealed by this state of affairs. He might be glad to learn about the origin of religion in Greece, but that question is relatively unimportant. He finds an immense mass of data as to the worship at different shrines, data concerning practices which belong to long-separated epochs and which have never been really unified. If he is able to outline a historical hypothesis which shall account for the facts at his disposal, assigning different practices to the period in which they originated and explaining the religious ideas or ideals to which they were due, his task is accomplished. The multiplicity of data, the different possible explanations, and the relatively little attention which has been given to the subject explain the lack of agreement as yet in regard to it. 2 8 GREEK RELIGION Greek religion, then, was without dogma, or any other authority except the tradition of each particular shrine ; before leaving this proposition, we must state certain corollaries or deductions from it. In the first place it means, as was said above, that there were as many forms of religion, if not as many different religions, as there were local shrines. It does not mean that there was not a constant interchange of ideas and even of cult-forms, as worship- pers passed from one shrine to another. From the interchange of ideas and practices there gradually arose two general types of sac- rifice, one a glad feast in honor of the gods who protected and prospered the state, the other a solemn rite to pacify deities who were angry or to prevent the anger of gods easily stirred to wrath. 1 But while these two types of sacrifice stand out with some dis- tinctness, while there was a distinct tendency toward common prac- tices and common beliefs at other points, the independent author- ity of each shrine remained unquestioned and at most shrines some peculiar practices were always retained. A second corollary of the above proposition is that it was only habit, habit not enforced by any statement of its content, which tended toward unity of belief among a group of worshippers ; conse- quently the same practices were often interpreted very differently by those who shared them. So long as the people did not ask any formulation of religious ideas, and so long as it was not for the in- terest of any one class of the people (e.g. the priests) to perform this task, it was never done. Every one was free to think of the gods as he chose. Aristophanes might make fun of them, Plato might reconstitute the idea of them entirely ; it made no differ- ence so long as public worship went on undisturbed. At a festival of Asclepius one might be a scoffer, one an implicit believer in the god's power to heal, many indifferent to anything except the cus- tom of the city or the meat distributed at the sacrifice. We shall not look among such a people for any Hebrew prophet, any intense preacher of spiritual truth in whom the religious con- sciousness of the nation was focussed. On the other hand the 1 Cp. infra, p. 97 f. and 105 f. INTRODUCTION 29 conditions favored the development of a religion which touched human life at every point, and which gave to every human ideal its personal expression in the divine world. Finally we may note that this complete absence of dogma was most important for the evolution of religion in Greece. Perhaps there never was a people with any degree of culture whose spirit- ual development was more free and spontaneous. The only con- servative force, a force always paramount in the history of religious phenomena, and not at all peculiar to Greece, was the force of tradition. But as ritual was passed on from one generation to an- other, the interpretation of the rites was easily forgotten. On the one hand a great spiritual force might be quickly dissipated ; on the other hand a new spiritual impulse readily found expression either in the old rites themselves, or in some accretion to the old ritual. This quick and complete response of religion to concep- tions regnant in each phase of civilization makes the history of religion a most valuable commentary on the development of the Greek people ; nowhere better than in Greece can the natural evolution of religious conceptions and practices be studied, while at the same time the task which confronts the student of this reli- gion is rendered peculiarly difficult. 4. What did Religion mean to the Greeks? The question as to the significance of Greek religion is better asked at the conclu- sion of the chapters which follow, 1 than in an introduction to them ; some consideration of the topic, however, may make the discussion of worship and belief more intelligible. Some word is the more necessary because of the emphasis which has often been laid on the investigation of the origin of religion. Perhaps the study of Greek religion has suffered unduly from this trend of modern thought, because matters seemed so clear and simple. With equal confidence the origin of the Greek gods has been assigned to a habit of deifying natural phenomena, and again to a habit of offer- ing worship to the souls of ancestors. The worship of ancestors was a real and widespread element of Greek religion, but it l Part III, Chap. iv. 30 GREEK RELIGION remains to be proved that the worship of any single god did arise or could have arisen from this source. Similarly, the hypothesis that the Greek gods arose from some habit of deifying natural phenomena neither can be proved nor does it serve to explain the facts. It seems clear that the Greeks did not worship physical objects, whether sun or river or growing tree or any idol. On the con- trary, their religion served to people the world with superhuman beings, human in their nature and in their humanity expressing Greek thought of the world and its phenomena. Zeus was both father of gods and men, and the spirit of the sky ; rain came from Zeus, the lightning was his weapon, his worship belonged naturally on high peaks, his home was on Olympus. Dionysus was the god of the vine, even so that the juice of the grape seemed to be the essence of that spirit which makes for growth in all vegetation. The dark wavy locks of Poseidon recalled the dark, tossing sea, in the depths of which were the stables of Poseidon's steeds. Yet Dionysus was a human god visiting one spot after another to be- stow on men his gift of the wine ; Poseidon was a boisterous spirit, lover of horses, fond of the battlefield, watching over the children borne to him by human wives. Apollo, who came to be associated with the sun, was the god of shepherds, himself once serving as a shepherd ; he was the prophet who made known to men the divine will, the musician, the healer of disease. And Aphrodite, as rep- resented in the statue found at Melos, was the most human of the gods, not a human passion deified for worship, but rather the spirit in whom was manifested human love as a fundamental principle of the universe. If we turn from the greater gods to the world near at hand, we find the same interpretation of nature in personal, all but human, beings. The sailor sees spiritual forces in the storm or the dan- gerous hidden shoal ; not the gods of Olympus, but spirits of the sea sympathize with him and save him in trouble. The farmer's daily work is religious in that the grain, the foes that threaten the grain, the very earth on which it grows, are animated by a nature FIG. 4. APHRODITE FROM MELOS (Louvre) 32 GREEK RELIGION like his own, whose blessing he may gain by worship ; these rites are indeed thrown into the shadow by the brilliancy of the Olympian worship, yet enough persists to show that the facts of farming are interpreted in terms of religion. And there are many festivals like those of Dionysus and Demeter which show that even in city life the Greeks did not lose this spiritual touch with nature. The Greeks did not worship natural objects, but they expressed their thought of nature in spiritual beings, for the most part friendly to man, who were members of that same community to which the human world belonged. To-day the sublime and the beautiful in nature afford us aesthetic gratification as facts out- side ourselves ; similarly Hebrew poetry reflects a sense for the grandeur and beauty of nature ; in Greek religion the attitude toward nature was very different, for in the forces there at work the Greek recognized a life like his own, with which he himself was most intimately associated. The joy of spring, the sadness of dying vegetation, are poetry for us ; for the Greek they repre- sented the joy and sadness of that community of nature in which he was an integral part. In a word, the Greeks were idealists ; their religion was not a worship of nature, but a worship of spirits (almost human spirits) in nature ; by peopling their world with such spirits, they made nature an intelligible, not to say a social, fact. As for the humanity of the Greek gods, it found an almost ex- aggerated expression in myth. The Homeric gods exhibit human frailty and sin on the same large scale as human virtue and power. Families which claimed a history traced their descent from the gods. Not only did myths tell of the presence of gods in the society of men ; we must go further and say that worship was based on the belief in such a relation as actually existing. The gods of other peoples were now more vague, now more closely bound up with objects in nature, more abstract, more to be dreaded, perhaps more lofty than the Greek gods ; none stood in closer sympathy with man. It is practically true that these gods differed from man only in degree, that the king differed INTRODUCTION 33 from his subjects hardly less than the gods differed from men. In many religions the development of the gods was away from men toward moral or philosophical ideals ; the Greek gods be- came more perfect only as they more perfectly expressed all the possibilities of human nature. Artemis was never so fully identi- fied with the moon, Zeus with the sky, nor even Gaia with the earth, as to obscure in any degree their essentially human charac- ter. It is in the grain goddess Demeter that one finds the best example of the mother's love, sorrowing but finally triumphant. In worship as in myth Leto is the mother proud of her successful children, Hera the queenly wife, Persephone the gentle daughter, Artemis the maiden loving wild nature, each stands out a per- sonality because she personifies so clearly some human relation. It is from this standpoint that one may best understand the relation to religion of such human ideals as the ideal of beauty and of morality. As beings intimately related to man, the gods shared the Greek impulse toward the beautiful. And this means not merely that the highest expression of the artist's power was found in the creation of divine images, and in the erection of suitable homes for the gods represented by these images. It does certainly mean that even traditions of ancient holy objects must eventually yield to the power of a Pheidias to give some adequate conception of the physical beauty of the gods. It means that the temple, the home of the god, must be the most perfect building that could be erected. We may even go so far as to say that the principle of beauty was what largely determined Greek thought as to the character and the rule of the gods. The unity and symmetry of their personality, the graciousness of their nature, the kindly spirit of their relations to each other and to men, are a reflection of that aesthetic ideal which was so domi- nant in Greek life. And the world was beautiful, the physical world and the social world, for its unity and order came from the gods. 1 The connection between religion and morality may be dismissed for the present with the statement that the gods were moral beings i See Part III, Chap. i. GREEK RELIGION 3 34 GREEK RELIGION only in the sense that men were moral beings. It was character- istic of the Greek mind not to judge human life and activity by stern moral standards. The consciousness of right and wrong did not enter into every human act. And the gods were human enough so that they could not be conceived as the embodiment of moral ideals, or indeed as beings which never transgressed moral law. Their rule was on the whole righteous, nor was more demanded of a king or a god in Greece before the days of phi- losophers and theologians. Nowhere does the essentially human nature of the Greek gods, and at the same time their relation to the physical world, come out more clearly than in the consideration of the " divine govern- ment " of the world. These gods did not create the world out of nothing, for man has no such mysterious faculty which he could transfer from himself to the gods. The existence of matter was assumed ; and as it was man's task to subdue physical agencies to serve human ends, so it belonged to the gods to bring the physical world under the rule of reason. So Poseidon granted safety to sailors ; Athena and Hephaestus taught men the arts and crafts ; and Demeter showed them how to cultivate the grain. Yet it was in the social world, in the relations of men to each other and to the community, that the rule of the greater gods was most clearly manifest. The activities of the gods, as men came in contact with them, were not universal forces, but particular acts which ordina- rily had in view some particular end. The relation of the gods to each other in their rule of the world was like the relation of members in some human council, in that the social unity of such a council came to express the essential unity of the city they gov- erned. That the sway of reason in the world and consequently the unity of the world was to be an achievement, that the gods belonged in the same society with men working together toward this common goal, and that men might therefore look for the par- ticular aid of the gods in every phase of human activity, such were the principles of divine government as conceived by the Greeks. INTRODUCTION 35 The general significance of worship in Greece is quite in line with what has been said as to the nature of the gods and the char- acter of their rule. Among primitive peoples religious ritual is the effort to drive away or to control for good the mysterious forces in the world ; and the method is ordinarily what we should call magic, though at times there is found something like barter be- tween men and spirits. Magic was not at all foreign to Greek thought, but it was entirely foreign to the worship of the greater gods. On the other hand, it was quite possible for Plato 1 to describe piety as a sort of trade between men and gods, or as a knowledge of the right way to ask for what one wants and to give the gods in exchange what they want ; although one must be blinder than Euthyphro, if he fails to see Plato's satire. Worship, in truth, was no more magic or barter than it was purely spiritual adoration. The only standpoint from which worship can be understood is found in the distinct recognition that the gods were superior members of that same society in which men live. For Greek worship is no less human than the Greek gods. That the sympo- sium after the banquet should begin and end with prayer ; that the chief function of religion should be no painful rite, no long and tedious service, no task of the intellect, but a joyous feast on sacrificed flesh ; that comedy and tragedy should develop in con- nection with the religion of Dionysus ; that art should be so human in its service of the gods ; that even gymnastic contests and horse- racing should come within the pale of religion, all this is so far from our conception of divine worship as at first to puzzle and confuse the student. The key to the puzzle is simply that every side of man found expression in this human religion. Political assemblies began with worship that was no empty form ; for the gods cared for the state just as did its citizens. Marriage and the bringing up of children was at every point under the protection of the gods. Needing bread and wine, men worshipped Demeter i Euthyphro, 14 E; Pollticus, 290 D; cp. C.I. A. 1. 397 (Kajbel, Epigr. graec^ 753)- 36 GREEK RELIGION and Dionysus; needing health, Asclepius; needing care for their flocks, Apollo or Hermes or Pan. For a knowledge of the future they could consult the oracles. With the thought of death before them, they listened to the invitation to the mysteries where they might obtain the blessing of the queen of the dead. While it is universally true that religion arises to meet human need, perhaps nowhere is this need met at so many points and in so purely human a manner as in Greece. The conception of the gods as higher members of the same social world with man involves a double idea of the nature of worship ; it was only right in the first place for men to pay divine rulers their due, and secondly it was reasonable to seek connection with the gods. Both in the practice of bringing to the gods votive offerings of some intrinsic value, and in the usual forms of sacri- fice, the gods were treated in much the same manner as human rulers. From this point of view worship might be described baldly as a tax paid to the gods to insure the continuance of their favor to their subjects. The difference between barter and a tax paid to the gods lies in the fact that barter presupposes some equality between the two parties, while a tax involves a recognition of the ruler's superiority. Further, the ancient idea of taxation makes it something very different from the businesslike transaction fa- miliar to us. The Athenian words for the few extraordinary taxes paid by full citizens were dafyopa. and XtiTovpyia, the first a " con- tribution " paid only in the stress of war, the second a " service " which in theory (though not in practice) was voluntarily performed by such citizens as possessed sufficient property. It is in fact the second of these words, Xurovpyia (English, liturgy}, which was at times used as a name for worship. We may say with entire truth, then, that worship was like that form of taxation with which the Athenians were familiar, in that it was a voluntary gift which was rightly expected from men on certain occasions. While this conception of worship applies especially to votive offerings, the second idea is predominant in the common type of sacrifice. The normal form of worship at a festival of any god INTRODUCTION 37 consisted first in processions and secondly in a common meal shared alike by the god and his worshippers. The procession was no whit different from such triumphal processions as have been familiar to European thought from the greater days of Rome on till the present. At Athens a great concourse of men, headed by priests and carrying sacred utensils, brought honor both to the city and to its gods as it slowly made its way to the place of worship. And the use of the common meal as a form of worship is not entirely foreign to our thought, for it is perpetuated in the Lord's Supper of the Christian church. Only, the point emphasized in Greece was not so much the sacredness of the food as the belief that a common meal renewed the vital bond of union between the god and his worshippers. Among other peoples the effort for union with a deity appears oftentimes in forms strange and fanatical ; in Greece that phase of religion is ordinarily kept in the background by the national sense of proportion. The con- nection with the gods which was secured by worship was primarily a social matter, the same sort of bond which united any two persons in the common pleasure of a banquet. Music and dance together with food and wine emphasized the belief that the god and his worshippers were united in one society ; and the connection with the gods then became a matter of actual experience. The meaning of a religion depends primarily on the need it satisfies. It may be essentially spiritual and mystic in its answer to vague longings, or ethical in that it expresses a stern command of duty ; it may be aesthetic, giving form to ideals of beauty, or philosophical, when men seek for absolute truth as their pearl of great price. All these tendencies appear, the ethical least of them all, in Greek religion. Its most important appeal to men, how- ever, was on the social side. Facing strange facts and mighty forces, the Greek sought for a sympathetic chord in them ; and he found it as his imagination peopled the world with gods. To use the happy phrase of Mr. Dickinson, religion " made him at home in the world." 38 GREEK RELIGION " All that is unintelligible in the world . . . has been drawn, as it were, from its dark retreat, clothed in radiant form, and presented to the mind as a glori- fied image of itself. Every phenomenon of nature, night and ' rosy-fingered dawn,' earth and sun, winds, rivers and seas, sleep and death all have been transformed into divine and conscious agents, to be propitiated by prayer, interpreted by divination, and comprehended by passions and desires iden- tical with those which stir and control mankind." . . . "There were other powers, equally strange, dwelling in man's own heart. . . . With these too he felt the need to make himself at home, and these too, to satisfy his need, he shaped into creatures like himself. ... In Aphrodite, mother of Eros, he incarnated the passion, of love, ... in Ares the lust of war, in Athene wis- dom, in Apollo music and the arts." And thus religion made him " at home in the world." l It is perhaps necessary to repeat the statement that the Greeks did not worship natural objects. Where we interpret the facts and processes of nature as a mechanical system, the Greek made them part of his social system. Danger was made intelligible, solitude filled with consciousness, human life enriched with new meaning, in that the world became a great society in which man might find his true home. 1 G. Lowes Dickinson, The Greek View of Life, p. 7, 8. PART I FORMS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND PRAC- TICE IN ANCIENT GREECE CHAPTER I REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 1. The Greek Conception of Revelation. The fundamental difference between the conception of revelation in Greek religion and in Christianity lies in the fact that the Greeks, like most other races, assumed the existence of the gods, formed their notions of the divine character by making'the gods in their own image, and looked to special revelation only as the source of practical guid- ance. 1 When a colony was to be founded, the god at Delphi would be consulted as to the best time and the best place ; the omens for battle must be favorable, or the battle was delayed ; the sick and suffering looked for divine direction as to means of cure ; a sneeze or a chance word expressed the approval of the gods, while an ominous dream deterred or encouraged the dreamer in his undertakings. Though signs and prophets and oracles were not regarded as revealing the nature of the gods, they yet were part of the apparatus of religion. In the history of Greek religion they are to be considered because of the light they throw incidentally on the character of the gods, the religious nature of man, and the divine government of the world, as these were conceived by the Greeks. For the study of religious antiquities it is convenient to divide the subject according to the nature of the signs ; signs from birds or dreams which occur without human intervention would belong 1 See Introduction, p. 28. 39 40 GREEK RELIGION to one class, signs sought by consulting the entrails of a victim or answers sought from an oracle would belong to a second class. But from the standpoint of religion this difference is merely accidental. It is more important to note how the knowledge of the future is obtained, than whether it comes sought or unsought. Signs in the external world presuppose that the course of nature and of human history is in the hands of the gods, directed by them in such wise that learned men can ascertain their will from it. On the other hand, the mind of the dreamer, the prophet, the Pythian priestess, is immediately influenced by the will of the gods, so that under this inspiration the human mind gains new power to see what would otherwise be hidden. Divination by signs was called by the Stoics l " artificial " or scientific, in that success rested upon a developed science of signs. Inspiration of prophets was called natural, or " without art," for the results came directly without any intervention of human learning. The history of religion accepts this division, not because of the presence or absence of human science, but because the presupposition as to the working of the gods is different in the two cases. NOTE. In this chapter, as in the chapter on sacrifice and worship, the data from the Homeric poems are separated to some extent from the data obtained from other authors. The reader should bear in mind that this course is not followed because the Homeric poems are more important than other sources, or because they represent an earlier stage in the development of reli- gion. The Greeks themselves assigned a unique place to the epic; sometimes they consciously modified their religious views to accord with it; far more often they unconsciously yielded to its influence. Again, on the other hand, the nature of the poetry is such that data from this source can only be used with caution and with allowance for some special peculiarities. Under these circumstances it has seemed wise to separate the discussion of the epic, wherever possible, from the general treatment under each theme. 2. Theophany in the Homeric Poems. In the later historical period visions of the gods, except in dreams, are not supposed 1 (Plutarch) De vita Homeri, 212, p. 456; Cicero, De divinatione, I. 18/34, 49/119; 2. 11/226. REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 41 to occur ; the tendency toward what was rational or " matter of fact " led the Greek mind to look in other directions for the manifestation of the divine will. The epic, starting with the assumption that its heroes were separated from the gods by only two or three generations, made large use of direct visions of the gods. Granted that Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite, Achilles of Thetis, Sarpedon of Zeus, granted that the line of Priam in Troy, of Idomeneus in Crete, of Agamemnon in Mycenae is to be traced directly back to Zeus, it is clear that in the " good old times " no barrier separated men and gods. As gods had so recently favored mortal men and women with their love, so in the time of the siege of Troy they watched over their favorites and appeared occasion- ally to warn them of danger or guide them in perplexity. 1 "Not to all men do the gods appear visibly," 2 nor do all the gods deign to come so close to men. Zeus and Hera, generally Poseidon, remain on Olympus ; Iris and Hermes are common messengers to men, while Athena and Apollo appear at times in order to carry out their plans or the plans of Zeus. In those parts of the poems assigned to an earlier date, the gods appear more commonly as gods. The angry Achilles feels the hand of Athena on his auburn hair and hears her rebuking voice, just as later he hears her word that the hour has come for him to kill Hector. 3 Each message is but the expression of Achilles' own thought ; the goddess is felt and heard, but apparently she is not seen by others or even by Achilles himself. Again the gods assume the form of a man, often a man known to people to whom they go. Aphrodite comes as an old woman, Apollo as Agenor, Poseidon as Calchas ; 4 in the first books of the Odyssey Athena comes to Telemachus as Mentes, and later as Mentor accompanies him on his journey. This type of theophany plays a large part especially in the Odyssey. Thirdly, in a few instances, the gods come directly on to the battlefield ; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes till her divine blood flows, Ares is dazed by a blow of 1 Odyssey, 3. 375 f. 8 Iliad, i. 197; 22. 215. 2 Odyssey, 16. 161. 4 Iliad, 3. 386; 21. 600; 13. 45. 42 GREEK RELIGION Athena, Apollo shouts so loud as to frighten back the Greeks. 1 This third type may be dismissed with the statement that the gods are made ridiculous to amuse the poet's audience. The second type represents a successful attempt to bring the gods on the stage with other characters of the epic drama. The first type alone is the direct expression of religious feeling. The study of all such appearances of the gods shows that this motif of the epic poet did have its basis in religion. Except as his audience believed that the gods were really near to men, that the gods did care for individual men and could bless or injure them by changing the course of events, it would have been idle for the poet even to make fun of the gods by bringing them into his song. He rarely tried to make the gods ridiculous ; ordi- narily he succeeded in his effort to make real gods genuine actors in his story. The influence of the epic practice is seen in the Attic drama, where occasionally the gods are brought on the stage. 3. Signs in the Ordinary Coursa of Nature. Except in the case of armies preparing for battle, signs in the ordinary course of nature were more important than signs secured by divination. The Greeks paid special attention to meteorological phenomena and (in earlier times) to the flight of birds. In the Iliad thunder and lightning indicated the will of Zeus, god of the sky. Some- times the occurrence of these phenomena caused fear to both Greeks and Trojans ; more commonly the unsuccessful side was frightened, the successful side encouraged, by such a token of the presence of Zeus. 2 A thunderbolt in front of the horses of Diomedes stopped his victorious advance. 3 Lightning on the right hand signified definitely the favor of Zeus. 4 The only mention of thunder as a sign of approval is when Odysseus's prayer for a favorable sign was answered by a thunderbolt. 5 The same causes which in myth made the thunderbolt the attribute of Zeus, led the epic poets to emphasize this sign of the presence 1 Iliad, 5. 339 f. ; 21. 406 f. ; 4. 508. 8 Iliad, 8. 133. 2 Iliad, 7. 478 ; 17. 595. 4 Iliad, 9. 236. 6 Odyssey, 20. 100 f. REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 43 and favor of Zeus. He is the god of the sky and the divine ruler of the world ; naturally he signifies his will to man by phenomena in the sky. It is not entirely clear whether the epic poet made this deduction himself, or whether there was in some localities a vivid belief in the significance of thunder and lightning. The Athenian sacred embassy to Delphi waited for lightning from Zeus Astrapaios before setting out, and Xenophon alludes to lightning as a veritable sign ; ' other references to it are almost wholly lacking in later literature. Other meteorological phenomena influenced men who were rated as superstitious. An eclipse of the moon so affected Nicias that he did not withdraw the Athenian army before Syracuse ; Pelopidas, on the other hand, was not himself influenced by an eclipse of the sun. 2 Some claimed that a meteor foretold the Spartan victory at Aegospotami, and that later a comet predicted the downfall of Sparta from her primacy in Greece. 3 At Athens the assembly was dissolved whenever rain indicated that Zeus was not propitious. An earthquake in Delos is said to have been the forerunner of the Peloponnesian war. 4 It is clear that only the superstitious paid much attention to this class of signs ; men generally looked elsewhere to ascertain the will of the gods. Further, it should not be forgotten that the science of astrology found little or no place in Greece. Nor did other portents or prodigies receive great emphasis with thinking men. Herodotus and Plutarch collected stories of portentous marvels, a priestess who grew a beard, fish that leaped in the frying-pan, divine images that moved or shed drops of perspiration, stories uncommon enough to show a general absence of superstition. 5 The seer Lampon prophesied the future greatness of Pericles from a ram with one horn, but Anaxagoras, cutting open the head, showed why only one horn 1 Xenophon, Apol. 12 ; cp. Bacchylides, 17. 55. 2 Plutarch, Nicias, 23, p. 538 ; De super stitione, 8, p. 169 ; Pelopidat, 31, p. 295. 8 Plutarch, Lysander, 12, p. 439; Diodorus Siculus, 15. 50. 4 Thucydides, 2. 8. 3. ; Herodotus, 6. 98; Xenophon, Hell. 3. 2. 24. 6 Herodotus, i. 175, 9. 120; Plutarch, Nicias, 13, p. 531 ; Timoleon, 12, p. 241. 44 GREEK RELIGION had grown. 1 Such a scientific spirit was not favorable to belief in portents. 4. Signs in Nature : Birds. In the Homeric poems the most important method for learning the will of the gods, was to observe the flight of birds ; the most important function of the prophet was to interpret signs from birds. Their freedom from human control, their access to the sky where lived the gods, the con- nection which was assumed between particular birds and particular gods all contributed to their significance. Not, of course, that all birds were harbingers of future events ; it was the eagle of Zeus, the hawk of Apollo, the heron flying at night, which intimated the plans of the gods. 2 Often the mere presence of an eagle on the right hand (toward the east) was enough, especially when it came in answer to prayer. 3 The eagle with a goose in its talons or the hawk with a dove signified success when it appeared on the right ; yet even such a sign might be disregarded when the course of events tended the other way. 4 That Troy should be taken in the tenth year was indicated by the sparrow and her eight young devoured by a serpent. 5 At times the act of the bird was a definite type of the event, as when Apollo's hawk is seen scattering the feathers of a dove, or when the eagle of Zeus kills the geese eating grain in Odysseus's hall. 6 Calchas and Halitherses, who interpret such signs, are the great seers of the poems. Other evidence may be brought to show that here the epic belief is based on real practice, while it can hardly be doubted that the emphasis laid on bird-signs in the epic tended to increase the importance attached to them in fact. Prometheus, in the play of Aeschylus, claims to have taught men to discern the flight of taloned birds, which are favorable, which unfavorable, and to understand their habits, their quarrels, 1 Plutarch, Pericles, 6, p. 154. a Odyssey, 2. 146 ; 15. 525, 532 ; Iliad, 24. 315 ; 10. 274. * Iliad, 13. 821 ; 24. 292; Odyssey, 24. 311. * Odyssey, 15. 160; 20. 242; Iliad, 8. 247; 12. 200 f. * Iliad, 2. 308 f. Odyssey, 15. 525 f. ; 19. 536 fc REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 45 their mating. 1 The eagle, the vulture, and the crow were specially significant, rather for their dominant cruel habits than for any connection with one particular god. Their appearance in the east, or their flight toward the east, was in itself favorable. 2 Seers like Teiresias are said to have had a regular place where they FIG. 5. ATHENIAN RED-FIGURED VASE PAINTING Above a four-horse chariot (driven by a goddess) appears an eagle flying. might observe the appearance or the conflicts of birds of prey. 3 Two eagles tearing a hare with its young signified for the Greeks the utter destruction of Troy by the army which Agamemnon and Menelaus led ; similarly the Persian queen Atossa feared for the great army of Xerxes when she saw a hawk pursuing an eagle and plucking feathers from its head as the eagle flew toward the shrine of Apollo. 4 While omens from birds were undoubtedly important in some localities in early times, in the greater days of Greece they became rather a part of the poet's apparatus. The increasing importance of oracles and of an organized, unified system of reli- 1 Aeschylus, Prom. 488 f. 2 Cp. Plato, Leg. 6, p. 760 D. 3 Sophocles, Ant. 999 ; Euripides, Bacch. 347. * Aeschylus, Agam. 114 f.; Pers. 205 f. 46 GREEK RELIGION gious practice tended to eclipse the simple observance of natural signs. 5. Minor Signs in Nature : Chance Words, etc. Just as light- ning and the flight of birds suggest the intervention of the gods, for here human life comes in contact with what cannot be fore- seen or calculated, so the rumor which starts no one knows where, and gains in certainty and definiteness no one knows how, comes to be regarded as the messenger of Zeus to man. When Agamem- non proposed to test the temper of his army by suggesting that they abandon the siege of Troy and return home, it was Rumor, messenger of Zeus, which urged them to accept his suggestion ; Athena, in the form of Mentes, bade Telemachus look to Rumor for news of his father ; so Rumor spread the word that the suitors had been killed. 1 Again, the chance word, suggesting to the hearer something totally different from what was intended by the speaker, was often regarded as a sign. When Zeus answered Odysseus's prayer for a sign by sending a thunderbolt, Odysseus overheard the comment of women grinding at the mill. 2 It was mere comment for them to say that Zeus was about to punish the suitors ; to Odysseus it seemed that Zeus had first sent the thunderbolt, then had given him the interpretation of its meaning. Such chance words or chance happenings seem always to have influenced superstitious persons in Greece. Cyrus hailed it as an omen when he was told that the watchword was " Preserver Zeus and victory " ; the Greeks were encouraged to fight at Mycale by the name of the Samian messenger, Hegesistratus, " Army-leader " ; and when Alexander forced the Pythian priestess to mount the tripod at an unusual time, her exclamation that he could not be resisted was all the oracle he asked for. 3 Pausanias speaks of oracles which depended on the first chance word one heard after sacrificing to the god. 4 1 Iliad, 2. 93 ; Odyssey, i. 282 ; 24. 413. 2 Odyssey, 20. 105 ; cp. 2. 35 ; 18. 117. 8 Xenophon, Anab. i. 8. 16; Herodotus, 9. 91 ; Plutarch, Alexander, 14, p. 671. 4 Pausanias, 7. 22. 3 ; 9. i j. 7, REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 47 Such an interpretation of chance words does not seem so strange, when one recalls that not many years ago the Bible was used in much the same way : to obtain guidance the book was opened at random and perhaps in the last word on the page was sought a sug- gestion of the right course. An example of chance events re- garded as signs occurs in Plutarch : l an army advancing to meet the enemy were discouraged by the sight of asses laden with pars- ley, for parsley was used to make crowns for the dead. A sneeze, on the other hand, was favorable ; as Xenophon spoke of the hope of safety, a soldier sneezed, and the army accepted it as a good omen from Zeus. 2 The theory of these signs, in so far as any theory may be assumed, is definitely religious. It is assumed that all nature is under the direction of the gods, and that the gods wish to guide men by giv- ing them some indications of their favor or disapproval. Omens are sought in events not easily explained by natural causes ; they are vague, in order that responsibility may still be left with men ; their range increases rapidly with superstitious men ; the sense of their reality and importance, however, rests on the deep-set belief that the gods wish to guide men by signs in nature. Because the gods are consistent, experience is the source of principles by which signs can be correctly interpreted. 6. Divination by means of Sacrificial Victims. In the fifth and fourth centuries divination from the flight of birds had all but passed out of use and signs in nature were only occasionally noted ; the will of the gods was ascertained by the consultation of oracles or by divination in connection with sacrificial victims. Whether this means of divination existed in early times and was passed over by the epic, 3 or was introduced later ; whether it was devel- oped from the Greek religious consciousness, or adopted from other nations, it is not easy to say. In any case its meaning is 1 Plutarch, Timoleon, 26, p. 248. 2 Xenophon, Anab. 3. 2. 9 ; cp. Aristophanes, Aves, 720. 8 The word fluoo-itdo? (e.g. Iliad, 24. 221) according to the usage of the epic seems to mean no more than " attendant at the sacrifice." 48 GREEK RELIGION found in the belief that animals sacrificed to the gods must be perfect ; if they come unwillingly to the altar, if the inner parts are deformed or discolored, if the sacrifice does not burn properly, then it is a bad omen, for the gods are displeased. On this theory any sacrifice may have prophetic import. The priest, sometimes a special seer, is on the lookout for tokens sig- FIG. 6. ATHENIAN RED-FIGURED VASE PAINTING (Gotha) A servant carefully watches the roasting meat, while Nike fills the priest's phiale for a libation, in the presence of Apollo with a cithara. nificant of the divine will. If the bull " comes boldly to the altar as though led of the gods," and perhaps bows its own head to the blow, 1 heaven favors the worshippers ; even if the result is brought about by the skill of the priest, it is interpreted in the same way ; but for an animal to die on the way to the altar forebodes some dreadful evil. 2 Then after the victim is opened, the character of 1 Aeschylus, Agam. 1298; cp. Plutarch, Lucullus, 24, p. 507; Paton-Hicks, In- scriptions of Cos, 37, 1. 21. 2 Schol. on Aristophanes, Pax, 960; Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 6, p. 386. REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 49 the liver and gall bladder is most significant. A sound liver, smooth, of good color, and with well-shaped lobes, means that the sacrifice is acceptable and that the god is ready to grant the wishes of the worshipper. 1 As the sacrifice is burning on the altar, the manner in which the flame envelops the moist meat also indicates the attitude of the gods ; 2 when " Hephaestus's flame Shone not from out the offering; but there oozed Upon the ashes, trickling from the hones, A moisture, and it smouldered, and it spat, And, lo ! the gall was scattered to the air, And forth from out the fat that wrapped them round The thigh bones fell," then " evil falls upon the State." 3 The bursting of the gall blad- der, and the behavior of the bones at the base of the tail (oo-; Aristotle, De mvndo, 4; Pausanias, 10. 5. 6-7 ; Plutarch, De defect, or ac. 46, p. 435 D ; Strabo, 8. 419. 2 Euripides, Ion, 1322; Diodorus, 16. 26; Plutarch, De Pyth. orac. 22, p. 405 C. 8 Lucian, Her mot. 60, p. 801 ; Bis ace. I, p. 792. 4 Pomtow, Beitra^e zur Topographie von Delphi (1889), 32 Anm. 2. 60 GREEK RELIGION currents of ice-cold air with a sharp acid smell issuing from the earth in the vicinity. Gas or no gas, the ritual would be sufficient to produce hypnotic effects in a susceptible priestess. Unwill- ingly, " struggling against Apollo's power," she mounted the tripod. Meantime the questioners had sacrificed to Apollo, lots had deter- mined their order, and the questions in written form were handed to the head official (TTTHX^T^S) - 1 Within the shrine the official pro- pounded the question to the raving priestess, her answer, only partly intelligible, he put into a sort of hexameter verse, and returned it in writing, sealed, to the questioner. 2 All the imposing ritual of a wealthy shrine was devised to gain credence for this answer. More than two hundred supposed deliverances of the oracle are preserved to us in literature. Most of these are given by late authors and their validity is very doubtful. Some fifty of them, however, are quoted in Herodotus ; and of these it may be affirmed that he obtained at least half at Delphi itself. Whether they are genuine or forged by Delphic priests in the form of genuine oracles, they illustrate the claims of the shrine. 3 Nat- urally the historian quotes very few that deal with private life. We do read how Croesus enquired about his dead son, Halyattes about his illness, Teisamenus as to offspring. 4 Oftentimes the answer gave some other information than what was asked, infor- mation that in the case of Teisamenus led to its own fulfilment. A long series of the oracles quoted by Herodotus deal with the internal needs of states : where cure from pestilence is sought, some moral or religious cause is assigned in answer and some moral or religious cure suggested ; for political confusion, an arbitrator is assigned, or a code of laws sanctioned, or a king con- firmed in his position; 5 changes in worship, also, are rejected or 1 Plutarch, Qitaes. graec. 9, p. 292 D ; De defect, orac. 49, p. 437 A; Schol. on Aristophanes, Plut. 39. 2 Plutarch, De Pyth. orac. 5, p. 396 D ; Suidas, s.v. ret rpla. 8 " Herodotus and the Oracle at Delphi," Classical Journal, i (1906) 37 f. 4 Herodotus, i. 85 ; i. 19 ; 9. 33. 6 Herodotus, 4. 151 f. ; 5. 82 ; 4. 161 ; I. 65 ; 6. 52 ; I. 13 ; 4. 163 ; 5. 67 ; 7. 178 ; Demosthenes, 21. 52 f. REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 61 FIG. 8. PLAN OF THE PRECINCT OF APOLLO AT DELPHI 62 GREEK RELIGION approved by the Delphic god. Other oracles deal with external politics. The shrine claimed the right to suggest colonies, to determine their destination, and to establish the form of govern- ment. 1 In case of war, the answers of the oracle now predicted failure, now suggested an alliance, at times they urged moderation ' FIG. 9. VIEW OF THE RUINS OF THE SHRINE OF APOI.LO AT DELPHI in victory, or warned of treachery, or finally they promised suc- cess. 2 Necessarily very many of the answers were vague, in most general terms, perhaps susceptible of opposite meanings. When Croesus inquired whether he should march against the Persians, he was told that if he crossed the river Halys he should destroy a great kingdom his own kingdom, as the event proved. 3 The fact remains that they often contained very shrewd advice ; for this reason and because the answers were often such as to cause 1 Herodotus, 5. 42 ; 4. 150. 2 Herodotus, 6. 19 ; 7. 140 ; 5. 79 ; 4. 163. 8 Herodotus, i. 53 ; Aristotle, Rhet. 3. 5. REVELATION AND INSPIRATION 63 their own fulfilment, the claims of the oracle to foretell the future found considerable justification. In particular the answers of the oracle stood for progress in ethics and in religion. Glaucus, who asked whether he could break an oath, 1 so the priests said, was told that for even propos- ing the question his family should utterly perish. A late story tells of three men attacked by robbers ; the one who ran away was condemned by the oracle for refusing his aid ; the second, who killed his companion in trying to aid him, was told that his hands were made even purer by manslaughter with pure inten- tion. 2 Extreme cruelty was assigned as the cause of divine wrath which led to pestilence. 3 As the penalty for murder the oracle advised some money recompense instead of more shedding of blood. 4 In religion the influence of the oracle was directed toward the development of local worship ; not that it in any way sought to check the worship of the Olympian deities, but its policy was to establish that local worship of heroes in which there was a more vital religion for the people than in the splendid state cults. What estimate are we to place on oracles which consist of the incoherent cries of a delirious woman interpreted by shrewd priests ? In antiquity the shrine had such a reputation that not only Greece, but Asia Minor, and the Roman world came here to consult the god. The early fathers of the Christian church con- sistently held that the inspiration of the Pythia was real, the work of evil spirits. One of the first to attack this doctrine was the Hollander, Van Dale, 5 who explained the oracles as the result of conscious deception deliberately practised by the priests. His theory leaves unexplained the influence of the oracle for purer morals; nor can we believe that freedom-loving Greeks would have yielded submission for centuries to the dictates of such de- liberate imposition. Both the Pythian priestess, the "prophet," 1 Herodotus, 6. 86. 8 Herodotus, 6. 139. 2 Aelian, Var. hist. 3. 44. * Herodotus, 8. 114. 6 De oraculis veterum ethnicorum dissertationes duae, Amsterdam, 1700. 64 GREEK RELIGION and the priests must have been well informed as to the political condition of the Greek states; if one may judge from the oracles that remain, they were inspired by high ideals and a real desire for the welfare of Greece ; the oracles further reveal certain defi- nite principles, e.g. as to colonies, the worship of heroes, recom- pense for murder, principles that applied to large numbers of the questions asked. When the shrine " medized " or " philippized," the latter a word of Demosthenes, 1 it was because the Greek people were overmastered by fear of Xerxes and of Philip ; actual corruption of the oracle, wholly improbable in these cases, was proven only in a very few instances which were promptly punished by the Delphians themselves. 2 So far as the delirious priestess is concerned, she was no doubt open to unconscious suggestion from the official " prophet " who put the question to her ; in giving metrical form to her answers we can hardly doubt that, however much he was really responsible for the content of the reply, he ordinarily acted in the honest conviction that he was giving what Apollo had suggested through the priestess. The fact remains unquestioned that Delphi was, as it has often been called, the " Vatican of antiquity," a holy city, a centre of moral teaching, and an authoritative guide in matters of politics as well as in matters of religion. 1 Aeschines, 3. 130. 2 Herodotus, 6. 66 ; Plutarch, Lysander, 25, p. 447. CHAPTER II THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 1. Sacred Places. While the gods of Homer have in Olympus their dwellings made by Hephaestus, each god has also favorite haunts on the earth where he is wont to receive the worship of men. In later ages also men worshipped in places which sug- gested the presence of the gods, and where men worshipped was the place at which a god liked to be present. Mountain tops high in heaven and often covered with thunder clouds suggested the presence of Zeus, grottoes and springs the presence of nymphs, underground caverns, gods or spirits from the world below ; in any thick grove might dwell a god. The goddess of the hearth dwelt inside the home, gods of the market-place in the busy centre of trade, so that it was a purely empirical deduction when Xeno- phon 1 stated that ordinarily a sanctuary should be located "in some conspicuous place, apart from the daily life of men " ; such a principle, in so far as it was based on fact, would mean that the gods more commonly gave token of their presence in places apart from the daily life of men. For where the gods were mani- festly present, worship would, of course, most surely reach them. The assumption that a god may be found again where he has once been present, is perhaps the most important principle in deter- mining a place of worship. Centres of local worship, sacred places where the gods come to enjoy the gifts men bring to them, are recognized in the Homeric poems. On his way to Troy Agamemnon stopped at every altar 1 Xenophon, Mem. 3. 8. 10. GREEK RELIGION 5 65 66 GREEK RELIGION of Zeus to offer sacrifices. 1 Two shrines of the nymphs near Ithaca are described, wild spots where wayfarers stopped to honor the spirits of fertility. 2 Chryses, Maron, and Onetor were priests attached to shrines of Apollo or Zeus, whose duty it was to keep up the worship at these sacred spots. 3 Such a shrine included an altar and ordinarily a grove sacred to the god ; its position might be determined by the nature of the god worshipped, as in the case of the shrine of Zeus on Mt. Ida, and that of the river god, Spercheius ; in any case it was a favorite resort of the god. 4 When it was inside a city, or contained treasures of the god, a stone wall protected it from intrusion. In the palace also, the camp of an army, the hut of a swineherd, were altars on which parts of each animal killed for food were sacrificed to the gods. 5 In almost every instance it is clear that worship was carried on, not inside any building, but in the open air. The temples (or temple) which Chryses built must have been very simple, perhaps mere booths used in worship ; the temples of the Phaeacians, and the temple vowed to Helios by the companions of Odysseus were more substantial ; however, it was only the temples of Athena and of Apollo on the Trojan acropolis that played any part in the poems. 6 In the earlier period of the epic worship was described as taking place beside an altar in the open air ; but when the poems took final shape, at least in the more important city shrines of Ionia, substantial houses for the god had taken the place of the simple altar near a grove. In later times the sacred precinct (re/xevos) might be a very limited space about the temple, or in the country it might cover several miles. Sometimes it was holy ground that none could enter, like 1 Iliad, 8. 238 ; cp. " Local Cults in Homer," The New World, December, 1895. 2 Odyssey, 13. 349 ; 17. 210. 8 Iliad, i. ii, 39; 16. 604; Odyssey, 9. 197. 4 Iliad, 2. 305, 506; Odyssey, 6. 162, 291, 321; Iliad, 22. 170; 23. 148. 6 Iliad, ii. 773 ; 2. 400 f. ; Odyssey, 14. 420. 6 Iliad, I. 39; Odyssey, 6. 10; 12. 346; Iliad, 6. 88, 274, 279, 297; 5. 446-448; 7. 83 ; cp. Cauer, Grundfragen der Homerkritik, 197 f. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 67 " the holy grove, By foot of man untrod, Where dwell the Virgin Ones invincible;" 1 again it could be entered only at certain periods by persons duly purified, 2 or there might be ownership by the god without any such restrictions. The whole Crisaean plain was dedicated to the Delphic gods to lie fallow. 3 Ordinarily, however, such properties served as a source of income to the shrine of the god ; contracts still extant tell of the exact manner in which the land was to be used, the amount to be paid to the god, and the care with which he was protected against loss. 4 Such properties were often given to Greek shrines, as later to Christian churches, to be a source of income. Along with the lands, the gods owned and leased now houses, now factories, flocks of sheep, poultry, or rights in fish- eries. 5 Rentals from these sources, a share in taxes, some per- quisites from the animals sacrificed, and fines imposed for failure to obey divine commands, constituted the income of the shrine. The management of the income was in the hands of the priests, 6 though ordinarily the priests were state officials. In the city of Athens we know of more than two hundred such shrines (including altars to one god in the precinct of another god) which were centres of worship. Speaking generally we may say that in no two of these shrines was the same god worshipped under the same aspect of his being. 7 Athena was worshipped on 1 Sophocles, Oed. Col. 125 f., trans. Plumptre. 2 E.g. the shrine of Hippodameia at Olyinpia was entered once a year by women. Pausanias, 6. 20. 4. 3 Aeschines, 3. 107-108 ; cp. Plutarch, Pericles, 30, p. 168. 4 E.g. for the shrine of Codrus, Neleus, and Basile, C.I. A. IV. i. 2, p. 66, no. 53 a ; cp. also Bull. Corr. Hell. 4 (1880) 295 f. ; 16 (1892) 278 f., and farther references given by Stengel, Die griechisc hen Kultusaltertiimer, 19-21. 6 C.I. A. I. 283; 11.817; Altertiimer von Pergamon, 8. 1, p. 36, no. 40; Bull. Corr. Hell. 6 (1882) 20, 1. 158 f.; 14 (1890) 399 f. 6 In the case of important shrines a special state commission (at Athens the Ta.fda.1 r&v iepuv xpwuirui') was often appointed to take charge of the temple finances. 7 Cp. Introduction, p. 22. 68 GREEK RELIGION the Acropolis as Athena Polias, guardian of the city, as Athena Nike, and as Athena Hygieia ; on the Areopagus she was Athena Areia ; elsewhere in the city were shrines of Athena Hephaistia, Athena Hippia, Athena Skiras, etc. These different shrines did not exist for the convenience of worshippers, like churches in a modern city, but the goddess was worshipped at each point in a different aspect of her nature. Oftentimes they represented some old worship at Athens ; or they were branches of honored cults elsewhere, like the worship of Apollo Pythios on the banks of the Ilissus, or that of Artemis Brauronia on the Acropolis, branches established that Athens might worship the god of Delphi and the goddess of Brauron ; sometimes they seem to be offshoots of another Athenian cult, established to emphasize some one aspect FIG. 10. EARLY BLACK-FIGURED VASE PAINTING (British Museum) A procession headed by a priestess with tray of offerings and a man playing the double flute is conducting a bull to the altar of Athena; behind the altar is a statue of Athena and a serpent. of the god. An examination of these cults confirms the impres- sion that worship was carried on primarily in the name of the city, so that one shrine to one aspect of a god was all sufficient ; and further that each god or goddess was at the same time one and many-fold, one in mythological theory, many- fold in worship. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 69 The centre of worship, ordinarily within a sacred precinct, was the altar (/Jto/xds). The attempt has been made to prove that Greek altars were in the first instance seats fjr the unseen god, present with his worshippers ; then later, tables to receive the offering or hearths where it could be burnt. 1 No other explana- tion has been offered for the peculiar shapes of altars depicted in early vase paintings, than that the higher part represents a seat, the lower part a footstool where men might humbly lay their gifts. The material of which the altar was made and its form, were FIG. ii. ATHENIAN BLACK-FIGURED VASE PAINTING (Lekythos, Athens) Sacrifice before the departure of a warrior; on an altar of brick the tail of the animal is seen in the fire, over which an attendant is roasting meat on a spit. determined partly by its position and use, partly by local tradition. In the house a table or a pillar, or even some portable tray, received the fruits and flowers men offered to the god. 2 A heap of stones or sod might serve the traveller as an altar. 3 Before the temple there was built perhaps a large structure of cut stone, 4 or an altar was hewn from the natural rock; the ashes of former sacrifices, the piled up horns of previous victims, a mound of earth or stones even a few inches high, were the altars prescribed by holy tradition at some shrines ; 5 again at Syracuse there are 1 Reichel, Ueber vorhellenische Goiterkulte. 2 In general see de Molin, De ara apud Graecos, 1884, and the article "Altar" by Reisch in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopaedie. 8 Apollonius Rhodius, i. 403 ; 2. 695. 4 E.g. the altar of the Chians at Delphi, Herodotus 2. 135. 6 Pausanias, 5. 13. 8; 9. u. 7; Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo, 60; Altertiime'r von Pergamon, 8. i, no. 68. 7 o GREEK RELIGION still seen the remains of a rock altar a stadium in length, 1 and sculptured slabs testify to the magnificence of the great altar of Zeus at Pergamon. Oftentimes the " hearth " where the victims were burned was a distinct part of the altar. 2 The most important question for the history of religion is con- cerned with the difference between the altar proper for the gods above and the hearth altar (eo-xapa) for the gods and spirits of the FIG. 12. THE GREAT ALTAR AT PERGAMON (restoration) lower regions. Whether this latter type was made of earth or stone, it was a low structure so built that the blood of the victims might run down through it into the earth itself. At the shrine in Samothrace and at the Kabeirion near Thebes, 3 this hearth included a covered stone bowl with such an aperture for the blood to percolate into the earth below. Fire carried the odor of fat thigh pieces to the gods above : the gods below drank the blood of victims slain to propitiate their wrath. Almost without exception the Greek temple was a home for the god, not a place where men assembled for worship. In such a home some symbol or image denoted the god's presence ; valu- able gifts wreaths or vessels of precious metal, works of art, 1 Diodorus, 16. 83. * Aristophanes, Ach. 887 ; Vesp. 938. 8 Ath. Mittk, 13 (1888) 95 and illustration. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 71 or money and the utensils of worship belonged there ;* at times it might even serve as the treasury for the city of which the god was the patron deity. Often the treasures belonging to the god were sufficiently large so that loans could be made to the state in time of need. 2 About the home of the god might be grouped the houses of his priests, 3 stalls for animals destined to be sacri- ficed, and occasionally dwellings where sick people could be brought to be healed by the god. All this precinct (re/xevos) was sacred. The man accused of a crime could flee here for safety, and, though there was a difference in the rights accorded to differ- ent temples, a suppliant of the god was not to be lightly treated. To remove an innocent person from the altar of the god where he had taken refuge was a sacrilege that stirred the divine anger. The right to shelter any man, innocent or guilty, was accorded only to a few shrines. 4 Bowls of holy water (irepippavT-^pui) served to purify those who approached the god. 5 The temple itself ordinarily faced the east, for the worship of the gods above belonged to the morning. Three steps ran around it, three, we are told, in order that the worshipper might place the right foot on the first and third. 6 The essential part of the temple was the chamber in which stood the symbol or image of the god (cella, vaos ; the word aSvrov is properly applied to an inner room, but sometimes it is used for the cella). The simpler form of temple consisted of a cella with columns at the front, or at both front and back ; in the case of larger buildings one or even two rows of columns ran around the entire building, but the building proper still retained the extra columns at the end, inside the outer 1 Cp. the inventory of the objects in the temple of Apollo at Delos about 180 B.C., Bull. Corr. Hell. 6 (1882) 29 f. ; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 588. 2 Cp. the proposal of the Corinthians to borrow from the temple funds at Delphi and Olympia, Thucydides, i. 121; the temples also received deposits of money, like a modern bank, cp. Posidonius in Athenaeus, 6. 24, p. 233 F ; cp. Pausanias 10. 14. 7. 8 Strabo 12, p. 575 ; Euripides, Iph. Taur. 65. 4 E.g. the shrine of Athena Alea in Tegea (Xenophon, Hell. 3. 5. 25; Pau- sanius, 3. 5. 6), and of Zeus Lykaios at Megalopolis (Thucydides, 5. 16). 6 Herodotus, I. 51 ; Pollux, I. 8. 8 Vitruvius, 3. 4. 4. GREEK RELIGION row. The Parthenon at Athens is a typical Greek temple of this second type. It had eight columns at each end, and seventeen on each side ; behind the eight columns were six more columns in front of the building itself. The base on which the columns rested was 69.51 metres in length and 30.86 metres wide. In the case of the Parthenon a sculptured frieze ran around the upper wall of the building, inside the outer row of columns; the colon- nade had a richly decorated ceiling ; over the architrave proper FIG. 13. GROUND PLAN OF THE PARTHENON on the outside sculptured slabs (metopes) were set between sup- porting blocks (triglyphs) ; and in the pediments or gable ends were placed groups of figures. The frieze represented the great annual procession at the Panathenaic festival ; it began at the west of the building with young men preparing to join the proces- sion ; on the sides of the temple were to be seen the youth on horseback, men in armor in chariots, animals brought to the sacrifice, and persons carrying the necessary utensils ; while at the front officials of the goddess received the procession in the presence of the gods of Attica. The metopes represented the contest of the gods and giants, and other contests in which law and order triumphed over barbarian force. In the east pediment was to be seen the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, in the THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 73 west pediment the contest of Athena with Poseidon for the land of Attica. The building itself consisted of two parts, a long room FIG. 14. SECTION OF THE FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON Cattle are being driven to the Acropolis in the Panathenaic procession, to be sacrificed to Athena. facing the east in which stood the great gold and ivory image of the goddess with its altar table, and a square room behind (the HapOcvuv proper) where were kept utensils, votive offerings, and other property of the goddess. In early times there was no cult image, properly so called, although perhaps some sacred stone or pillar marked the spot where the god was present for his worshippers. Whether the Homeric poems mention real cult images, is a matter of dispute. 1 FIG. Figures of the god in clay or wood seem to have OF been presented as votive offerings, and it is not improbable that in many cases one of these offer- ings became the cult image (ayaXpa) of the god. Hestia, goddess of the fire on the hearth, never was represented by any'images, for she was herself present in the fire. The earlier cult images were rude objects of wood (oava) with but little resemblance to the human form ; we know something of them, 1 See Iliad, 6. 92, 303. 15. COIN MEGALOPO- LIS (Caracalla) A herm-figure of Heracles, draped. 74 GREEK RELIGION for in many temples they were never replaced, or were preserved as relics. 1 By far the commonest form of earlier cult image to persist was the herm (ep/w/s) or term ; the god Hermes continued to be represented by a square pillar with a head or a mask at the top, and occasionally other gods, especially Dionysus, were repre- sented by similar " herms." To cleanse the image, perhaps to decorate it with fresh garments, was often an important part of the annual worship at the temple. 2 With the great development of plastic art in the fifth and fourth centuries almost every temple received a new image in which the nature of the god found adequate artistic expression. These images were of bronze, of marble, of gold and ivory with a wooden core. 3 So the Athena FIG. 16. GEM BY which stood in the Parthenon was a framework ASPASIUS covered with delicately tinted plates of ivory for The head of Athena the flesh parts, while the garments and acces- is apparently cop- sor i es were made from plates of gold. As the ied from the statue . , . , . , . , , , . , in the Parthenon. mormn g h g ht streamed in through the great door this image seemed truly to embody the goddess of war and wisdom whose nature so fitly expressed the spirit of the Athenian people. To such an image our word " idol " hardly applies. It did indeed represent the goddess herself present in her home, but she was in no wise limited to its gold and its ivory ; not the image, but the goddess, received the homage of the Athenians. 2. Sacred Times. Just as some places are sacred because the presence of the god has been felt there and he may be expected to visit the spot again, so some times are sacred ; i.e. on these days the god has visited his temple, and on these days he may be expected to be present with his worshippers once more. 4 On this 1 The meaning of the term xoanon in Pausanias is discussed by Fraser, Pausanias 2. 69. 2 Pausanias, 3. 16. 2; 6. 25. 5; Euripides, Iph. Taur. 1199. 8 Cp. Lucian, Gallus, 24; Valerius Maximus i. Ext. 7. * Aristophanes, Nub. 615 f. ; cp. Odyssey, 3. 44. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 75 basis the calendar becomes a religious institution, for days and years are reckoned by the recurring worship of the gods. Per- haps for the reason that these occasions of worship differed in different localities, they find small mention in the Homeric poems. The feast of Apollo at Ithaca, which is in progress at the time of the trials of Odysseus's bow, is an indication, if any proof be needed, that the practice of observing set days as religious festi- vals dates back to early times. 1 In general, however, sacrifices are described as taking place when men are passing some sacred spot, or in connection with the main meal of the day, or in times of special need; 2 as the gods are divested of local features in the epic, so local occasions of worship are neglected in favor of occasions universally recognized. In the periods of which we have fuller information, it becomes clear that the Greeks laid much stress on sacred times. There are no traces of anything like the Jewish Sabbath or the Christian Sunday ; in its stead each state had a series of religious festivals which occurred at irregular intervals through the year. Many of these caused little or no interference to regular business ; many, on the other hand, were of sufficient importance to involve a sus- pension of public and private business in favor of the festival. The Athenians set aside more than fifty days each year specifically for public worship of the gods, and only one day in the year, it is said, was without its appointed offering to some god. 3 Certain days in each month were sacred to a god, the first and seventh to Apollo, the fourth to Hermes and to Aphrodite, the sixth to Artemis, the third, thirteenth, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth to Athena:. 4 Each shrine had a monthly or an annual festival vary- ing in importance with the character of the shrine : it might be some simple offering shared only by a few people of the neighbor- hood ; it might be the Panathenaea or the Eleusinia, national feasts that lasted for days, splendid with processions and sacrifices, 1 Iliad, 9. 534 ; Odyssey, 20. 156, 276 f. 2 Iliad, 8. 238 ; 2. 402 f. ; Odyssey, 14. 421 ; 9. 551 ; Iliad, 7. 177. 8 Thucydides, 2. 38 and schol. 4 Schoemann, GriecA. Alt. 2. 456. 76 GREEK RELIGION solemn with mysterious ritual (eoprat, Travi/yv/jets) - 1 The different elements that entered into this worship will be considered in the following sections. Finally biennial and quadrennial festivals were celebrated with special pomp at Delphi, Olympia, and other great religious centres. Oftentimes it is possible to ascertain the reason why a festival was celebrated at a given time, or at least the reason assigned by the worshippers for its celebration at that time. 2 Agri- cultural festivals, including those celebrated to Zeus the heaven- god, Demeter, goddess of the grain, Dionysus, god of the vine, Apollo, protector of the growing crops, etc., were determined by the season of the year. Asclepius was worshipped on the anni- versary of the establishment of his cult in Athens ; in other in- stances also the mythical anniversary of the comihg of the god was the cause assigned for the festival. The birth of Artemis and of Apollo was celebrated on the sixth and seventh of each month ; and the twenty-eighth of the month was recognized in worship as the birthday of Athena. At Delphi the return of Apollo in the spring and that of Dionysus in the autumn were the occasion of special religious rites. In all these instances the principles hold good that the gods are likely to appear again at the date when they have appeared at their shrines before, and that worship should be offered to them when their presence is expected. 3. Sacred Persons ; Priests and Attendants. Although priests are mentioned several times in the Homeric poems, all the sacri- fices of which an account is given are performed by the head of a household or by a king. The priest (lepeus, ap-rfrrip) is the person who presides over some local shrine, directing the worship and making such sacrifices as its ritual demands. Such a priest, at least in Troy, was appointed by the people ; Theano, priestess of Athena, and Onetor, priest of Idaean Zeus, were married ; Hyp- senor, priest of the Scamander, was not prevented by his sacred office from taking part in the defence of the city ; Maron, priest 1 In Appendix II is given a list of the more important festivals of Athens; cp. also A. Mommsen, Die Feste der Stadt Athen, 1898. 2 Cp. Schoemann, Griech. Alt. z. 459 f. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 77 of Apollo at Ismarus, dwelt with wife and child in the sacred grove of Apollo. 1 In virtue of his office the priest was greatly honored by the people, " honored as a god " the poet says. For this rea- son the Aetolians sent priests to treat with a besieging enemy ; FIG. 17. ATHENIAN RED-FIGURED VASE PAINTING (Stamnos, British Museum) The priest raises his left hand in attitude of worship before the altar, above which Nike flies to fill the vessel in his right hand ; opposite him are youths with spits and a flute player. Odysseus protected Maron when Ismarus was taken ; Chryses, trusting in the respect due to his position, entered the camp of the enemy to demand of the Greeks his captured daughter. 2 It appears from these instances that while the priest was not cut off from the activities of ordinary life, his connection with the god brought him such privileges and immunities as might be granted to the special servant of any powerful ruler. 1 Iliad, 5. 76 f. ; 6. 298 f. ; 16. 604 ; Odyssey, 9. 197 f. 2 Iliad, 9. 575 ; I. II f. ; Odyssey, g. 199. 78 GREEK RELIGION The conception of the priest as the person in charge of some one shrine held good in later periods. In Greece the priest was not a " holy man " ; even if one does not accept literally the state- ment of Isocrates * that any one is good enough to become a priest, the office was not one that required any unusual qualifica- tion in morals or piety. Nor was it necessary for the priest to have any special education ; such esoteric knowledge as was needed for his duties he could easily acquire after taking office. Inasmuch as there was no organic connection between the priests of different shrines, and there were no priests except those con- nected with particular shrines, the Greek cities were free from all the dangers of priestcraft. At the same time religion must remain entirely unorganized, except as it came under the direction of the state. The choice of a priest must conform to conditions which dif- fered with each shrine. Ordinarily the gods were served by men and the goddesses by women ; but the opposite was not rare, as at Tegea where a boy was priest of Athena, and at Thespiae where the priestess of Heracles was a young woman. 2 In some places young boys and girls were demanded by the ritual as priests ; 3 in some, old men or women ; more commonly the priest was a person in the prime of life. Physical perfection, even physi- cal beauty, was necessary to please the god ; an " unlucky " man would not be chosen, for ill luck was in some way connected with divine anger; again, as acting for the state, the priest must be of citizen parents. 4 Ordinarily the requirements of a priesthood were few and simple ; any one who conformed to these conditions might be appointed to the office. The term of office for a priest in some instances lasted as long as he met the conditions as to age or purity, or during his lifetime ; not infrequently it lasted only a year. The method of filling the l Isocrates, 2. 6, p. 16. 2 Pausanias, 8. 47. 3; 9. 27. 6. 8 E.g. Pausanias, 2. 33.2; 10. 34. 8. 4 Plato, Leg. 6, p. 759 C ; Antiphanes, quoted by Athenaeus, 7. 55, p. 300 A ; Dittenberger, Syllogi, 594. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 79 office varied with the requirements of each shrine. When the worship was confined to a particular family in its origin, or where one family had performed some special service for the honor of the god, such as giving the money to build the temple, the priest- hood was often limited to that family. 1 At Eleusis, for instance, the hierophant was always one of the Eumolpidae ; the other main officials belonged to the family of the Kerykes. 2 In these cases the successor to a priest might be selected within the family by some fixed principle (e.g. the oldest son of the former priest), or by lot, or by the testament of his predecessor. Where no such limitation existed, the king or in a democracy the people appointed many of the priests. 3 Occasionally the right to a priesthood was sold to the highest bidder, in which case only those could buy the right who conformed to all the requirements of the office. 4 At Athens probably the commonest method of appointment was to cast lots among approved candidates. 5 These methods of appoint- ment are further evidence that the priesthood was a sacred office only in a very limited sense of the term. The requirements made in behalf of the god were few and simple ; they concerned mainly the physical character of the candidate ; when these were satisfied, the ritual might be performed so as to secure the god's favor. Naturally no elaborate consecration was necessary when the de- mands of the god were so simple. The emoluments of the priest's office consisted of money and of other privileges which had a money value, such as a portion from every sacrifice, in addition to some public honors. The prices paid for the priesthoods in the city of Erythrae varied from 10 to 4610 drachmas, prices that probably represent the annual net value of the office plus what the buyer was ready to pay for the honor that went with it. 6 The priestess of Athena Nike re- ceived in money 50 drachmas a year ; part of the money gifts to 1 E.g. the priesthood of Zeus Karios, Herodotus, 5. 66 ; and the descendants of Telines at Gela, ibid. 7. 153. 2 Dittenberger in Hermes, 20 (1885) if. 8 Cp. Dionysius Halicarn. 2. 21. 4 Inscription from Erythrae, Dittenberger, Sylloge, 600. 6 Plato, Leg. 6, 759 C ; C.I. A. II. 567 b, 622. 6 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 600. 8o GREEK RELIGION Athena Polias fell to the share of her priestess ; at some shrines a gift to the priest in money went with each sacrifice. 1 In connec- tion with the administration of the temple property the priest might receive a percentage of the net gain. 2 Oftentimes he had the right to a dwelling on the temple ground, and was abundantly provided with food by his share in the sacrifices. 3 He might also have the use of temple land for grazing purposes or farm- ing, and a personal share in other rights belonging to the temple. Many priests were freed from military services and all taxes, though this right was sometimes more than counterbalanced by the demand that the priest him- self contribute toward sup- porting a magnificent wor- ship. The honor shown to a priest varied with the im- FIG. 18. MARBLE SEAT FOR THE PRIKST portance of his shrine. At OF DIONYSUS IN THE THEATRE AT A h of fc ATHENS * priests received front seats at the theatre and at public functions ; in some cities the years were named from the persons holding an important priest- hood ; at the successful termination of his office a priest might be rewarded by the people with a gold crown or even with a statue. 4 That a man should undertake the office of priest from a purely unselfish motive, a desire either to please the god or to serve the people, was a conception that found no place in Greek religion. Nor is the reason far to seek; almost all worship is for the benefit 1 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 911. 2 Dittenberger, Sylloge, (x>\. 8 Strabo, 12, p. 575; Schol. on Aristophanes, Vesp. 695, and Plut. 1105; von Prott, Fasti Graeci, n. 6. * C.I.A. III. 261 f. ; Thucydides, 2. 2; C.I.A. II. 477 b. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 81 of the state, tribe, or family ; the priest who acts as their agent earns his pay from them, and ordinarily he does not gain any enduring personal relation with the god whose worship he super- vises. During his duties as priest, a man often received a special title, Purphoros at Epidauros, Stephanephoros at Magnesia and elsewhere, Loutrophoros at Sicyon. The Hierophant at Eleusis is said to have laid aside his personal name while holding the office. Commonly the priest, at least while officiating, wore an unusual garment, an ungirded robe (chiton) of white or purple, or white with purple border. 1 The staff of the priest, the key of the priestess, sometimes a torch, the crown or the fillet of the god on their heads, were part of the insignia of office. Still it should be remembered that neither the office nor its insignia as a rule kept the priest from the business of ordinary life. The requirements for the priests in the matter of ceremonial purity are not fully known. Every worshipper, like Hector in the Iliad, 2 must avoid approaching the god with soiled hands or unclean garment ; for the priest this requirement was no doubt rigidly enforced. Many priests might be married ; others must remain celibates, at least during their term of office. In some instances particular foods were unclean ; cheese was forbidden the priestess of Athena Polias, fish the priestess of Hera at Argos, beans and goat flesh must be abjured by both priest and worshipper at a shrine of Lindos on the island of Rhodes. 3 Such requirements, so far as we know, were isolated and unusual, the remains of some ancient " taboo " at these shrines. Though so little stress was laid on the sacredness of the priest, it was always thought that he had a connection with the god more intimate than that of other worshippers. When they came to sacrifice at the shrine, bringing their petition or paying a vow, they were obliged to engage the services of the priest in order to make 1 Strabo, 14, p. 648 ; Athenaeus, 5, pp. 211 B, 215 B. 2 Iliad, 6. 266. 8 Strabo, 9, p. 395 ; Aelian, De nat. anim.g. 65 ; C.I.G. Ins. I. 789 ; cp. Plutarch, Symp. 8. 8. 4, p. 730 D. GREEK RELIGION 6 82 GREEK RELIGION sure that their sacrifice was offered in due form to gratify the god. For the regular worship of the shrine, the hymns, prayers, and sacrifices demanded by its ritual, the priest was alone responsible. 1 He directed it personally; and if the god gave evidence of his favor to the people, the priest was the one to be honored. More- over it was the priest who preserved the shrine from impurity, guarded its votive offerings from theft, managed (with the " treas- urers," ra.fj.uiC) whatever properties it possessed. 2 When fugitives sought asylum there, it was his duty to receive them and protect them as best he could ; when masters brought slaves to be freed, it was he who published their freedom by dedicating them to the god, or buying them for the god. 3 The priest took up questions of impiety and brought the guilty man before the courts in the name of the god. As a matter of fact he did represent the wor- shippers in the divine presence, and he might speak the will of the god to men, both blessing and cursing ; 4 his office was dis- tinctly sacred and holy, but it was the peculiarity of Greek religion to separate rather sharply the man from the office he held, with the result that the priest was sacred only at such times as he was acting in his official capacity. So far as the other officials of the temple are concerned, 5 we may be satisfied to indicate the tasks which fell to them. In earlier times, and later at small shrines, one or two slaves belong- ing either to the shrine or to the priest could furnish him all the help he needed in carrying on the worship. Only the large shrines demanded a varied list of attendants. In this list would be included (i) heralds, and others who assisted in performing the sacrifices, e.g. the hieropoioi ; (2) those whose duty it was under the supervision of the priests to take proper care of the 1 Plato, Z^f.io, 909 D; Aristotle, 2>r#. 7 (6). 8. i8,p. 1322 b. Cp. CJ.A.ll.6io. 2 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 604. 3 Foucart, Mimoire sur I' affranchisement des esclaves, Paris, 1886; Weil, Ath. Mitth. 4 (1879) 25 f. 4 [Lysias] 6. 51, p. 107; cp. Plato, Politicus, 290 C, for the distinction of priest and seer (ji&vrui). 6 Aristotle, De repub. 7 (6). 8. 18 f., p. 13225. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 83 temple and its utensils, the sacred precinct, and the properties of the shrine (VCWKO/HM) ; and (3) the officials who under the priest managed the finances of such shrines as had any considerable property (ie/oora/iuu, KaAa/oerai). To this list might be added musicians, and those who were appointed to perform some special function at one of the greater festivals (e.g. dppr)6poi and Kavt]- 6poi at the Panathenaea). 1 In addition to the priests and attendants who were always attached to some one shrine, there were state officials of religion whose duties were more general. 2 The kings at Sparta and the archon eponymos at Athens had a general supervision of all cult matters ; in particular, cases of sacrilege were tried before them, on complaint of priest or citizen. When a new cult was to be established or some important change made in ritual, the senate and the people voted on the question; either the priest or some special commission executed their decision. 3 A commission of hieropoioi at Athens (tepoTroiot icar' cviavrov) provided the victims for some of the greater sacrifices and had some supervision of the administration of all the temples ; other state commissions were appointed regularly (e.g. on temple repairs, tepwv eTrio-Keuacrrai' ) with more specific functions. 4 Some of the state officials retained the duty of the earlier kings to sacrifice on behalf of the people. The prytanies offered sacrifices at the opening of an assembly, the pole- march sacrificed to Artemis and Enyalius, the generals (orpaT^yot) sacrificed for the army. 5 These religious duties of state officials were only secondary. In general the organization of religion crystallized about the individual shrines ; it was the duty of the state to give such supervision as was necessary to keep up in due form the ritual at these shrines. 4. Forms of Worship : (a) Prayers, hymns, curses, oaths. In the Homeric poems a wish is often accompanied by an appeal 1 C.I.G. 2715 ; Aristotle, Athen. Pol. 18 ; Pausanias, i. 27. 3 ; C.I.A. III. 917-918. 2 Aristotle, Athen. Pol. 30; Schoemann, Griech. Alt. 2. 433 f. 3 Hermes, 21 (1886) 91, 1. 9; C.I.A. II. 477 b. 4 Cp. Schoemann, Griech. Alt. 2. 427 f. and references. 6 C.I.A. II. 392, 408; Aristotle, Athen. Pol. 58; C.I.A. II. 302. 84 GREEK RELIGION to the greater gods, " Father Zeus and Athena and Apollo," " May Athena grant me power in war," " Lord Zeus, may Telemachus be blessed among men and gain his heart's desire ; " * such simple prayers constantly express the poet's conception of man's depen- dence on the gods. Prayer or a prayer-hymn regularly accom- panies the sacrifice to express the attitude of the worshipper and the special purpose of the sacrifice. It may consist of a joyful paean, a chant of worship (oAoAvy?/) , or a formal petition. 2 Prayer is appropriate also when some token may indicate the presence of the gods or when one passes a shrine. In dire need the heroes seek divine help, Chryses when his daughter is refused by Aga- memnon, the Trojan women when Hector tells of the army's repulse, Odysseus worn out with swimming or fearing the out- come of the struggle with the suitors; 4 the heroes prayed in need, and in most instances help came. Nor should the regular worship at the principal meal of the day be forgotten, nor Odys- seus's prayer before retiring at night. 5 The choice of the god to whom prayer was made depended on what god was nearest ; nearest in place, nearest in ties of personal relation, or nearest in his interest in the subject of the prayer. 6 It is part of the epic conception of Zeus that prayer was offered to him more frequently than to any other god. The longer and more formal prayers 7 included (i) an invoca- tion citing some titles of the god and perhaps mentioning the sphere of his activity; (2) an alleged ground for answering the prayer former sacrifices to the god, former answers to prayer by the god, or an appeal to his pity; and (3) the petition proper. The reason why prayer should be answered was in almost every instance the bond which united the man and his god ; it was not a bargain, do ut des, but a social relation, cemented, to be sure, by mutual gifts. 1 Iliad, 4. 288; Odyssey, j. 311; Iliad, 17. 561 ; Odyssey, 17. 354. 2 Iliad, i. 473; Odyssey, 4. 767. 8 Odyssey, 20. 112; 13. 356. 4 Iliad, 1.37 f.; 6. 115, 240; 16. 514 f.; Odyssey, 5. 444 f. ; 20. 98. 6 Odyssey, 12. 337. 8 Odyssey, 13. 356; 20. 100; Iliad, 16. 227 f. . //tad, I. 39 ; i. 451 ; 5. 115 ; 16. 333 ; j6. 514 ; Odyssey, 2. 262, THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 85 The religiousness of prayer in the epic lies in the frank, full recognition that " all men need the gods." 1 When Hector es- caped him, Diomedes assumed that he must have prayed to Apollo before entering the battle ; the man who prayed to the immortals did not come in last in the race or fail with the bow ; the wall which the Greeks made without prayer could not prove a protection for them. 2 Any deeper or more personal feeling than would be exhibited toward a powerful and kindly human chief is not suggested. Even the striking passage on " Prayers of penitence . . . daughters of great Zeus . . . that have their task to go in the steps of sin ... to heal the harm," 3 out of line as it is with the main spirit of the poem, hardly suggests that prayer opens the way to any intimate spiritual relation with the gods. It so happens that later literature does not contain many exam- ples of prayers, though the Attic drama still shows epic influence in this particular. 4 Men -pray to the gods, for from the gods come all good things. It was especially at the beginning of any new undertaking that the need of divine help was felt. At daybreak Helios was greeted with prayer; dinner began and ended with prayer; a prayer was offered when men entered the athletic games, or went on a hunt, that they might be successful ; prayers were offered before exhibitions in the theatre, at the opening of the assembly, and especially when setting out for war ; the farmer prayed when he began ploughing, and offered his first-fruits with thanks to the gods ; 5 Demosthenes began his oration on the crown with a prayer that the judges might be guided to a just decision by 1 Odyssey, 1.48. 3 Iliad, 23. 546 ; 23.863; 7.448-463. 8 Iliad, 9. 502 f. 4 E.g. Aeschylus, Suppl. 627 f.; Sept. Theb. 146 f.; Aristophanes, Equit. 551 f.; Nub 563 f. ; cp. Xenophon, Oecon. 6. I. 6 Before a new undertaking, Plato, Tim. 27 C ; Leg. 712 B ; Daybreak, Plato, Symp. 220 D ; Leg. 887 E; Meals, Diotogenes in Stobaeus, Flor. 43. 130; Xenophon, Hell. 4. 7. 4; Hunt, Arrian, Cyneget, 34; Xenophon, Cyneget, 6. 13; Theatre, De- mosthenes, 21. 51-52; Assembly, Aeschines, i. 23; Thucydides, 8. 70; War, Thu- cydides, 2. 74; 6. 32; Farming, Hesiod, Erga, 336; Diodorus Sic., Exc. 23. 13. 86 GREEK RELIGION the gods, and we are told that Pericles never spoke without a prayer that he might " utter no unfitting word." l In the orators the phrase "pray to the gods" means hardly more than "de- sire ; " 2 such is the natural result when the Athenians prayed for whatever they desired with little thought of worship. On the other hand, Socrates simply prayed the gods to send good things, on the ground that they knew best what was good ; for he thought that " those who prayed for gold or silver or power to rule or any such thing " were asking for what might turn out to be either good or bad. 8 A fable of Babrius 4 illustrates the folly of prayer for par- ticular things : a farmer vows sacrifices to Hermes, Pan, and the Nymphs in case he finds the thief of his cattle ; the thief proves to be a lion, and he must vow yet greater sacrifices to escape it himself. Prayers for the city that it may be free from dissension, trouble, and untimely death, again "that the Greeks may have prosperity," that barley, wine, and figs may be abundant, that women may bear chil- dren, that the citizens regain all good things they have lost, and that weapons of war be no longer needed, 5 such prayers show a truer sense of dependence on the gods. Only a few writers like Aeschylus and Pindar and Xenophon give any real spiritual content to prayer. 6 The choice of the right god when one prayed was no light matter. In the country Socrates prayed to Pan ; Zeus Boulaios received the prayers of the assembly, Zeus Ktesios, prayers in the home. 7 Women ordinarily prayed to Demeter and Persephone, or in love matters to Aphrodite. 8 The choruses in the drama invoke the greater gods of their native city. Before battle men 1 Demosthenes, 18. i ; Plutarch, Pericles, 8, p. 156. 2 Eg. Demosthenes, 3. 18 ; 18. 89. 8 Xenophon, Mem, i. 3. 2. Cp. [Plato] Alcib. 148 8-149; Plutarch, /nsf. Lacon. 27, p. 239 A. * Babrius, 23. 6 Athenaeus, 15, p. 694 C; Aristophanes, Pax, 1320 f; cp. Aves, 878 f. Aeschylus, Suppl. 670; Pindar, Olytn. 13. 115; Pyth. i. 29; Nem. 8. 35; Xenophon, Mem. 2. 2. 14. J Plato, Phaedrus, 279 B ; Antiphon, 6. 45 ; Isaeus, 8. 16. 8 Aristophanes, Thesm. 286 . THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 87 prayed to the Muses, perhaps because they were attendants of the archer god Apollo. 1 The lead plates recovered at Dodona 2 show that one of the frequent questions propounded to the oracle was the question as to what god should be invoked for aid under some special conditions. In Homer men prayed to the gods with whom they had some personal connection ; in later times they sought the god presiding over that special province in which their request fell. The name of the god, however, was not at all so important as, for instance, in India or at Rome. The grounds for expecting prayer to be answered were much the same as in the epic : because the request was a just one, because the man was a worshipper of the god, because the god pitied his need. 3 Commonly there was an appeal to remember the sacrifices that had been offered, coupled with vows of special sacrifices in case the prayer was answered. There was no assurance in the mind of the worshipper that the god would hear or grant his prayer. 4 Impurity or sin of the worshipper might stand in the way. Some things in the rule of the world were fixed by divine decree and could not be changed by prayer. Moreover it was necessary that the man work with the god, if he was to gain his petition : the carter whose wagon was stuck in the mud must goad on his oxen and push the wheels before Heracles would help him. 5 Thanksgiving rarely went with petition as a part of prayer. When a state was freed from danger a special sacrifice was offered (xapio-TT/piov) , and in a few instances this sacrifice was repeated year after year. 6 The individual expressed his gratitude to the god ordinarily by a votive offering. 7 A real sacrifice of thanks- 1 Plutarch, Lycurg. 21, p. 53. 2 Carapanos, Dodone et ses mines, pi. 34-36. 8 Just Cause, Aeschylus, Choepfi. 783; Former Worship, Herodotus, i. 87; Sophocles, Electro,, 1376; Future Worship, Aeschylus, Eum. 287 f. ; Personal Relation, Isocrates, 9. 14; Pity, Aeschylus, Suppl. 215. 4 Pindar, Olym. 8.8; Xenophon, Cyrop. i. 6. 6; Hesiod, Erga, 725; Aeschylus, Again. 396. 5 Xenophon, Cyrop. i. 6. 5-6; Babrius, 20. 6 Plutarch, de gloria Ath. 7, p. 349 F. J See 5 infra, p. 92 f. Cp. Xenophon, Ages. n. 2 ; Anth. Pal. 6. 174 ; 6. 203, etc. 88 GREEK RELIGION giving is described by Xenophon : the prayer is, " Zeus Patroos, Helios, and ye other gods, receive these offerings because ye have granted many favors and as the expression of thanksgiving for granting me guidance by omens." l Is such prayer religious? It can of course be interpreted as a mere bargain with the gods ; there is little doubt that the case sometimes lay thus in the mind of the worshipper ; it seems to me, however, that without question a genuine religious feeling did commonly exist, that the prayer was ordinarily a request from real gods and the votive offering was something other than mere pay- ment of a debt incurred. Certainly the prayers for moral guidance and help which occur in Pindar, the prayer of Xenophon's knight 2 that he may please the gods and do his duty in thought, word, and deed, and many prayers in the Attic drama, rise far above any mere bargain with the gods. No sharp line exists between prayer and the prayer-hymn. The paeans to Apollo, the dithyrambs to Dionysus, the processional hymns (TiyxxrooV), the hymns sung with the sacred dance about the altar, are a most important part of religious worship. 3 No doubt each temple had its own ritual hymns. 4 The hymns of Isyllus at Epidaurus and the hymns recently found at Delphi are examples of hymns actually used in worship. 5 They illustrate how invocation of the god, recital of his deeds, and petition were com- bined in connection with sacrifice. When men appeared before the gods they stood with bare heads, or in extreme need they might grasp the feet of the divine image. 6 Their attitude expressed trust rather than humility or fear ; the 1 Xenophon, Cyrop. 8. 7. 3 ; cp. 4. I. z. 2 Xenophon, Hipp. i. i. 8 Pausanias, 10. 7. a; Proclus in Photius, Bibl. 985; Athenaeus, 14, p. 619 B. 4 Aristotle, Pol. 5 (8). 7, p. 1341 b; Plutarch, de mus. 6, p. 1133 B; C.I.G. 2715. 6 Wilamowitz, Isyllos von Epidauros, 1886 ; Bull. Corr. Hell. 17 (1893) 561 f. ; 18 (1894) 345 f. ; 19 (1895) 393 f.; Fairbanks, "The Greek Paean," Cornell Studies, XII. 8 E.g. Sophocles, Elec. 453; Voullieme, Quomodo veteres adoraverint; "Atti- tudes of Worship in Greece," The Biblical World, 1897, 98 f. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 89 Greek did not kneel or bow his head, but looked toward the god with glad confidence. In presenting a sacrifice he raised his right hand, palm out, as though he would touch the god ; in need he held out both hands, palm up, as though he would grasp the god or receive the gift he craved. 1 Without any trace of the mystical or magical, his prayer was a request from a god whose interest in him and care for him he did not question. The curse is a prayer (dpa) not for good to one's self, but for evil to another, a form of prayer common among the Hebrews, though it finds little place in Christianity. At Athens the herald pronounced a curse on traitors at the opening of each assembly ; on criminals who were beyond the reach of direct punishment by the state, punishment was invoked from the gods ; temples were protected by curses against any who should desecrate them. 2 Thus a curse was pronounced by the Eumolpidae on the absent Alci- biades for sacrilege, and when he was acquitted of the charge the curse was formally withdrawn. 3 The curses of individuals belong to a different sphere. It is characteristic of the unorganized state of Greek religion that Olympian gods were not invoked in these curses, but that the magical element was in the ascendant. Where the appeal for ven- geance was made to gods, it was directed to the gods of the lower regions. 4 It was not enough to utter the curse ; in order to make it truly effective it was written on lead tablets and buried by the house of the cursed person or in the shrine of some chthonic god. 5 " I bind tongue, hands, feet, etc. of A. B." is a common formula ; the reason for the curse is omitted. Oftentimes the writing is con- fused, confused enough to puzzle the person against whom it is directed, but clear enough for the gods to understand. A third group includes curses against those who might disturb 1 E.g. Iliad, 5. 174 ; Euripides, Elec. 592. 2 Demosthenes, 23. 97 ; Isocrates, 4. 157 ; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 584 ; C.I.G. 2919. 8 Diodorus Sic. 13. 69 ; Plutarch, Alcib. 22, p. 202; 33, p. 210. 4 Iliad, 9. 566 f. ; but cp. Odyssey, 17. 494. 6 C.I.G. 5773; Newton, Discoveries in Cnidos, II. 2. 720 f. ; Wiinsch, Defixionum tabellae Atticae. 90 GREEK RELIGION a grave, either to rob it of valuables or to place in it the corpse of one who had no right there. Curses invoking the vengeance of the gods of the dead on those who disturbed the grave are not infrequently found buried with the dead. 1 The oath is nothing but a curse which a man or a group of men place on themselves in case they break their word. In the epic FIG. 19. RELIEF FROM THE ASCLEPIEUM AT ATHENS The worshipper at the left grasps the altar with his right hand in the presence of Asclepius and his daughter Epione. Achilles and Hector swear by their sceptres that they are stating the truth ; Agamemnon invokes the gods to punish him as a per- jurer if he has harmed Briseis ; when the issue of war is staked on a duel, wine is mixed and poured out, and sheep are slain, with a prayer to Zeus, the all-seeing sun, rivers, and the earth, that they 1 Rohde, Psyche, 630 f. and references there cited. guard the oath. 1 The ritual is symbolic, for the prayer is added that the perjurer's blood may be poured out like the wine, that he may die like the sheep. The skill in false swearing which Hermes gave Autolycus seems to be the power to deceive his associates without rendering himself liable to the curse of the oath. 2 The form of the oath in Greece was to pledge something valu- able, the sceptre as the sign of royal power, or one's life, or one's welfare, or one's children, with a prayer that the gods take them away if the oath were broken. 3 In treaties between states it was custom- ary to invoke as witnesses one or more of the chief gods of each state. In common life at Athens, if one may judge from the com- edies of Aristophanes, Poseidon was frequently invoked in oaths. The oath of Socrates, " by the goose," was a satire on the ready use of oaths by his countrymen. Very solemn oaths were taken at a shrine, sometimes grasping the altar of the god, as though to be sure the gods heard the oath. 4 As the Homeric heroes shed blood and poured out wine with an oath as symbolizing the death that should come to them if their oath were broken, so Olympian gods swore by the Styx, the river of death, as if invoking death on the god who swore falsely. 5 At Athens citizens swore allegiance to the state, every official took oath on entering and leaving office, and the oath was ad- ministered to those who came before the courts. As the officials, in particular the jurors, were numerous, this form of oath was far more common than in our own day. Perjury, however, was not punished by the state ; the oath remained a matter of religion, binding only on those who feared the gods. The ordeal may be regarded as a form of oath. 6 The guards in Sophocles's Antigone are ready to take hot irons in their hands, to go through fire, or to swear by the gods that they are guiltless. 1 Iliad, i. 233; 10. 321 ; 9. 132; 3. 103 f., 269 f. 2 Odyssey, 19. 396. 8 Sophocles, Track. 1189; Lysias, 12. 10; 32. 13; Lycurgus, Leocr. 79. 4 Andocides, i. 98,126; Thucydides, 5. 50 ; Lycurgus, Leocr. 20 ; Demosthenes, 23. 68. 5 Hesiod, Theog. 784 f. ; cp. Dummler, Delphika, 1894. 6 Sophocles, Ant. 264 f. ; Pausanias, 7. 25. 8 ; cp. Bekker, Charikles, i. 278 t 9 2 GREEK RELIGION To drink the blood of a bull is mentioned as a characteristic Greek ordeal. 1 The references to such ordeals in which a man submits his case to the gods are few, nor does the practice find any place in Greek courts of law. 5. Forms of Worship : (b) Votive offerings, processions, ath- letic contests. The Greek votive offering was a gift to some god, ordinarily in acknowledg- ment of special blessing. 2 It was often promised beforehand, as Odysseus promised to make rich gifts (the arms of Dolon and a sacrifice) to Athena, and Hector vowed to decorate Apollo's temple with the arms of the conquered. 3 r r ~_,. r _ l ~~~'~ ~~^~\^l\ In great need Hecabe car- L'W-UJ 3 '" L_-J^.71 ned a beautiful garment to the temple of Athena and laid it on the knees of the goddess to secure her favor. 4 When Telemachus thinks Odysseus a god, he prays, "Be gracious," and promises sacrifices and golden gifts ; so the companions of Odysseus think to propitiate Helios. 5 Gar- ments and gold accompany the thank-offerings of Aegisthus ; Achilles offers to Patroclus the hair which had been vowed to Spercheius in case he returned home in safety ; a tithe of agri- cultural products is mentioned in the story of Artemis and the Calydonian boar. 6 In a word men appear before a god, as before 1 Aristophanes, Et/uit. 83; Pausanias, 7. 25. 13. 2 See Schoemann, Griech. Alt. 2. 218 f. ; Reisch, Die gruchische Weihgeschenke ; and especially Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings, 1902. 8 Iliad, 10. 463, 570; 7. 81 f. 4 Iliad, 6. 303. 6 Odyssey, 16. 185 ; 12. 346 f. Odyssey, 3. 274 ; Iliad, 23. 146, cp. 10. 15 ; 9. 534. FIG. 20. RELIEF FROM THESSALY (Thebes) Two locks of hair hang in a niche below the inscription " Philombrotus, Apthonetus, (sons) of Deinomachus, (to) Poseidon." THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 93 a king, with some gift ; the purpose may be to secure the god's favor, or it may be to maintain friendly relations, as when the host sends away his guest with a gift. In later times the votive gift is either a thank-offering, pure and simple, or the payment of a vow. Such gifts were offered by the state in gratitude for signal divine favor, such as victory in war or delivery from pestilence; tithes or first-fruits were also brought to certain shrines in gratitude for the regular harvests. At the shrine of Demeter at Eleusis, for instance, offerings of the first-fruits were received regularly from many Greek states and constituted a considerable part of the regular income of the shrine. 1 The temple of Apollo at Phigaleia was erected in gratitude for deliverance from the plague. 2 ' The statue of Apollo the Averter by Calamis, FlG . 2I ._ CL AY TABLET FROM that of the Locust Apollo (assigned CORINTH to Pheidias), the Hermes Carrying a An artist is represented at work ram at Tanagra, commemorated special on an ec l uestrian statue - cases of divine favor. 3 The victory at Marathon led the Athenians to build a treasure-house for votive offerings at Delphi, and later to erect the statue of Athena Promachos on the Acropolis. 4 The temple of Zeus at Olympia is said to have been built with the spoils of war. 5 The arms of the enemy might be dedicated in a "trophy," or hung in a temple, as shields were fastened on the architrave of the Parthenon. 6 After the battle of Salamis, ships were dedicated to the gods ; the serpent tripod set up at Delphi after Plataea is one of the most interesting of these offerings ; 1 C.I.A., IV. i. 2, p. 59, no. 27 b. 2 Pausanias, 8. 41. 8. 5 Pausanias, 5. 10. 2. 6 Arrian, Anab. i. 16. 7 ; Plutarch, 8 Pausanias, i. 3. 4; i. 24. 8 ; 9. 22. I. 4 Pausanias, 10. n. 5; I. 28. 2. ^ is /3o/uoj; Thucydides, 1. 126. 6, and schol.; Pau- sanias i. 26. 5 ; 8. 2. 3. 1 Pausanias, 8. 37. 7 ; Xenophon, Anab. 5. 3. 9 ; tirdpy/jLara, Dittenberger, Sylloge, 630. 5 Von Fritze, Die Rauchopfer bei den Griechen, 1894. 6 K. Bernhardi, Das Tiankopfer bei Homer, 1885. IO4 GREEK RELIGION vow or prayer is more effective if it is attended with a gift of wine to the gods ; before any important undertaking if a burnt sacrifice is not offered, at least wine is freshly mixed and poured out with a prayer for success. In later usage libations at the sacrifice and at the banquet are universal ; the practice of making libations of wine to reen- force a prayer is not so often mentioned as in the epic. In these in- stances the libation is made from mixed wine and water, since the gods, like men, did not drink wine unmixed. 1 The Athenians offered a mixture of milk, honey, and water (with- out wine, /AtXiKpaTov) to such lesser gods as the Muse Mnemosyne, Eos, Helios, Selene, the Nymphs, and to Aphro- dite Ourania. 2 Zeus Hypatos in Athens re- FIG. 26. ATHENIAN RED-FIGURED VASE PAINTING (Kylix, Athens) A youth with kylix and pitcher pours a libation on an altar ; inscription, " Athenodotos Kalos." ceived no animal offer- ing and no wine. The Eumenides and gods of the lower world generally received "soothing libations" without wine. 3 In some cults it is possible that this peculiarity dated back to a time when wine was not yet in use ; in other instances it may be due to the feeling that wine is not " soothing," not a suitable drink for gods easily made angry. 1 E.g. Thucydides, 6. 32. i. 2 Schol. Sophocles, Oed. Col. 100 (Polemon). 8 Pausanias, i. 26. 5; Aeschylus, Bum. 107; Sophocles, Oed. Col. too, 481; Euripides, Iph. Taur. 160 f. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 105 7. Forms of Worship : (d) Propitiatory sacrifice, purification. To angry gods or gods easily roused to anger the Greeks offered sacrifices very different from the glad communion meal described in the preceding section. There is little doubt that human sacrifice was occasionally practised by the Greeks, though it is difficult to find well authenticated cases of it in Greek history. When the Greeks set out for Troy, story describes the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, 1 and that of Polyxena as they set out for home. Creon is said to have sacrificed his son to save Thebes from a besieging army, while Codrus gave up his own life to save Athens on a similar occasion. 2 Epimenides is reported to have sacrificed a youth when he purified Athens from the plague. These cases are mythical, but they represent the principle that when the lives of many are in danger from war or plague, the vol- untary sacrifice of some man may turn aside the anger of gods. If the story could be traced to some earlier authority than Plu- tarch, we might easily believe that Themistocles sacrificed three captive Persians before the battle of Salamis. 3 In the worship of Zeus Lykaios in Arcadia, of Zeus at Rhodes, of Apollo at Leucas, human sacrifice is said to have been offered up to the time when it was strictly forbidden by the emperor Libanius. 4 A criminal condemned to death, however, was the victim ; his death in the service of religion was said to purify the city from evil. 8 In actual practice the propitiatory sacrifices before a battle or a voyage were of animals, sometimes said to be substituted for men. At some few regular centres of worship, particularly in cults of Dionysus and of Artemis, goats or cattle were also said to be substituted for human beings, and human garments were put on the animals as if the gods would be better pleased by such an illusion. 6 It is, then, entirely possible that some of the propitia- tory sacrifices to be described in this section involved the sub- 1 fOvaev avrov iraiSa . . . tirySttv Qprjicluv aTj/mrwc, Aeschylus, Agam. 1417. 2 Euripides, Phoen. 911 f. ; Lycurgus, Leocr. 86 f. 8 Plutarch, Themistocles, 13; cp. Aristides,g. 4 Pausanias, 8. 2. 3 and 6; Strabo, 10, p. 452. 5 Harpocration, s.v. 0ap/xa/c6s. 6 Pausanias, 9. 8. 2; Aeiian, De not. anim. 12. 34; Paroemiogr.graec. i, p. 402. io6 GREEK RELIGION stitution of animals where men had once been sacrificed; the principle, however, would hold good in an extremely small num- ber of cases, and can in no sense be used to explain this type of sacrifice. As for the fact that these propitiatory sacrifices are not mentioned in the epic, 1 it can hardly be explained on the ground that they are not properly Greek. They are not normally offered to the Olympian gods, the gods of the epic, consequently there was no occasion for mentioning them. The fundamental fact that the epic neglects one whole side of Greek religion, the worship of local spirits, agricultural deities, and the dead, together with magi- cal rites and propitiatory rites, must be considered in another connection. 2 The ordinary sacrifice of propitiatory character differed from the communion meal in occasion, in ritual, and in the gods to whom it was offered. The communion-meal offering assumed that the gods were favorable, whether it was offered when they had already signalized their favor or before some important undertak- ing. On the other hand the propitiatory sacrifice meant that men felt the anger of the gods in the danger or trouble which was already on them ; or again when it was offered before battle or before a voyage or before sowing grain, it was intended to pacify the possible anger of the gods before any damage had been done. 3 The ritual was different. A black animal was ordinarily chosen ; 4 it was brought to a low mound of earth (rx da y> Sulphur, etc., find standing beside a column. a place in the ceremony. The skin of a ram sacrificed to Zeus Meilichios (Aios KoiSiov) had peculiar power to absorb the taint of evil. 4 The mur- derer flees to another city and seeks purification there as a sup- pliant ; those about to be married or to be initiated in the myste- ries are purified by their friends ; the assembly-place and theatre are sprinkled with pigs' blood by city officials. 4 It is only when a city or a people is to be purified that some priest or prophet is l Rohde, Rhein. Mus. 50 (1895) 6 f. 2 Aeschylus, Choeph. 967. 8 Apollonius Rhod. 4. 702 f. and schol. ; Pausanias, 5. 16. 8. 4 Preller, Polemon, 139 f. 6 Herodotus, i. 35; Aeschylus, Earn. 835, and schol.; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 653- 68. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS in needed. In the celebrated case of the plague at Athens after the murder of the Cylonidae, we are told that the seer Epimenides was fetched from Crete to direct the purification. 1 The first step consisted in the removal from the land of all the guilty persons, including the bones of those who had died in the meantime. Then black and white sheep were brought to the altar where the sacrilege had been committed, let loose to follow their own course, and sacrificed on the spot where each chanced to lie down. Some writers add that a youth also was sacrificed. In time of plague Tanagra was purified by Hermes himself who bore a ram on his shoulders around the walls of the city; 2 the evil spirits " entered into " the ram, as into the swine of Gadara, and were borne away. The regular purifications had to do mainly with agriculture. At the Thesmophoria pigs were thrown into a hole in the ground as a sacrifice to Eubouleus and Persephone ; later the decayed re- mains of the flesh were mixed with seed by superstitious persons. 8 In the early spring at the Diasia individuals offered animals (or cakes in the forms of animals) to propitiate Zeus Meilichios ; the purpose apparently was to remove any taint which might cause damage to the crops as the result of divine anger. Again in early summer at the Thargelia danger was averted from the ripening crop by purification of the city ; in addition to the sacrifice of ani- mals, two men (apiwKoi) were escorted through the city to gather up all taint of evil ; they were then driven from the coun- try, or in earlier time, slain in sacrifice. 4 The meaning of the rites of purification is to be sought in two directions. First, men felt the necessity of removing the guilt ; the murderer must leave the country, before either he or the coun- try can be purified ; an animal or a man led through the city with proper rites may attract the taint of evil and carry it off when he is driven from the land ; mere washing may be enough to remove 1 Diogenes Laer. i. no; Aristotle, Athen. Pol. i. 2 Pausanias, 9. 22. i. 8 Rhtin. Mus. 25 (1870) 549 ; cp. Lasaulx, Studien des classischen Alter turns, 262 f. 4 Harpocration, s.v. 6poi) , envoys from the col- THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 115 onies, victors in the athletic contests, those who bore utensils of sacrifice, priests and attendants driving cattle to be offered to the goddess, and marshals directing the procession. At the great altar before the temple of Athena the animals were sacrificed, that all the people of the city might share the great banquet in honor of the city's goddess. On the last day came a boat race at the Peiraeus, for Athena had brought glory to her city through its fleet. Among the contests of the previous days the war dance (pyrrich) and the combination of chariot and foot race, in which a man (aTro/Jarr/;) was driven across the stadium only to leap from the chariot and run back to the starting-point, were peculiar to this festival ; other athletic contests resembled those at the greater games (e.g. at Olympia), except that the prize was a large jar of oil from Athena's sacred grove of olive trees. 1 It is said that Peisistratus introduced the practice of having the Homeric poems recited by bards ; Pericles pursued the same policy in adding other musical contests with cithara and flute and song. For these contests the first prize was a gold or silver wreath, with gifts of money for the first five successful contestants. In honor of Athena and of Apollo musical contests were as important as athletic games. From local festivals of somewhat this type, we may assume that the Panhellenic festivals were developed. Common language and common descent never proved strong enough bands to connect the Greek city-states into one nation ; military genius and power of organization were never united long enough to overcome the love of local independence ; the influence of a few great shrines was almost the only force tending toward one Greek nation. The Delphic oracle was universally recognized, and at times the con- gress of states meeting at Delphi had considerable influence in settling minor disputes, or in establishing some principles of inter- state law. The games at Delphi, the Isthmus, and Nemea, but far more the games celebrated at Olympia, for the time they were in progress united all the Greek states in one enthusiasm for what was distinctively Greek. 1 Aristotle, Athen. Pol. 60. GREEK RELIGION BED OF THE CLADETJ RETAINING WALL FIG. 31. PLAN OF THE RUINS AT OLYMPIA THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 117 German excavators have laid bare the ruins of the sacred pre- cinct of Zeus at Olympia, the great temple of Zeus from the fifth century, the altar of heaped-up ashes on which the people of Elis offered daily sacrifice, the old temple of Hera, the shrine of the hero Pelops, the prytaneum where the victors were feasted, the gymnasium where the contestants trained, the stadium where the races were held, the treasure-houses for the votive offerings of the different cities, besides many remains of the latter classical period. 1 In late summer every fourth year heralds proclaimed a sacred peace for the celebration of the Olympic games, for as early as the seventh century the different Greek states sent participants and spectators to the scene. First came the contestants, to carry on their training here at the spot where the contest was to be held. Embassies to the games from the different states would soon begin to arrive, while merchants in great numbers brought their wares for sale ; artist and poet came to help celebrate the victors by their art ; orators found opportunity to win fame in addressing the crowds ; for more than 1000 years (till it was forbidden in 393 A.D.) the festival proved a splendid focus of all that was best in the common life of the Greeks. The first day of the festival was devoted to the great sacrifice to Zeus, in whose honor the games were held, and to the necessary preliminaries. Judges (If e llano dikai) and contestants appeared before Zeus Horkios, the former to swear that they would act with impartial justice, the latter to swear that they had observed the rules for training during the preceding ten months, and that they would refrain from everything dishonorable in the games. The judges then made up the final list of contestants, omitting those whom they found unworthy, investigating the Hellenic descent of the applicants, and arranging the contests of youths so as to pre- vent any unfairness. The second day saw the running and wrest- ling and boxing of the youths under twenty, those only excepted 1 A convenient presentation of the subject is Hachtmann, Olympia und seine Festspiele, 1899. n8 GREEK RELIGION who had been adjudged strong enough to compete with men. On the next day the men, entirely naked and anointed with oil, entered the lists. The running would not appeal to a modern athlete, for the course was strewn with soft sand and the runners waved their arms vigorously in their efforts to cover such a course. The Olympic period was named for the victor in the single course of about 200 yards (600 Greek feet =192. 27 metres). This single course was followed by the endurance race of 24 courses, nearly three miles, and the double course. In the wrestling three throws (rpia^eiv) were necessary for a victory. The celebrated Milo of Croton won this prize six times ; the seventh time he was conquered by a fellow- citizen who had learned how to avoid his fatal grip. The boxers had their arms and hands wound with leather thongs, to which leaden weights were later added. The skill of the contestants lay in parrying and avoiding the blows till one ac- knowledged himself beaten ; more than once a boxer was crippled or killed by his opponent. The last contest, the pankration, was the severest of all. Wrestling and boxing were combined and even throttling was permitted, a battle royal in which only the strongest and most skilful might participate. On the fourth day came the horse races, the pentathlon, and the foot race in armor. The hippodrome is said to have provided a course up and back, just less than a mile in length. At one end of the central dividing wall was a statue of Hippodameia crown- ing Pelops, victor in the chariot race. On either side and at the east end sat the spectators. Each car, a low two-wheeled affair with body open behind, was confined behind a rope in its own little compartment at the west end ; by a somewhat artificial device these ropes were dropped in such a way as to permit the drivers to begin the race together. The race included twelve courses ; if the length of the course is correctly given, the race of about 1 1 miles must have been a test of endurance rather than of speed. At Delphi on one occasion no less than 41 cars took part in a single race ; such scenes of confusion as Sophocles describes, car crashing into car, driver and horses in most immi- THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 119 nent danger in the melee, must often have added to the excite- ment. 1 The prize of victory was awarded not to the driver for his skill, but to the owner who had raised or secured such excellent horses. The races of two-horse cars, of colts, etc., need hardly be mentioned beside the main race of four-horse chariots. The pentathlon was a peculiarly Greek contest in that it tended to develop skill in all forms of athletics. The long jump, the 200 yards dash, throwing a discus of about four pounds, throwing the spear, and wrestling, one after the other, tested the man's powers in every direction ; only those who came up to a high standard in the early contests, entered the wrestling, and the victor here was victor in the series. The race of men in armor, a double course, completed the games, and in the evening those who had received the palm branch of victory were banqueted. The prizes were publicly bestowed on the fifth and last day. Wreaths of wild olive, cut with due ceremony from the tree desig- nated by the oracle, had been lying in the temple before the image of Zeus ; 2 now the judges placed them on the brows of the victors and heralds proclaimed name and state of the victors to the applauding crowd. After the victors had sacrificed to Zeus, the embassies from the different states joined in a magnificent proces- sion from one altar to another. The people of Elis served a ban- quet to the victors, a Pindar was engaged to sing their praises, they were escorted home in triumph, their crowns were dedicated in the principal temple at home, and they received substantial tokens of their countrymen's favor. At Olympia also, the victor might dedicate a statue to the god, though only to him who had won three victories was a portrait statue permitted. Not even the war with Persia, that great struggle to vindicate Greek freedom against what claimed to be a world power, united the different states of Greece as they were united in the Panhel- lenic games. Men offered to the gods the exhibition of their strength and skill as an expression of the worship of all Greece, 1 Pindar, Pyth. 5. 49; Sophocles, Elec. 698 f. 2 Pindar, Olym. 3. 13 f. ; Pausanias, 5. 7. 7 ; 5. 20. i ; cp. Lucian, Anach. 15. 120 GREEK RELIGION and every state accepted this worship as the common inheritance of one people. 9. Worship of the Individual and the Home. The variety of worship in the city was to some extent reflected in the home. The goddess of the home as such was Hestia (Vesta), the per- sonified hearth flame. Her round altar wound with white fillets stood in the main room (dvSpuiv), for the hearth had from earliest days been the centre of home life. 1 The city also had its central hearth, where burned the fire of Hestia, symbol that the city was a larger home. Every sacrifice is said to have begun and ended with the worship of Hestia. In the home sacrifices of animals were offered to the gods of the hearth (0eoi C^EOTIOI), including Hestia. Every day libations were twice offered to her at meals. And on all occasions which emphasized the home departing on a journey or returning home, the reception of the new wife, birth, death, the coming of new slaves on all such occasions the god- dess of the home was worshipped. At Athens the first shrine as one entered the house was a stone in the form of a truncated cone which stood just outside the door. This was at the same time altar and symbol of the god. Here to Apollo the Guardian men prayed in time of plague or other trouble ; the home comer stopped to worship here ; on receipt of good news fragrant herbs burned on this altar. 2 At the door the bridal pair stopped to receive on this altar the new fire for their home. The patron deities of the race (Oeol Trdrpioi) had their worship perhaps in a side room off the main hall. The goddess of the city, Athena, as well as the gods of the family, the deme, the tribe, the phratry, might find a place here; in fact men brought to their homes the worship of any city god in which they were interested. Small images of these gods were kept in cupboard-shrines, shrines the front of which often had the form of a temple (veuoacos), and 1 Cornutus, De nat. dear. 28 ; Diodorus Sic. 5. 68 ; the material is gathered (but not critically handled) by Petersen, Der Hausgottcsdienst der alien Griechen, 1851. 2 Sophocles, Elec. 637; Track. 209; Aeschylus, Agam. 1080 f. ; Aristophanes, Vesf. 875. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 121 were worshipped both at family feasts and at the time of their public worship. 1 As an altar of Zeus stood in the court of the palace in early times, 2 so there may often have been an altar of Zeus Herkeios in the open court of later houses, for he was wor- shipped in the home as well as publicly in the city. Probably images of marriage gods were installed in the bedroom of husband and wife. Finally gods of property and of good fortune found their place in the home. Zeus Ktesios was worshipped here to safeguard health and wealth. 3 His presence is said to have been symbolized by a two-handled vessel ; for purposes of worship the vessel, wound with wool, was filled with water, oil, and fruits of all kinds. Plutus, good fortune, Agathodaemon (success), and Hermes, god of trade, seem to have been worshipped occasionally with Zeus Ktesios. These different shrines that of Apollo Agyieus at the door, of Hestia in the main room (androti), of the gods of the family and the gods of property perhaps in side rooms, of marriage in the bridal chamber were not necessarily all present in every house, but they stand for the normal worship of the home. The worship of each day and of recurring festivals was brought to them. 4 It remains to speak of the special worship associated with the spe- cial events of family life. The religious ceremonies connected with birth had a double aim, to remove ceremonial uncleanness and to obtain divine favor for the new-born child. The olive wreath hung on the front door at the birth of a son or the woolen fillets at the birth of a daughter, which betokened the work of the future housewife or the honor to be won by the man, warned visitors from a house ceremonially impure. The ceremony of purification, the Amphidromia, is said by some authors to have taken place on the fifth day after birth, though it seems ordinarily to have been combined with the birth- 1 Cp. Schol. Aeschines, i. 10. 2 Iliad, ii. 774; cp. Plato, Polltia, i, p. 328 C. 3 Isaeus, 8. 16; Athenaeus, n, p. 473 C (Anticleides). 4 Hesiod, Erga, 336 f. ; Frag. 178. 122 GREEK RELIGION day feast on the tenth day. 1 After the mother, nurse, etc., had been purified, the women of the house laid aside their garments and ran around the hearth carrying the young child. The gifts which were brought consisted mainly of delicacies for the feast that followed ; one was never missing, the special cake (xapurios) which the slaves of the household prepared for the occasion. The sacrifice before the banquet (TO. yf.viOX.ia.) 2 was offered to the gods who preside over the growth of children, for example Apollo and Artemis. 3 The feast itself was peculiar in that the women of the family were present ; according to late authors delicacies of the table abounded, games like the cottabus were shared even by the women, and the festivities were prolonged far into the night. The enrolment of the young child as a member of the phratry has already been mentioned. At least in the Hellenistic age it was not unusual for those who had been initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries to have their young children consecrated to the same service of Demeter (d<' tanas fivriO/jvai). 4 It was the practice at Athens to bring young girls under the protection of the maiden Artemis for the five years before they were marriageable. 5 When a young man reached maturity and at about the age of eighteen began to assume the duties of citizenship, the change in his mode of life received the sanction of religion. 6 The long hair of youth was cut and dedicated to Apollo, ordinarily at Athens, in excep- tional cases at Delphi ; the young men took the oath of citizen- ship and were registered in the official list ; we read also of a drink-offering to Heracles accompanied with festivities on this occasion. Marriage was a religious rite (re'Aos) , not because any sacramen- tal bond united husband and wife, but because the blessing of the gods was sought for the new home. 7 Preliminary sacrifices (TO 1 Suidas, s.v. d/u^tSpijUta ; Hesychius, s.v. Spopidipiov 2 Euripides, /on, 653 ; Aristophanes, Aves, 494. 8 Schoemann, Ofmsc. 2. 227. 5 Suidas s.v. Apxros, 4 C.I.A. III. 809, 828 f. etc. 6 Hesychius, ol 7 Cp. I^asaulx, Studien des classischen Altertums, 261, 426 f. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 123 were offered by the parents of bride and groom to the gods of marriage (0eot ya/i^Aioi), Zeus Teleios, Hera Teleia, Arte- FIG. 32. ATHENIAN RED-FIGURED VASE PAINTING A bride is being led toward her new home ; the central figures are Apollo and Artemis as gods of marriage. mis, and at Athens, Athena. The bride consecrated to the gods her playthings, her maiden garment, sometimes an offering of her hair. To avert evil both bride and groom 1 took purificatory baths in water brought with special rites. The wedding feast itself at the house of the bride's father included sacri- fices to the household gods with prayers for the prosperity of the new home. The wed- ding procession in the early evening was accompanied by musicians invoking Hymen, the god of marriage. On reach- ing their new home the hus- band and wife worshipped at its different shrines, ending with the gods of marriage in the bridal chamber ; in Boeotia, FIG. 33. REUEF IN ATHENS An attendant is holding the head of a sick man in the presence of Asclepius. according to Plutarch, the priestess of Demeter formally blessed 1 Pollux, 3. 38 and 43 ; Euripides, Phoen. 347 and schol. 124 GREEK RELIGION the new wife in the name of the goddess who presided over the mysteries of marriage. 1 In sickness men turned to the gods for help. The warriors of Homer all had some skill in dealing with wounds, but Machaon, son of Asclepius, was divinely gifted to treat them successfully. The physician of the gods was Paieon (the god of healing, appar- ently of healing charms) ; from him the physicians of Egypt claimed descent. In spite of the epic aversion to magic, we read of charms used to stay the dark blood of Odvsseus's wounds. The plague described in the beginning of the Iliad was from Apollo ; not " soothing herbs " nor charms, but the direct intercession of Apollo's priest was the power that checked it. 2 Later Greek medicine was intimately connected with the wor- ship of Asclepius. The school of Cos, of which Hippocrates is the best-known representative, was not independent of the cele- brated shrine of Asclepius on that island ; one of Galen's four "schools" was that of the Asclepiadae in Asia. The sick man had his choice between visiting a "drugseller" in the market- place, 3 or calling in a man of some education who practised for money, or going directly to the shrine of healing. Although at such shrines healing virtues were ascribed to the god alone, there is no question that the priests were versed in medical lore ; 4 many of the cures which patients believed were due to the touch of the divine hand can only have been due to surgical operations by the priests. The most famous shrine of healing was the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus, with which the worship of the same god at Tricca, Cos, Pergamon, and Athens was closely related. The records at Epidaurus testify to the remarkable cures there achieved. 5 These may have been due in a measure to the healthy location, the waters, and the wise advice of priests who inherited the knowl- l Athenaeus, 7, p. 309 D ; Petersen, Hausgottesdienst, n. 145 and 160; Plutarch, Conjug. praec. 138 B ; Preller, Demeter and Persephone, 353, n. 58. 8 Iliad, ii. 514 f. ; Odyssey, 4. 231 ; 19. 457 ; Iliad, i. 456. 8 Lucian, Apologia, 7, p. 714. 4 Plato, Politia, 10, p. 599 C. 6 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 802-804 Merriam, " Aesculapia as revealed by inscrip- tions," GaMard's Medical Journal, n, no. 5. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS i 2 6 GREEK RELIGION edge of generations. The central feature of the treatment was the incubatio (fycotfiipnf;), the sleep in the shrine during which the god appeared to the patients in a dream either to heal them di- rectly by divine touch or to give them medical advice. 1 Aris- tophanes gives an entertaining account of the way Plutus, god of wealth, was cured of blindness at the shrine of Asclepius in Athens. 2 The order of the attendant that all patients go to sleep, the appear- ance of the priest, then of the god attended by laso and Panaceia and the boy with a chest of drugs, the serpents that licked dis- eased parts all these represent Athenian belief as to the method of healing there pursued. Votive offerings of the part cured, eyes or ears or hands or breasts, together with liberal fees testified to the gratitude of the patient. Properly speaking the rites connected with death and burial belong with the worship of the home ; but because of the light they throw on the conception of what follows death, they will be treated in Chapter IV. Lastly we must consider the private worship, i.e. the worship independent of the state, in the religious associations (duuroi, opyeuives). 3 Associations under the patronage of some god played a large part in Greek life after the fifth century ; for the most part they may be grouped in two classes : associations formed for the worship of some foreign god, and clubs or societies formed for various ends, but with one of the state gods as patron. In both classes the organization was much the same ; those who were elected to membership paid an initiation fee and made themselves subject to the laws of the society; officers (priest, treasurer, etc.) were elected annually ; all members were on the same democratic footing, governing the society by " decrees," imposing fines or granting honors by their votes, in much the same manner as was done in the assembly of the state. It was a peculiarity of many of these societies, especially those formed for the worship of a foreign god, that women, freedmen, and slaves were admitted on the same terms as citizens. 1 Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. i. 8-10; Aristides, Orat. i. 570. 2 Plutus, 653 f. 8 Foucart, Des associations religieuses ches ies Grecs, 1873. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 127 The clubs or societies under the patronage of a state god were of most varied character. The biographer of Sophocles states 1 that he formed a society (0iWo?) of educated men who honored the Muses. The actors in the theatre had associations in many cities with Dionysus as their patron. We read of a society of sixty bon-vivants at Athens, whose banquets were celebrated enough to attract the attention of Philip of Macedon ; Heracles was their patron deity. 2 Even the courtesans of Paros had their society with its priest and temple servants. 3 The list of such soci- eties included benefit clubs, which loaned money without interest and paid funeral expenses, " trades-unions" of artisans in the same occupation, literary and philosophical clubs, as well as those formed for purely social ends. Just as each group in the state had its religious side in the worship of some god or hero, so each club, whatever its purpose, recognized some god in whose worship the club joined. The distinctively religious associations consisted primarily of foreigners who united in the worship of the gods of their home cities. In the days of its prosperity thousands of foreign residents took up their abode at Athens, especially in the Peiraeus. No law forbade them from carrying on the worship of the Mother of the Gods, or the Thracian Bendis, or the Tyrian Heracles, in their own manner. 4 It was only when they wished to build a temple that the express permission of the city was needed. For example, when the people of Citium wished to build a temple to their Aphrodite, the matter was brought before the Boule and the Assembly, and received favorable action. 5 Occasionally one of these cults, like that of Artemis Bendis, was adopted by the Athenian state. For Athenian citizens to join associations for the worship of these strange gods was not unusual, although it was regarded as discreditable. Demosthenes's account of such private 1 Vita Soph. 6. 2 Athenaeus, 14, p. 614 D ; 6, p. 260 B. *Ath. Mitt/i. 18 (1893) 21 f. 4 Cp. Plato, Politia. i, p. 327 and schol.; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 633. 5 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 551. 128 GREEK RELIGION worship 1 may fairly be regarded as expressing the sentiment of the Athenians toward these crude, weird cults ; and yet with all their crudeness and immoral practices, they were not without influence in suggesting to the Athenians a more personal type of religion than that which found expression in the formal worship of the state. With the decay of the city's power and the gradual neglect of its public worship, private religious associations in some cases took over the worship of the state. A recently discovered inscription describes in detail the organization of the lobakchoi, 2 an association which carried on the Bacchus worship after the true Athenian manner in a temple built above the old state shrine of Dionysus Lenaios. The fact re- mains that in the best days of Greece the state and the family, rather than the private association, were the organizing forces of religion. 10. The Eleusinian Mysteries. The cults of some foreign gods won adherents from the Greeks them- selves, because they made a personal appeal ; they met a need which the inherited ritual and splendid ceremony of the state cults did not even recognize ; it is, then, no mere chance that so-called mysteries be- came a large factor in Greek religion. The public worship of the state was so bound up with the political and social conception of the state that it meant little for the individual. And when these state- ideals began to break down, when the personality of the individual in its strength and in its weakness began to be more clearly recog- nized, men sought some more immediate personal relation with a god. That the worship of Sabazius, 3 for example, gained a hold FIG. 35. GROUND PLAN OF THE TELESTERION AT ELEUSIS 1 Demosthenes, 18. 260. *Ath. Mitth. 19 (1894) 248; Maas, Orpheus, 18 f. 3 Cp. p. 241. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 129 among the Greeks is proof of this tendency in religion. What these private worships furnished in a form often unworthy and dis- creditable, might better be secured in the old and respected worship of Demeter at Eleusis. Apparently Eleusis grew up as a FIG. 36. VIEW OF THE RUINS AT ELEUSIS community of Demeter. worshippers governed by priests of Demeter. Only after bitter conflict with the developing power of Athens, was this agricultural priest-state brought under Athenian sway ; in its religious influence the conquered state prevailed, the worship of the goddesses became the most important cult of Athens, it gradually gained adherents all over Greece, and flourished with Olympia and Delphi in Roman days. Excavations on the site of the shrine have brought striking testimony to the development of these " mysteries." Because this worship furnished the appeal of reli- gion to the individual and the assurance of a real life after death, GREEK RELIGION 9 1 3 o GREEK RELIGION while at the same time it had the respect due to an old and sacred Attic cult, its rapid growth is not difficult to explain. The shrine of Demeter at Eleusis occupied a slope facing the bay of Salamis and not far from the water. In Roman days one entered the precinct through a larger and a smaller gateway ; just inside the latter was a temple of Pluto where the rape of Per- sephone was said to have taken place ; a little farther on was the temple of Demeter herself. The main building, the Telesterion, differed from other Greek religious houses in that it was a place of assembly large enough to accommodate the crowds of worship- FIG. 37. VASE WITH FIGURES IN RELIEF (St. Petersburg) The Eleusinian officials are standing between seated gods and goddesses. pers, not simply a home for some god. The lower story, once surrounded on all sides by some twelve steps on which the initiated might sit or stand, remains in part to-day ; of the second story only the entrance platform is left. The lower hall was so filled with supporting columns that the view of any rites celebrated there must have been seriously obstructed ; the upper hall is said to have had similar rows of seats about it and in the centre a stage, open to the sky and surrounded with columns. 1 The celebration of the mysteries was in charge of the hierophant, selected for life from the Eleusinian family of the Eumolpidae, who was known only by his official title after his election to the position. The name indicates that it was his function to exhibit and explain the secret symbols. The dadouchos (torch-carrier), the herald, and the altar-priest were chosen for life from the family of the Kerykes. These officials with their assistants had charge of the sacrifices, purifications, and other ritual; while the archon basileus of Athens with one or more civic commissions exercised super- vision over the shrine in the name of the state. Much confusion on this subject has been due to a misunder- standing of the word " mysteries." If there had been any large body of secret doctrine, some traces of it would certainly have reached us through the watchful enemies of the old religion. We are expressly told that Greek mysteries consisted of things done or acted, and sentences pronounced (TO. Spwfteva KCU TO. A.eyo/u,eva). 2 Such ritual-dramas were not foreign to other Greek cults ; at Delphi, for instance, the purification of Apollo after killing the dragon was represented by the worshippers once in eight years. At Eleusis the drama was perhaps more symbolic, more secret, more sacred. For the Greek a mystery meant a ritual-drama, beheld and shared only by the initiated. In the fifth century the mysteries included two festivals. The so-called " lesser mysteries " at Agrae early in March served as a preparation for the rites at Eleusis, in that only those who had first been initiated here were eligible candidates for the "greater mysteries." It was in March that Persephone returned from the lower world to her mother, so that it is natural for her to be the central figure in a rite at this season of the year ; of the 1 Plutarch, Pericles, 13, p. 159. 8 Pausanias, 2. 37. 3 f. (at Lerna) ; 3. 32. 2 (to Dionysus). 132 GREEK RELIGION festival at Agrae we know hardly more than that Persephone and Dionysus, not Demeter, were in the foreground. The " greater mysteries " were preceded by a truce between the Greek states to permit worshippers from outside Attica to travel thither unmolested. 1 Candidates for initiation obtained a director or " confessor " (//.uo-raywyos), whose duty it was to advise them as to necessary purifications, to instruct them as to the meaning of the ritual, and to serve as their guide during the whole ceremony. On the fifteenth of Boedromion (i.e. the beginning of September) began the fast which was rigidly observed during the daytime and prohibited some kinds of food at night. The next day formal proclamation was made by the hierophant and dadouchos in front of the Painted Porch (o-roa Troi/ciAr/), warning away the impure and barbarians, and inviting others to share the worship of Demeter. The day was named dA.uSe /x,xrrai because those who were to take part in the mysteries bathed (and cleansed the pigs they were to sacrifice) in the sea near Athens. Two days more were spent at Athens in sacrifices to Demeter and to Asclepius as well, for as Asclepius had himself been purified for initiation in the mysteries, so thereafter new- comers might have an " Epidaurian initiation " (TO. "E-7ri8uLvpia /iveiv). 2 The ceremonies at Athens ended with the lacchus procession to Eleusis on the nineteenth of Boedromion. All who were to share the worship at Eleusis, early in the fifth century some 30,000 in number, 3 set out along the Sacred Way bearing the image of the god lacchus (a form of Dionysus which had been adopted into the Eleusinian worship) together with symbols brought from Eleusis (TO. Upd), and chanting hymns to the god. Though the distance is barely thirteen miles, sacrifices at different shrines and other ceremonies along the way delayed 1 References for the following account are to be found in Mommsen, Feste der Stadt At hen, 204 f. 2 It may be that this initiation might take the place of initiation in the lesser mysteries in the spring ; see Mommsen, ibid., p. 290, 8 Herodotus, 8. 65. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS the slowly moving multitude until it was late at night before they arrived. During the next three days (and nights, TrawuxtScs) the worship at Eleusis included (i) sacrifices on the different altars of the precinct, (2) the initiation of new-comers, which included sacri- fices, purifications, and some instruction as to the rites they were to share now for the first time, and (3) the mysteries FIG. 38. MARBLE FUNERARY URN (Terme Museum, Rome) At the right the initiate is sacrificing ; in the center the purification is represented, and at the left he sees the vision of the goddesses, Demeter and Persephone. proper. The latter consisted of two parts, the second of which was reserved for those who had shared the first stage at least once in a former year. The night of the twenty-second was spent in torch-dances and visits to the spots made sacred by the Demeter legend ; the fast of the previous nine days was ended by taking a peculiar drink, the kykeon (KVKCUV, made from barley meal, mint, and water), and symbols kept from profane view were exhibited to the mystae or handled by them. Perhaps also some sacred formulae were then for the first time imparted to the initiates. 1 1 Clement of Alexandria (Protr. 2. 21) gives the " confession " of the initiates in the following form : tvfiffrevffa, %-iriov rbv KVKewva, eXapov K Klffr-qs, fyyevffdnevos bireOtn-qv tls icd\a0ov xal IK Ka\d6ov els KlffTijv. This indicates that the mystae tasted cakes contained in the mystic cista. For the symbols see Apuleius, Apol. de magia, c. 55. 134 GREEK RELIGION On their second visit to Eleusis the mystae were admitted to the crowning ceremony of all, the " visions " (cTroTTTtta). Gathered in the great hall of the mysteries (rcXco-TT/piov) they saw scenes representing Demeter's joy in the recovery of her daughter, representing the underworld where this same Persephone is queen, representing perhaps the birth of lacchus, the estab- lishment of the Festival at Eleusis, and the sending out of Trip- tolemus to distribute among men the grain of De meter. To call these scenes a drama suggests something more pretentious than the evidence warrants ; the ritual of the pre- ceding night might better receive that name. In these " vis- ions " symbols were sufficient to suggest scenes of the familiar story, while images of the gods showed Persephone with Hades in the lower world, the mourning Demeter, and Persephone reunited with her mother. Apparently the rites ended with this blessing by the hierophant : " Dread and rever- end are the goddesses ; most blessed of men on the earth he whom they truly love ; speedily they are his escorts to the great home, to Plutus who grants abundance to mortal men." 1 The " Homeric hymn " to Demeter contains the cult legend 1 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 487 f. FIG. 39. FRAGMENT OF A SMALL VOTIVE FIGURE (Eleusis) Persephone stands by the seated Demeter, perhaps in the form in which the reunion of the two god- desses was exhibited to the worshippers at Eleusis. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 135 which serves as a commentary on the ritual. Persephone, pluck- ing flowers with her attendant maidens, was seized by the king of the dead and borne away to his realm below. Demeter, who had heard her daughter's last cry as she disappeared beneath the surface of the earth, hurried over sea and land for nine days in search of her. Learning that Hades had carried her off, Demeter came to Eleusis in the guise of an old woman, where the daughters of the king found her sitting by the Par- thenian well. She was persuaded to break her fast and come to the king's house. At length her divinity was revealed, and she established the mystic rites, but still the mourning mother did not permit the grain to sprout. The hymn closes with the account of Demeter's joy when Persephone was restored to her, and with expressions of gratitude for the gift of the grain and for the revelation of the mysteries. The worshippers came to Eleusis veiled like Demeter, they imitated her wanderings in their torch-dances on the seashore. They too had fasted nine days, and they broke their fast with the same mystic "kykeon" which Demeter had drunk. The Par- thenian well (Callichore) where she rested, the house of the king of Eleusis, the temple he had built for the goddess in the time of her grief, were the spots where they sought to realize her divine presence. The symbols they handled and the " visions " in which the mysteries culminated brought the mother and the daughter very near to the worshippers. The reunion of Persephone with her mother, the continued life of Persephone in the realm of Hades, the sending out of Triptolemus these scenes constituted a drama of things divine. Men shared the experiences of the goddess in her sorrow, in her joy, in her blessings to men ; and as they shared her experiences, they felt a mystic bond uniting them with the mother and the daughter. To be able to claim these gods as their personal protectors and friends, gods who sympathized with them in the deepest human experiences, this, rather than any new knowledge, was what men gained at Eleusis. "We alone have the sun and its gracious light, we who have 136 GREEK RELIGION been initiated in the mysteries and have lived a pious life toward strangers and toward our own people," sings Aristophanes's chorus in the flowery meadows of the lower world. 1 Again, in the words of Sophocles, " Thrice blessed they of men who see these mystic rites before they go to Hades's realm. These alone have life there, for others there all things are evil." 2 The universal testi- mony of Greek litera- ture teaches us that the most important result of the mysteries 9 ' ' 'If '"'I II was this clear hope of a real life after death. All /- 1 U V A All Greeks believed m the continued exist- ence of the soul, though such existence hardly deserved the name " life." The in- itiated at Eleusis felt for themselves the favor of Persephone, queen of the dead; if the goddess of the dead accepted their worship here, they might expect her favoring care when they came into her presence after death. Moreover they saw Hades in the " visions," and they found out for them- 1 Aristophanes, Ran. 455 f.; cp. Pindar, Frag. 114 (102) ; Plato, Phaedo, 69 C; Aristeides, Or. Eleus. 259. 2 Sophocles, Frag. 719. FIG. 40. MARBLE RELIEF FROM ELEUSIS Demeter (at the left) is giving the grain to Triptol- emus, while Persephone (at the right) places a crown on his head. THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS 137 selves that he was not the dread king of Homer but the fit con- sort for Demeter's daughter. 1 Nor was this hope for themselves alone. The worshippers shared the pangs of Demeter's sorrow when Hades carried off her daughter, they shared the love that demanded the return of Persephone, and they shared the joy of the goddess when that love won back its object even from death. Could the mother or husband or brother from some bereaved home have shared these experiences without feeling that his love too would sometime be satisfied again, that in the life after death he would rejoin the loved ones he had lost? Because they vivified the belief in a future life, while at the same time they met the religious needs of the individual, the Eleusinian mysteries were perhaps the most important form of worship in ancient Greece. 1 Plutarch, De def. orac. 422 C. CHAPTER III THE GREEK GODS 1. The Gods in their Relation to the World. According to the Hebrew conception the material world, plants and animals, man himself, were the direct creation of God ; the Greeks ex- plained the world as the result of a process of growth or develop- ment, in which the higher and more complex forms of existence grew out of simpler forms. The gods instead of creating the world were a part of the world, in the same sense that men were a part of it. Men originally sprang from the earth, or developed from lower animals, or some said were the one thing that the gods did make. 1 The gods for the most part traced their descent back through Cronus and Rhea to that same primeval Heaven and Earth (Ouranos and Gaia) from which came the physical world. The three generations of the gods, marking successively the rule of force, the rule of cunning, and the rule of reason, and the crises which separated them, belong to that half-philosophical explanation of the origin of things which was offered by Greek mythology ; Greek religion started with the world we know, a world in which gods and men are the active forces. That the forces at work in the world were conceived by the Greeks as personal beings, after the type of the human will, has already been explained ; 2 indeed, it is difficult for scientist or child or primitive man wholly to avoid this view. Both in wor- 1 [Pindar], Frag. 84, Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. 3. 711; cp. Odyssey, 19. 163; Hesiod, Theog. 570 f. ; Aristophanes, Aves, 686. The whole subject is treated in Preller-Robert, Griech. Myth. i. 29-105. 2 Cp. Introduction, p. 30. THE GREEK GODS 139 ship and in myth the Greek freely created for himself a personal universe ; his world was made up of men and gods, many gods, each of them (like a man) working from some one point or within some definite sphere. What man can use, what helps or hinders him, the source of good and the source of evil, find expression in these Greek gods. Such a belief enables a man to handle evil like a human enemy, to seek blessing as from human benefactors ; all that affects him is part of the intelligent society to which he himself belongs. The fire, as useful as it is treacherous, is the province of Hephaestus ; all the dangers and changeableness of the sea are reflected in Poseidon and his followers ; an Artemis is there to guide the hunter, a Demeter to make the grain sprout, a Hermes or Apollo to watch over the herds ; Athena is the spirit of wisdom, Hermes of shrewdness, Ares of tumultuous war ; even the spirits of vengeance, the Erinyes, may be turned into powers of blessing. In a word the Greek gods are in the world, not above the world, superior beings who embody in personal form all the forces that enter into human life. Such is the truth, which becomes obscured when the attempt is made to identify the gods of worship with objects or processes in nature. Helios, Selene, and Eos belonged to the poetry of myth rather than to religion. But the Zeus of Olympia and Dodona was not the sky, even though one hears the expression, " Zeus rains." Apollo at Delphi was not the sun, nor did the Artemis of Delos wear a crescent to suggest that she was the moon. Poseidon was not a personification of the sea nor Dionysus of the wine. In each instance the god was that superhuman person whose power was ever made manifest in the fact or process of the natural world. The epic was the first attempt to treat these gods as rulers of the whole known world. 1 The account of them is interesting in that it lays down the lines of later belief for worship almost as much as for myth. Because the epic statement furnished the background for the worshipper's thought, it is all important for our attempt to understand the Greek view of the rule of the gods. 1 Mythology of Greece and Rome, Part I, Chap, i, " The Gods in Homer." I4 o GREEK RELIGION The world was governed by a royal family in Olympus, in which King Zeus had far greater power than any other individual though his throne was endangered when the other gods combined against him. The court of Zeus was like that of Menelaus or Alcinous ; at the banquet of these divine princes Athena obtained permission for Odysseus to return home, and Hera vainly taunted Zeus for planning reverses to the Greeks. 1 Once in the poems Zeus sum- moned a popular assembly of all the divine spirits, like the assem- bly at which Agamemnon tried to test the spirit of his soldiers. 2 It is Zeus who dispenses good and evil to men, Zeus to whom the epic heroes commonly pray. Poseidon, Hera, even Athena, try without lasting success to circumvent his purposes. So long as the other gods keep within their own sphere, Zeus does not inter- fere with them. Nature is subject to the gods ; Athena sends a fair wind, Poseidon a tempest ; the sun is hastened in his course at the wish of the gods. The events of history are guided by Zeus ; Achilles's anger and the story of the Iliad are part of his plan, and Troy falls as he had purposed. Whatever the individual is or does may be referred to the gods the beauty of Paris, the might of Ajax, the breaking of the truce by Pandarus, the bad bargain Glaucus made in exchanging his armor. As an actor in the poem, however, Zeus cannot always follow his personal desires ; when Sarpedon is hard pressed by Patroclus, Zeus questions whether to let his friend die or snatch him away to his home in Lycia, till Hera reminds him that it is Sarpedon's lot to die at this time. 8 " Neither men nor gods can ward it off, when the baneful lot of death overtakes a man." 4 Is this lot or portion a fate higher than Zeus? or is it part of the "ancient decrees of the gods " which Zeus is bound to obey? 5 The ques- tion is never asked in such form by the poet, who recognizes no power higher than that of Zeus. That which befalls man, his good or evil fortune, his duty, the limitations of his life these consti- 1 Odyssey, 5. 1-42; Iliad, i. 559. 8 Iliad, 16. 431 f. * Iliad, 20. I f. 4 Odyssey, 3. 236. * For the literature see Buchholtz, Die komerischen Realien, 3, i. 47 f. THE GREEK GODS 141 tute his divinely appointed lot, for man does not control his own destiny. The lot included an " ought " which he might disobey (he might act virlp p.6pov, inrep ala-av), as well as the inevitable to which he must bow. With all the other human characteristics transferred to the gods, this belief in a " lot " governing man's life was also transferred to them. The gods also were sometimes spoken of as subject to the same kind of destiny ; if Zeus saved Sarpedon he would be acting v-n-cp /AO/OOV, contrary to the " ought " which he felt binding on himself. We are not to infer that there was any definite conception of a fate to which the gods were sub- ject ; the language which produces this impression is due to that epic tendency which makes its gods so human. The epic picture of the gods as a council of world-rulers with Zeus at their head determines the lines of later thought. All- powerful gods control events according to a perfect plan, says the pious Xenophon. Success or failure in war is referred directly to the gods ; the gods preserve the Athenians from the evil results of their poor political administration ; the basis of laws and morality is assigned to the gods. The good or bad fortune of individuals, their wisdom, their righteousness, and their sin are part of the divine rule. The crops are cared for by the gods, for the gods determine the weather. In general Homer's phrase for success, " with divine favor " (crvv flew), and the contrary (dveu 0eu>v) con- tinue to be used, especially in poetry. The extreme position on the one hand is that men are merely tools of the gods ; on the other hand we read that the gods hurry men on in the course they themselves have chosen, or again, that men succeed in doing some things because the gods are negligent. It is the normal belief that gods and men work together in all the events of human history ; naturally the victorious in war emphasize the human side, the con- quered refer to the defeat as divinely sent. 1 The guiding power in history is vaguely called " the gods " or " the divine " (TO delay)* The phrase " divine government " is 1 Schoemann, Griech. Alt. 2. 152 f. 2 Rohde, Die Religion der Griechen, 10 f. 142 GREEK RELIGION hardly appropriate, for the thought of a definite plan worked out in the world, or of any real goal toward which history was tending, was quite absent from popular belief. The power man recognized outside himself was called "the gods," or sometimes "god"; each man and each city looked for help to certain gods ; it was left for philosophy to ask what the gods were making of the world. At the same time there was a strange lack of definiteness as to the relation of the gods to each other in the government of the world. The practical side of the matter amounted to this, that if a man prayed to the right god he might hope to get what he wanted. It is therefore no isolated case when Xenophon asked of the oracle to what god he should look if he wished to prosper on the ex- pedition with Cyrus. 1 As in worship one god was supreme at one festival, another at another, and there was no priesthood to make an absolute hierarchy, so in religious belief men were con- tent to say that the " divine " governed the world, without asking how it was that many gods maintained one government. 2. The Nature of the Gods as Individuals. If the worshipper ever asked himself what sort of a being the god was, his answer to this question would again have been determined by the epic, so true is it that the epic picture of the gods formed the background for all later thought. The Homeric account of the nature of the gods as individuals may be very briefly stated as follows : a While the Greek gods were always spirits akin to man, it remained for the epic, as it were, to clothe them with flesh and blood. The epic preserves a clear line of demarcation between the lesser gods and the greatest men in that the gods possess faculties far less limited than men, the gods are free from the difficulties and dis- tresses of human life, the gods have not to fear death. Though Hephaestus is used to mean " fire," and Ares to mean " war," the usage is purely poetic metonymy ; neither Ares nor Hephaestus nor any of the other gods in the poems really represent physical phenomena. Everything is in human moulds. The gods have their homes on Olympus, where they live and eat and sleep, like men ; 1 Xenophon, Anab. 3. 1. 6. 8 Mythology of Greece and Rome 37 f. THE GREEK GODS 143 but their beauty, the rapidity of their movement, the power of their voices, their size, bear no comparison to man's. Most of the gods move from place to place and even descend to the battle ground before Troy in order to carry out their purposes ; only Zeus rules from Ida, watching the course of events and controlling gods and men by his messages. The gods are not omniscient ; Zeus himself stops to plan, sometimes his attention is relaxed, and it is possible to deceive him. Yet the gods can see much farther than man in space and in time ; they are far wiser than man, and human wisdom comes from them. It is in their feelings that they are most like men. The hatred of Poseidon for Odysseus, the quick anger of Zeus with Athena and with Hera, the boasts and threats and taunts of Zeus, Hera's pity for the Greeks, her quarrelsome or sulky attitude toward Zeus, the sensitiveness of Poseidon, the fondness of the gods for banquets, the amours of Zeus with goddesses and with mortal women these are the qualities which mark the gods as essentially human in their na- ture. Only in poems which grew up as did the Greek epic, only in lays sung to amuse the princes and the people, could gods be treated with such frank license. 1 The process was aided by the fact that the Apollo or Poseidon of the epic was not exactly the Apollo or Poseidon worshipped by any one audience to which the bard sang. The result, this legacy of gods universally recognized and most human in their nature, not only determined the character of other Greek myths ; it was also a force directly and indirectly modifying the god of each local shrine in the thought of his worshippers. If now the reader will change his point of view from that of the epic .audience to that of the worshipper, the inherent differences 1 It is easy to account for the unreligious, undignified, even unmoral character of these gods, when one remembers the circumstances under which the poems grew up. An after-dinner audience demanded amusement from the bard, nor was it in any mood to criticise religious conceptions. Demodocus, for example ( Odyssey, 8. 266 f.), handled his theme to meet the wishes of his audience; other bards no doubt did the same ; and the gods of Homer are the result of this con- vivial atmosphere, only tempered by the Greek sense of beauty. 144 GREEK RELIGION between the two in their conception of what a god is will prove quite as striking as the similarities. The differences may be found in the practices by which men sought to learn the will of the gods, 1 though they are less noticeable than in other forms of sacred rite. In the epic, revelation by theophanies or portents or prophets gives an idea not at variance with the epic doctrine of the gods ; for in thus guiding men's actions the gods are but carrying out their plans as rulers of the world. That theophanies and divine guidance come primarily to the individual in whom the god has a personal interest, as Athena is interested in Diomedes and in Odysseus, may be regarded as part of the economy of the poems ; still the kindly interest of the gods in their worshippers was included in the heritage which later religious belief received from the epic. The deceitfulness of signs and dreams was a part of human experience, not forgotten in the epic, but in the epic gods forgetfulness or deceit are no peculiar blemish. In later times, on the contrary, the doctrine of signs, prophets, and oracles assumes absolute knowledge on the part of the god, and it leaves no place for careless oversight by the god. The personal element in signs is strikingly absent ; it is not clear in every instance what god is supposed to give the sign, nor whether the pious man may lay any special claim to such guidance. The spirit of Apollo which overmastered the priestess on the tripod or enlightened the gifted seer implies, it is true, a god who could immediately touch the human mind with inspiring power ; the thunderbolt of Zeus comes from the god who rules in the heavens ; on the other hand, the ordinary divination from sacrifices is a peculiarly impersonal, mechanical method of determining whether the worship is accept- able or not. The fact that the gods are supposed to guide human action and are not supposed to show their own nature in what we have called revelation, is the reason why we get no more light from this source as to what men thought the gods to be. In worship proper, i.e. in the ritual of different shrines where men sought the blessing of the gods, two different forces were at 1 Cp. Chap, i, supra. THE GREEK GODS 145 work to determine men's thought of the gods. Here the contrast between the epic point of view and the point of view natural to the worship at these shrines was very marked, although the differences were more or less blunted in the Athens of the fifth century B.C. In the first place, as was pointed out in the Introduction (p. 22 f.), worship was carried on at countless particular shrines, at each of which a peculiar phase of one god to the exclusion of all other gods for the time being was approached with sacred rites. At Athens, for instance, we know of some twelve centres of Artemis worship, seven centres of Aphrodite worship, perhaps twelve of Athena worship. 1 In each cult of Artemis she has a different epithet, and the origin of each cult is different ; in some instances the Artemis of one cult is extremely like that of a second, or again the goddess may appear in such different forms as Lysi- zonos (childbirth), Agrotera (hunting), and Boulaia (wise counsel). Nothing could better illustrate the particularism of worship than this series of Artemis cults. How goddesses with such different functions became fused into one cannot be explained in detail. The process began many hundreds of years before Homer ; the rise and fall of cities, tribes, and nations played a part in it; perhaps one of the last forces tending in this direction was the epic. The fact remains that worship dealt with gods distinct and local, while all the forces of civilization and of literature were at work to make connections between them. The unity of the god found expression in the general name Artemis; the phase con- nected with the particular shrine was marked by the added epithet name, e.g. Agrotera or Mounychia ; such were the two poles be- tween which the worshipper's thought of the god's nature must have played. So far as the rites of worship are concerned the discussion in the preceding chapter has shown, in the first place, that ordinarily the element of mysticism was not prominent. The religion of Dionysus distinctly presupposes the idea of a soul akin to the divine in its nature, which may become merged in the god or 1 Preller-Robert, Griech. Myth. Index II, s.v. Athen. GREEK RELIGION IO 146 GREEK RELIGION possessed by the god as the result of worship. Imitative rites in the service of other gods produced a sympathy between the god and his worshippers, which was by no means free from mysticism. On the other hand, the enlightenment by which Apollo enabled his prophets to see the future was rather a gift from outside than " inspiration " in the strict sense of the term. In the state worship at Athens mysticism was reduced to a minimum ; in other words, the gods were conceived as definite beings, whose relations to man were as personal as the relations of one man to another. Further, it is clear that there was no worship of evil beings. When evil came from the gods, it was because they were angry, doubtless justly angry. When it did not come from the gods, it might be referred to evil spirits, but these spirits were to be ban- ished, not to be worshipped. In later Greek practice such rites were not yet extinct ; they have, however, so little of religion about them, they are so definitely magic and not worship, that they hardly require our consideration. Ordinarily evil is to be attributed to an angry god. The ritual for dealing with such a situation the rites of purification, propitiatory sacrifice, etc. 1 has special interest because it was not much subject to change under epic influence. The nature of these gods is essentially capricious. They have special blessings to bestow, in particular the blessing of rich crops, but if their favor is forfeited the loss and suffering to be expected are equally great. At times this fickle nature was attributed to one or another of the Olympian gods, but rarely or never to the patron deity of the city. The gods whose anger was specially feared were not more holy than the Olympian rulers, nor less accessible to man ; in fact they stood in closer touch with the vicissitudes of human life. The list includes gods of agriculture, gods of the winds and the sea, and gods like the Eumenides or the local heroes, who have some kinship with the souls of the dead. Such gods shared no festal banquet with their worshippers ; they received animal sacrifice either because they were fond of blood (the dead longed for this principle of life) or i See Chap, ii, p. 105 f. THE GREEK GODS 147 because they liked the gift ; then the animal was wholly consumed. Belief in gods of this type was as persistent as the suffering or calamity which their worship might alleviate. The normal type of state worship with its processions and prayer hymns, its votive gifts and festal sacrifices, 1 was associated with the belief in gods not unlike human rulers, who were bound to their worshippers by the ties of social relationship. The grounds on which the worshipper based his hope that his prayer would be answered were mentioned in the discussion of prayer : former worship of the god and former favors received from the god, both of which are tokens of the personal relation existing between the god and the worshipper ; the greatness of man's need, and the god's pity ; the justice of the request. In Homer there are many references to the reciprocal relations between the god and the worshipper. The same note is found later in the community wor- ship, that is, the gods enter into personal relations with a state or community ; they find pleasure in the homage of their worshippers and gladly grant these men their favor and protection. It is true that Homer has much to say of the gods' fondness for banquets and their delight in the fragrance of sacrifice. But while this pleasure of appetite on the part of the gods was never entirely forgotten by the worshipper, it would seem that the desire for man's homage was what made worship most acceptable. The pleasure of the gods in worship was thus like the keenest pleasure of the human ruler, the pleasure in having his power fully recog- nized and honored. The personal relation implied in worship determines the char- acter of every religion, and thereby the character of its gods. The fear of angry or capricious gods is almost wholly omitted from the epic, and finds a relatively small place in the later worship of the state. The oriental attitude of abject servitude is as absent from Greek religion as from Greek society. The Greek sacrifice with the communion meal keeps, though somewhat vaguely, the idea of gods who cement social bonds of friendship by feasting 1 See Chap, ii, $ 5-6 ; p. 90 t i 4 8 GREEK RELIGION with their worshippers. On such gods the family or the state may depend to care for them, so long as they keep up the wor- ship in due form. These gods are not too far off, or too holy, or too selfish to watch over the community which worships them. They are not far enough off or holy enough to make religion so potent a factor as it might be in Greek life. In a word, the ordi- nary worship of the state presupposes gods to have the power and the wish to prosper the state because they are gratified by its homage, gods who stand for human ideals that are high but by no means absolute. The later tendency was strong toward the epic conception of the gods as divine rulers with power to grant particular blessings. When this conception was emphasized and defined by a great temple statue, like the gold and ivory statue of Zeus at Olympia, its hold on religious belief was assured. The Greek gods lost all that was vague in their nature. They lent themselves to the pur- poses of art and poetry, because even in worship they were beings as clear-cut and definite as the men who paid them homage. 3. Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis. For practical pur- poses it is convenient to treat the Olympian gods in three groups : (i) the five greater gods, (2) the gods associated with some phase of nature, and (3) the gods who stand for human emotions and activities. 1 The five gods treated in the present section are so varied in their functions and at the same time so important that they may best be treated together as the greater Olympian gods. (a) Zeus. The important seats of Zeus worship, Olympia ex- cepted, were on mountain tops, as though men would get as near as they could to the sky which was the home of Zeus. The mariner prayed to the god of the weather for a prosperous voyage ; the thunderbolt was his sign to deter or to encourage ; when 1 Preller-Rohert, Griech. Mythologie, discusses the gods of worship as well as the gods of myth; references to the Greek and Latin sources are given quite fully in the notes of that book so that it is unnecessary to repeat them here. See also the chapters on worship in Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, and the references there given. A list of the more important festivals at Athens is given in Ap- pendix II. THE GREEK GODS 149 Zeus sent rain, the Athenian assembly adjourned ; the god of the sky was one of the special gods of agriculture. One of the most interesting cults of Zeus was on Mt. Lycaeus ; in this shrine of the god of light it was believed that nothing cast a shadow, nor could any man enter the presence of the god and live. When the crops were parched, the priests of Zeus stirred a sacred spring on the mountain top with an oak bough till a mist arose, the mist spread into a cloud, and from the cloud fell the needed rain. On the acropolis of Athens, Zeus Polieus was worshipped with cakes and wineless libations ; in the summer rites of purifi- cation were performed that he might send rain. Zeus Maimaktes was worshipped in the early winter, and Zeus 'Meilichios _ FIG. 41. COIN OF ELIS at the Diasia in the early spring to pro- (Hadrian) tect the fields from dangerous storms. The Zeus of Pheidias. The festival of the Diasia was peculiar in that individuals brought only burnt offerings to appease the god of storms ; he who could not afford an animal brought a cake in the form of a pig or a sheep. The legend of the birth of Zeus in Crete was based on the worship there by which the life of vegetation was evoked in the spring. His mother Rhea was "mother-earth " ; his father was no doubt the stormy heavens ; the din made by the Couretes to drown the cries of the infant god was suggested by the orgiastic worship of the priests. The many myths of Zeus's amours had historic basis in the fact that the heaven god was worshipped with one wife in one place, with another in another place ; these gods became one Zeus with many wives. As the " father of men and gods," Zeus became the god of the family and of all social institutions. The stranger and the suppliant were under his protection, for there was no god greater or more universal to whom they could appeal. Just because he was so universal, his special cults were often less im- portant than those of other divinities. GREEK RELIGION (&} Hera is the wife and queen among the gods. She, too, was worshipped on mountain tops and the phenomena of the heavens were sometimes referred to her. Men worshipped her, e.g. at the Argive Heraeum and in Elis, with games of war, a side of her nature which found expression in the myth that she was the mother of Ares. As goddess of marriage she was worshipped by women with imi- tative rites. At Argos once a year her image was decked as a bride with wreaths and garlands, the bridal bed was woven of osier twigs, and the whole ceremony of marriage per- formed. At Athens the bride's parents sacrificed to Hera Teleia for blessing on their daughter's mar- riage. The island of Samos was the most important centre of the worship of Hera. (c] Athena. As might be expected from the position she occupies in the Iliad, Athena was worshipped all through northern Greece as the god- dess of war. The most widespread cult was that of Athena Itonia, which centred in Thessaly. At Athens this aspect of the goddess appears not only in the worship of Athena Iton.ia, but in the characteristic Athenian cult of Athena Nike whose worship formed a part of the Panathenaea. The war-dance (pyrrich) at the Panathenaea indicated that Athena Polias, goddess of the city, was also a goddess of war. Why Athena was "Triton-born" (water-born) and was worshipped in many parts of Greece as the goddess of rivers and springs, it is not easy to explain. Possibly the local worship of a Larisaia, a Nedousia, and other river goddesses was merged with the worship FIG. 42. HERA LUDOVISI (Terme Museum, Rome) THE GREEK GODS of the daughter of Zeus, because the most important local goddess was felt to be identical with the most important goddess of the Greeks generally. The goddess born from the brain of Zeus was worshipped with Hephaestus as the patron of the handi- crafts : under the name Athena Ergane she granted women skill in weaving and embroidery ; the art of healing also be- longed to Athena as Hygieia and Paionia. The olive was her best gift to the Athenian people and other forms of agriculture awaited her blessing ; her servants gave the signal for sowing the grain by ritual ploughings at the foot of the Acropolis. At the Panathenaic festival (cp. p. 114) she appeared as the patron of Athens, of its glory in war, its technical skill in manu- facture, and its political wisdom ; for in the Athena of the city, Athena Polias, all these different aspects of her being were united. ((f) Apollo was wor- shipped at Athens mainly as the protector of the FIG. 44. COIN OF crops. At the Thargelia in May the first fruits were offered to him, musical contests were held Apollo is represented m his honor, and the city was purified with in the act of shoot- . , . , . J ., ing the Python; s P ecial ntes m order that the npenmg corn the Delphic tripod might not suffer from his anger. The Smin- stands in front of thian Apollo in Asia Minor (Iliad, i. 39) kept the mice from the grain, Apollo Parnopios kept off the locusts. In the Peloponnesus and more especially in Thessaly shepherds looked to him to protect and prosper their flocks. Apollo, the perfect embodiment of FIG. 43. BRONZE STAT- UETTE OF "ATHENA PROMACHOS " (Boston) the omphalos the centre. 152 GREEK RELIGION youth, was worshipped by boys as they arrived at maturity ; gym- nasiums, like the Lykeion (Lyceum) at Athens, were situated in his sacred precincts. The best-known form of Apollo was the god of Delphi, patron of prophecy, music, and the healing art. In the Pythian games alone athletic contests were second to contests in singing and playing and rhythmic dancing. ( were ce iebrated at his shrine ; the The river-god Seiinus is island ofCalauria was the centre of worship pouring a libation; be- f ., ,. r . fore the altar stands a for a considerable group of cities, mclud- cock; behind the god is ing Athens. His favorite sacrifice was a a seiinon leaf above the bull, often a black bull, for his nature was statue of a bull. . , , ., .. , . ,-, violent and easily stirred to anger. Posei- don was also the " father of waters" away from the sea ; especially in the Peloponnesus he was honored as the god of fertility of the soil. The shepherds prayed to him to bless their flocks, but the rearing of horses was his special care. At Mantinea in Arcadia, at Athens, particularly in Thessaly, he was worshipped as the patron of horse-raising, of skill in horsemanship, and of cavalry as used in war. ((f) The heavenly bodies were not generally worshipped in Greece. On the island of Rhodes, however, the sun, Helios, was the chief deity ; horses were sacrificed to him by being plunged into the sea, and the Halieia was a splendid festival in his honor. At Corinth and at various points in the Peloponnesus he was an important god who watched over flocks. The maintenance of holy flocks and herds tended by priests was a part of his wor- THE GREEK GODS 155 ship. The moon determined the seasons of worship but was not herself worshipped. Nor were the stars worshipped. The dog-days, however, marked by the early rising of Sirius, who was known as the dog of the hunter Orion (Iliad, 22. 29), were the season of peculiar rites. To ward off the evil effects of the dog-day heat sacrifices were offered to Aristaeus, a god of shep- herds, wine culture, and bee culture in northern Greece. The Linus song (Iliad, 18. 57of.) is a ritual of this same season, which seems to have been introduced into Greece through Asia Minor from a Semitic source (a*\ivov = ai lenu, "woe to us"). At Argos Linus was worshipped as the son of Apollo and the nymph Psamathe ("sand-spring"); according to the story this child was exposed and grew up with the lambs of the flock, till the dogs tore him in pieces. At his tomb in Argos each summer women and children performed a ritual of mourning and supplication. The festival was called Arneides (" Lamb-days ") and on one day (Kynophontis, "dog-killing") all dogs found on the streets were put to death. The purpose of this worship was to ward off the evil effects of the dog-days from men and flocks. Similar rites of mourning combined with the use of the Linus song were to be found in other parts of Greece. (op), the burial or. cremation of the body, and the banquet in honor of the dead. The eyes and mouth of the dead were closed, the face was l Apol., 40 C-E. 2 Supra, p. 136. 174 GREEK RELIGION covered, and the body washed or anointed with perfumes, offices performed by the nearest female relatives rather than by hired attendants. 1 On a high couch spread with sprays of pungent herbs was laid the body, clad in white garments and wreathed with flowers, while about it stood funeral vases (\r]Kv6oi) manufactured specially to hold the perfumes on such occasions. 2 By ancient custom the feet were toward the door where the corpse was to be borne out. 3 The day during which the body was thus exposed was spent in lamentation. Members of the family, the slaves, near relatives and friends, and often some hired singers conducted the ritual of mourning ; until it was prohibited by law, the women were accustomed to tear their garments, to beat their breasts, and to scratch their faces till the blood ran down. 4 The lamentation often took the form of a responsive chant to flute music, with a refrain in which all joined. 5 In any case there seems to have been an element of worship in the mourning. The Athenians, who often carried money in the mouth, placed in the mouth of the dead a two-obol piece for Charon, the ferryman of the Styx ; sometimes the dead was also provided with a honey-cake for Cer- berus. 6 Meantime a vessel containing water fetched from a neigh- boring house had been placed at the door, that those who left the house might purify themselves by sprinkling. 7 Early the next morning came the funeral procession. The couch on which the body had lain served as the bier ; before it went the male relatives, behind near female relatives, with hair cut short and dressed in black (or gray). 8 The law of Ceos prescribed silence ; at Athens hired singers might accompany the procession with their sad lays. In many places libations were 1 Iliad, 18. 350; Plato, Phaedo, 115 A ; Lucian, De luctu, n, p. 927. a Aristophanes, Eccles. 1030 f. 8 /Had, 19. 212. 4 Plutarch, Solon, 12. p. 84; 21, p. 90; cp. Plato, Leg. 7, p. 800 E; Lucian, De luctu, 12, p. 927. 6 Iliad, 18. 315 ; 24. 719 f. 6 Lucian, De luctu, 10, p. 926; Wachsmuth, Das alte Griechenland im newen, 118; cp. Aristophanes, Lys. 601 and schol. ; Nub. 507, 7 Euripides, Ale. 98 f.; Pollux, 8. 65. 8 Euripides, Ale. 427 ; Demosthenes, 43. 69, 176 GREEK RELIGION poured out and whole burnt offerings sacrificed at the grave ; in Ceos, for instance, the law limited the amount of wine to three measures and of oil to one, while it enjoined the sacrifice of an animal " after the custom of the fathers." J At Athens the sacri- fice of cattle was expressly forbidden in a law attributed to Solon. 2 For those killed in battle the Athenians made a public funeral, at which a Pericles or a Demosthenes spoke in praise of the pa- triotic virtues of the dead. 3 Athletic games in honor of the dead man were held in early times, but they dropped out of use until at a late period they were occasionally revived. It was a fundamental principle of Greek religion that the body must not be neglected. The unburied body is said to be a cause of anger to the underworld gods, for its burial is their due, a source of impurity bringing a curse on the region, a blot to spoil any worship of the gods. 4 In war there were truces for the burial of the dead, and the victors buried their enemies as well as their friends. The traveller who found a corpse unburied must place at least two handfuls of earth on it as a ceremonial burial. 5 The tragic significance of Sophocles's Antigone lies in the fact that the human king forbids what divine law absolutely requires, namely, the burial of Antigone's brother. This deep-rooted requirement dates back to the fear of ghosts in the early stages of Greek religion. Both burial in the earth and cremation seem to have been practised from early times. 6 Burial was the simpler and more natural, cremation more imposing after a battle, more convenient when it was proposed to carry home the bones of one who died in a foreign land. The souls of those who were buried were thought to dwell in or about the tomb where offerings could be brought to them. That the tombs were placed near the gates or occasionally inside the city, and again that they were often formed 1 Dittenberger, Sylloge^, 877. 8 f. 8 Thucydides, 2. 34. 2 Plutarch, Solon, 21, p. 90. * Iliad, 22. 358; Odyssey, u. 72. 8 Sophocles, Ant. 255, and schol. ; Pausanias, i. 32. 5. 6 See Hermann-Blumner, Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiqult'dten , 4. 373, for the literature ; cp. Ath. Mitth. 18 (1893) 104 f. THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 177 like the front of a temple (aedicula), suggest the same range of ideas. Cremation, on the other hand, cut off souls from this world more or less completely and encouraged the idea of a realm of Hades from which none could return. The two con- ceptions were so blended, however, that no difference between souls of the buried and souls of the cremated was ordinarily recog- FIG. 54. TERRA COTTA FIGURINES FROM TOMBS AT TANAGRA (Boston) nized. In places like Athens, where both were practised, it is natural that the difference in the outcome should be obliterated. In either case, objects used by the dead man were placed be- side the corpse. Jewelry, toilet articles, armor, pottery, and vessels of metal were placed in graves of the Mycenaean period, as though the dead man would still need them as during his life- time ; only much of the jewelry was of gold leaf, for it was to be used by shades. 1 The same principle held good later, but pottery predominated. At Athens the lekythoi manufactured for use at the funeral are found in the tombs in large numbers. From early 1 Hermann-Blumner, Ibid., 4. 379 f. ; cp. Jahr. Inst. 7 (1892) A. A. 20; Ath. Mitth. 1 8 (1893) 155 f. GREEK RELIGION 12 1 78 GREEK RELIGION times figures of divine beings were placed in the grave, as though to bring the soul of the dead under the protection of these gods. The beautiful Tanagra figurines were a survival of this interesting practice. After the body had been buried or burned and a last " farewell " had been uttered, the mourners returned to the house for a memo- rial banquet in honor of the deceased (ireptBtLirvov) . Both the persons and the house were first purified, and wreaths, discarded since the death had occurred, were resumed for this occasion. Women relatives as well as men were present at this banquet. The purpose of it was to recall and praise the merits of the de- ceased ; for this occasion the principle de mortuis nil nisi bene was enforced by law. The soul of the dead was thought to be present as the host at this last banquet in his honor. 1 4. The Worship of Souls. Though many of the funeral customs probably originated in a worship of souls, it is not always easy to prove the point. There is no question that the grave monument originally marked a sacred spot where worship was carried on. Plants and trees were placed about tombs as about temples to please the divinity there present. 2 From the standpoint of the Olympian gods death was a source of impurity ; on this ground graves were ordinarily outside the city gates, the dying were carried away from the shrines of Asclepius, and Delos was purified by removing all graves that it might be an island sacred to Apollo. 8 But for the family the tombs of its dead were important shrines. There are some indications that in early days the Greeks buried their dead within the house, as in many Dorian cities they con- tinued to bury them inside the city walls ; then the cult of ances- tors would be the central element in the worship of the family. 4 In Athens members of the family brought food to the tomb on the third day and the ninth day after the funeral, 5 a custom still 1 Cicero, de leg. z. 25/63. 2 Eustathius on Odyssey, n. 538. 8 Pausanias, 2. 27. 6; Herodotus, i. 64; Thucydides, 3. 104. 4 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 27, p. 56; Pausanias, i. 43. 3.; Polybius, 8. 30. 6 Aristophanes, Lys. 612, and schoL ; Isaeus, 8. 39 ; Aeschines, 3. 225. THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 179 observed on some of the Greek islands. The mourning seems to have continued for thirty days, when it was ended with an offer- ing or memorial meal. 1 At Argos this offering was in honor of Hermes, Conductor of souls ; in Sparta a similar offering at the end of the mourning was made to Demeter ; perhaps the god of souls was worshipped with the thought that after the mourning the soul went to Hades and returned to the tomb only on occa- sions of worship. The birthday of the dead was one such occa- sion when worship was offered at the tomb (yeve'cna), as though the life after death was a continuation of the life which began with the birthday. 2 At a festival in early autumn (the city Genesia or birthday celebration), and on the thirtieth of every month (at the vEKvoW) the Athenians brought offerings to the tombs of their respective families. 3 Finally, at the Anthesteria, a festival of Diony- sus already described (p. 158), the souls of the dead were free to revisit the upper world. The temples of the gods were closed, pitch on the doorposts kept the souls from entering private houses, business was suspended, while libations were offered to the dead and pots of cooked fruits were brought to Hermes, Conductor of souls. The worship at the grave was of two kinds (i) sacrifices and libations such as were offered to heroes and to gods of the under- world, and (2) tokens of honor and affection. The sacrifice of animals at the tomb was not a necessary part of soul worship, though in many places the sacrifice of a sheep was customary. 4 A black animal was chosen, its blood allowed to flow into a trench by the grave, and the carcass cut in pieces and burned (evayiecr0ai). 5 Apparently, it was simply the blood which the soul of the dead man wanted. 6 On the ninth day after burial cooked food, spe- 1 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 27, p. 56; Quaest. graec. 24, p. 296 E; Pollux I. 66, Bekker, Artec. Graec. 268. 19. 2 Petersen, Geburtstagsfeier , 301 f. 8 Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen, 172; Rohde, Psyche, 215 i, * Cp. Ath. Mitth. 18 (1893) 151, 155, etc. 5 Apollonius Rhod. i. 587, and schol. 6 Pindar, Olym. i. 94; Euripides, Hec. 536; Plutarch, Arist. 21, p. 332. i8o GREEK RELIGION cially prepared for the occasion, was placed on the grave. 1 When Lucian speaks of banquets, burned at the grave with libations for the dead, he may be referring to this practice. 2 The commonest offering was the libation (called x y> not wovSrj) . 3 The libations, consisting of honey mixed with water, of unmixed wine, and of olive oil, were poured into a trench dug beside the grave. The honey mixture was perhaps an old drink, in use before the general introduction of wine. Oil was brought to the dead not to drink, but probably that he might not lack what the living man regularly used after gymnastic exercises to anoint his body. So in some places baths of water were set in large basins by the tomb for the use of souls. 4 All these forms of worship assume that the soul desired food, drink, water for bathing, etc., just as the living man needed them. 5 If they were provided at the grave, the soul was graciously inclined toward the dead man's kindred and descend- ants. 6 It is suggested that in some way the continued existence and power of the soul depended on such occasional offerings. On most of the small funeral vases (lekythoi) found in Attic tombs are represented scenes at the grave. 7 No animal sacrifice is depicted, but not infrequently men are pouring libations to the dead, or bringing to the tomb flat baskets containing cakes and fruits, or offering phials of perfume and oil. These phials (alabastra) are often set on the steps of the tomb or tied to its shaft. In the same way a sword, a helmet, a mirror, a fan, are brought to the tomb, as for the use of the dead. The seated man playing a harp is in some instances probably one of the family making music for the soul, as he had made music to gratify the 1 Cp. Plautus, Pseud. 3. 2. 6 (795) ; Aul. 2. 4. 45 (324). 2 Lucian, De luctu, 19, p. 931. 8 Iliad, 23. 170 and 218 ; Aeschylus, Choeph. 15 f. ; Sophocles, Elec. 434 f. ; Eu- ripides, Orest. 113 f. ; Iph. Taur. 633 ; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 877. 8. *Jahr. Inst. 13 (1898) 13 f. ; 14 (1899) 103 f. 6 Philol. 39 (1880) 378 f. ; Jahr. Philol. 135 (1887) 653 f.; Aeschylus, Choeph. 483 f. ; Lucian, De luctu, 9, p. 926. 6 Aeschylus, Choeph. 93 ; Euripides, Orest. 118. 7 Benndorf, Griech, Sicil, Vzsenbilder Taf, xiv, f. ; Fairbanks, Athenian Whitt Lekythoi, 346 , THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE iSi man while he lived. Dolls are brought to the graves of children ; ducks or finches and rabbits, pets of the living, are brought to the tomb to amuse the dead. Most commonly of all the mourners hang wreaths on the monument, or fasten ribbons (taeniae) about the shaft. These practices all grow out of the belief that the soul of the dead is present to enjoy what the man had enjoyed be- fore he died. At Athens, however, they tend to be- come a form of pious re- membrance of the dead, instead of forms of wor- ship. The worship of souls was probably one of the oldest elements of Greek religion, the foundation of the worship of chthonic gods, an all-important factor in the rise of hero worship and the worship of agricultural gods. It was perhaps the strongest force in giving a perma- nent unity to the family, such that the family could serve as the basis for an enduring organized state. A man felt that he must have children, his own or adopted, to keep up the worship of his soul after death. It is not easy to state exactly what advan- tage men expected from this worship, or with what feelings they looked forward to a future state. That the soul was an invisible being with some degree of consciousness, hovering about the grave and gratified by the offerings brought there, powerful to harm and FIG. 55. ATHENIAN WHITE LEKYTHOI (Athens) Offerings at the grave; a bird in a cage, a dish with fruit, a duck, and a flat basket (for vases, wreaths, etc.) are presented before the stele. 1 82 GREEK RELIGION to help so that its blessing was sought by its survivors, is plain. It seems plain, also, that men did not look forward to any moral retribution after death, and that the thought of future blessedness was not part of the old soul worship. An unquestioning faith that sometning, however shadowy, persisted after death, was the foundation of the later developments of belief in the worship of Demeter and of Dionysus. 5. The Gods of the Underworld. Along with the popular thought of the souls as little winged beings fluttering about the tomb, there existed from early days the thought of a realm where the souls were gathered. Whether it was placed beneath the earth, as the body was buried beneath the earth's surface, or whether men located it in the extreme west, as in the Odyssey, the conception of it was much the same. It was the " house of Hades," whose name means invisible ; it was dark and gloomy, so that men at death bade farewell to the sun ; Hades was called Polydegmon and Pankoinos, for he received all who came, Isodai- tes, for he assigned them equal lots. 1 That the lot of the good man should be better than the lot of the bad, is a thought that developed very slowly. In the Odyssey we read of the islands of the blessed, a future abode for Menelaus the son-in-law of Zeus, not for the good and the brave ; 2 the stories of Tityos, Tantalus, Sisyphus, etc., punished for crimes against the gods, are not a part of early belief; even the judgments of Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Minos contain the thought of retribution only in germ. 3 This " house of Hades " was the more real because streams swallowed up in limestone rock, wild caves and fissures, spots where mephitic gases were emitted, seemed to furnish an actual connection between this world and the world below. The chasm under the Areopagus rock at Athens was the seat of underworld beings. 4 In the precinct of Pluto at Hermione 5 there was a chasm 1 See Preller-Robert, Index III, s.v. Aides. 2 Odyssey, 4. 566 f. * Odyssey, n. 576 f. 4 Thucydides, i. 126; Euripides, Elect. 1270 f. ; Pausanias, i. 28. 6; C.I. A. II, 948-950. 5 Pausanias, 2. 35. 10. THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 183 1 84 GREEK RELIGION through which Heracles is said to have brought up Cerberus from Hades, and near by was an "Acherousian lake." Strabo 1 says that the people of Hermione thought it unnecessary to give the dead any money for Charon, because Acheron lay in their own land, instead of separating the land of the living from the place of souls. At Eleusis, at Pheneos in Arcadia, at Lerna, and in Sicily, caves were pointed out as the spot where Hades carried off Persephone to be his bride. 2 At Hierapolis in Phrygia s there was an oracular cave under the temple of Apollo, filled with gases from below which only the initiated could breathe. Other " Charo- neia" or "Plutonia" in Asia Minor are mentioned by Strabo. 4 Herodotus 5 tells of a soul-oracle (ve/c/ao/iavTeiov) on the river Acheron in Thesprotia. At Taenaron also was an entrance to the lower world where souls could be evoked and consulted. The worship of the underworld gods was pretty closely limited to these spots where physical conditions suggested that the world below was directly accessible. In the epic " mighty Hades and dread Persephone " were rulers of this gloomy world, as Zeus and Hera were rulers of the world above. The picture of Hades's realm was consciously made the counterpart to that of the realm of Zeus, a dim shadowy copy of life on the earth. All the awfulness of death gathered about the king and queen of the shades ; they alone of the gods were un- touched by human prayers ; men sought their help only in wreak- ing vengeance on an enemy. " Persephone " like " Tisiphone " suggested pursuing punishment, anything but the Daughter who was worshipped with the Grain Mother at Eleusis. The trans- formation of this Persephone into the daughter of Demeter, and of Hades into Pluto, the god of wealth, is a problem not yet fully solved. There is reason to think that the god of riches in the earth, riches of mineral wealth and riches gained from the 1 Strabo, 8, p. 373. 2 Pausanias, i. 38. 5 ; 2. 36. 7 ; Diodorus. Sic. 5. 3 ; Plutarch, Quaest. phys. 23, p. 917 F. * Strabo, 13, p. 629. 4 Strabo, 12. 579 ; 13. 629 ; 14. 649. 5 Herodotus, 5. 92. 7. THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 185 earth by means of agriculture, was worshipped from early times in certain localities. He would be, for example, the agricultural Zeus worshipped with Ge (earth) in the island of Myconos, 1 and the Pluto of Eleusis. This god may then have been identified with the Hades of Homer and of later myth for the very simple reason that both were gods who ruled beneath the earth's surface. And as for Persephone, the story of her rape furnishes a kind of explanation as to how Demeter's daughter became Hades's queen. Demeter is not, like Pluto, an underworld god ; it is through her daughter that Greek belief must make the con- nection between the queen of souls and the growing corn. Per- haps the sowing of the seed and the sprouting of the grain itself made the daughter of Demeter the underworld goddess for part of the year, a goddess who then was identified with the queen of souls. The epic conceptions, however, kept their hold on litera- ture and in some measure on religious belief. Hades continued to mean death ; Pluto remained a local divinity ; it was only the initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries who could confidently look to the queen of the dead as the kindly daughter of the earth-mother. The only other divinities of souls who found wide recognition in religion were the Erinyes. In the Homeric poems they enforced the rights of strangers, and in particular they guarded the rights of the firstborn. 2 Later they were the special avengers of crime against the family ; they pursued Orestes for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra, even though this was vengeance prescribed by the Delphic Apollo. 3 The "Erinyes of Clytemnestra" who avenged the mother's blood, however rightly shed, were the spirits of the family, perhaps the souls of ancestors. 4 When the Erinyes (or Furies) were worshipped they were called Eumenides (Kindly), Semnai (Revered), Potniai (Queenly), as though men would flatter them by such names. They did, however, have another side to their nature in that, like Hades and Persephone, they were god- desses of agriculture. 1 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 615. 25. Aeschylus, Bum. passim. 2 Odyssey, 14. 57 ; Iliad, 15. 204. * Rohde, Psyche, 247- 1 86 GREEK RELIGION 6. Transfiguration of the Future Life in the Worship of Dionysus and of Demeter. We have seen that in the Homeric poems themselves there is a transition from the belief that souls are nothing but shades to the belief that these shades retain con- sciousness. This consciousness is a bane rather than a blessing, for it brings with it no joy. So the worship of souls lends to them certain powers for and against human welfare; it brings them nearer to men and makes them dependent on the gifts brought to them in worship ; yet men do not look forward to any joy in the worship of their souls after death. The contrast is most striking between these views and that expressed by Pindar : " Blessed he who goes beneath the earth after seeing these mystic rites; he knows the goal of life, he knows its Zeus-given beginning." l It is in connection with the religious revival of the seventh and" sixth centuries B.C. that the new thought of the future life obtains a place in Greek religious belief. The nature of Dionysus worship and its introduction into Greece are considered in Part II (Chap. iii). In Thrace the wor- shippers of this god believed in the continued existence of the soul after death and the return of the soul to this world again. In the actual experiences of a religious frenzy in which men were "possessed" by the god, called by the divine name, gifted with divine foresight, the Thracians realized their belief that the soul was made of divine stuff. The revival which brought this re- ligion into Greece, came with convincing force, for the northern god made his presence felt by his worshippers. The Greeks too yielded to his maddening touch and found proof in personal ex- perience that the soul of the worshipper was of the same nature as the god who possessed it. From the epic on, immortality and divinity were almost interchangeable terms. It was good logic for the Greek to hold that if the soul of the living man is of divine nature, the soul of the dead continues to be divine and immortal. This new phase of religion with its wild orgiastic ritual was diametrically opposed to the Homeric standards. Its rapid prog- l Pindar, Frag. (102) 114. THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE 187 ress was in some measure due to its uncompromising claims ; its decline was inevitable except as its practices were modified to correspond with the habits of Greek thought. But though the " revival " lost much of its vitality, though the worship of Dionysus was reduced to a state cult in which religious experience gave way to splendid forms, its power did not completely die. The longing for a real future life which it stimulated in individuals, led to private " initiations " and religious associations in order to secure the favor of underworld gods ; its aspirations reappeared in the poetry of Sophocles and the philosophy of Plato ; in the worship of Demeter at Eleusis the new conceptions found a congenial soil in which they sprang up and bore abundant fruit. 1 The mysteries of Eleusis and similar rites elsewhere in Greece were based on an old peasant worship of agricultural deities. The gods of the dead who were buried in the earth, and of the grain which sprang from the earth, were not sharply distinguished, but at Eleusis the earlier purpose of the rites was to secure abundant crops. We may believe that Eleusis first developed as a priest- state devoted to the worship of the grain goddesses, and sought to make good its claim to be the centre and source of their worship. 2 It was the introduction of lacchus (a form of Dionysus) into these mysteries which gave them their distinctive character in the great days of Greece. That same assimilating power which later brought Asclepius and his healing rites into this worship, some two centuries earlier enabled the Eleusinian goddesses to appropriate the essence of the Dionysus revival by making a place in their worship for lacchus. In the fifth century B.C. all the emphasis in the mysteries was on the hope for a life of blessedness after death for those who had been initiated. The source of this hope was no new dogma. The universal belief that souls persisted after death was now a belief that they persisted with some degree of con- sciousness ; at Eleusis this belief was enriched by the experience of initiation, the experience that Hades was not implacable and 1 Cp. supra, p. 128, and notes. 2 Supra, p. 129 f. 1 88 GREEK RELIGION cruel to those who seek him rightly, the experience of the blessed- ness which his queen Persephone granted to the initiated. lac- chus, the reborn Dionysus, was only the symbol for that religion of experience which found a truly Greek form in these mysteries. The Eleusinian rites were but one of many forms of initiation, the aim of which was to set one's self right with the gods of the lower world. Their widespread influence was due to the policy of Peisistratus ; by including Eleusis among the cults of the Athe- nian state he gave political sanction to a worship hitherto purely local, and at the same time enabled the state religion to meet the new demand for a " soul-saving " worship. Nevertheless, the Dionysus-belief that the soul was divine and immortal re- mained the possession of a few. For the Athenian in the days of Pericles death was (i) departure from this world of reality and joy, and (2) the entrance on a future life not uncomfortable so long as his descendants continued to bring him offerings ; but if he were initiated at Eleusis it meant also (3) a life of real blessed- ness in the presence of Persephone and Hades. Thus Socrates could anticipate meeting just judges and the great men of past days in that future world ; the Antigone of Sophocles could look forward to an affectionate welcome from the father and mother and brothers whom " Persephone had received among the dead " ; and Isocrates could say " those who share this initiation, have sweet hopes both for the end of life and for all future time." 1 l Plato, Apol. 41 A-C ; Sophocles, Ant. 897 f. ; Isocrates, 4. 28 ; cp. Aristopha- nes, Ran. 380 f. ; Pausanias, 10. 31. 9. PART II HISTORICAL SKETCH OF RELIGION IN GREECE CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 1. Periods ; Methods of Investigation. The early history of Greek religion, and even the periods in which this history has to be considered, have been profoundly modified by recent investi- gations. During the last thirty years the remarkable discoveries in Greece and Crete have added new and striking chapters to our knowledge of Greek history. Incomplete as are the data in regard to the religion of Greece before 1000 B.C., it is now possible to speak tentatively of its form during the Mycenaean age, and even in the period which preceded the Mycenaean age. Coming down to the Homeric poems, we find that they raise one of the most difficult questions in the history of Greek religion ; to interpret the epic picture of religion and explain its relation to religious belief and practice in the age when the poems arose, are problems which have received most contradictory solutions. In the later history of this religion the attention of the student is focussed on that important movement connected with the religion of Dionysus and of Demeter, of which the Orphic sect was but one expression. Accordingly the main topics to be considered in a sketch of the history of Greek religion will be the following : I. The Beginnings of Greek Religion. II. Religion in the Greek Middle Ages (1100-700): The epic picture of religion. 189 190 GREEK RELIGION III. Religion in the Seventh and Sixth Centuries, B.C. : The rise of Demeter and Dionysus worship. IV. Religion in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries, B.C. : Hellenism at its height. V. The Outcome : Religion in the Hellenistic age ; The influ- ence of Greek religion on Roman civilization and on Christianity. Before discussing the lines of investigation by which knowledge of the earlier epochs may be obtained, it is necessary to point out two principles which have often been overlooked in dealing with this general topic. In the first place Greek religion cannot be studied by itself. It is so intimately connected with other phases of civilization and culture, not to say with political development, that its history must be studied step by step with the broader history of the people. The epochs of the history of Greek religion are not different from the epochs of the history of the Greek people. The forces which directed politics and scientific investigation, the social and moral ideals, even the forms of commerce and industry, are determining facts for the development of this religion. Per- haps the study of religious phenomena has as much to contribute to Greek history in general as the study of industry, or the study of social institutions ; conversely the study of Greek religion with- out taking into account other phases of life can never produce trustworthy results. A few examples will illustrate the importance of this principle. We have pointed out that the Zeus worshipped in each hamlet differed in greater or less degree from any other form of Zeus. The question whether one " sky god " has been split up into these countless forms, or whether the similar gods worshipped by different groups of people gradually tended to be merged into one god, father of gods and men, is fundamental. The long-accepted belief that the unity of Zeus is original, the variety of the local forms of Zeus a development more or less acci- dental, neglects the historic fact that the conscious unity of the Greek people was the outcome of a long process of development. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 191 Again, it is not reasonable to regard Crete as the one main source of Greek religion, 1 unless it is also the source of other forms of Greek civilization. If it should seem to be proved that the cults of Crete were a determining factor for religion as it is found on the Balkan peninsula, it would still be necessary to look for Cretan influence along other lines before the proof would be complete. Once more, the two main types of sacrifice in Greece the com- munion meal and the piacular sacrifice cannot stand for two periods in the history of religion, until each form has been defi- nitely connected with one epoch in the history of the Greek people. The principle under discussion does not rest on any mere theoreti- cal basis. Such historical facts as that hunting is more primitive than the keeping of domestic animals, that a nomad life precedes agriculture, that seafaring and commerce belong to a higher stage of society still, are facts reflected in the history of each god as well as in the history of worship. A second principle, now somewhat generally recognized, is that localities of worship and local forms of worship tend to persist through the greatest changes in outward belief. The discussion of ancient Greek cults in Christian Greece (cp. p. 285 f.) illustrates the wide reach of this principle. The tenacity of old forms always characterizes religion more than any other department of human life. The interpretation of a worship may change and imposing ceremonies may be added ; still the forms are likely to continue as they have been handed down, means by which the divine power may be propitiated. The flexibility of myth stands in striking contrast with the relatively fixed character of worship. Even when myth stood in much closer relation to belief than in the days when it furnished the theme of lyric or tragic poet, yet its ready response to any change in environment must be admitted. Con- sequently the investigation of myth yields relatively little for the history of religion. On the other hand worship is something so intensely practical, so tenacious of old forms though their meaning 1 As does O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte. I 9 2 GREEK RELIGION be forgotten, so slow to yield even when the religious conscious- ness demands some new type of religion, that in the study of cult- practices is to be found material for the entire religious history of such a people as the Greeks. In the effort to reconstruct the early history of Greek religion before the rise of any literature, several lines of investigation are to be pursued, (i) The first definite effort to deal with this problem used the method of Indo-European parallels. The wonderful advance in the knowledge of Indo-European languages which followed the discovery and critical study of Sanskrit gave rise to the belief that a similar method would yield equally impor- tant results in the history of other phases of culture. The com- parative method was applied to the study of social, industrial, political, and religious institutions with varying success. Although the belief in one Indo-European race has been somewhat shaken, yet the fact that all the European languages go back to one source justifies the student in seeking some likeness in the early religious development of the peoples who spoke these languages ; indeed, the historic relation between different phases of culture demands that such a course be followed. At the same time the fact that religious belief and practice do not follow exactly the same lines of development as do social or political institutions, is a warning to caution. When one people subdues another and occupies its land, sometimes the institutions and the language of the conquerors prevail in the territory they have won, or on the other hand the language and the civilization of the country may survive the politi- cal changes, as was the case in Greece under Roman domination. In the first instance the conquerors may not dare to neglect the gods and the worship they find in the land, though they bring their own gods with them ; in the second instance the conquerors may introduce their gods that brought them victory, even though their language tends to die out. Moreover, it is evident that the spirit of a people dominates and shapes religious belief more than it can affect language on the one hand, or the forms of religious practice on the other hand. It is just this tenacity of religious THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 193 forms along with the flexibility of the content in these forms which makes it difficult, to apply the comparative method to the historical study of religion. (2) A second method of investigation uses the archaeological remains which have recently been discovered in such abundance in Greece, in the Aegean islands, and in Crete. By means of the relations existing between early Greece and Egypt it is possible to get, with some assurance, an approximate date for these remains. The difficulty which confronts the student here is to determine what objects really have religious significance, and then to ascer- tain just what this significance is. The only safe principle is to reject for the time being all monuments the religious meaning of which cannot be proved by the circumstances of their discovery, by comparison with remains from a later date, or by their relation to religious objects among related peoples. Even then, it may be impossible to determine the significance of definitely religious monu- ments for early Greek religion. (3) Thirdly, some inferences may be drawn from the practices of later worship. Many of the local forms of worship in later time conform to the type suggested by the Homeric poems. Other practices, in themselves older, were profoundly modified by the religious movements of the seventh and sixth centuries, B.C. ; there still remain some rites so out of line with the development of religion during these epochs that they may fairly be referred to an earlier period. With all the obstacles to the successful use of this method, some results obtained by it may be accepted, espe- cially when they are in harmony with the results of other lines of investigation. (4) Again some historical data throw indirect but important light on the special history of religion. A study of the cults in colonies, the founding of which may be approximately dated, furnishes evidence as to the cults in the mother cities. Similarly the stage of religious development in Greece at the time of the great migrations, in particular the migrations across the Aegean to Asia Minor, is indicated by a comparison of the later conditions GREEK RELIGION 13 i 9 4 GREEK RELIGION in the regions affected. There can be no doubt that the people of Ionia worshipped Olympian deities, such as Zeus and Athena, Apollo and Poseidon, because they brought this worship with them from Greece. It is fairly well established that Heracles was not originally a Dorian god, yet it must be admitted that he was adopted as a national hero at the time of the " Dorian migration." Similarly the presence of many Thessalian cults in southern Greece points to the development of these cults in the north before a migration southward. (5) Another line of historical argument is concerned with the names of places and the names of persons. There is no question that many names were " theophoric," derived from the name of the god himself, or sometimes from practices that obtained in his worship. The study of language throws some light on the epoch when these names were formed, and historical data occasionally indicate when they came into general use. For example, the use of the names of the Olympian gods without change as names for persons is known to be late ; the formation of adjectives from these Olympian names to be used as names for persons or places was not common in early times ; on the other hand such forms as Athenai, Thebai, Alalkomenai, belong to a far earlier epoch. The special advantages of this method, wherever it is available, are that it is entirely independent of the others mentioned and that the results thus obtained may be approximately dated. 2. The Type of Early Religion in Greece. The common belief of kindred races in later times and in particular the later Greek belief has led to the following inferences as to this period in Greece. The objects and processes of nature, in so far as they attracted man's attention, were endowed with a life not unlike his own (animism), a life which we may describe by saying that nature was full of spirits. What these spirits were is hard to define ; sometimes it would seem that they were the souls of the dead, not properly laid to rest, again it is not so much souls in objects as a sentient life peculiar to the objects themselves with which we have to deal. If we may say that nature was full of spirits, it is neces- THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 195 sary to add that relatively few of these spirits were important to man. Only such as represented the objects which he used and the processes in nature which affected him for good or evil, together with the souls of his ancestors, demanded his attention. These he sought, either to win over by his worship, or to banish out of this sphere of life by his arts ; his gods were the powerful spirits whose continuous favor he sought to gain. Among the gods we may assume a heaven god, the source of light and warmth and rain ; an earth goddess, mother of vegetation when fertilized by the rain ; perhaps also a goddess of the hearth and the family, a Hestia. Spirits which protected the flocks from harm, or pro- duced young of the flocks, or blessed the hunter in his search for game were also worshipped. In a word, it seems that some nature gods were generally worshipped, and some " departmental " gods. The contrast between these communities based on the family as the primary unit and the Semitic blood-clans, between these departmental gods (quite generally of the same type, though differing in detail) and the Semitic gods who are of one blood with their worshipping clans, is very striking. We are justified further in the belief that worship and in partic- ular the greater festivals were determined by the annual changes of nature. The equinoxes and the solstices, the date of sowing and of reaping, etc., were the times of worship. The forms of worship, no doubt, were shaped by that sympathy with the life and death of vegetation which gave rise to the belief in gods that were born and died each year. More than this, men thought by half- magical rites to induce germination of the seed, generation in animals, growth in plants and animals. The presence of these ideas and practices both in later Greece and among other Indo- European races indicates that they date back to a very early period. Particular cases of cult survival cannot be traced back with any confidence to this epoch. Cults located on mountain tops, no doubt, date back to some early worship of the heaven god, cults in caves, to an early worship of the earth goddess who both 196 GREEK RELIGION receives the dead and gives birth to vegetation. The reason for assigning to these cults an early date is that the developed Mycenaean civilization, like later civilization which centred in towns, was probably unfavorable to the creation of such localities of worship. In some particular cases the libation without wine, the sacrifices without blood, and even without fire, may be sur- vivals of very early practice. 1 That springs, particular trees, cer- tain kinds of animals, were held sacred by some communities, is altogether probable. The central feature of " totemism," the sac- rificial meal of a clan on its kindred animal, is nowhere attested for Greece. On the other hand, the animal " symbols " of the Olympian deities, the eagle of Zeus, the owl of Athena, hardly originated as mere symbols ; and it is also pointed out that the worship of a bear goddess (Artemis) by girls imitating bears by their movements and their brown clothing, and called " bears " (apKToi), may be the relic of a very early worship of animals. 2 If the views presented in the preceding paragraph are correct, we must assume that a worship of " tendance," which aimed to secure the favor of real gods, always existed in Greece along with the worship of " aversion " by which men sought to drive away evil spirits and to distract the attention of beings which might harm them. This attempt to drive away evil, or in later language to " purify " one's self from evil, was unquestionably far more wide- spread before the rise of the definitely fixed Olympian deities which Homer pictures, than it was later ; in fact these rites belong to the lowest stratum of Greek religion, although the attempt to treat them as exclusively the worship of any one period seems to me unhis- torical, and unjustified by any arguments yet adduced in its favor. To this earliest period we are to assign none of the gods of later religion, not Zeus on the one hand, nor the chthonic gods on the other ; rather we find here the germs out of which the later gods were developed : a sky god worshipped in many forms in different 1 Polemon in scholion to Sophocles, Oed. Col. 100; Pausanias, i. 26. 6; Plato, Leg. 6, p. 782 C. 2 Cp. supra, p. 122. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 197 places who became Zeus, an earth goddess who appears later under several names, gods who preside over different human activities no two just alike, and countless spirits many of which must be avoided and even averted by special rites. 3. Early Religion in the light of Archaeological Remains. The excavations of Schliemann at Mycenae shed the first light on a period in Greek history, which till then was but dimly known through inferences from myth and from the epic. Later discoveries revealed similar remains all along the east coast of Greece, among the Aegean islands, on the coast of Asia Minor, and in Crete. The remains marked a distinct type of civilization, often called Mycenaean because Mycenae was one of its most important centres of influence. The pottery and utensils were of a type so marked that they were readily recognized whether they appeared along the Aegean sea, in Egypt, or in more distant regions. The situation of the cities, and the decorative designs on the remains, indicate that this was the civilization of a seafaring people. That it was at its height about 1500-1200 B.C. is shown by dated Egyptian objects in Mycenaean tombs and by Mycenaean objects found with dated remains in Egypt. Although the impulse to progress in art, in religion, as well as in commerce came from the east and south, there is little doubt that this civilization belonged to an essentially Greek people. In Crete alone do we learn much of the earlier periods and the civilization out of which the Mycenaean civilization probably developed. The excavations of the last ten years in Crete seem to indicate three main periods of development, only the third of which is connected with what has been called Mycenaean. These periods are, for convenience, called by the names assigned by Mr. Arthur Evans, " Early Minoan," " Middle Minoan," and " Late Minoan," while subdivisions in the periods are indicated by the Roman numerals I-III. 1 The third main period was marked by the irruption into Crete of an Hellenic race from the north ; of the 1 The dates which may be assigned to these periods are discussed in Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, and in Hawes, Govrnia, p. 2 f. 198 GREEK RELIGION earlier periods we can only say that the people were of a different race, not necessarily an Aryan race, of which traces have been found in Asia Minor, if not in Greece itself. It is clear that the first important civilization of the Aegean belonged to this race ; that it centred in Crete ; and that it developed into a sea-power, FIG. 57. SECTION AND PLAN OF DOMED TOMB (Tholos) AT MYCENAE which left its mark in the legends of Minos. The name " Myce- naean " must be limited to that phase of early civilization which developed in a Greek race through its contact with this earlier race in Crete, and which had its main centres in the Aegean islands and in Greece proper. At the same time it adopted so much from the earlier periods in Crete that it is almost impos- sible for us to treat it by itself. So far as religion is concerned, it is clear, in the first place, that in all these earlier ages there was a real belief in the future life, THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 199 if not an actual worship of the dead. The utensils found in early Cretan tombs vessels of stone or pottery or bronze, rings and jewelry, weapons, etc. can only mean that the dead had the same wants as the living. The later domed tombs of " bee-hive " shape were elaborate structures erected as homes for the dead. Over an earlier " shaft " grave at Mycenae was found an altar with ashes and charred remains of domestic animals ; here and elsewhere both the bones of sacrificed ani- mals and the objects found with the dead are evidence of a real wor- ship of the dead, a worship of tendance, so far as we can learn, not of aversion. The objects of thin gold plate found in such abun- dance at Mycenae sug- gest, perhaps, that dead were shades the who such sub- and Bath vessel reconstructed from fragments be- fore the tomb at Menidi. FIG. 58. ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED VASE PAINTING did not need stantial ornaments utensils as living men ; yet the bronze vessels, the pottery, and the armor are such as living men used. The question whether worship continued to be offered at the tomb after the ceremony of burial was finished, cannot be answered absolutely. Dr. Wolters infers from the fragments of pottery found in the entrance of a bee-hive tomb near Menidi in Attica, that here water for bathing was regularly brought to the dead in a high basin, until the practice was stopped by the Pelo- 200 GREEK RELIGION ponnesian war ; * if the inference is accepted, it means continued tendance of the dead. Again, the question whether rites in honor of the dead should be considered the worship of gods, 2 whether they imply a belief in beings themselves potent to send good and evil to the worshippers, may receive different answers. If the spirits of the dead were not banished from this world, but tended with kindly offices, we can but infer a real belief in their power to send divine bless- ings. Other places besides the tomb where actual traces of worship have been found are the mountain cave and the palace shrine. The cave on the Cretan Mt. Dicte was an im- portant centre of wor- ship in the " Minoan " age. A large stone altar, small libation tables, layers of ashes with incinerated bones, fragments of pottery vases and figures, small double axes and figurines of bronze, all attest its impor- tance as a shrine in the Middle and Late Minoan periods. There is no definite evidence as to the god or goddess here worshipped. Tradition and myth connect the birth of Zeus with Mt. Dicte as well as with Mt. Ida ; we only know that with the advent of the Dorians in Crete the Idaean shrine rapidly gained the pre- 1 Jahr. Arch, Inst. 13 (1898) 13 f. ; 14 (1899) 103 f. 2 On the interesting sarcophagus from Hagia Triada one scene is interpreted as representing worship offered to the dead man in front of the tomb ; Lagrange, La Crete ancienne, 65, fig. 35. FIG. 59. PLAN OF THE DICTAEAN CAVE THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 201 STEATITE DOUBLE D BLE DOUBLE GODDESS RESTORED ON HEAD db LOWER Y. STEP SHRINE OF DOUBLE AX SECTION HOLDING DOVE FEMALE FIGURE d ^FI FEMALE GODDESS WITH DOVE ON HEAD , i i d OFEMALE I / SMALL VOTARY FIGURE I 'DOUBLE AX ! i CYLINDRICAL ^ OF STEATITE -^ 4- BELOW 4- + RAISED BASE WITH PEBBLED FLOOR AND PLASTER FACING CLAY VESSELS- K 1-50 -5 Centimetres^. \ Metre. FIG. 60. THE " SHRINE OF THE DOUBLE AXES " AT CNOSSOS 202 GREEK RELIGION eminence, and that this was a shrine of Zeus, the Greek god of the heavens. In the Cretan palaces which have been excavated at Cnossos, Phaestos, Hagia Triada, and Gournia, small rooms have been found which clearly were used for worship in the Middle Minoan (III) and Late Minoan periods. The most complete of these is the "shrine of the Double Axes" in the palace at Cnossos (Late Minoan III). 1 It is a small room about 1.50 m. square, divided into three parts by a difference of level. In the first section as one enters were found several amphorae and other vases ; in the second section, which is slightly higher, a low tripod basin of plaster stood in the centre and about it were small cups and bowls of pottery ; the third section, which was narrower and consider- ably higher, may be described as a shelf, on which stood five terra cotta figurines, a small double axe of steatite, a Maltese cross, and two " horns of consecration " of plaster, each with a socket in which perhaps a double axe once stood. These objects will demand consideration later. On the mainland of Greece no such shrines have been found in Mycenaean palaces. A pit in the court of the palace at Tiryns has been interpreted as a pit altar. In any case we are probably right in assuming that in these palaces (and perhaps in the Cretan palaces) sacrifices were offered to the gods in the court or in the megaron opening off the court. Among the objects used in worship the types of vases are not peculiar, except for the high, slender, funnel-shaped vase with handle at the top. 2 The conch-shell perhaps was used to summon either the gods or their worshippers. Liquid offerings were pre- sented in the hollowed top of a stone or in some other flat basin. The altar itself was a square structure, sometimes represented as having one part higher than the other ; or again, it takes the form of a pedestal with the sides cut back between the top and bottom. 1 Brit. School Annual, 8 (1901) 95-105. 2 Wide in Atk. Mitth. 26 (1901) 247 f.; Lagrange, La Crete ancienne, frontis- piece. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 203 It is not clear whether the altar was actually used for burnt offer- ings or whether they were burned (if they were burned at all) on the ground in the open air. In any case, the term altar has often been applied to what is essentially a pedestal or support. Two monuments representing worship actually in progress deserve careful study. The first, a sarcophagus from Hagia Triada, is described and partially illustrated by Lagrange. 1 On one side is a scene of sacrifice : two women and a man blowing the flute stand behind a table on which lies a bull with blood flowing from his throat into a vessel below ; then follows a priestess holding a basket of fruits or cakes above a low FIG. 61. LIBATION TABLES AND DISHES base, upright double axes with a black bird perched on them, and a building on which a plant is growing. On the other side offerings are brought and placed in a jar between double axes at the left ; at the right small calves and a bowl (or boat) are brought by persons in a peculiar dress toward a tree and a stiff figure (the dead ?) stand- ing before a high structure (the tomb?). The second monument is the upper half of a small stone vase (Fig. 62). The scene apparently represents a procession of harvesters carrying long three-pronged forks, and headed by a man in a richly ornamented cloak or cape. 2 It is difficult to explain the procession other than as a religious act. There is no evidence that idols in the proper sense of the term, anthropomorphic images which exemplified a god to his wor- 1 Lagrange, La Crete ancienne, 61 f. 2 Fowler and Wheeler, Greek Archaeology, 68. 264 GREEK RELIGION shippers, were in general use ; in fact none of the figurines found in these shrines are unmistakably gods, and, if they are to be in- terpreted as gods, it is quite unlikely that such small figures were themselves objects of worship. Various religious symbols, how- ever, may be pointed out ; representations of the gods appear in FIG. 62. STEATITE VASE FROM HAGIA TRIADA scenes of worship depicted on seals, etc. ; and the question as to the figurines needs further consideration. Among the commonest symbols are the so-called "horns of consecration," two horns or prongs connected by a depressed line. In scenes of worship on gems, these horns stand on a sort of altar, and they are found on a miniature terra cotta altar from the Cnossos "Temple Repositories." 1 In the shrine described above they stand on the upper level with the figurines. A steatite 1 Lagrange, ibid., 83, fig. 62; Brit. School Ann. g (1902). Cp. the Hebrew " horns of the altar," Exodus 27. 2. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 205 fragment shows two men holding out bowls before a wall with several pairs of horns. 1 The motive is repeated several times on representations of an architectural fa?ade which suggests a temple, in remains both from Crete and Mycenae. 2 With it are often associated a pillar, a double axe, or, at Mycenae, a dove. The only interpreta- tion yet suggested is that these horns are conventionalized from " boukrania," the skulls of sacrificed oxen with the horns attached, which are found in scenes of worship in this period as well as in later times. There are many indications that the bull was very im- portant for religion in Crete. One of the com- monest symbols in this period was the symbol of power, the double axe. That this was often used with religious significance no one can question. It occurs in the " Shrine of the Double Axes " at Cnossos ; many small bronze axes were found with some miniature shields in the later Minoan deposits of the Dictaean caves ; a double axe is represented in scenes of worship on gems ; it is associated both with " horns of consecration " and FIG. 63. STEATITE OFFERTORY SCENE Two figures stand holding out bowls before a wall on which are " horns of consecration." 1 Riit. School Ann. g (1902) 129. 2 Ibid. 7 (1900) fig. 9 ; p. 207, infra, fig. 65. 2O6 GREEK RELIGION with the representation of a bull's head with horns. The use of the double axe on the sarcophagus from Hagia Triada has already been mentioned. 1 No trace has been found in Crete of a double axe which was suited for actual use as a weapon; it is simply a symbol of the power which such a weapon once gave. It is most naturally understood as the symbol of a god of the heavens, who was at the same time a war-god. On the architectural facades mentioned above (p. 205) a pillar stands between the horns of consecration ; usually it rests on a sort of altar base. While it is possible that this pillar is purely structural, it is more probable that it had some meaning for reli- gion ; in this case, the pillar in some rooms of the Cnossos palace may also have had some religious signifi- cance. The evidence for sacred pillars or stones elsewhere in Crete is slight. That sacred trees had a place in the early Cretan religion cannot be disputed. A fragment of a steatite vase found at Cnossos 2 shows a fig tree in an enclosure with horns of consecration and wor- shippers. On gems a tree or branches from trees are found with worshippers before an altar with horns. Again, on the " heraldic gems " we often see be- tween the two creatures a tree instead of a human figure ; in one interesting case the creatures are watering the tree. It is possible that the Gournia shrine was once occupied by a sacred tree. 3 The question of animal "symbols" is complicated by the occurrence on the gems, just mentioned, of creatures half animal, half man, and in several instances combining parts of several ani- mals. These creatures seem to indicate worshippers, or rather FIG. 64. GEM FROM VAPHIO In the centre sprays of a tree rise from " horns of consecration " on a stand ; on either side a com- posite creature is holding up a pitcher. 1 Cp, supra, p. 203. 2 Evan*, Jour. Hell. Stud. 14 (1901) 103. 3 Hawes, Gournia, 47 (B.E.W.). THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 207 attendants in worship, who might be either human beings or minor divine beings. The last explanation seems to be the more prob- able ; in that case we should regard these curious creatures as the embodiment of lesser spirits whose function it is to keep up the worship of the gods. That spirits should be conceived in animal forms may be due to a " totemistic " range of ideas, but there is no clear evidence of totemism and no great probability that it existed in Crete or in Greece at this time. Except for the serpent, the one clear instance of a " sacred animal " is the dove, which is found with the horns on a complicated shrine facade, again on a female figure which the Greeks would have called Aphrodite, and in other connections. While no real idols have been found, there are various representations of the gods on gems and in painting, and some small figures which may be divinities. The small pottery figures found in such abundance on Mycenaean sites have no doubt some religious significance. They represent a woman, either with raised hands or with her hands clasped to her breast, and sometimes holding a child. A few figures of a woman in thin gold have also been found. What use was made of these figures is not clear. In a shrine of the palace at Cnossos, however, there were found three pottery figures of a type somewhat similar to the pottery figures of Tiryns and Mycenae ; in this instance the " horns," the double axe, and the vessels found with them indicate that they played a part in actual worship. A dove stands on the head of one of the figures. FIG. 65. THIN GOLD PLAQUE FROM MYCENAE Several pairs of horns and three double columns are seen in the facade, above which are two doves. 208 GREEK RELIGION At Cnossos, in the shrine at Gournia, and elsewhere in Crete, have been found figures of pottery or faience, dressed in tight bodice and full flounced skirt, often with a serpent twined about the body. It has been customary to treat at least the figures with dove or serpent as god- desses, while others have more often been regarded as worship- pers. Probably all are votive offerings, for there is no reason why figures of the god as well as of the wor- shipper should not be so presented. The scenes on gems and seal impressions include both divine and human beings. We can but call it a goddess who stands on a mountain flanked by lions, with a shrine at the left, and a wor- shipper at the right. 1 Probably it is a god- dess with a lion, and a god with a lioness on two impressions found a little later. 2 On the often published gem from Mycenae (Fig. 67), there is little question that the figure seated under a tree is a goddess ; her attendants may be nymphs or human beings. The figure on this same gem with double shield and spear, which also occurs in a wall painting at Mycenae, I can only regard as a god, possibly the god of the heavens as a war-god. Finally, the figure of a woman with an animal in each hand, 1 Brit. School Ann. 7 (1900) 29. 2 Ibid., 9 (1902) 59. FIG. 66. FAIENCE FIGURE FROM CNOSSOS THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 209 which occurs both on gems and in other forms of representa- tion, is doubtless a goddess, the predecessor of the so-called " Persian Artemis." It is very noticeable that the evidence for a male god is slight. The important divinity of the Minoans was a goddess, a goddess connected with the earth by her snake, with the heavens by her dove. So soon as we begin to deal with a Hellenic race it is fair to compare her with the Cretan Rhea (the Mother, perhaps Mother Earth). The dove, even at this early day, may suggest Aphrodite. The goddess of wild animals would, for such a race, be a form of Artemis, the queen of wild beasts and the patron of hunters. Finally the war- god (perhaps the god of the double axe) would of course be the god of . , -/I , F IG - 67- GOLD RING FROM the heavens, Zeus, the consort or the MYCENAE (.035 m. long) son of the earth goddess. The ar- chaeological evidence is such as to justify the belief that these old Cretan deities would be received by invading Greeks and wor- shipped under their Greek names. 4. Early Religion as inferred from the Following Period. A second main line of argument with reference to early Greek reli- gion would proceed backward from the known to the unknown, from cult survivals back to earlier types of worship, and from later religious conceptions back to their probable sources. In the present state of our knowledge it is absolutely impossible to assign survivals of early worship definitely to a Mycenaean age, to an earlier Minoan age, or to wandering Greek tribes. Rites which have to do with the care of flocks may go back to nomad tribes ; unquestionably with the development of civilization increasing stress was laid on agriculture and agricultural worship ; the devel- opment of city life with its stimulus to manufactures and commerce must have been reflected in the forms of religion. In particular, the spirits of plant life and the ritual of sowing and reaping, which GREEK RELIGION-* 14 210 GREEK RELIGION Homer absolutely neglects, can be no new creation of the period following Homer ; they are the background for the religious re- vival of the period which followed Homer. This line of argument, however, becomes really fruitful for the epoch under consideration only when we take into account the Homeric poems. If we assume as the generally accepted position that our Iliad was for the most part a product of the ninth century B.C. in Asia Minor, that the epic gives us older " Aeolic " material in an Ionic form, and finally that the Olympian deities are a Thessalian prod- uct brought from the mainland of Greece in a migration across the Aegean, the epic world of the gods in approximately the epic form is thrown back of 1000 B.C. But this epic picture marks a definite stage at the end of a long period of development, a period which ends rather later than the close of the Mycenaean epoch. The influence of epic poetry both on the general conception of religion and man's attitude toward the gods and on his ideas of particular deities can hardly be overestimated. Yet it seems clear that the epic lays did not themselves create Zeus and Athena and Poseidon ; rather they presuppose fairly well defined ideas of these Olympian gods and their functions. So we must assume for the Mycenaean epoch at least in northern Greece such a process of evolution in religious belief as will end in the Olympian gods, such forms of worship as are not out of harmony with this belief. We shall assume, then, that in Thessaly the god of the heavens, worshipped on Olympus and other mountains, was not so much a war-god as a divine ruler, whose nature came to reflect the ideal of the human king. Each community had worshipped its heaven- god, source of light and rain ; now as the communities of Thessaly or Boeotia or the Argolid were united into larger units, these heaven-gods were fused into one ; as the ruler and his court gained in splendor, both ruler and people would think of their greatest god as the ruler among the gods. Even apart from archaeological remains, the Greek calendar, with its emphasis on the birth and death of vegetable life, would lead us to assume a mother goddess, the mother earth, who is the THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK RELIGION 211 ultimate source of all life. Granted that each community had such a goddess, the consort (and sometimes the mother) of the heaven- god, we need not be surprised that she develops differently in dif- ferent localities. As the communities of one region are brought into closer touch with each other, and as their civilization is en- riched by elements which each contributes as well as by elements from outside, the form of Rhea appears in Crete, the form of Hera the queen in the Argive plain, while other forms of the goddess (Leto, Dione, Themis, Cybele, Europa?, Demeter, etc.) are shaped in other regions. From goddesses as numerous as the communi- ties which worshipped them, but of one general type, there de- veloped a relatively small number of goddesses, each a definite many-sided personality. Sometimes closely related to the mother of vegetable life, no doubt sometimes distinct, the early communities of Greece wor- shipped a queen of wild beasts, the patron of the chase; the goddesses of this type gave rise to the Olympian Artemis, later the exemplification of chastity and the companion of Apollo. And Apollo was one outgrowth of the shepherd-god existing in each community, himself once a shepherd, protecting the sheep from wolves (Apollo Lykeios), patron of the music and the games that shepherds loved. Each community recognized a god of fire, the patron of smiths, though here again some regions contributed much more than others to the making of Hephaestus. The Aphrodite of later religion sometimes included elements that came from the old mother goddess ; doubtless many of the early communities recognized in addition now a spirit who presided over human love, now a goddess of family life, both of which were taken up into Aphrodite. Every seafaring people worshipped spirits of the sea ; some of these remained in local worship and in myth as distinct beings, more were fused in Poseidon, the god whose resistless might and capricious nature expressed the general Greek thought of the sea. Of the process here described the epic contains scarcely a trace ; on the other hand, there is hardly one centre of worship GREEK RELIGION where the marks of it are not to be discerned. The nature of the process is suggested by the history of the people. Families and tribes in much the same stage of culture, and with much the same range of ideas, make their way down into Greece. In the My- cenaean age larger politi- cal and social commer- cial groups are gradually formed, with a civilization richer and more varied as it embraces elements from different sources within and without the country. Similarly we must assume that the conception of nature- spirits, of souls, of "de- partmental gods " (gods of the chase, of the flocks, of seafaring, etc.), was originally much the same for different com- munities, but nowhere quite the same, and that in the larger civili- zation which developed the gods of each type grew richer and more varied with elements drawn from different com- munities, different regions in the Greek world, and different sources outside of Greece. In this sense the Zeus or the Poseidon of the epic was a " composite photograph " of earlier Zeuses and Posei- dons. The process was one of synthesis or of " condensation," to use the word of Eduard Meyer. 1 But if the Zeus of Homer was a 1 Geschichte dr. 903. 2 Again. 67 f. * Elec. 174 f. 6 Oed. Tyr. 864 f. FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURIES 259 ethical basis ; he simply passes over what does not suit his pur- pose. And while he holds fast to certain fundamental ethical principles, he is far from reducing religion to any rationalistic basis. The mysterious both in worship and in the nature of the gods is very attractive to this poet ; to pry into the mysteries of religion seems to him an example of that presumption which is the essence of sin. Inspiration and revelation from the divine powers he is very ready to accept. In particular there is an evident purpose in his extant dramas to exalt the function of Apollo at Delphi as the mouthpiece of the gods. The oracles of the god always prove true ; once when they seem to have failed, the chorus utters the sentiment that the worship of the gods at Athens should cease at once, unless the revelation of the divine will by Apollo is promptly proved to be true and the apparent failure leads to an awful justification of the god's foresight. 1 In the honor paid to the Delphic god, as at many other points, Herodotus is intimately associated with Sophocles. Herodotus accepts the oracles and the presence of the gods in human life, while he freely criticises myth ; for in religion as in geography and in history he is guided by a somewhat naive sense for the reality which comes within the range of experience. Judging by the facts of human life, he is impressed by the limitations of man and by the power of the gods ; and the facts suggest to him gods jealous of their prerogatives rather than gods primarily just. As the rela- tions of Greece and Persia seem to him to be determined by the unreasonable greatness of the eastern power which provokes jealous retribution from the gods, so each stage in the history, the account of Croesus, of Polycrates, of Candaules, of Miltiades, illustrates the same principle. " You see how divine lightning strikes very great animals and God does not permit them to exhibit themselves proudly, while small ones do not excite his wrath ; and thunder- bolts always strike large buildings and tall trees ; for God loves to bring to naught anything that is excessive . . . nor does he permit any but himself to think proud thoughts." 2 In his treatment l Oed. Tyr, 895 f. Herodotus, 7. 10. 260 GREEK RELIGION of religious phenomena Herodotus shows his critical instinct by analyzing them and referring some to a Pelasgic source, others to an Egyptian source. And with all his curiosity and credulity he does not hesitate to reject what does not seem to him natural or to explain away some marvels. The existence of griffins, for instance, he refuses to believe ; and the prophesying doves of Dodona he explains as priestesses who had come from Egypt, and who were called doves because their words were at first unin- telligible. 1 Herodotus felt the deepest interest in the great shrines of Greece and the mysterious doctrines of their priests, but he was often deterred by awe from imparting what he learned. At Delphi it seems that he obtained much material for his history, and in the earlier part of his work he appears as the frank defender of the claims of the oracle. 2 3. The Peloponnesian War. The latter part of the fifth cen- tury at Athens constitutes a period quite as distinct in its social and religious tendencies as in its political developments. The Peloponnesian war was the great struggle which Athenian states- men had long foreseen, and which ended after nearly thirty years in the temporary overthrow of Athens. Democracy in the city had become impatient of wise leadership ; now some scheme for world-power, such as the Sicilian expedition, now some sudden impulse of resentment, as in the condemnation of the generals at Arginusae, proved the essential weakness of Athens. Wild schemes for social betterment of the masses were in the air. Moreover, science and philosophy were beginning to make a wide impression on the Athenian view of life. The conception of nature as a reality independent of and including both gods and men, the idea of natural law as distinct from any personal will, the thought of moral and legal requirements as conventions, the validity of which might well be questioned such were some of the main prob- lems which gradually attracted the attention of thinking people. As mysticism earlier had been driven into the background by 1 Herodotus, 2. 55. *" Herodotus and the Oracle at Delphi," Classical Journal, i (1906) 37 FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURIES 261 the state ideal and the Olympian religion, so now the state phase of religion was threatened by the rising current of intellectualism. What may be termed rationalism, or better intellectualism, in religious matters was not a new development at the end of the fifth century ; it was only its reach and its grasp that were new. 1 Up to this time it had appeared in two forms, in a rationalism which neglected or undermined belief in the gods, and in a reflec- tion which modified religious conceptions to accord with ethical and philosophical principles. The religious type of intellectualism appeared as early as Hesiod and reached its height in Pindar and Aeschylus. It amounted to an assertion that religion is not merely a matter of tradition, but rather a subject to be tested by critical standards in order to determine its truth. Among the historians, the credulous Herodotus applied the same standards to religion as to other matters, and rejected many myths on the ground of im- probability. Among the earlier philosophers, Empedocles made a real place for the gods in his system ; he followed Xenophanes in rejecting all traces of anthropomorphism, but he spoke with reverence of God (Apollo?) as the intelligence of the universe; his purpose to purify belief and to reform worship appeared in much of his work. This line of effort accomplished a little in raising religious belief to a higher plane, but until a much later age its influence was limited to a relatively small circle. The negative criticism of religion had played a larger part in the work of the early philosophers. The absurdities of supersti- tion made it an easy mark for Xenophanes and Heracleitus, while some of their successors were rather inclined to omit all reference to religion. The conception of the physical world as an ultimate fact, and of law as a fixed natural process, seemed to leave little place for religion. It was possible, however, to admit the exist- ence in nature of beings superior to man who influenced him for good or for evil. In some such way Democritus admitted a place for religion, even while he explained away many myths as illusions caused by phenomena of the heavens. 1 Decharme, La critique des traditions religieuses chez les Grecs, iii-vi. 262 GREEK RELIGION At Athens, soon after the middle of the fifth century, it was rather the negative phase of philosophy which attracted the atten- tion of the people. Visiting sophists were beginning to show them how easy it was to refute not only so-called philosophical systems, but also the demands of custom, of morals, and of law. As law and morals were useful to weak members of society, so, they taught, a belief in gods is useful in making the strong afraid to injure the weak. 1 The strongest proof that religion, morality, and law belonged to social convention rather than to the realities of nature they found in the fact that among different peoples belief and custom and law were so radically different. Man, the individ- ual man, is the measure of all things, declared Protagoras. These doctrines tended to develop individualism as over against all social authority ; in particular the authority of religious belief and reli- gious practice was often questioned. Yet while religion remained so closely connected with the state as in Athens during the fifth century B.C., public attacks on reli- gion could not pass unheeded. The avowed "atheist" was con- demned by public opinion, and even the courts took cognizance of charges of impiety. Diagoras, who mocked at the mysteries and divulged their secrets, had a price set on his head ; the names of Cinesias and of Hippon who wrote the epitaph, " Death has made me like the gods," were handed down as objects of con- tempt. For one and only one period in Greek history thinking men were brought into court on the charge of impiety. Anax- agoras was driven from Athens for teaching that the sun was (not a god but) an incandescent stone. Aspasia was brought into court on the charge of impiety. Pheidias was forced to meet the same charge because he had placed his own likeness and that of Pericles on the shield of his Athena Parthenos. Socrates was condemned to death " because he did not recognize the gods of the state, but introduced new divinities, and moreover, because he corrupted the youth." 2 Others still were charged with intro- ducing the worship of foreign gods without permission of the 1 Plato, Leg. io, p. 889 E. * Plato, Apol. 19 B. FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURIES 263 state. The charge of impiety brought against Alcibiades, the profanation of the mysteries, itself illustrates the weakened ties of religion, in that such an act seemed to be possible. Overt acts of this sort against public worship would always subject a man to punishment, while trials for impious teaching were limited to a brief period. In a word, the intellectual movement which culminated in the study of science, in the development of education, and in the spread of popular philosophy at Athens toward the end of the fifth century, assumed a form directly hostile to organized religion. Its whole influence tended to weaken traditional faith in the gods, nor was any reconciliation of faith and philosophy as yet in sight. Had not the state ideal in society and the state phase of religion obtained so strong a foothold in the half century preceding the Peloponnesian war, they would hardly have survived the forces now at work. The new education, thoroughly individualistic in its first results, was a menace to patriotism and the demands of the state; a crude democracy resented the limitations of the constitution ; and from outside the very existence of the state was threatened by the war. Yet the state ideal had developed strength enough to weather the attacks from without and from within. And with the state ideal the state religion remained in control of the masses of the people. Men listened with interested curiosity to the speculations of a Euripides ; but when he went too far, his bold- ness was promptly checked. The splendid ritual of worship went on as before, the worship of the Athenian people to gods which it publicly recognized as supreme. So far as the mystic side of religion was concerned, the condi- tions for its development were much more favorable. Successful activity did not draw men's thoughts away from spiritual things or satisfy their aspirations in a more immediate manner. The gods of the state no longer showed their favor to every undertak- ing, but oftentimes they were tried and found wanting. When siege and defeat and pestilence made this world look dark, the demand for " redemption," for religious " cures," came to be 264 GREEK RELIGION generally felt. 1 The wandering oracle-vender found a ready sale for his wares ; the priest, who promised blessings by means of his initiations, was welcomed among those who felt the woes of life ; again unusual and private forms of worship were introduced to meet demands which ordinary sacrifices and festivals did not satisfy. Yet the public organization of religion in the worship of the state gods was so strongly intrenched that it was modified but little by such innovations. Among the writers of this period Euripides deserves first men- tion, not because his work begins with the Peloponnesian war, but because he anticipated the spirit which then prevailed. He re- jected some of the old myths, e.g. the story of Leda and the swan and of Erichthonius's birth from the soil, not on moral and reli- gious grounds like Aeschylus, but because they seemed to him im- probable. And when he did condemn the gods for immorality, his tone was critical rather than religious. It is peculiarly difficult to estimate correctly the religious views of Euripides. Writing under the influence of the new movement of thought at Athens, yet himself a poet and no philosopher, keenly alive to human weaknesses and human ills, yet honoring that ideal which made Athens great, he presents problems rather than principles in his tragedies. Retribution to the sinner is a fact of experience, but who knows if it comes from the gods worshipped at Athens? And who knows of the soul and its destiny, beyond the fact that insight, energy, virtue, ordinarily bring their reward in this present life? " The gods, whatever the gods are " 2 sounds like the critical scepticism of a sophist. To interpret Zeus now as Intelligence, now as Necessity, or to make the Erinyes the hallucinations of a disor- dered brain, suggests an attempt to rationalize the gods. Such sug- gestions and problems proved intensely interesting to the audience when the poet did not go too far, even though the questionings did not meet with general assent. .Certainly the attacks on Euripides prove his influence. Even in the Bacchantes the poet, now an old man, does not entirely change his view. The outcome of his l Plato, Politic., 2, p. 364 B. 2 Orest. 418. FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURIES 265 experience as developed in this tragedy is simply, " Whatever the gods are, let us bow to them." The old comedy as represented by Aristophanes was much closer to the thought of the people than was tragedy. Religious parody, which was so striking a feature of Aristophanes's work, was not inconsistent with religious belief and practice in Greece from Homer on. Not simply Heracles and Hermes and Dionysus were the objects of Aristophanes's buffoonery ; Zeus himself must furnish fun for his audience. Not simply the quack diviner and the vender of oracles, but the priest of the state religion also was held up to ridicule. Nor was the worship of Asclepius or Dionysus or Demeter free from the poet's gibes. Yet in Aristophanes there was no denial of the gods, nothing that was felt by his audience to be a religious profanation. On the contrary the tone of his work was on the whole conservative in religion as in other matters. In the Clouds he appears as the direct defender of the old ideals of life and the old religion. A sincere religious spirit seems to per- vade his hymns to the gods. He is first of all a comedian, but just for this reason he reflects the views of his hearers. In fact his fun always presupposes (i) an elaborate state ritual universally accepted, and (2) a general belief in the actual power and pres- ence of the gods. Whatever his own views may have been, the faithfulness of Aristophanes to his art made his comedies a wit- ness to the essential religiousness of Athens at the end of the fifth century. Much the same conclusion as to the hold of religion on the people may be drawn from the history of Thucydides and from the orations of Antiphon. Thucydides contrasts sharply the prophecies of the oracle-mongers and the genuine words of the Delphic Apollo ' ; while condemning the superstitions of a Nicias, he notes the enfeebled fear of the gods and of divine justice as one of the evils produced by the Peloponnesian war 2 ; he refers to the epic and some particular myths with no note of criticism. Although he gives no indications of devoutness on his own part, 1 Thucydides, 2. 54; cp. 5. 103. 2; 5. 26. 3. 2 Ibid., 3. 82. 6; cp. 2. 53. 266 GREEK RELIGION he clearly recognizes the importance of religion as it existed at Athens. So Antiphon continually bases his argument on popular belief in a divine justice which punishes the guilty, and in a divine purity which turns away from a man or a city polluted with evil. These statements might be mere rhetoric, but they would lose their value as rhetoric unless they were addressed to a people religiously inclined. 4. The Fourth Century. With the close of the fifth century we may almost say that the religious development of Greece was ended ; none of the later changes can be regarded as new move- ments of primary importance, and on the whole the later history of religion in Greece is concerned with the degeneration and dis- appearance of the forces which at this time were in operation. Only philosophy had not said its last word on matters of religion, but the teaching of philosophy was confined to a very limited range. For the people the old religion was to become little more than a form, a form which could offer small resistance to the cruder but more vital cults of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. The fourth century at Athens in the first place was marked by a further development of the individualistic spirit. The teaching of the Sophists had been accepted by relatively few persons, but the centrifugal forces set in motion at the time of the Peloponnesian war had a far wider influence than direct teaching. In politics individualism showed itself in a loss of public spirit. When men began to ask whether they existed for the good of the state, or the state for their welfare and protection, it was difficult to enforce the demands of patriotism. Moreover the loss of political power had for Athens a surprisingly small effect on her commerce, or on her intellectual and artistic prestige. Naturally the thought of the state as such gave way before the thought of the larger Hellenic world ; a cosmopolitan spirit began to prevail, which made the claims of society rest lightly as compared with the claims of individual welfare. The spread of education worked in the same direction. The self-development which it proposed as an end was diametrically FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURIES 267 opposed to self-devotion for the community, for the more a man's attention was focussed on the training of his own powers as an end in itself, the less he was inclined to regard himself merely as one fraction of the state. The spread of private luxury was a cause as well as a symptom of individualism. In a striking passage Demosthenes points out that the magnificence which the fifth century had devoted to temples and public buildings, was now lavished on the houses of the rich. 1 The productions of great painters and sculptors, because so often they were used for mere adornment and private pleasure, were often created with no higher end in view. The great works in literature were not poetry but prose, not dramas for public performance but essays for the drawing-room or the study ; they were not grand and imposing but rather were finished with delicate grace. The effect of private luxury in Greece was all the more baneful for higher ideals of life because it was not satisfied in a barbaric or oriental manner. It is but looking at this individualism from another point of view to say that the fourth century differed from the fifth in the relative absence of great controlling ideals. Not simply patriotism, political honor also, and military honor had a weaker hold ; prizes, crowns, honorary decrees, were needed as rewards for public ser- vice. The objective activity which had given to life its tone, now yielded to self-conscious reflection, to musing introspection, often to a note of ennui and melancholy. In other phases of life as well as in religion the age of faith had gone by. The change in the spirit of the age is strikingly reflected in the modified conception of the gods. The gods on the Parthenon frieze, like the statue of Athena inside the temple, are divine counterparts of the statesmen who were making Athens great ; for these gods, too, stood for high ideals and for the energy which made those ideals effective. In contrast with these types of the gods in the fifth century, the statue of Peace carrying her child Wealth has rightly been regarded as a symbol of the spirit of the 1 Demosthenes, 3. 25. 268 GREEK RELIGION following century. The Aphrodite unrobing for the bath, which Praxiteles made for her Cnidian temple, was the goddess of a people devoted to the love of beauty and grace. And the Her- mes found at Olympia still repeats its message that the Greek youth of Praxiteles's time found in self-conscious musing the natural sequence to a gymnastics and an education which aimed to give the body and the mind their perfect development. Such changes in the conception of the gods seem to have brought no corresponding change in the forms of worship. The gods were still part of the conception of the state and their wor- ship was one phase of the state's activity. The orators of the fourth century not only use the gods to swear by and to conjure by, they refer again and again to the proverbial care of the gods for Athens, and in the blessing of the gods they find hope for the city in the future. Devotion to the state was an underlying motive to keep up the ancient forms of worship at the shrines of the city, while on the other hand the influence of the public festivals still tended to keep up the consciousness of common political bonds among the people. In his first Philippic 1 Demosthenes complains that the military officials remain at home to take charge of religious processions instead of engaging in service at the front, and that the organizing genius of the city as well as its funds are devoted to religious festivals rather than to the war against Macedon. It would not be fair to say that the enjoyment of the Dionysia or the Panathenaea was the reason why such pains were taken in their celebration, though certainly popular pleasure was one end in view. The festivals were maintained partly for pleasure, partly for genuine religious motives, but largely because they were institu- tions hallowed by long observance on the part of the state. So far as Demosthenes is concerned, it is hard to doubt the genuine- ness of his appeals to the gods, yet there is no evidence of deep religious feeling on the part of either audience or speaker. If Demosthenes is contrasted with Antiphon, we might well believe that the former was the more religious individual ; we can hardly l Demosthenes, 4. 26 and 35. FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURIES 269 believe that his hearers found the same meaning in religion as did those who listened to Antiphon. In the fine passage on the beginning of the sacred war Aeschines almost persuades his readers now, as he claims to have persuaded his hearers then, that the oath and its consequences were a dread reality. 1 The religious emotions of these delegates were strong enough to be used with effect by the political speaker, but even under the shadow of the Delphic oracle the most solemn form of devotion had not checked the cultivation of the sacred plain. The Greek gods were made for man, not man for the gods. Difficult as it is to use the pleas of a lawyer, the speeches of a statesman, the pamphlets of a teacher of rhetoric, in getting at the religious ideas of the people, the testimony of the orators is fairly simple. There is abundant evidence that the state kept up the forms of religious worship in all their magnificence. That faith in the gods was at all a ruling principle in human life, or that genuine religious emotions were stirred and satisfied by this worship, we find no proof in the extant works of the orators. But Athenian gods had made Athens great, and in the struggles to revive that greatness the observances of worship were loyally maintained. The changes in worship during this period were largely due to a practical (not to say a superstitious) impulse on the part of individuals. The presence of this practical vein in religious matters at the beginning of the fourth century is seen in the attitude of Xenophon. His writings teem with references to the forms of religion. In the retreat of the ten thousand he himself depended constantly on dreams and omens to ascertain the will of the gods ; his fear of divine anger was a governing principle ; his ideal cavalry officer would act according to the will of the gods, and his hunting dogs were to be loosed with a prayer to Apollo and Artemis. 2 Such devotion to the forms of religion on the part of a typical Athenian soldier testifies to the hold of reli- 1 Aeschines, 3. 107 f. 2 Xenophon, Hipparch. i. i ; Cyneget. i. i f. 270 GREEK RELIGION gious practice among the people. Even though a man of shallow nature had no sense for the deeper meaning of religion, he saw its practical possibilities in controlling what was otherwise outside his power ; just because religion had a practical value, the soldier and the merchant could not afford to neglect it. The same practical impulse largely accounts for the fact that at the beginning of the fourth century the worship of Asclepius was established as one of the state cults. Heroes had received the prayer of the sick for healing in Attica, but no hero had ever gained such a reputation as the god Asclepius for power to over- come disease. His reputation had brought invalids in great num- bers to Epidaurus ; the shrine had assumed the form of a great hospital for the care of the sick under divine direction ; its success is still attested by the offerings of men who there had found heal- ing. Now the journey to Epidaurus might be saved and the gifts of the god made more accessible by introducing a branch of this religious hospital at Athens. First in private houses Asclepius worship was begun at Athens, and soon priests with their sacred serpents and other paraphernalia of worship were brought to the city that the cult might be established in due form. The south side of the Acropolis proved a spot admirably adapted to the medical purpose of this worship. The ruins of its temples, its sacred spring, and its buildings for the care of the sick still attest the importance that a new worship could gain when it offered such practical blessings to its worshippers. This practical impulse showed itself also in the effort to ascer- tain and control the future by some stronger means than the routine sacrifices of the state religion. The revival of the Orphic movement, to which Plato if not Demosthenes bears witness, was due quite as much to the desire for higher potencies to control one's destiny as to any real effort for spiritual ends. The Orphic conception of life was no doubt gratifying to some because it placed the standard of genuine happiness and the goal of human life in another phase of existence. And there was much about the Orphic theology which appealed to thinkers like Plato ; his FIFTH AND FOURTH CENTURIES 27! myths adopt Orphic imagery ; his whole account of the soul, its origin, and its destiny is based on Orphic conceptions. But Plato's allusions to Orphic " initiations " and the condemnation of such religious exercises by Demosthenes l indicate that they were what more than anything else appealed to the people in mystic religion. Because the priests promised blessedness here and hereafter to their adherents, and because the ritual seemed so effective in reaching the unseen powers that control life, this type of religion had a wider influence than at any time during the fifth century. Much the same influences were at work in the introduction of foreign worships into Attica. 2 These were brought in the first instance by foreigners themselves who had obtained permission to establish the worship of their native gods at the point where they had settled, i.e. mainly in the Peiraeus. That Athenian citizens should seek admission to the inner circle of the wor- shippers of Bendis or Kottyto seems strange at first sight. No doubt the intensity of these rites produced a refreshing sense of genuineness which attracted many. Still it was rather the practi- cal impulse, the impulse to control the mysterious forces in the world for the benefit of the individual, which accounts for this tendency. Because the state religion had become stereotyped form, great as was the respect in which this form was held, it did not stand in the way of any new worship which met a practical need. Over against the old forms of worship and the new more super- stitious phase of religion, the philosophical criticism of religious conceptions went on unhindered. The relation of philosophy and religion is to be considered in a later chapter, but the result for this period may be briefly stated here. The sharp antagonism between philosophy and established religion came to an abrupt end, first because people having become accustomed to the criti- cism of the gods realized that its immediate effect was harmless, and secondly because philosophy began to take a broader view 1 Plato, Politia, z, p. 364 B ; Demosthenes, 18. 259 f. 2 Cp. supra, p. 127. 272 GREEK RELIGION of what religion meant. In his Republic Plato did not discuss religious institutions but referred them to the Delphic oracle 1 ; a city without gods was to him inconceivable. The name " God," which Plato and Aristotle both apply to the hypothetical being in which their systems culminated, would be meaningless except as these thinkers recognized some deep reality in the religious sentiment of their day. While religion as such had little directly to hope from philosophical investigation, the indirect result was by no means small. In contrast with the materialistic scepticism which occupied popular attention at the end of the fifth century, philosophy was now both positive and idealistic. Just in so far as the successors of Socrates recognized thought as the great fact in the world, and found in the ideals cherished by individuals and by society the most important realities of life, the path was open for philosophy to become the handmaid of religion. The immediate results of a deeper philosophy were never very large for Greek religion, for it had no vitality to assimilate the fruits of thought ; it is only in the history of Christianity that the meaning of Greek philosophy for religion came to be realized. 1 Plato, Politia, 4, p. 427 B. CHAPTER V THE OUTCOME OF GREEK RELIGION 1. Religion in the Hellenistic Age. With the conquests of Alexander the internal development of Hellenism all but ceased, and history is concerned with its external development. The scene is shifted from the Balkan peninsula to a world which extended from India to Spain, from Scythia to Egypt ; and for this world the centre of culture was no longer Athens, but successively Alexandria, Pergamon, Antioch, Rhodes. That the Greek lan- guage followed the army and became a common medium of com- munication in Egypt, Syria, and the far East seems strange enough ; it is almost incredible that there should be truth in Plutarch's state- ment 1 that Homer was commonly read in Asia, that "children of the Persians, of the inhabitants of Susa, and of the Gedrosians played the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles," that inhabitants of India, Bactria, and the Caucasus worshipped the Greek gods ; yet as to the spread of Greek civilization there can be no doubt. " Greek culture alone had the capacity to embrace and interpret all the rest of the world ; its spirit made a universal appeal through poetry, art, and philosophy;" 2 and in the hands of Alexander this influence became operative. The history of reli- gion in this epoch is concerned mainly with the part which religion played in the spread of Hellenism. So far as Greece itself is concerned, the student's interest is primarily in such religious changes as prepare the way for the wider influence of Greek religion. The decay of sectional patriot- 1 Plutarch, De Alexandra fortuna, 5, p. 328 C, D. 2 Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, 4. 423. CREEK RELIGION 1 8 273 274 GREEK RELIGION i ism, patriotism to one's own particular city-state, inevitably meant for Greece the end of patriotism as a determining ideal in human life ; for cosmopolitanism was merely devotion to no state. The result was twofold. On the one hand the career of the statesman could no longer appeal to men of real capacity and high ideals ; unless their ambition were satisfied in the amassing of wealth or in the business of war, they must turn to science or to philosophy. On the other hand a religion which was intimately bound up with the state lost much of its hold on men who no longer cared for the state ; they might observe its forms from tradition, or in order to keep up the old pomp and splendor, but the ritual had lost its power to meet a genuine religious need. The first of these results helped the new spirit of research which had been kindled by Aris- totle. For religion, the only important effect of philological and scientific investigation was that it increased the tendency of the Greeks to see in their own gods other forms of the gods wor- shipped in Egypt and in the East a "theocrasy " which had no mean importance as a factor in the spread of Greek culture, for it gave a cosmopolitan aspect to an essentially sectional religion. But on philosophy both of these results had an effect which was deep and far reaching for the history of Greek religion. Already in the fourth century the need of a religion more real than the pageantry of state worship had lent a strong impulse to philosophy. From Plato on, the leaders of thought had recog- nized this need, and their followers had been inspired quite as much by the desire for a really religious explanation of the world as for one that was only metaphysical. Now with the downfall of the city-state and the consequent weakening of the religion connected with it, men could only turn to foreign superstition or to philoso- phy to satisfy this need. Moreover there was little to satisfy men of higher nature except in science and in philosophy. That under these circumstances ethical philosophy should in some measure take the place of religion, that the philosopher should dispense spiritual warning and comfort, that his moral ideals should be a somewhat effective antidote to materialism, superstition, and self- THE OUTCOME OF GREEK RELIGION 275 ish greed, is a striking tribute to the higher element in the Greek nature. The search for relief from the evils of life, which the Greeks called the effort for salvation (a-oirrjpia), has at many peri- ods in human history driven men to luxury and selfish pleasure or again to asceticism or to superstitious rites ; in later Greece, as in these days, it produced " Ethical Culture " societies. The attitude of these later philosophers to the old Greek gods is a relatively unimportant matter, except as it illustrates the strong hold of traditional religion on the people generally. Only the Sceptics, who introduced the universal principle of doubt, ex- pressed doubt as to the existence of the Olympian deities; phi- losophers who had a system of thought included the gods in this system. The Epicureans followed the founder of that school in admitting their existence as superior beings even while they denied them any potent influence in human affairs. The attitude of the Stoics varied at different times. An allegorical explanation was frequently given, or the gods were classed as intermediate beings between men and ultimate (divine) being. Stoics of religious nature like Chrysippus expressed their attitude toward the funda- mental unity of the world in purely religious language. So far, then, as the wider spread of Greek religion is concerned, phi- losophy helped to break the local ties of the Greek gods without destroying the gods themselves, and further it made men even more ready to identify Greek gods with gods from other nations. Besides the internal changes in religion due to cosmopolitanism and to an ethical idealism, the introduction of foreign cults into Greece itself made some further changes Greece had never been hospitable to foreign worships, but it had always been susceptible, at times strangely susceptible, to their influence. An examination of the evidence fails to show any marked and widespread intro- duction of foreign worship in this period, except in the case of the worship of Isis. The " Mother of the Gods " from Asia Minor had found worshippers in Greece even during the fifth century ; foreign residents in the Peiraeus continued to make much of this worship; and in the Peloponnese foreign rites were frequently 276 GREEK RELIGION introduced into the local worship of a similar goddess. Attis, who was so intimately connected with the Phrygian Mother, was also worshipped at the Pei- raeus l and at Patras ; but Attis was never adopted into Greek religion as into religion at Rome. The worship of Adonis was known at Athens in the fifth century B.C., but it made little progress later. 2 It was not till about 100 A.D. that the worship of Mithras was brought to Greece as to Rome. The worship of Isis, however, seems to have won considerable influence in Greece in the Hellenistic epoch. The ancient Egyptian Isis, the rain-giving heaven which was the mother of all things and in particular of the sun, was not wholly unknown in the Greek islands (e.g., Cyprus and Rhodes) in early times. When Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in Egypt, he made the worship of Isis prominent in the new city; and later this worship was en- riched by the rites of Serapis. Foreigners had been permitted to establish the worship of Isis at the Peiraeus as early as 333 B.C. ; 3 1 C.l.A. II. 622; Pausanias, 7. 20. 3, cf. 7. 17. 9. 2 Aristophanes, Lys. 389; Plutarch, Alcibiades, 18, p. 200. 8 Dittenberger, Sylloge, 551. FIG. 71. FIGURE OF Isis WITH SISTRON THE OUTCOME OF GREEK RELIGION 277 under the Ptolemies Athenian citizens welcomed the new worship and there remains abundant evidence of the hold it obtained. A shrine of Serapis near the Prytaneum, an altar in the precinct of Asclepius, a shrine of Isis on the south slope of the Acropolis, votive offerings to these gods and inscriptions mentioning their priests, coins, and reliefs, especially reliefs representing Athenian women with the attributes of Isis, all testify to the importance of this re- ligion from the third century on. 1 In the Aegean islands the in- fluence of the Ptolemies and of the Isis religion was even more marked. At Tithorea there was an important centre of the Isis mysteries where only those were received to whom the goddess had revealed herself in a dream. 2 In the rest of Boeotia, in the vicinity of Corinth, and at many points in the Peloponnese, the worship of Isis found a ready reception the more ready because the Greeks recognized in her a form of one of their own gods. Occasionally Isis as a goddess of the heavens was identified with Selene or with lo ; sometimes she was recognized as Hera, the queen of the gods, or as Hygieia, the goddess of health; among her functions was the protection of women in childbirth and the power to stir the heart with love, functions which to the Greek meant Aphrodite ; but more commonly she was a goddess of the mysteries, an Egyptian form of Demeter. The reception of Isis as a form of Demeter was the more natural because the two goddesses touched at many points. Isis, like Demeter, had become a goddess of the fertile earth and of the grain which it produced ; Isis and Serapis were gods of the world of souls ; and the symbols of De- meter, cista and basket and torches and serpents, early had found a place in the worship of Isis. Near Hermione, an old centre of Demeter worship, it is said that the mysteries of Demeter were celebrated in the precinct of an Isis temple. 3 Apuleius 4 describes as much as he deems right of the initiation into the mysteries of 1 Milchhoefer, Schriflquellen zur Topographie von Athen, xxxv, xxxix ; Jour. Hell. Stud. (1889), Plate 77, EE, 9-10; Von Sybel, Ath. Mitth. 8 (1883) 26. 2 Pausanias, 10. 32. 13. 8 Pausanias, 2. 34. 10. 4 Metamorphoses, u. 16 f. 278 GREEK RELIGION Isis. The bath by the priests with prayers to the goddess, the in- struction in sacred rules of life, with the abstinence from meat and wine during the period of initiation, the investing of the candidate with a mystic robe and crown of palm leaves, the vision of the image of Isis which only the initiated might see, and the "birth- day feast" with which the ceremonies ended all were imposing rites calculated to impress an age which demanded some new and more effective means of coming into connection with the divine. The higher mysteries of Isis were the more esteemed because they were not, like the Eleusinian mysteries, open to every class in society ; they were designed to appeal to men of culture and edu- cation, and they were too expensive for the lower classes. The hold which they rapidly gained was no doubt due mainly to the nature of this personal appeal. The universal character of the Isis religion, which seemed to sum up in itself the contents of other forms of worship and the other gods, was a second factor in its success. But perhaps the most important factor was the organ- ized priesthood which carried forward the new religion. These were the same factors which had been present at the end of the sixth century in the Orphic movement. But the Greece' of the third and second centuries B.C. quite lacked the nascent life of Greece in the sixth century and the religion of Isis never attained either the direct or the indirect influence which must be assigned to Orphism. 1 Still it was an important element in religion through all the Greek world for several centuries ; it was the most im- portant competitor of Christianity in Egypt and in Rome; and through the Gnostic sect it made its power felt by Christianity. The internal changes in Greek religion at this time, as we have pointed out, were (i) the increased importance assigned to ethical ideals, until philosophy might take the place of religion for many minds, (2) the readiness to see new interpretations of the old gods or to identify them with gods worshipped elsewhere, and (3) 1 On the religion of Isis see further the articles by E. Meyer and Drexler in Roscher's Lexikoti, and Schoemann, Griech. Alt. 2. 416 and 554. THE OUTCOME OF GREEK RELIGION 279 the introduction of at least one foreign type of religion to meet needs which traditional rites did not satisfy. At the same time the old forms of worship were scrupulously observed as part of that heritage which Greece learned to prize the more as men saw how it was prized by other peoples. The spread of Greek religion throughout the eastern world was largely an outcome of the same causes which produced these changes, while at the same time the new, cosmopolitan character of religion was a condition of its extension. To the character of Alexander, however, and to the avowed policy of many of his successors, the continued importance of the old religion may be attributed. The accounts of Alexander represent him as devoted to all the forms of Greek religion no less than Xenophon himself. 1 His marvellous escapes in battle he assigned to special divine protec- tion (TO 0e