The seventh and sixth centuries before Christ were marked by important
social, philosophic, and religious movements. Of the many causes which
brought about these changes, the most easily traced are those of a
political and economic nature.
The form of government which is pictured in the Homeric poems is one in
which the king and nobles alone have an effective voice. The humbler
folk meet to hear the decision of the few, which they are expected
to accept without a murmur. On only one occasion does a common man,
Thersites, venture to raise his voice against his betters, and then
he is made the laughing-stock of his fellows and is beaten into a
sad silence by Odysseus. But the Homeric organization of society was
gradually superseded by aristocracies in which the power of wealth
ultimately claimed a position beside nobility of birth. The development
of industry and trade in Ionia and on the mainland of Greece proper
created a new wealthy class which was a rival of the old nobility
whose riches had been in herds and lands. The political struggles
which accompanied these changes were highly educative to considerable
bodies of citizens, who were expending their efforts in improving the
condition of their own class or of themselves rather than in maintaining
the advantage of some prince or noble. In this way there was developed
a political and social self-consciousness. When kings were superseded
by aristocracies, magistracies, limited in scope and duration, had
necessarily been employed. Thus political machinery and organization
developed. These political changes and the failure of ancient customs
to fit new social and economic conditions naturally led to a demand
for written law, which alone can be the basis of even justice and
protection. So we hear of many “law-givers” in Greece during the
seventh and sixth centuries B.C., of whom the most famous were
Zaleucus among the western Locrians, Charondas of Catane, and Draco of
Athens, followed about thirty years later by Solon. Now written law
usually tends to become ultimately the embodiment of rules for all, not
simply for one class alone, so that the written codes marked a long
step in the advance of the common man toward equality with the noble.
It is true that the aristocracies in many parts of Greece were later
followed by the rule of tyrants, but the tyrannies themselves fostered
the development of the lower classes on whose well-being and support
the existence of the tyrannies depended.
Of the law-givers I have just mentioned one belonged to Catane, a Greek
city in Sicily. This fact suggests another important movement which
demands our notice. I mean the planting of colonies. The great era of
Hellenic colonization fell between the eighth and sixth centuries, and
was in a sense but a continuation of that earlier wave of expansion
which had carried the Greeks to Cyprus and to the nearer shores of Asia
Minor. Among the causes which led to the establishment of colonies the
chief seem to have been defects in the land system, whereby many were
deprived of a share in their ancestral estates, political conditions
often oppressive, and trade, which was now coming largely into the
hands of Greeks because of the disasters which were inflicted on their
former rivals, the Phoenicians, by their eastern neighbors. From
Megara and Miletus, from Chalcis and Eretria, began an outpouring
of eager traders, of the landless, the needy, the discontented, and
the adventurous, who eventually planted colonies entirely around the
Mediterranean and Euxine Seas. Between these colonies and the mother
cities a rich stream of traffic flowed; the growth of trade stimulated
manufactures and increased wealth. In the colonies there existed from
the beginning greater equality than in the older communities, the
land system was more equitable, and many men of humble birth came
to wealth and power. Furthermore, with travel and success in new
communities there was an expansion of mind, a sense of power acquired
by prosperity, such as can always be observed under similar conditions.
These developments had their reflex influence on the society of the
mother cities, and both at home and in the colonies there came to
pass those political and social changes to which I have referred
above. But the most important result of these things for our present
consideration was the fact that by these developments large numbers of
men were awakened to self-consciousness, and that the first period of
individualism in Greece was begun.
Whenever individuals come to self-consciousness, and have the leisure
and security which were enjoyed in many Greek cities of this time as
the result of improved social and economic conditions, men find not
only the opportunity but also the occasion for reflection. This was the
case in our period. Men began to think and question about themselves
and the world around them, to reflect not only concerning the political
and social world in which they lived, to ask what their place in it
was, but also to inquire still deeper into the meaning of things. They
debated with themselves questions relating to the gods, the nature and
justice of their rule; and most significant for our present interest
they began to ask whence men came and whither they were going. One
great monument of this period is Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” of which
I spoke in my last lecture. It is also important to remember that the
seventh and sixth centuries were the age of the so-called Seven Wise
Men, to whom were assigned many moral precepts which became revered
proverbs in Greece. These sayings, no less than the works of Hesiod and
the Gnomic Poets, bear witness to an age of increasing reflection.
In the seventh century Ionia controlled the trade between Asia and
Europe. Its chief center was Miletus. Here in the first half of the
sixth century before our era began Greek philosophy, with Thales,
Anaximander, and Anaximenes as the leaders. The modest task which they
set themselves was nothing less than the solution of the universe.
Their philosophic views are of no special interest to us now; but
it is a fact of supreme importance that here for the first time in
Greece appeared men whose reflection had made them bold enough to
wrestle with the whole problem of nature including man, and to propose
solutions entirely at variance with the traditional views. This
philosophic development was one result of the factors which we have
been considering—factors which produced also new ethical and religious
movements that do concern us directly.
With the emergence of Greece in the seventh century from the dark
ages that followed the Mycenaean civilization, we find that certain
beliefs, expressed or only hinted at in the Homeric poems, come to the
surface, and that religious ideas imported from without make themselves
manifest. The cult of the dead for example is almost passed over in
silence by the Homeric poems. At the funeral pyre of Patroclus Achilles
offered jars of oil and honey, and slew horses, dogs, and twelve Trojan
youths[71]; but nowhere else is such a sacrifice mentioned in the Iliad.
Likewise in the Odyssey the only instance of any similar offering is in
the description of Odysseus’ visit to the borders of the realm of Hades
to consult the shade of the seer Teiresias, where it is said that he
dug a square pit, poured into it a triple chrism, and then after prayer
and vows let the blood of a ram and a black ewe flow into it to attract
the shades.[72] Yet we know from archeological and other evidence that
the worship of the dead was common in Greece from the Minoan and
Mycenaean times throughout antiquity. Ceremonial purification also,
of which there are but few instances in Homer—and none of these is
magical—now appears common, as a notion of impurity attaches to many
conditions and acts which require expiation. The change in sentiment
with regard to murder will serve as an illustration. In the Homeric
poems killing brought no pollution either to the murderer or to his
land; but in the Cyclic epics, which date from the seventh and sixth
centuries B.C., bloodguilt required expiation just as in
the later tragedies. So in the Aethiopis Achilles went to Lesbos to
be cleansed from the stain of having slain Thersites. In fostering
and directing rites of purification the oracle of Apollo at Delphi
played an important part. There was developing, indeed there had been
developing from an unknown period, a sense of defilement and of the
necessity of cleansing. At this point, however, I must again speak a
word of caution. We need to remember that morality develops slowly.
It is undoubtedly a far cry from the morality of the seventh century
to Plato’s definition of the impure man as the one whose soul is
base, or to that motto which in a later century was written over the
entrance of the shrine of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, “Piety consisteth
in holy thoughts.” We must bear in mind that to the man of the seventh
and sixth century sin and purification were primarily if not wholly
ceremonial matters, and that his concept of future happiness was
largely material. But the consequence of his feeling was great in
future centuries.
Other phenomena of the seventh and sixth centuries require our notice
at this point. We saw in the preceding lecture that the gaze of the
Homeric man was fixed on this world with its victories and its defeats,
that he viewed splendid action on the field and wise counsel in the
assembly of the princes as the individual’s highest province and his
supreme happiness. The world beyond this had no rewards comparable
with those of this life; the greatest boon man could hope from the
future was that his exploits here might become the subject of song
for coming generations. Suffering he regarded as necessary that a
higher purpose might be attained. “The will of Zeus was accomplished”
was the explanation beyond which man might not go; he must find his
comfort in such unity as that thought gave to the world. Hence arises
that pathos and sadness which strike us again and again in Homer. But
the new age sought relief by shifting its gaze from this world to the
next and by expecting there the recompenses and balances which make
life just and complete; for it the future life furnished an escape
from the sufferings of this present existence. Moreover under the
manifold influences which I have tried to sketch above, men began to be
impressed with the unity which apparently underlay the variety of the
phenomenal world. This is the problem of philosophy. It is true that
the early Greek philosophers devoted themselves chiefly to the material
world, of which they regarded man as a part; but in religion there
resulted a tendency to pantheism, which saw behind the multitude of
divinities one all-embracing god. Moreover there were not lacking
thinkers to struggle with the question as to the way in which man
could bring himself into accord with the unity of the world. So in
spite of the individualism of this age we find it also an age of
mysticism—which is the very opposite of individualism. The mystic
always holds in greater or less degree the belief that by destroying
that which sets off the individual from his fellows, that is, by
uprooting personality through the destruction of the passions, or by
some ecstatic state which takes one out of himself, man may attain to
union with god and therefore to salvation. This belief may lead even to
a religion without gods, or it may be bound to a belief in divinity.
In Greece these tendencies were not fully developed for a considerable
time, but we can see that in the seventh and sixth centuries the
longing for future happiness, the desire for salvation, and the
mystic means thereto were already potent elements in Greek thought.
They showed themselves in various ways; one outlet for the religious
longing was found in the religion of Dionysus, especially as it was
incorporated in the beliefs of the Orphic sect.
Dionysus came late into Greek religion. As we have seen, in Homer he
was not a member of the Olympic circle. Mythology has preserved many
stories which bear witness to the opposition which his worship received
as it spread over Greece. The newcomer, like Ares and the Muses, was a
Thracian. His worship was introduced by immigrants and spread gradually
to the south. Apparently the cult of the god was brought into Greece by
more than one wave of immigration, and by more than one route. Thebes
and Orchomenos in Boeotia were early centers of his worship, from which
Delphi was later influenced. In the Peloponnesus probably Argolis
received the new comer first. Even before the god was established in
southern Greece he may have been carried to Crete directly from his
northern home. The islands of the Aegean, the cities of Asia Minor, and
ultimately the remote colonies knew the divinity. In Attica tradition
said that his first home was in the country demes, notably at Icaria,
where Americans excavated his shrine over twenty-five years ago.
Probably the early rulers at Athens received the god into the city, but
it was the Pisistratidae who especially favored his worship and gave
him a home on the south side of the Acropolis, where the fifth century
saw presented all the glories of the Attic stage.
The new god came as the god of all living things, of plants, trees, the
lower animals, as well as of man. In short he was a nature divinity
whose death was seen in the dead vegetation of winter and whose rebirth
appeared with the revival of spring. His orgiastic rites no doubt were
originally, in part at least, intended to recall the dead god to life.
But in all such religions there is the tendency to see in the rebirth
of the dead god the warrant of man’s future life. The hope is easily
awakened that as the vegetation, whose life disappears in the ground,
is revivified in the spring, so man, whose body also is laid in the
earth, may be recalled to new life. The Dionysiac myth set forth the
story of the god’s death and rebirth. It was natural then that men
should feel that if they could secure union with the god, lose
themselves in the divine, they too might attain immortality. Herodotus
tells us that among the Thracian peoples the Getae believed that men
at death went to dwell with their chief divinity beneath the earth.[73]
Such hope of immortality Dionysus brought with him from his Thracian
home.
The worship of this god was wholly unlike that of the Olympian gods.
Under his influence his devotees, mostly women, in divine madness left
their homes and daily tasks to roam the wild mountainside, clad no
longer in their ordinary dress but wearing the skins of wild beasts,
their flowing hair bound with ivy and wild bryony. In their excitement
they were unconscious of time and place, unfettered by the normal
limitations of human powers and sensibilities. Wild music stimulated
their orgiastic dance; in frenzy they tore living creatures limb from
limb, and devoured the raw dripping flesh, calling meantime on the
god by name. This mad revel was continued until the participants fell
exhausted to the ground.
We can well understand how these things shocked the earliest Hellenic
spectators and why it was that in becoming a Greek god, Dionysus lost
much of his wilder Thracian nature and the more savage elements of his
cult. To this amelioration the Delphic oracle doubtless contributed.
Yet it is certain that the ecstatic rites were known on Mt. Cithaeron
and on the heights of Parnassos down to a late date. Elsewhere for the
most part the excesses of the cult were checked and ordered by law. The
Greeks had come to see that there was something more than extravagant
madness in the wild Dionysiac revel. The possessed devotee was set free
for the moment from the tangled net of daily life, gained for a brief
time new and superhuman powers, a very foretaste of immortality. Not
least of all he was made one with all nature that united to worship the
one god. Now this escape from the daily round of human affairs, this
desire for union with divinity, has constantly made its appearance in
various times and under varied conditions; as we all know, it has led
to extraordinary religious outbursts in both pagan and Christian ages.
Dionysus came also as god of wine. In the revival and elevation
of the man, which the moderate use of wine gives, the Greek saw a
divine mystery. Of course this use of wine is exactly parallel to
the use of hashish and other narcotics for religious ends, and the
ecstasy produced by music and the dance is familiar in the history of
religion as a means to put individuals or whole companies into direct
communication with the spirits or into union with a god.
Now it will readily be seen that this idea that the soul can be
separated from the body and united with the god implies two things:
first, a belief in a difference between soul and body which sets them
off against each other, and secondly, a belief in the divine nature
of the human soul. The former clearly established for the first time
in Greek thought the concept of the dual ego, the double self, the
significance of which we can hardly overestimate. We shall be concerned
with it throughout the entire course of our considerations. The second
made it easy for men to explain the source and destiny of the soul and
to point out the means by which the soul must be set free to seek its
natural destiny. The possibility that the soul, escaping from the body
during the Dionysiac frenzy, might unite itself with god, might indeed
become a god, so that the orgiastic devotee was given the divine name
βάκχος—this showed the way by which man could secure immortality. He
must loose his divine soul from the body that it might ultimately enjoy
its divine life unhampered by earthly bonds and be forever with god.
According to the Dionysiac myth, which naturally varies much in
details, the god was pursued by the Titans, the warring powers opposed
to Zeus; in his distress Dionysus changed himself into various forms,
finally into that of a bull which was torn to pieces and devoured
by the Titans. But Athena saved the heart and gave it to Zeus who
swallowed it. Hence sprang the new Dionysus. The Titans were ultimately
destroyed by the thunderbolt of Zeus and their ashes scattered to the
winds. You will at once notice the parallelism between this myth of
Dionysus and those of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis. These are all gods who
die and live again, and so become gods of life and death, divinities
through whom man gains assurance of his own immortality. You will also
notice in this myth of Dionysus how most ancient and crudest elements
are united with a rather advanced attempt to wrestle with the problems
of the world, and particularly with the problem of evil. Over against
the beneficent divinity, or divinities, are set the Titans, powers of
ill.
The myth became the basis of the spiritual belief and of the mystic
ceremonial, and was made the center of that movement which we call
Orphism. Who the founder, Orpheus, was, we cannot say. The ancients
knew him as a Thracian, a magical musician, and also as a priest of
Dionysus. In the popular tradition the musician overshadowed the
priest. Yet he was regarded as the founder of the Bacchic or Dionysiac
rites. The truth we can never know; but thus much is certain, that
in the sixth century, possibly because of a second wave of Dionysiac
religion, a movement appeared in which the religion of Dionysus was
spiritualized and ennobled, and in which consecration, ceremonial
holiness in this life, became the chief concern as the means of
securing that immortality which would follow. The movement, however,
which may have been stimulated by a feeling of dissatisfaction with
the traditional religion, was only one prominent manifestation of the
general mysticism which showed itself in many forms during the sixth
century. Pythagoreanism was closely allied to it. Indeed some think
Orphism only a collective name for the mysticism of the time.
Our information as to the beginning and earliest forms of Orphism is
scanty and mostly late. But considering the influence which Orphic
ideas had in the fifth century, for example on Pindar, Empedocles, and
Plato, not to speak of the latter Neoplatonists, we are justified in
regarding the sect as of great significance. And we have a warrant for
attributing to the sixth century doctrines which are consistently set
forth by our witnesses, especially by Empedocles and Plato, so that
with due caution we may use also the fragmentary Orphic literature with
some confidence.
We do not know where Orphism started. In Greece proper, Delphi,
Thebes, and Athens were prominent centers; in greater Greece, Croton
in southern Italy, Camarina and Syracuse in Sicily. Some would regard
southern Italy, and specifically the city of Croton, as the home of the
movement; possibly they are correct, for tradition told of three great
Orphics at the court of Pisistratus. They were Zopyrus of Heraclea,
Orpheus of Croton, and Onomacritus, who formed part of the commission
which is said to have arranged the Homeric poems at the orders of the
Athenian tyrant. Whatever the truth of the tradition in detail is, it
is significant that two of the three came from southern Italy; and
the name of one of the commission, Orpheus, marks him as a devotee.
Yet Athens became the literary center, if I may use the term, for the
diffusion of Orphism.
The Orphic religion was distinguished from the popular religions by
having a body of belief and a method of life. Undoubtedly the beliefs
of the sect were enlarged and modified from age to age; but the Orphics
had a unity which is remotely comparable to that of Christian churches.
Of the organization of the brotherhoods we know little, but probably
they were loosely bound together in a manner similar to those of the
religious associations known to us from later times. Nor can we tell
whether the Orphics were numerous. Probably they were not; but in any
case their mysteries and teachings were important and influential; they
introduced new ideas which were destined to produce profound changes in
Greek religious thought.
With the varied details of the grotesque Orphic theogonies we are not
now concerned. They were similar to those of Hesiod and others in their
main lines, but they owe their importance for us now to the fact that
they exhibit a pantheism which is opposed to the common polytheistic
theology of the time; they endeavor to show that deity is one and
universal under whatever form or appearance. To this universal divinity
they give the name now of Zeus, now of Dionysus, the greatest of the
children of Zeus; at times he is called also Zagreus. Certain Orphic
verses clearly express this pantheistic thought: “One Zeus, one Hades,
one Sun, one Dionysus, one god in all.”[74] And again: “Zeus was the
first, Zeus of the flashing lightning bolt the last; Zeus the head,
Zeus the middle; from Zeus have all things been made. Zeus was the
foundation of the earth and of the starry heaven; Zeus was male, Zeus
was the bride immortal; Zeus the breath of all things, Zeus the rush of
the flame unwearied; Zeus the source of the sea, Zeus the sun and the
moon; Zeus the king, Zeus of the flashing lightning the beginning of
all things. For he concealed all and again brought them forth from his
sacred heart to the glad light, working wondrous things.”[75]
You will remember that in the myth of the rending of Dionysus by the
Titans, these powers of evil were burned to ashes by the thunderbolt
of Zeus. According to one version of the story man is formed from
these ashes, which contain the element of the divine, taken in by the
Titans when they devoured the god. Thus man is of a two-fold nature,
his soul divine, Dionysiac, his body evil, Titanic. On an Orphic tablet
found in a grave in southern Italy the soul declares: “I am a child of
earth and the starry heaven, but my race is from heaven. This ye know
yourselves.” Here we have a complete expression of man’s duality: his
body is of the earth, but his soul is of celestial origin. The descent
of the soul was due to sin; wind-borne—as Empedocles says of himself,
“an exile from god and a wanderer,”[76] it entered into the body, in
which prison it was condemned to live until such time as it might be
delivered. Clement of Alexandria, quoting the Pythagorean Philolaus of
the fifth century B.C., reports: “The ancient theologians and
seers bear witness that for a punishment the soul is yoked with the
body and buried in it as in a tomb.”[77] This figure of the body as the
prison-house or the tomb of the soul was used by Plato, as we shall
have occasion to see in a later lecture.
Man’s hope, therefore, according to the Orphic, lies in deliverance
from his body, the Titan element of his nature, that the Dionysiac
part, his soul, may be free and untrammelled. Yet one might not of
his own motion cast off his body by a physical act, for a round is
prescribed by necessity.
After death the soul was fated to pass to Hades and then from its
sojourn there into another body, and so on. This doom was the result
of sin. To hasten the process and escape from evil, “to end the cycle
and have respite from sin,” a course of life was necessary, which was
defined by the Orphic teaching. The requirements of the Orphic life
seem to us trivial and absurd for the most part. Apparently abstinence
from flesh was required, except perhaps at certain sacramental
festivals; this prohibition was of course due to the doctrine of
metempsychosis. No bloody sacrifices were allowed for the same reason.
The use of eggs and beans was forbidden, for these articles were
associated with the worship of the dead; and burial in woolen garments
was likewise wrong. Besides these taboos certain rites existed of
which we get only hints. There were liturgies, initiations, magic
incantations which seem to show that in time at least an elaborate
ritual was developed. All these things were the means by which the soul
might be purified from its sin which condemned it to the prison of the
body, and which pursued it through incarnation after incarnation.
After death, as I have said, the soul awaited in Hades its rebirth,
but its stay in Hades, like its life on earth, was a period of reward
or punishment: “They who are righteous beneath the rays of the sun,
when they die have a gentler lot in a fair meadow by deep-flowing
Acheron.... But they who have worked wrong and insolence beneath the
rays of the sun are led down beneath Cocytus’s watery plain into chill
Tartarus.”[78] So this stay in Hades was a period of punishment and of
purification, as life itself was a period of penance. The duration of
this intermediate stay in Hades was conceived perhaps as a thousand
years. In any case, after due season the soul entered upon a new
incarnation, which apparently was determined by the innocence or guilt
of its former life. Rebirth was not always into human form, as the
Orphic verses show: “Wherefore the changing soul of man, in the cycles
of time, passes into various creatures: sometimes it enters a horse,
... again it is a sheep, then a bird dread to see; again it has the
form of a dog with heavy voice, or as a chill snake creeps along the
ground.”[79] The poet-philosopher Empedocles declared that before his
present existence he had been “a youth, a maiden, a bush, a bird, and a
fish of the sea.”[80] So the soul was buffeted from birth to death and
back to birth again. Of those who had been guilty of most grievous sins
Empedocles says: “There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient, eternal
decree of the gods sealed with strong oaths: when one in sin stains his
hands with murder, or when another joining in strife swears falsely,
they become the spirits who have long life as their portion, who are
doomed to wander thrice ten thousand seasons far from the blessed,
being born in the course of time into all forms of mortal creatures,
shifting along life’s hard paths. For the might of the air drives them
to the sea and the sea spews them on the ground, and the land bares
them to the rays of the bright sun, and the sun throws them in whirls
of ether. One receives them from another, but all hate them. Of this
number am even I now, an exile from god and a wanderer, for I put my
trust in mad strife.”[81] The number of reincarnations was not fixed
so far as we know, though apparently ten thousand years was thought
to be the limit of the process for the ordinary soul. Probably it was
believed that there was no end of rebirths for the wicked, but that
they were condemned to their repeated fate forever; or that they were
doomed to endless punishment without rebirths.
But you may ask, what was the ultimate fate of the purified soul?
To this, too, we can give no complete answer. Apparently the soul,
stripped at last of all that was earthly and defiling, was then thought
to be first truly free and alive. On Orphic tablets of the fourth
century before our era found in southern Italy we read these words of
the triumphant soul: “I have escaped from the sorrowful, weary round,
I have entered with eager feet the ring desired. I have passed to the
bosom of the mistress queen of the lower world.” And it is greeted
in answer: “O happy and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of
mortal.”[82] Apparently the purified soul left earth and Hades behind.
There is no hint of absorption into god; no idea of Nirvana. The spirit
of Greek thought required that the individuality of the soul should
be retained. No doubt the Orphics conceived of every kind of heaven
that was possible, many of them of most materialistic nature. Indeed,
Plato reproaches some of them for believing future happiness to be a
perpetual drunken round.
For the sinful, torments of a most fearful sort were reserved: not only
did they lie in mud and filth, but they were exposed to most terrible
creatures who rent their vitals. In short, the Orphic hell was not less
awful physically than that of the medieval and later Christian, which
in no small part was inherited from the Orphics.
Before we go on to consider other movements of the sixth century,
let us summarize briefly the contributions of the Orphics to Greek
religious thought. In the first place they definitely shifted man’s
look from this world to the world beyond. In Homer, as we have seen,
this world offered all for which man could hope; but to the Orphic,
as to the devoted sectaries of all redemptive religions, this world
was unimportant compared with the next in which he was to realize
his fondest desires. Again the Orphics emphasized the duality of
man, regarding him as a divine soul imprisoned in a sinful body.
They made the divinity of the soul a motive for the religious life,
the aim of which was to free the spirit of man from the sin which
visits him in the prison-house of the flesh. Thereby they started the
tendency to religious asceticism which was to be sharply emphasized
by Christianity when a thousand years had past. Their doctrine of the
divine nature of the soul they also made the basis of their belief in
the soul’s immortality; for if the soul is divine, it must be eternally
so. Furthermore, so far as we can know, they introduced the idea of
pre-natal sin for which the individual soul must pay the penalty. It
needs no argument to show the intrinsic importance of these ideas; as
we go on, we shall have occasion to observe their significance in Greek
religious thought.
Less valuable in itself, but not less persistent, as we can still
see in our own Christian church, was the notion that only the
initiates, who by purificatory rites had been received into the sacred
association, could hope for salvation. Union with the divine nature
and future blessedness were thus made to depend on sacraments rather
than on virtue. Indeed, we need not suppose that here any more than
in the mysteries at Eleusis there was originally any requirement of
a virtuous life. But reason and an awakened ethical sense among the
Greeks began early to demand of the initiates compliance with the
recognized standards of morality, as the passages already quoted
show; and there can be no doubt that in due time most of the various
mysteries contributed to the ethical life. Yet the inevitable tendency
in the opposite direction made itself felt and there were many Orphic
charlatans and quacks who promised salvation to all who would undergo
the cheap rites of their initiations.
* * * * *
We must now glance at a contemporaneous and related movement—I mean
Pythagoreanism, which will have sprung into the thoughts of many of you
already.
Whether Orphism learned from Pythagoras or Pythagoras from Orphism
cannot be determined; but it seems probable that Croton was already an
Orphic center when about 530 B.C. Pythagoras of Samos after
long travels established there an association which combined in a
way hitherto unknown religious and philosophic aims. Pythagoras may
have attached himself to some group of Orphics already in existence
and have inspired it with his political and philosophic interests. In
any case his society, which was opposed to the democratic temper of
Croton, became in time important enough to be regarded with suspicion
and forced to move to Metapontum; ultimately the members were dispersed
carrying their doctrines with them throughout the Greek world.
Our knowledge of the philosophic ideas of Pythagoras himself amounts
to little. It is clear that in contrast to the emotional Orphics he
was interested in intellectual pursuits, especially in mathematics;
more than that we cannot say; our present concern lies rather in the
ethical and religious views and practices of the society which he
established. This set high store on ethical discipline, following a
strict course of life, for the ultimate aim was identical with that of
the Orphics—salvation and release from sin. Like them the Pythagoreans
also held to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Their rules
enjoined simplicity of food, rare use of meat, and abstention from the
eating of beans and eggs. But more important was the discipline which
was prescribed for the mind and soul. The applicant for admission to
the brotherhood was first tested to determine his fitness. The neophyte
was bound to silence and obedience. “The master said it” was argument
enough for him. The members devoted themselves to reflection, to
self-examination, to the pursuit of the truth. Their highest aim was
“to follow god.” Although the Pythagoreans fixed their gaze more on
this world than the Orphics did, they also were of great religious
significance. They emphasized the duality of man, the moral obligation
of the individual, and especially the possibility of training and
purifying the soul, and so helped to establish a spiritual heritage for
later centuries.
* * * * *
Now I shall invite your attention to a third manifestation of the
mystic tendency of this age. Fourteen miles northwest of Athens,
between a fertile plain and the sea, lies the ancient town of Eleusis,
the center of the most important mysteries in Greece. The story of
Demeter is familiar to us all—the goddess whose daughter, Persephone
or Kore, was carried off by the god of the lower world. According to
the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the mother wandered fasting in search of
her daughter over the earth. She came to Eleusis in the guise of an
old woman, where she was found by the daughters of the king, Keleos,
who took her to their home. There she was kindly received, and was
installed as nurse to the infant son of the king. Under her care the
child prospered and grew marvellously, for quite secretly Demeter
anointed him with ambrosia, breathed upon him, and cherished him in
her bosom. By night she hid him “like a brand in the fire ..., for she
would have made him free from age and death forever.”
But the queen saw her and cried out in dismay. The goddess was angry,
yet none the less promised glory imperishable; she declared herself: “I
am the honored Demeter, who am the greatest good and joy to immortals
and mortals alike. Come, let all the people build me a mighty temple
and hard by it an altar beneath your town and its steep wall, above
Callichoros on the jutting spur. But the rites I will myself prescribe,
that here ever after you may duly perform them and appease my will.” So
the temple and altar to the goddess were built, but she still mourned
for her lost daughter. In her sorrow she held back the seedgrain in
the ground and all man’s plowing was vain, so that the race of men
had nearly perished from the earth if it had not been for Zeus, who
interposed and finally restored Persephone to her mother—but not
forever. Before she left the house of the dead, Pluto had made her eat
a pomegranate seed by which she was bound to return beneath the earth.
So she spent two-thirds of each year with her mother on the earth,
coming “when the ground blossomed with fragrant flowers,” but returning
to the lord of the dead when the flowers faded and the grass withered
before the coming of winter. Zeus then summoned Demeter to join the
immortal gods on Olympus; but before she went, “she quickly sent up
the grain from the fertile ground, and all the broad earth was heavy
with leaves and with flowers. And the goddess went and taught the kings
who deal out justice, Triptolemus and Diocles the charioteer, mighty
Eumolpus, and Keleos, leader of the people. To them she showed the
manner of her rites and to them all her mysteries, holy, which none may
transgress or enquire into or make known. For a great curse of the
gods restrains men’s speech. Happy is he whoever of men dwelling on
this earth has seen these things! But he who is uninitiate in these
holy rites, who has no share in them, never hath equal lot in death
in the shadowy gloom.” So says the Homeric hymn to Demeter, which was
composed, according to the general opinion of scholars, in the seventh
century before our era.
Thus we see that before this hymn was written the myth was fully
developed at Eleusis. There Demeter, Kore, and Pluto had their place,
and with them were associated certain heroic personages. A temple
and altar to the two goddesses already existed, and mysteries were
celebrated which gave to those who might see them and share in them the
warrant of a better lot in death than that for which the uninitiate
might hope. The date at which the mysteries were established cannot be
determined. This is no place for the speculations of the learned in
detail, but they seem to have existed as early as the eighth century,
and indeed they probably go back to a much remoter antiquity; yet
there is no mention of them in Homer or Hesiod. In their earliest form
they evidently consisted of certain religious ceremonies connected
with agriculture by which the dead grain was called to life in the
spring. The grain and the earth from which it sprang were worshipped
as the corn-mother, Demeter, and then by a development natural in such
religions the goddess was doubled and Kore, the maiden, came into
existence beside Demeter. In the cult of these goddesses various rites
had developed—fasting, purifications, and night vigils; a myth grew
up to explain the ritual and the relation of the two goddesses, with
whom a god of the dead was early associated; so something like the
story in the Homeric hymn came into being. The agricultural festival
was gradually transformed into one of profound meaning, by partaking
in which one gained an assurance of future happiness. The wonderful
miracle of reviving vegetation, of the grain which dies in the ground
and springs anew to life, has often served as the warrant of man’s
longing for a revival of his own life, as an assurance of his hope of
immortality. So gods and goddesses of agriculture or of vegetation,
which grows and dies and grows again, have become for men the lords of
life and death, as we have already seen in the case of Dionysus.
The English word mystery is somewhat misleading in such a connection. A
mystery in the Greek sense is a secret ritual to which only those may
be admitted who have first been prepared by some rites of purification
or probation. Such, for example, is the Christian Eucharist to which
the Greek word μυστήριον was freely applied. After the proper ritual
of initiation, through which the neophyte is guided by one previously
initiate and expert, he may take part in the secret performances, which
are thought to confer some special power or to bring him into close and
privileged relation to divinity.
Originally the festival at Eleusis belonged to a noble Eleusinian
family, or possibly to two families. In the seventh century Eleusis
was incorporated with Attica; an Eleusinion, a shrine to Demeter of
Eleusis, was built near the city; and the privilege of sharing in the
festival was apparently given to all Athenians. The mysteries were
especially fostered in the sixth century by the tyrant Pisistratus,
who built a new hall of initiation which was destroyed by the Persians
during their great invasion. Under Pisistratus the mysteries may have
been opened to the whole Hellenic world. In the fifth century the
broad formula of admission was: “Whoever has pure hands and speaks our
tongue.” Eleusis shared in the glory of Athens’ greatest period, and
even in the time of Athenian weakness and decay the mysteries retained
much of their ancient prestige. Many Romans, including some of the
imperial house, were initiated, and the popularity of Eleusis continued
as late as the third and fourth centuries. Julian the Apostate in his
youth was here initiated. In 364 A.D. the Emperor Valentinian
I forbade all nocturnal festivals, including that at Eleusis, but
when the pro-consul of Achaea declared that the people could not live
without the mysteries, he relaxed his prohibition so far as they were
concerned. Thirty-two years later Alaric destroyed the sanctuary,
and its long history, which began before history, seemed closed.
Yet Eleusis was true to Demeter, for in spite of the iconoclastic
tendencies of the Greek Church, the inhabitants continued to worship
as St. Demetra a mutilated ancient statue of the goddess, until in
1801 the Englishmen Clarke and Cripps carried it off to its present
resting-place in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.
The mysteries were under the general charge of the King Archon and his
assistants at Athens, but the officials proper continued to be drawn
from the two sacred families of the Eumolpidae and Ceryces. From the
former was selected the highest official, the hierophant, who held
office for life. He alone had the right to show or to explain the
secret objects and ceremonies. The next three priests were taken from
the Ceryces, and like the hierophant were chosen for life; they were
the torch-bearer, dadouchos, who carried the sacred torch at sacrifices
and purifications, the altar-priest, and the sacred herald, hieroceryx.
Besides these four high officials we know of a considerable number of
lesser priests and priestesses, heralds, and secular officers who do
not concern us now.
The would-be initiate applied to someone belonging to either of the
sacred Eleusinian families to act as mystagogue and lead him through
the preliminary purification, which seems to have been essentially
identical with that employed to purify any unclean person; this
done, the mystagogue duly presented the novice to the officials and
recommended him as a proper person to be initiated. There were two
degrees of the secret rites: in the first the novices were initiated
and became mystae; in the second they advanced to be epoptae, those to
whom were made special revelations not vouchsafed to the mystae.
Each year there were two celebrations of the mysteries, one at Agrae, a
suburb of Athens, in the month Anthesterion, which corresponds roughly
to our February-March, and the greater celebration at Eleusis in
Boëdromion, our September. The initiate was ordinarily obliged to take
part in the lesser celebration before he could be admitted at Eleusis.
The great festival lasted eight or nine days, from the fifteenth to the
twenty-second or twenty-third of the month Boëdromion. On the first day
the participants assembled before the Painted Porch in Athens to listen
to the formal proclamation, in which the officials ordered all unclean
persons and all foreigners to withdraw, and enjoined secrecy on all who
were to share in the festival. The sixteenth was a day of purification
when the participants washed in the sea; the seventeenth and eighteenth
were spent as holidays at Athens, during which various sacrifices
were made; so that it was not until the nineteenth that the festal
procession started for Eleusis, carrying the image of Iacchos, a form
of the infant Dionysus. Although the Sacred Way is less than fourteen
miles in length, so many stops were made at shrines that Eleusis was
not reached until evening. The ceremonies there continued three days
and nights. There were sacrifices and offerings to many divinities.
In memory of Demeter’s hunt for her daughter the devotees roamed the
shore by night carrying lighted torches; and finally like the goddess,
they broke their fast by drinking a holy potion of meal and water. The
consummation of the festival was the celebration in the Great Hall,
where some three thousand might find place on the seats which rose in
banks on all four sides. There were two sorts of representations—one
for the mystae, who were witnessing the festival for the first time,
and the other for those who were more expert, the epoptae. What went on
in the Hall we do not know; we can, however, conjecture in general
the nature of the celebrations. They consisted of “things done,”
δρώμενα, and “things said,” λεγόμενα. The former may well refer to
some kind of mystery play, or of tableaux, in which incidents from the
myth were represented, such for example as the rape and the recovery
of Kore, the mourning of Demeter, the birth of the child Iacchos,
and so forth. In fact Clement of Alexandria tells us: “Deo and Kore
became persons in a mystic drama, and Eleusis with its torch-bearer
celebrates the wandering, the abduction, and the sorrow.”[83] From this
and other notices we may conclude that some simple mystery play was
acted or tableaux vivants presented before the eyes of the company. In
any case there was nothing elaborate. Sacred objects were doubtless
exhibited, and apparently handled by some of the spectators. The
formula: “I fasted, I drank the potion, I took it from the chest and
having tasted I put it away in the basket and from the basket into
the chest”[84] gives a hint of certain sacraments, but we cannot now
clearly determine their nature. There was no preaching or exhortation.
At most the “things said” were a simple ritual, or explanation of the
objects exhibited. There may have been music and singing. On the last
day of the festival two jars were filled with water and set up, one to
the east and the other to the west of the great hall. Then these were
overturned with the words, ὓε κύε, “rain,” “conceive.”[85] Here we have
a bit of ancient agricultural ritual, of magic, intended to secure
abundant rains and the prosperity of the crops. A similar rite was the
solemn exhibition of an ear of grain as a symbol of the initiates’
hope.[86]
We inevitably inquire as to what the nature of the teaching of these
mysteries was. As a matter of fact, there was probably little if any
instruction given. Life beyond the grave was certainly taken for
granted. The mystic ritual consisted of only certain simple symbolical
ceremonies and representations which each initiate might interpret
according to his own impressions. The spectators were put into a
certain frame of mind; the celebration touched their emotions and not
their intellects. So Aristotle says: “The initiates are not to learn
anything, but they are to be affected and put into a certain frame of
mind.”[87] This we can understand from the effect of a Christian Mass,
which, full of the richest meaning to the devout Catholic, to another
may seem of no significance.
Although we have no reason to believe that there was formal teaching at
Eleusis, we have abundant evidence of the convictions of the initiates.
They clearly enjoyed peace of mind and happiness, and they believed
that in the future life their blessedness would be secure, and that
they could dance in the sacred dance, while the uninitiate would be
wretched. As the Homeric hymn to Demeter promised: “Blessed is he among
mortal men who has seen these rites.”[88] And Pindar, at the beginning
of the fifth century, declared: “Happy he who has seen these things,
and then goes beneath the earth. For he knows the end of life and its
Zeus-given beginning.”[89] Sophocles too says: “Thrice blessed are they
who have seen these rites and then go to the house of Hades, for they
alone have life there; but all others have only woe.”[90] In the Frogs
of Aristophanes the chorus of mystae sing: “For we alone have a sun and
a holy light, we who were initiated and who live toward friends and
strangers with reverence towards the gods.”[91] And finally I would
offer you the evidence of an inscription set up in the third century of
our era by an Eleusinian hierophant: “Verily glorious is that mystery
vouchsafed by the blessed gods, for death is no ill for mortals, but
rather a good.”[92]
There were branches of the Eleusinian mysteries established in the
Peloponnesus, of which that at Andania in Messenia is best known to
us through a long inscription happily preserved.[93] But it never
rivalled Eleusis. Of the other mysteries dating from an early period,
those of Samothrace were most important and influential, being second
only to the Eleusinian. Herodotus tells us that the Samothracians got
these mysteries from the Pelasgians; among modern scholars it has been
the fashion to regard the two male divinities there worshipped, the
Kabeiroi, as Phoenician in origin; but whatever the source from which
they sprang, in the period in which they are known to us neither the
gods nor the mysteries betray foreign elements. With the Kabeiroi were
associated Demeter and Kore, and in general the mysteries seem to have
resembled those of Eleusis. As elsewhere the initiates were of two
grades, mystae and epoptae; there were “things done” and “things said,”
and the assurance of safety here and hereafter was equally potent.
Branches were established, notably in Thebes, as early as the middle of
the sixth century B.C.
You will observe that the mysteries did not interfere in any sense
with a faith in the many gods of popular belief or with their worship.
We should also note that here no less than in Orphism ecclesiastical
exclusiveness was evident: only those who had been initiated and had
partaken of the sacraments could hope for salvation. Yet by the end
of the fifth century the Eleusinian Mysteries had gained a moral
significance, as is shown by the passage from the Frogs of Aristophanes
quoted just now. A few years later Andocides in his speech On the
Mysteries appealed to his jurors, reminding them that the purpose
of their initiation was that they might punish the impious and save
those who had done no wrong.[94] Still there was undoubtedly abundant
warrant for the sarcastic joke of Diogenes who asked: “Shall the robber
Pataecion have a better lot after death than Epaminondas, just because
he has been initiated?”[95]
We have now considered three manifestations of the mysticism which
became prominent in the sixth century before our era—Orphism,
Pythagoreanism, and the Greater Mysteries. We have seen how a new
religious sense arose which turned men’s thoughts toward the next world
and future happiness. This happiness the Orphics and Pythagoreans
endeavored to secure by a prescribed mode of life, by ceremonial
purifications, and by sacraments. The Mysteries likewise offered
assurance through initiation and participation in their sacred ritual.
In every case the devotees were inspired with confident hope, not by
reason, but by ceremonies and emotional experiences. Philosophy was not
yet united with religion.