Let us take first a question which much exercised the Greek mind--the
difficulty of forecasting the future. Clearly, the notion that the world
was controlled by a crowd of capricious deities, swayed by human
passions and desires, was incompatible with the idea of fixed law; but
on the other hand it made it possible to suppose that some intimation
might be had from the gods, either directly or symbolically, of what
their intentions and purposes really were. And on this hypothesis we
find developed quite early in Greek history, a complex art of divining
the future by signs. The flight of birds and other phenomena of the
heavens, events encountered on the road, the speech of passers-by, or,
most important of all, the appearance of the entrails of the victims
sacrificed were supposed to indicate the probable course of events. And
this art, already mature in the time of the Homeric poems, we find
flourishing throughout the historic age. Nothing could better indicate
its prevalence and its scope than the following passage from
Aristophanes, where he ridicules the readiness of his contemporaries to
see in everything an omen, or, as he puts it, punning on the Greek word,
a "bird": "On us you depend," sings his chorus of Birds,
"On us you depend, and to us you repair
For counsel and aid, when a marriage is made,
A purchase, a bargain, a venture in trade;
Unlucky or lucky, whatever has struck ye,
An ox or an ass, that may happen to pass,
A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet,
A name or a word by chance overheard,
You deem it an omen, and call it a Bird."
[Footnote: Aristoph. "Birds" 717.--Frere's translation.]
Aristophanes, of course, is jesting; but how serious and important this
art of divination must have appeared even to the most cultivated
Athenians may be gathered from a passage of the tragedian Aeschylus,
where he mentions it as one of the benefits conferred by Prometheus on
mankind, and puts it on a level with the arts of building, metal-making,
sailing, and the like, and the sciences of arithmetic and astronomy.
And if anyone were dissatisfied with this method of interpretation by
signs, he had a directer means of approaching the gods. He could visit
one of the oracles and consult the deity at first hand about his most
trivial and personal family affairs. Some of the questions put to the
oracle at Dodona have been preserved to us, [Footnote: See Percy
Gardner, "New Chapters in Greek History."] and very curious they are.
"Who stole my cushions and pillow?" asks one bereaved householder.
Another wants to know whether it will pay him to buy a certain house and
farm; another whether sheep-farming is a good investment. Clearly, the
god was not above being consulted on the meanest affairs; and his easy
accessibility must have been some compensation for his probable caprice.
Nor must it be supposed that this phase of the Greek religion was a
superstition confined to individuals; on the contrary, it was fully
recognised by the state. No important public act could be undertaken
without a previous consultation of omens. More than once, in the
clearest and most brilliant period of the Greek civilisation, we hear of
military expeditions being abandoned because the sacrifices were
unfavourable; and at the time of the Persian invasion, at the most
critical moment of the history of Greece, the Lacedaemonians, we are
told, came too late to be present at the battle of Marathon, because
they thought it unlucky to start until the moon was full.
In all this we have a suggestion of the sort of relation in which the
Greek conceived himself to stand to the gods. It is a relation, as we
said, external and mechanical. The gods were superior beings who knew,
it might be presumed, what was going to happen; man didn't know, but
perhaps he could find out. How could he find out? that was the problem;
and it was answered in the way we have seen. There was no question,
clearly, of a spiritual relation; all is external; and a similar
externality pervades, on the whole, the Greek view of sacrifice and of
sin. Let us turn now to consider this point.