And now let us turn to a point for which perhaps some readers have long
been waiting, and with which they may have expected us to begin rather
than to end. So far, in considering the part played by religion in Greek
Life, we have assumed the position of orthodoxy. We have endeavoured to
place ourselves at the standpoint of the man who did not criticise or
reflect, but accepted simply, as a matter of course, the tradition
handed down to him by his fathers. Only so, if at all, was it possible
for us to detach ourselves from our habitual preconceptions, and to
regard the pagan mythology not as a graceful invention of the poets, but
as a serious and, at the time, a natural and inevitable way of looking
at the world. Now, however, it is time to turn to the other side, and to
consider the Greek religion as it appeared to contemporary critics. For
critics there were, and sceptics, or rather, to put it more exactly,
there was a critical age succeeding an age of faith. As we trace,
however imperfectly, the development of the Greek mind, we can observe
their intellect and their moral sense expanding beyond the limits of
their creed. Either as sympathetic, though candid, friends, or as avowed
enemies, they bring to light its contradictions and defects; and as a
result of the process one of two things happens. Either the ancient
conception of the gods is transformed in the direction of monotheism, or
it is altogether swept away, and a new system of the world built up, on
the basis of natural science or of philosophy. These tendencies of
thought we must now endeavour to trace; for we should have formed but an
imperfect idea of the scope of the religious consciousness of the Greeks
if we confined ourselves to what we may call their orthodox faith. It is
in their most critical thinkers, in Euripides and Plato, that the
religious sense is most fully and keenly developed; and it is in the
philosophy that supervened upon the popular creed, rather than in the
popular creed itself, that we shall find the highest and most spiritual
reaches of their thought.
Let us endeavour, then, in the first place to realise to ourselves how
the Greek religion must have appeared to one who approached it not from
the side of unthinking acquiescence, but with the idea of discovering
for himself how far it really met the needs and claims of the intellect
and the moral sense. Let us imagine him turning to his Homer, to those
poems which were the Bible of the Greek, his ultimate appeal both in
religion and in ethics; which were taught in the schools, quoted in the
law-courts, recited in the streets; and from which the teacher drew his
moral instances, the rhetorician his allusions, the artist his models,
every man his conception of the gods. Let us imagine some candid and
ingenuous youth, turning to his Homer and repeating, say, the following
passage of the Iliad:--
"Among the other gods fell grievous bitter strife, and their hearts were
carried diverse in their breasts. And they clashed together with a great
noise, and the wide earth groaned, and the clarion of great Heaven rang
around. Zeus heard as he sate upon Olympus, and his heart within him
laughed pleasantly when he beheld that strife of the gods." [Footnote:
Iliad xxi. 385.--Translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers.]
At this point, let us suppose, the reader pauses to reflect; and is
struck, for the first time, with a shock of surprise by the fact that
the gods should be not only many but opposed; and opposed on what issue?
a purely human one! a war between Greeks and Trojans for the possession
of a beautiful woman! Into such a contest the immortal gods descend,
fight with human weapons, and dispute in human terms! Where is the
single purpose that should mark the divine will? where the repose of the
wisdom that foreordained and knows the end? Not, it is clear, in this
motley array of capricious and passionate wills! Then, perhaps, in Zeus,
Zeus, who is lord of all? He, at least, will impose upon this mob of
recalcitrant deities the harmony which the pious soul demands. He, whose
rod shakes the sky, will arise and assert the law. He, in his majesty,
will speak the words--alas! what words! Let us take them straight from
the lips of the King of gods and men:--
"Hearken to me, all gods and all ye goddesses, that I may tell you that
my heart within my breast commandeth me. One thing let none essay, be it
goddess or be it god, to wit, to thwart my saying; approve ye it all
together, that with all speed I may accomplish these things. Whomsoever
I shall perceive minded to go, apart from the gods, to succour Trojans
or Danaans, chastened in no seemly wise shall he return to Olympus, or I
will take and cast him into misty Tartaros, right far away, where is the
deepest gulf beneath the earth; there are the gate of iron and threshold
of bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth: then
shall ye know how far I am mightiest of all gods. Go to now, ye gods,
make trial that ye all may know. Fasten ye a rope of gold from heaven,
and all ye gods lay hold thereof and all goddesses; yet could ye not
drag from heaven to earth Zeus, counsellor supreme, not though ye toiled
sore. But once I likewise were minded to draw with all my heart, then
should I draw ye up with very earth and sea withal. Thereafter would I
bind the rope about a pinnacle of Olympus, and so should all those
things be hung in air. By so much am I beyond gods and beyond men."
[Footnote: Iliad viii. 5.--Translated by Lang, Leaf and Myers.]
And is that all? In the divine tug of war Zeus is more than a match for
all the other gods together! Is it on this that the lordship of heaven
and earth depends? This that we are to worship as highest, we of the
brain and heart and soul? And even so, even admitting the ground of
supremacy, with what providence or consistency of purpose is it
exercised? Why, Zeus himself is as capricious as the rest! Because
Thetis comes whining to him about an insult put upon Achilles, he
interferes to change the whole course of the war, and that too by means
of a lying dream! Even his own direct decrees he can hardly be induced
to observe. His son Sarpedon, for example, who is "fated," as he says
himself, to die, he is yet at the last moment in half a mind to save
alive! How is such division possible in the will of the supreme god? Or
is the "fate" of which he speaks something outside himself? But if so,
then above him! and if above him, what is he? Not, after all, the
highest, not the supreme at all! What then _are_ we to worship?
What _is_ this higher "fate?"
Such would be the kind of questions that would vex our candid youth when
he approached his Homer from the side of theology. Nor would he fare any
better if he took the ethical point of view. The gods, he would find,
who should surely at least attain to the human standard, not only are
capable of every phase of passion, anger, fear, jealousy and, above all,
love, but indulge them all with a verve and an abandonment that might
make the boldest libertine pause. Zeus himself, for example, expends
upon the mere catalogue of his amours a good twelve lines of hexameter
verse. No wonder that Hera is jealous, and that her lord is driven to
put her down in terms better suited to the lips of mortal husbands:
"Lady, ever art thou imagining, nor can I escape thee; yet shalt thou in
no wise have power to fulfil, but wilt be the further from my heart;
that shall be even the worse for thee. Hide thou in silence and hearken
to my bidding, lest all the gods that are in Olympus keep not off from
thee my visitation, when I put forth my hands unapproachable against
thee." [Footnote: Iliad i. 560.--Translated by Leaf, Lang and Myers.]