Though the foundation of the Empire in many ways inaugurated a new era for
the antique world, it is, of course, impossible, in an inquiry which is
not confined to political history in the narrowest sense of the word, to
operate with anything but the loosest chronological divisions. Accordingly
in the last chapter we had to include phenomena from the early days of the
Empire in order not to separate things which naturally belonged together.
From the point of view of religious history the dividing line cannot
possibly be drawn at the Emperor Augustus, in spite of his restoration of
worship and the orthodox reaction in the official Augustan poetry, but
rather at about the beginning of the second century. The enthusiasm of the
Augustan Age for the good old times was never much more than affectation.
It quickly evaporated when the promised millennium was not forthcoming,
and was replaced by a reserve which developed into cynicism—but, be it
understood, in the upper circles of the capital only. In the empire at
large the development took its natural tranquil course, unaffected by the
manner in which the old Roman nobility was effacing itself; and this
development did not tend towards atheism.
The reaction towards positive religious feeling, which becomes clearly
manifest in the second century after Christ, though the preparation for it
is undoubtedly of earlier date, is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon
in the religious history of antiquity. This is not the place to inquire
into its causes, which still remain largely unexplained; there is even no
reason to enter more closely into its outer manifestations, as the thing
itself is doubted by nobody. It is sufficient to mention as instances
authors like Suetonius, with his naïve belief in miracles, and the
rhetorician Aristides, with his Asclepius-cult and general
sanctimoniousness; or a minor figure such as Aelian, who wrote whole books
of a pronounced, nay even fanatical, devotionalism; or within the sphere
of philosophy movements like Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism, both of
which are as much in the nature of mystic theology as attempts at a
scientific explanation of the universe. It is characteristic, too, that an
essentially anti-religious school like that of the Epicureans actually
dies out at this time. Under these conditions our task in this chapter
must be to bring out the comparatively few and weak traces of other
currents which still made themselves felt.
Of the earlier philosophical schools Stoicism flowered afresh in the
second century; the Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself was a prominent
adherent of the creed. This later Stoicism differs, however, somewhat from
the earlier. It limits the scientific apparatus which the early Stoics had
operated with to a minimum, and is almost exclusively concerned with
practical ethics on a religious basis. Its religion is that of ordinary
Stoicism: Pantheism and belief in Providence. But, on the whole, it takes
up a more sympathetic attitude towards popular religion than early
Stoicism had done. Of the bitter criticism of the absurdities of the
worship of the gods and of mythology which is still to be met with as late
as Seneca, nothing remains. On the contrary, participation in public
worship is still enjoined as being a duty; nay, more: attacks on belief in
the gods—in the plain popular sense of the word—are denounced as
pernicious and reprehensible. Perhaps no clearer proof could be adduced of
the revolution which had taken place in the attitude of the educated
classes towards popular religion than this change of front on the part of
Stoicism.
Contrary to this was the attitude of another school which was in vogue at
the same time as the Stoic, namely, the Cynic. Between Cynicism and
popular belief strained relations had existed since early times. It is
true, the Cynics did not altogether deny the existence of the gods; but
they rejected worship on the ground that the gods were not in need of
anything, and they denied categorically the majority of the popular ideas
about the gods. For the latter were, in fact, popular and traditional, and
the whole aim of the Cynics was to antagonise the current estimate of
values. A characteristic instance of their manner is provided by this very
period in the fragments of the work of Oenomaus. The work was entitled
_The Swindlers Unmasked_, and it contained a violent attack on oracles.
Its tone is exceedingly pungent. In the extant fragments Oenomaus
addresses the god in Delphi and overwhelms him with insults. But we are
expressly told—and one utterance of Oenomaus himself verifies it—that the
attack was not really directed against the god, but against the men who
gave oracles in his name. In his opinion the whole thing was a priestly
fraud—a view which otherwise was rather unfamiliar to the ancients, but
played an important part later. Incidentally there is a violent attack on
idolatry. The work is not without acuteness of thought and a certain
coarse wit of the true Cynical kind; but it is entirely uncritical
(oracles are used which are evidently inventions of later times) and of no
great significance. It is even difficult to avoid the impression that the
author’s aim is in some degree to create a sensation. Cynics of that day
were not strangers to that kind of thing. But it is at any rate a proof of
the fact that there were at the time tendencies opposed to the religious
reaction.
A more significant phenomenon of the same kind is to be found in the
writings of Lucian. Lucian was by education a rhetorician, by profession
an itinerant lecturer and essayist. At a certain stage of his life he
became acquainted with the Cynic philosophy and for some time felt much
attracted to it. From that he evidently acquired a sincere contempt of the
vulgar superstition which flourished in his time, even in circles of which
one might have expected something better. In writings which for the
greater part belong to his later period, he pilloried individuals who
traded (or seemed to trade) in the religious ferment of the time, as well
as satirised superstition as such. In this way he made an important
contribution to the spiritual history of the age. But simultaneously he
produced, for the entertainment of his public, a series of writings the
aim of which is to make fun of the Olympian gods. In this work also he
leant on the literature of the Cynics, but substituted for their grave and
biting satire light causeries or slight dramatic sketches, in which his
wit—for Lucian was really witty—had full scope. As an instance of his
manner I shall quote a short passage from the dialogue _Timon_. It is Zeus
who speaks; he has given Hermes orders to send the god of wealth to Timon,
who has wasted his fortune by his liberality and is now abandoned by his
false friends. Then he goes on: “As to the flatterers you speak of and
their ingratitude, I shall deal with them another time, and they will meet
with their due punishment as soon as I have had my thunderbolt repaired.
The two largest darts of it were broken and blunted the other day when I
got in a rage and flung it at the sophist Anaxagoras, who was trying to
make his disciples believe that we gods do not exist at all. However, I
missed him, for Pericles held his hand over him, but the bolt struck the
temple of the Dioscuri and set fire to it, and the bolt itself was nearly
destroyed when it struck the rock.” This sort of thing abounds in Lucian,
even if it is not always equally amusing and to the point. Now there is
nothing strange in the fact that a witty man for once should feel inclined
to make game of the old mythology; this might have happened almost at any
time, once the critical spirit had been awakened. But that a man, and
moreover an essayist, who had to live by the approval of his public,
should make it his trade, as it were, and that at a time of vigorous
religious reaction, seems more difficult to account for. Lucian’s
controversial pamphlets against superstition cannot be classed off-hand
with his _Dialogues of the Gods_; the latter are of a quite different and
far more harmless character. The fact is rather that mythology at this
time was fair game. It was cut off from its connexion with religion—a
connexion which in historical times was never very intimate and was now
entirely severed. This had been brought about in part by centuries of
criticism of the most varied kind, in part precisely as a result of the
religious reaction which had now set in. If people turned during this time
to the old gods—who, however, had been considerably contaminated with new
elements—it was because they had nothing else to turn to; but what they
now looked for was something quite different from the old religion. The
powerful tradition which had bound members of each small community—we
should say, of each township—to its familiar gods, with all that belonged
to them, was now in process of dissolution; in the larger cities of the
world-empire with their mixed populations it had entirely disappeared.
Religion was no longer primarily a concern of society; it was a personal
matter. In the face of the enormous selection of gods which ancient
paganism came gradually to proffer, the individual was free to choose, as
individual or as a member of a communion based upon religious, not
political, sympathy. Under these circumstances the existence of the gods
and their power and will to help their worshippers was the only thing of
interest; all the old tales about them were more than ever myths of no
religious value. On closer inspection Lucian indeed proves to have
exercised a certain selection in his satire. Gods like Asclepius and
Serapis, who were popular in his day, he prefers to say nothing about; and
even with a phenomenon like Christianity he deals cautiously; he sticks to
the old Olympian gods. Thus his derision of these constitutes an indirect
proof that they had gone out of vogue, and his forbearance on other points
is a proof of the power of the current religion over contemporary minds.
As to ascribing any deeper religious conviction to Lucian—were it even of
a purely negative kind—that is, in view of the whole character of his
work, out of the question. To be sure, his polemical pamphlets against
superstition show clearly, like those of Oenomaus, that the religious
reaction did not run its course without criticism from certain sides; but
even here it is significant that the criticism comes from a professional
jester and not from a serious religious thinker.
A few words remain to be said about the two monotheistic religions which
in the days of the Roman Empire came to play a great, one of them indeed a
decisive, part. I have already referred to pagan society’s attitude
towards Judaism and Christianity, and pointed out that the adherents of
both were designated and treated as atheists—the Jews only occasionally
and with certain reservations, the Christians nearly always and
unconditionally. The question here is, how far this designation was
justified according to the definition of atheism which is the basis of our
inquiry.
In the preceding pages we have several times referred to the fact that the
real enemy of Polytheism is not the philosophical theology, which
generally tends more or less towards Pantheism, but Monotheism. It is in
keeping with this that the Jews and the Christians in practice are
downright deniers of the pagan gods: they would not worship them; whereas
the Greek philosophers as a rule respected worship, however far they went
in their criticism of men’s ideas of the gods. We shall not dwell here on
this aspect of the matter; we are concerned with the theory only. Detailed
expositions of it occur in numerous writings, from the passages in the Old
Testament where heathenism is attacked, to the defences of Christianity by
the latest Fathers of the Church.
The original Jewish view, according to which the heathen gods are real
beings just as much as the God of the Jews themselves—only Jews must not
worship them—is in the later portions of the Old Testament superseded by
the view that the gods are only images made of wood, stone or metal, and
incapable of doing either good or evil. This point of view is taken over
by later Jewish authors and completely dominates them. In those acquainted
with Greek thought it is combined with Euhemeristic ideas: the images
represent dead men. The theory that the gods are really natural
objects—elements or heavenly bodies—is occasionally taken into account
too. Alongside of these opinions there appears also the view that the
pagan gods are evil spirits (demons). It is already found in a few places
in the Old Testament, and after that sporadically and quite incidentally
in later Jewish writings; in one place it is combined with the Old
Testament’s account of the fallen angels. The demon-theory is not an
instrument of Jewish apologetics proper, not even of Philo, though he has
a complete demonology and can hardly have been ignorant of the
Platonic-Stoic doctrine of demons.
Apart from the few and, as it were, incidental utterances concerning
demons, the Jewish view of the pagan gods impresses one as decidedly
atheistic. The god is identical with the idol, and the idol is a dead
object, the work of men’s hands, or the god is identical with a natural
object, made by God to be sure, but without soul or, at any rate, without
divinity. It is remarkable that no Jewish controversialist seriously
envisaged the problem of the real view of the gods embodied in the popular
belief of the ancients, namely, that they are personal beings of a higher
order than man. It is inconceivable that men like Philo, Josephus and the
author of the Wisdom of Solomon should have been ignorant of it. I know
nothing to account for this curious phenomenon; and till some light has
been thrown upon the matter, I should hesitate to assert that the Jewish
conception of Polytheism was purely atheistic, however much appearance it
may have of being so.
It was otherwise with Christian polemical writing. As early as St. Paul
the demon-theory appears distinctly, though side by side with utterances
of seemingly atheistic character. Other New Testament authors, too,
designate the gods as demons. The subsequent apologists, excepting the
earliest, Aristides, lay the main stress on demonology, but include for
the sake of completeness idolatry and the like, sometimes without caring
about or trying to conciliate the contradictions. In the long run
demonology is victorious; in St. Augustine, the foremost among Christian
apologists, there is hardly any other point of view that counts.
To trace the Christian demonology in detail and give an account of its
various aspects is outside the scope of this essay. Its origin is a
twofold one, partly the Jewish demonology, which just at the commencement
of our era had received a great impetus, partly the theory of the Greek
philosophers, which we have characterised above when speaking of
Xenocrates. The Christian doctrine regarding demons differs from the
latter, especially by the fact that it does not acknowledge good demons;
they were all evil. This was the indispensable basis for the interdict
against the worship of demons; in its further development the Christians,
following Jewish tradition, pointed to an origin in the fallen angels, and
thus effected a connexion with the Old Testament. While they at the same
time retained its angelology they had to distinguish good and evil beings
intermediate between god and man; but they carefully avoided designating
the angels as demons, and kept them distinct from the pagan gods, who were
all demons and evil.
The application of demonology to the pagan worship caused certain
difficulties in detail. To be sure, it was possible to identify a given
pagan god with a certain demon, and this was often done; but it was
impossible to identify the Pagans’ conceptions of their gods with the
Christians’ conceptions of demons. The Pagans, in fact, ascribed to their
gods not only demoniac (diabolical) but also divine qualities, which the
Christians absolutely denied them. Consequently they had to recognise that
pagan worship to a great extent rested on a delusion, on a misconception
of the essential character of the gods which were worshipped. This view
was corroborated by the dogma of the fallen angels, which was altogether
alien to paganism. By identifying them with the evil spirits of the Bible,
demon-names were even obtained which differed from those of the pagan gods
and, of course, were the correct ones; were they not given in Holy Writ?
In general, the Christians, who possessed an authentic revelation of the
matter, were of course much better informed about the nature of the pagan
gods than the Pagans themselves, who were groping in the dark. Euhemerism,
which plays a great part in the apologists, helped in the same direction:
the supposition that the idols were originally men existed among the
Pagans themselves, and it was too much in harmony with the tendency of the
apologists to be left unemployed. It was reconciled with demonology by the
supposition that the demons had assumed the masks of dead heroes; they had
beguiled mankind to worship them in order to possess themselves of the
sacrifices, which they always coveted, and by this deception to be able to
rule and corrupt men. The Christians also could not avoid recognising that
part of the pagan worship was worship of natural objects, in particular of
the heavenly bodies; and this error of worshipping the “creation instead
of the creator” was so obvious that the Christians were not inclined to
resort to demonology for an explanation of this phenomenon, the less so as
they could not identify the sun or the moon with a demon. The conflict of
these different points of view accounts for the peculiar vacillation in
the Christian conception of paganism. On one hand, we meet with crude
conceptions, according to which the pagan gods are just like so many
demons; they are specially prominent when pagan miracles and prophecies
are to be explained. On the other hand, there is a train of thought which
carried to its logical conclusion would lead to conceiving paganism as a
whole as a huge delusion of humanity, but a delusion caused indeed by
supernatural agencies. This conclusion hardly presented itself to the
early Church; later, however, it was drawn and caused a not inconsiderable
shifting in men’s views and explanations of paganism.
Demonology is to such a degree the ruling point of view in Christian
apologetics that it would be absurd to make a collection from these
writings of utterances with an atheistic ring. Such utterances are to be
found in most of them; they appear spontaneously, for instance, wherever
idolatry is attacked. But one cannot attach any importance to them when
they appear in this connexion, not even in apologists in whose works the
demon theory is lacking. No Christian theologian in antiquity advanced,
much less sustained, the view that the pagan gods were mere phantoms of
human imagination without any corresponding reality.
Remarkable as this state of things may appear to us moderns, it is really
quite simple, nay even a matter of course, when regarded historically.
Christianity had from its very beginning a decidedly dualistic character.
The contrast between this world and the world to come was identical with
the contrast between the kingdom of the Devil and the kingdom of God. As
soon as the new religion came into contact with paganism, the latter was
necessarily regarded as belonging to the kingdom of the Devil; thus the
conception of the gods as demons was a foregone conclusion. In the minds
of the later apologists, who became acquainted with Greek philosophy, this
conception received additional confirmation; did it not indeed agree in
the main with Platonic and Stoic theory? Details were added: the
Christians could not deny the pagan miracles without throwing a doubt on
their own, for miracles cannot be done away with at all except by a denial
on principle; neither could they explain paganism—that gigantic,
millennial aberration of humanity—by merely human causes, much less lay
the blame on God alone. But ultimately all this rests on one and the same
thing—the supernatural and dualistic hypothesis. Consequently demonology
is the kernel of the Christian conception of paganism: it is not merely a
natural result of the hypotheses, it is the one and only correct
expression of the way in which the new religion understood the old.