F., xlii, 438-75.
[150:2] Irenaeus, i. 13, 3.
[150:3] Bousset, chap. vii; Reitzenstein, _Mysterienreligionen_, p. 20
ff., with excursus; _Poimandres_, 226 ff.; Dieterich, _Mithrasliturgie_,
pp. 121 ff.
[152:1] Eur. fr. 484.
[152:2] _R. G. E._{3}, pp. 135-40. I do not touch on the political side
of this apotheosis of Hellenistic kings; it is well brought out in
Ferguson's _Hellenistic Athens_, e. g. p. 108 f., also p. 11 f. and
note. Antigonus Gonatas refused to be worshipped (Tarn, p. 250 f.). For
Sallustius's opinion, see below, p. 223, chap. xviii _ad fin._
[153:1] Cf. ψυχὴ οἰκητήριον δαίμονος, Democr. 171, Diels, and Alcmaeon
is said by Cicero to have attributed divinity to the Stars and the Soul.
Melissus and Zeno θείας οἴεται τὰς ψυχάς. The phrase τινὲς τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸ
τῶν ἄστρων ῥέουσαν, Diels 651, must refer to some Gnostic sect.
[154:1] See for instance Frazer, _Golden Bough_{3}, part I, i. 417-19.
[154:2] Aesch. _Pers._ 157, 644 (θεός), 642 (δαίμων). Mr. Bevan however
suspects that Aeschylus misunderstood his Persian sources: see his
article on 'Deification' in Hastings's _Dictionary of Religion_.
[154:3] Cf. Aristotle on the Μεγαλόψυχος, _Eth. Nic._ 1123 b. 15. εἰ δὲ
δὴ μεγάλων ἑαμτὸν ἀξιοῖ ἄξιος ὤν, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν μεγίστων, περὶ ἓν
μάλιστα ἂν εἲη. . . . μέγιστον δὲ τοῦτ' ἂν θείημεν ὃ τοῖς θεοῖς
ἀπονέμομεν. But these kings clearly transgressed the mean. For the
satirical comments of various public men in Athens see Ed. Meyer,
_Kleine Schriften_, 301 ff., 330.
[155:1] Lysander too had altars raised to him by some Asiatic cities.
[156:1] Dittenberger, _Inscr. Orientis Graeci_, 90; Wendland,
_Hellenistisch-römische Kultur_, 1907, p. 74 f. and notes.
[157:1] Several of the phrases are interesting. The last gift of the
heavenly gods to this Theos is the old gift of Mana. In Hesiod it was
Κάρτος τε Βίη τε, the two ministers who are never away from the King
Zeus. In Aeschylus it was Kratos and Bia who subdue Prometheus. In
Tyrtaeus it was Νίκη καὶ Κάρτος. In other inscriptions of the Ptolemaic
age it is Σωτηρία καὶ Νίκη or Σωτηρία καὶ Νίκη αἰώνιος. In the current
Christian liturgies it is 'the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory'. _R.
G. E._{3}, p. 135, n. The new conception, as always, is rooted in the
old. 'The Gods Saviours, Brethren', &c., are of course Ptolemy Soter,
Ptolemy Philadelphus, &c., and their Queens. The phrases εἰκὼν ζῶσα τοῦ
Διός, υἱὸς τοῦ Ἡλίου, ἠγαπημένος ὑπὸ τοῦ Φθᾶ, are characteristic of the
religious language of this period. Cf. also Col. i. 14, εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ
τοῦ ἀοράτου; 2 Cor. iv. 4; Ephes. i. 5, 6.
[158:1] Fr. 1118. Arnim. Cf. Antipater, fr. 33, 34, τὸ εὐποιητικόν is
part of the definition of Deity.
[158:2] Plin., _Nat. Hist._ ii. 7, 18. Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem
et haec ad aeternam gloriam via. Cf. also the striking passages from
Cicero and others in Wendland, p. 85, n. 2.
[159:1] The Stoic philosopher, teaching at Rhodes, _c._ 100 B. C. A man
of immense knowledge and strong religious emotions, he moved the Stoa in
the direction of Oriental mysticism. See Schwartz's sketch in
_Characterköpfe_{a}, pp. 89-98. Also Norden's _Commentary on Aeneid_ vi.
[160:1] Jacoby in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopädie_, vi. 954. It was
called Ἱερὰ Ἀναγραφή.
[161:1] Cf. Plotin. _Enn._ I, ii. 6 ἀλλ' ἡ σπουδὴ οὐκ ἔξω ἁμαρτίας
εἶναι, ἀλλὰ θεὸν εἶναι.
[161:2] Acts xiv. 12. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes, because
he was ὁ ἡγούμενος τοῦ λόγου.--Paul also writes to the Galatians (iv.
14): 'Ye received me _as a messenger of God, as Jesus Christ_.'
[162:1] Bousset, p. 238.
[162:2] Hippolytus, 134, 90 ff., text in Reitzenstein's _Poimandres_,
pp. 83-98.
[163:1] _Republic_, 362 A. Ἀνασχινδυλεύω is said to = ἀνασκολοπίζω,
which is used both for 'impale' and 'crucify'. The two were alternative
forms of the most slavish and cruel capital punishment, impalement being
mainly Persian, crucifixion Roman.
[164:1] See _The Hymn of the Soul_, attributed to the Gnostic
Bardesanes, edited by A. A. Bevan, Cambridge, 1897.
[164:2] Bousset cites Acta Archelai 8, and Epiphanius, _Haeres_. 66, 32.
[164:3] Gal. iv. 9; 1 Cor. xv. 21 f., 47; Rom. v. 12-18.
[165:1] ἡ ἀνάστασις τῶν νεκρῶν. Cf. Acts xvii. 32.
[165:2] Cleanthes, 538, Arnim; Diels, p. 592, 30. Cf. Philolaus, Diels,
p. 336 f.
[166:1] See especially the interpretation of Nestor's Cup, Athenaeus,
pp. 489 c. ff.
[167:1] I may refer to the learned and interesting remarks on the
Esoteric Style in Prof. Margoliouth's edition of Aristotle's _Poetics_.
It is not, of course, the same as Allegory.
[169:1] Published in the Teubner series by William, 1907.
[170:1]
Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός. Ἀναίσθητον ὁ θάνατος.
Τὸ ἀγαθὸν εὔκτητον. Τὸ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον.
I regret to say that I cannot track this Epicurean 'tetractys' to its
source.
V
THE LAST PROTEST
In the last essay we have followed Greek popular religion to the very
threshold of Christianity, till we found not only a soil ready for the
seed of Christian metaphysic, but a large number of the plants already
in full and exuberant growth. A complete history of Greek religion
ought, without doubt, to include at least the rise of Christianity and
the growth of the Orthodox Church, but, of course, the present series of
studies does not aim at completeness. We will take the Christian
theology for granted as we took the classical Greek philosophy, and will
finish with a brief glance at the Pagan reaction of the fourth century,
when the old religion, already full of allegory, mysticism, asceticism,
and Oriental influences, raised itself for a last indignant stand
against the all-prevailing deniers of the gods.
This period, however, admits a rather simpler treatment than the others.
It so happens that for the last period of paganism we actually possess
an authoritative statement of doctrine, something between a creed and a
catechism. It seems to me a document so singularly important and, as far
as I can make out, so little known, that I shall venture to print it
entire.
A creed or catechism is, of course, not at all the same thing as the
real religion of those who subscribe to it. The rules of metre are not
the same thing as poetry; the rules of cricket, if the analogy may be
excused, are not the same thing as good play. Nay, more. A man states in
his creed only the articles which he thinks it right to assert
positively against those who think otherwise. His deepest and most
practical beliefs are those on which he acts without question, which
have never occurred to him as being open to doubt. If you take on the
one hand a number of persons who have accepted the same creed but lived
in markedly different ages and societies, with markedly different
standards of thought and conduct, and on the other an equal number who
profess different creeds but live in the same general environment, I
think there will probably be more real identity of religion in the
latter group. Take three orthodox Christians, enlightened according to
the standards of their time, in the fourth, the sixteenth, and the
twentieth centuries respectively, I think you will find more profound
differences of religion between them than between a Methodist, a
Catholic, a Freethinker, and even perhaps a well-educated Buddhist or
Brahmin at the present day, provided you take the most generally
enlightened representatives of each class. Still, when a student is
trying to understand the inner religion of the ancients, he realizes how
immensely valuable a creed or even a regular liturgy would be.
Literature enables us sometimes to approach pretty close, in various
ways, to the minds of certain of the great men of antiquity, and
understand how they thought and felt about a good many subjects. At
times one of these subjects is the accepted religion of their society;
we can see how they criticized it or rejected it. But it is very hard to
know from their reaction against it what that accepted religion really
was. Who, for instance, knows Herodotus's religion? He talks in his
penetrating and garrulous way, 'sometimes for children and sometimes for
philosophers,' as Gibbon puts it, about everything in the world; but at
the end of his book you find that he has not opened his heart on this
subject. No doubt his profession as a reciter and story-teller prevented
him. We can see that Thucydides was sceptical; but can we fully see what
his scepticism was directed against, or where, for instance, Nikias
would have disagreed with him, and where he and Nikias both agreed
against us?
We have, of course, the systems of the great philosophers--especially of
Plato and Aristotle. Better than either, perhaps, we can make out the
religion of M. Aurelius. Amid all the harshness and plainness of his
literary style, Marcus possessed a gift which has been granted to few,
the power of writing down what was in his heart just as it was, not
obscured by any consciousness of the presence of witnesses or any
striving after effect. He does not seem to have tried deliberately to
reveal himself, yet he has revealed himself in that short personal
note-book almost as much as the great inspired egotists, Rousseau and
St. Augustine. True, there are some passages in the book which are
unintelligible to us; that is natural in a work which was not meant to
be read by the public; broken flames of the white passion that consumed
him bursting through the armour of his habitual accuracy and
self-restraint.
People fail to understand Marcus, not because of his lack of
self-expression, but because it is hard for most men to breathe at that
intense height of spiritual life, or, at least, to breathe soberly. They
can do it if they are allowed to abandon themselves to floods of
emotion, and to lose self-judgement and self-control. I am often rather
surprised at good critics speaking of Marcus as 'cold'. There is as much
intensity of feeling in Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν as in most of the nobler modern
books of religion, only there is a sterner power controlling it. The
feeling never amounts to complete self-abandonment. 'The Guiding Power'
never trembles upon its throne, and the emotion is severely purged of
earthly dross. That being so, we children of earth respond to it less
readily.
Still, whether or no we can share Marcus's religion, we can at any rate
understand most of it. But even then we reach only the personal religion
of a very extraordinary man; we are not much nearer to the religion of
the average educated person--the background against which Marcus, like
Plato, ought to stand out. I believe that our conceptions of it are
really very vague and various. Our great-grandfathers who read 'Tully's
_Offices_ and _Ends_' were better informed than we. But there are many
large and apparently simple questions about which, even after reading
Cicero's philosophical translations, scholars probably feel quite
uncertain. Were the morals of Epictetus or the morals of Part V of the
Anthology most near to those of real life among respectable persons? Are
there not subjects on which Plato himself sometimes makes our flesh
creep? What are we to feel about slavery, about the exposing of
children? True, slavery was not peculiar to antiquity; it flourished in
a civilized and peculiarly humane people of English blood till a
generation ago. And the history of infanticide among the finest modern
nations is such as to make one reluctant to throw stones, and even
doubtful in which direction to throw them. Still, these great facts and
others like them have to be understood, and are rather hard to
understand, in their bearing on the religious life of the ancients.
Points of minor morals again are apt to surprise a reader of ancient
literature. We must remember, of course, that they always do surprise
one, in every age of history, as soon as its manners are studied in
detail. One need not go beyond Salimbene's Chronicle, one need hardly go
beyond Macaulay's History, or any of the famous French memoirs, to
realize that. Was it really an ordinary thing in the first century, as
Philo seems to say, for gentlemen at dinner-parties to black one
another's eyes or bite one another's ears off?[177:1] Or were such
practices confined to some Smart Set? Or was Philo, for his own
purposes, using some particular scandalous occurrence as if it was
typical?
St. Augustine mentions among the virtues of his mother her unusual
meekness and tact. Although her husband had a fiery temper, she never
had bruises on her face, which made her a _rara avis_ among the matrons
of her circle.[177:2] Her circle, presumably, included Christians as
well as Pagans and Manicheans. And Philo's circle can scarcely be
considered Pagan. Indeed, as for the difference of religion, we should
bear in mind that, just at the time we are about to consider, the middle
of the fourth century, the conduct of the Christians, either to the rest
of the world or to one another, was very far from evangelical. Ammianus
says that no savage beasts could equal its cruelty; Ammianus was a
pagan; but St. Gregory himself says it was like Hell.[178:1]
I have expressed elsewhere my own general answer to this puzzle.[178:2]
Not only in early Greek times, but throughout the whole of antiquity the
possibility of all sorts of absurd and atrocious things lay much nearer,
the protective forces of society were much weaker, the strain on
personal character, the need for real 'wisdom and virtue', was much
greater than it is at the present day. That is one of the causes that
make antiquity so interesting. Of course, different periods of antiquity
varied greatly, both in the conventional standard demanded and in the
spiritual force which answered or surpassed the demand. But, in general,
the strong governments and orderly societies of modern Europe have made
it infinitely easier for men of no particular virtue to live a decent
life, infinitely easier also for men of no particular reasoning power or
scientific knowledge to have a more or less scientific or sane view of
the world.
That, however, does not carry us far towards solving the main problem:
it brings us no nearer to knowledge of anything that we may call
typically a religious creed or an authorized code of morals, in any age
from Hesiod to M. Aurelius.
The book which I have ventured to call a Creed or Catechism is the work
of Sallustius _About the Gods and the World_, a book, I should say,
about the length of the Scottish Shorter Catechism. It is printed in the
third volume of Mullach's _Fragmenta Philosophorum_; apart from that,
the only edition generally accessible--and that is rare--is a duodecimo
published by Allatius in 1539. Orelli's brochure of 1821 seems to be
unprocurable.
The author was in all probability that Sallustius who is known to us as
a close friend of Julian before his accession, and a backer or inspirer
of the emperor's efforts to restore the old religion. He was concerned
in an educational edition of Sophocles--the seven selected plays now
extant with a commentary. He was given the rank of prefect in 362, that
of consul in 363. One must remember, of course, that in that rigorous
and ascetic court high rank connoted no pomp or luxury. Julian had
dismissed the thousand hairdressers, the innumerable cooks and eunuchs
of his Christian predecessor. It probably brought with it only an
increased obligation to live on pulse and to do without such pamperings
of the body as fine clothes or warmth or washing.
Julian's fourth oration, a prose hymn _To King Sun_, πρὸς Ἥλιον βασιλέα,
is dedicated to Sallustius; his eighth is a 'Consolation to Himself upon
the Departure of Sallustius'. (He had been with Julian in the wars in
Gaul, and was recalled by the jealousy of the emperor Constantius.) It
is a touching and even a noble treatise. The nervous self-distrust which
was habitual in Julian makes him write always with a certain
affectation, but no one could mistake the real feeling of loss and
loneliness that runs through the consolation. He has lost his 'comrade
in the ranks', and now is 'Odysseus left alone'. So he writes, quoting
the _Iliad_; Sallustius has been carried by God outside the spears and
arrows: 'which malignant men were always aiming at you, or rather at me,
trying to wound me through you, and believing that the only way to beat
me down was by depriving me of the fellowship of my true friend and
fellow-soldier, the comrade who never flinched from sharing my dangers.'
One note recurs four times; he has lost the one man to whom he could
talk as a brother; the man of 'guileless and clean free-speech',[180:1]
who was honest and unafraid and able to contradict the emperor freely
because of their mutual trust. If one thinks of it, Julian, for all his
gentleness, must have been an alarming emperor to converse with. His
standard of conduct was not only uncomfortably high, it was also a
little unaccountable. The most correct and blameless court officials
must often have suspected that their master looked upon them as simply
wallowing in sin. And that feeling does not promote ease or
truthfulness. Julian compares his friendship with Sallustius to that of
Scipio and Laelius. People said of Scipio that he only carried out what
Laelius told him. 'Is that true of me?' Julian asks himself. 'Have I
only done what Sallustius told me?' His answer is sincere and beautiful:
κοινὰ τὰ φίλων. It little matters who suggested, and who agreed to the
suggestion; his thoughts, and any credit that came from the thoughts,
are his friend's as much as his own. We happen to hear from the
Christian Theodoret (_Hist._ iii. 11) that on one occasion when Julian
was nearly goaded into persecution of the Christians, it was Sallustius
who recalled him to their fixed policy of toleration.
Sallustius then may be taken to represent in the most authoritative way
the Pagan reaction of Julian's time, in its final struggle against
Christianity.
He was, roughly speaking, a Neo-Platonist. But it is not as a professed
philosopher that he writes. It is only that Neo-Platonism had permeated
the whole atmosphere of the age.[181:1] The strife of the philosophical
sects had almost ceased. Just as Julian's mysticism made all gods and
almost all forms of worship into one, so his enthusiasm for Hellenism
revered, nay, idolized, almost all the great philosophers of the past.
They were all trying to say the same ineffable thing; all lifting
mankind towards the knowledge of God. I say 'almost' in both cases; for
the Christians are outside the pale in one domain and the Epicureans and
a few Cynics in the other. Both had committed the cardinal sin; they had
denied the gods. They are sometimes lumped together as _Atheoi_.
_L'athéisme, voilà l'ennemi._
This may surprise us at first sight, but the explanation is easy. To
Julian the one great truth that matters is the presence and glory of
the gods. No doubt, they are all ultimately one: they are δυνάμεις,
'forces,' not persons, but for reasons above our comprehension they are
manifest only under conditions of form, time, and personality, and have
so been revealed and worshipped and partly known by the great minds of
the past. In Julian's mind the religious emotion itself becomes the
thing to live for. Every object that has been touched by that emotion is
thereby glorified and made sacred. Every shrine where men have
worshipped in truth of heart is thereby a house of God. The worship may
be mixed up with all sorts of folly, all sorts of unedifying practice.
Such things must be purged away, or, still better, must be properly
understood. For to the pure all things are pure: and the myths that
shock the vulgar are noble allegories to the wise and reverent. Purge
religion from dross, if you like; but remember that you do so at your
peril. One false step, one self-confident rejection of a thing which is
merely too high for you to grasp, and you are darkening the Sun, casting
God out of the world. And that was just what the Christians deliberately
did. In many of the early Christian writings denial is a much greater
element than assertion. The beautiful _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix
(about A. D. 130-60) is an example. Such denial was, of course, to our
judgement, eminently needed, and rendered a great service to the world.
But to Julian it seemed impiety. In other Christian writings the
misrepresentation of pagan rites and beliefs is decidedly foul-mouthed
and malicious. Quite apart from his personal wrongs and his contempt for
the character of Constantius, Julian could have no sympathy for men who
overturned altars and heaped blasphemy on old deserted shrines, defilers
of every sacred object that was not protected by popularity. The most
that such people could expect from him was that they should not be
proscribed by law.
But meantime what were the multitudes of the god-fearing to believe? The
arm of the state was not very strong or effective. Labour as he might to
supply good teaching to all provincial towns, Julian could not hope to
educate the poor and ignorant to understand Plato and M. Aurelius. For
them, he seems to say, all that is necessary is that they should be
pious and god-fearing in their own way. But for more or less educated
people, not blankly ignorant, and yet not professed students of
philosophy, there might be some simple and authoritative treatise
issued--a sort of reasoned creed, to lay down in a convincing manner the
outlines of the old Hellenic religion, before the Christians and
Atheists should have swept all fear of the gods from off the earth.
The treatise is this work of Sallustius.
* * * * *
The Christian fathers from Minucius Felix onward have shown us what was
the most vulnerable point of Paganism: the traditional mythology.
Sallustius deals with it at once. The _Akroâtês_, or pupil, he says in
Section 1, needs some preliminary training. He should have been well
brought up, should not be incurably stupid, and should not have been
familiarized with foolish fables. Evidently the mythology was not to be
taught to children. He enunciates certain postulates of religious
thought, viz. that God is always good and not subject to passion or to
change, and then proceeds straight to the traditional myths. In the
first place, he insists that they are what he calls 'divine'. That is,
they are inspired or have some touch of divine truth in them. This is
proved by the fact that they have been uttered, and sometimes invented,
by the most inspired poets and philosophers and by the gods themselves
in oracles--a very characteristic argument.
The myths are all expressions of God and of the goodness of God; but
they follow the usual method of divine revelation, to wit, mystery and
allegory. The myths state clearly the one tremendous fact that the Gods
_are_; that is what Julian cared about and the Christians denied: _what_
they are the myths reveal only to those who have understanding. 'The
world itself is a great myth, in which bodies and inanimate things are
visible, souls and minds invisible.'
'But, admitting all this, how comes it that the myths are so often
absurd and even immoral?' For the usual purpose of mystery and allegory;
in order to make people think. The soul that wishes to know God must
make its own effort; it cannot expect simply to lie still and be told.
The myths by their obvious falsity and absurdity on the surface
stimulate the mind capable of religion to probe deeper.