Chapter VII.

The Gods of Greece.

§ 1. The Land and the Race.

§ 2. Idea and General Character of Greek Religion.

§ 3. The Gods of Greece before Homer.

§ 4. The Gods of the Poets.

§ 5. The Gods of the Artists.

§ 6. The Gods of the Philosophers.

§ 7. The Worship of Greece.

§ 8. The Mysteries. Orphism.

§ 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.

§ 1. The Land and the Race.

The little promontory and peninsula, famous in the history of mankind as

Greece, or Hellas, projects into the Mediterranean Sea from the South of

Europe. It is insignificant on the map, its area being only two thirds as

large as that of the State of Maine. But never was a country better

situated in order to develop a new civilization. A temperate climate,

where the vine, olive, and fig ripened with wheat, barley, and flax; a

rich alluvial soil, resting on limestone, and contained in a series of

valleys, each surrounded by mountains; a position equally remote from

excesses of heat and cold, dryness and moisture; and finally, the

ever-present neighborhood of the sea,--constituted a home well fitted for

the physical culture of a perfect race of men.

Comparative Geography, which has pointed out so many relations between the

terrestrial conditions of nations and their moral attainments, has laid

great stress on the connection between the extent of sea-coast and a

country's civilization. The sea line of Europe, compared with its area, is

more extensive than that of any other continent, and Europe has had a more

various and complete intellectual development than elsewhere. Africa,

which has the shortest sea line compared with its area, has been most

tardy in mental activity. The sea is the highway of nations and the

promoter of commerce; and commerce, which brings different races together,

awakens the intellect by the contact of different languages, religions,

arts, and manners. Material civilization, it is true, does not commence on

the sea-shore, but in river intervals. The arts of life were invented in

the valleys of the Indus and Ganges, of the Yellow and Blue Rivers of

China, of the Euphrates and the Nile. But the Phoenician navigators in the

Mediterranean brought to the shores of Greece the knowledge of the arts of

Egypt, the manufactures of Tyre, and the products of India and Africa.

Every part of the coast of Greece is indented with bays and harbors. The

Mediterranean, large enough to separate the nations on its shores, and so

permit independent and distinct evolution of character, is not so large as

to divide them. Coasting vessels, running within sight of land, could

easily traverse its shores. All this tempted to navigation, and so the

Greeks learned to be a race of sailors. What the shore line of Europe was

to that of the other continents, that the shore line of Greece was to the

rest of Europe. Only long after, in the Baltic, the Northern

Mediterranean, did a similar land-locked sea create a similar love of

navigation among the Scandinavians.[204]

Another feature in the physical geography of Greece must be noticed as

having an effect on the psychical condition of its inhabitants. Mountains

intersected every part, dividing its tribes from each other. In numerous

valleys, separated by these mountain walls, each clan, left to itself,

formed a special character of its own. The great chain of Pindus with its

many branches, the lofty ridges of the Peloponnesus, allowed the people of

Thessaly, Boeotia, Attica, Phocis, Locris, Argolis, Arcadia, Laconia, to

attain those individual traits which distinguish them during all the

course of Greek history.

Such physical conditions as we have described are eminently favorable to

a free and full development of national character. But this word

"development," so familiar to modern thought, implies not only outward

circumstances to educate, but a special germ to be educated. So long as

the human being is regarded as a lump of dough, to be moulded into any

shape by external influences, no such term as "development" was needed.

But philosophical historians now admit national character to be the result

of two factors,--the original ethnic germ in the race, and the terrestrial

influences which unfold it.[205] A question, therefore, of grave moment

concerns the origin of the Hellenic people. Whence are they derived? what

are their affinities? and from what region did they come?

The science of Comparative Philology, one of the great triumphs of modern

scholarship, has enabled us now, for the first time, to answer this

question. What no Greek knew, what neither Herodotus, Plato, nor Aristotle

could tell us, we are now able to state with certainty. The Greek

language, both in its grammar and its vocabulary, belongs to the family of

Indo-European languages, of which the Sanskrit is the elder sister. Out of

eleven thousand six hundred and thirty-three Greek words, some two

thousand are found to be Sanskrit, and three thousand more to belong to

other branches of the Indo-European tongues. As the words common to the

Greek and the Sanskrit must have been in use by both races before their

separation, while living together in Central Asia, we have a clew to the

degree of civilization attained by the Greeks before they arrived in

Europe. Thus it appears that they brought from Asia a familiarity with

oxen and cows, horses, dogs, swine, goats, geese; that they could work in

metals; that they built houses, and were acquainted with the elements of

agriculture, especially with farinaceous grains; they used salt; they had

boats propelled by oars, but not sails; they divided the year by moons,

and had a decimal notation.[206]

The Greeks, as a race, came from Asia later than the Latin races. They

belonged to that powerful Indo-European race, to which Europe owes its

civilization, and whose chief branches are the Hindoos, the Persians, the

Greeks, the Latins, the Kelts, the Teutonic tribes, and the Slavi. The

original site of the race was, as we have seen in our chapter on

Brahmanism, in Bactria; and the earliest division of this people could not

have been later than three thousand or four thousand years before the

Christian era. When the Hellenic branch entered Europe we have now no

means of saying. It was so long anterior to Greek history that all

knowledge of the time was lost, and only the faintest traditions of an

Asiatic origin of their nation are to be found in Greek writers.

The Hellenic tribes, at the beginning of the seventh century before

Christ, were divided into four groups,--the Achaians, Æolians, Dorians,

and Ionians,--with outlying tribes more or less akin. But this Hellenic

people had been preceded in Greece by another race known as Pelasgians. It

is so difficult to say who these were, that Mr. Grote, in despair,

pronounces them unknowable, and relinquishes the problem. Some facts

concerning them may, however, be considered as established. Their

existence in Greece is pronounced by Thirwall to be "the first

unquestionable fact in Greek history." Homer speaks (Iliad, II. 681) of

"Pelasgian Argos," and of "spear-skilled Pelasgians," "noble Pelasgians,"

"Pelasgians inhabiting fertile Larissa" (II. 840; X. 429). Herodotus

frequently speaks of the Pelasgians. He says that the Dorians were a

Hellenic nation, the Ionians were Pelasgic; he does not profess to know

what language the Pelasgians used, but says that those who in his time

inhabited Crestona, Placia, and other regions, spoke a barbarous language,

and that the people of Attica were formerly Pelasgic. He mentions the

Pelasgians as remaining to his time in Arcadia, after the Dorians had

expelled them from the rest of the Peloponnesus; says that the

Samothracians adopted the mysteries of the Kabiri from the Pelasgians;

that the Pelasgians sacrificed victims to unknown gods at Dodona, and

asked that oracle advice about what names they should give their gods.

These names, taken from Egypt, the Grecians received from them. Hellas was

formerly called Pelasgia. The Athenians expelled the Pelasgians from

Attica (whether justly or unjustly, Herodotus does not undertake to say),

where they were living under Mount Hymettus; whereupon the Pelasgians of

Lemnos, in revenge, carried off a number of Athenian women, and afterward

murdered them; as an expiation of which crime they were finally commanded

by the oracle at Delphi to surrender that island to Miltiades and the

Athenians. Herodotus repeatedly informs us that nearly the whole Ionian

race were formerly called Pelasgians.[207]

From all this it appears that the Pelasgians were the ancient occupants of

nearly all Greece; that they were probably of the same stock as their

Hellenic successors, but of another branch; that their language was

somewhat different, and contained words of barbaric (that is Phoenician or

Egyptian) origin, but not so different as to remain distinct after the

conquest. From the Pelasgian names which remain, it is highly probable

that this people was of the same family with the old Italians.[208] They

must have constituted the main stem of the Greek people. The Ionians of

Attica, the most brilliant portion of the Greeks, were of Pelasgic origin.

It may be therefore assumed, without much improbability, that while the

Dorian element gave the nation its strength and vital force, the Pelasgic

was the source of its intellectual activity and success in literature and

art. Ottfried Muller remarks that "there is no doubt that most of the

ancient religions of Greece owed their origin to this race. The Zeus and

Diônê of Dodona, Zeus and Hêrê of Argos, Hêphæstos and Athênê of Athens,

Dêmetêr and Cora of Eleusis, Hermês and Artemis of Arcadia, together with

Cadmus and the Cabiri of Thebes, cannot properly be referred to any other

origin."[209]

Welcker[210] thinks that the ethnological conceptions of Aeschylus, in his

"Suppliants," are invaluable helps in the study of the Pelasgic relations

to the Greeks. The poet makes Pelasgos the king of Argos, and represents

him as ruling over the largest part of Greece. His subjects he calls

Greeks, and they vote in public assembly by holding up their hands, so

distinguishing them from the Dorians, among whom no such democracy

prevailed.[211] He protects the suppliant women against their Egyptian

persecutors, who claimed them as fugitives from slavery. The character

assigned by Aeschylus to this representative of the Pelasgian race is that

of a just, wise, and religious king, who judged that it was best to obey

God, even at the risk of displeasing man.

It is evident, therefore, that from the earliest times there were in

Greece two distinct elements, either two different races or two very

distinct branches of a common race. First known as Pelasgians and

Hellênes, they afterwards took form as the Ionian and Dorian peoples. And

it is evident also that the Greek character, so strong yet so flexible, so

mighty to act and so open to receive, with its stern virtues and its

tender sensibilities, was the result of the mingling of these antagonist

tendencies. Two continents may have met in Greece, if to the genius of

that wonderful people Asia lent her intellect and Africa her fire. It was

the marriage of soul and body, of nature and spirit, of abstract

speculation and passionate interest in this life. Darkness rests on the

period when this national life was being created; the Greeks themselves

have preserved no record of it.

That some powerful influence from Egypt was acting on Greece during this

forming period, and contributing its share to the great result, there can

hardly be a question. All the legends and traditions hint at such a

relation, and if this were otherwise, we might be sure that it must have

existed. Egypt was in all her power and splendor when Greece was being

settled by the Aryans from Asia. They were only a few hundred miles apart,

and the ships of Phoenicia were continually sailing to and fro between

them.

The testimony of Greek writers to the early influence of Egypt on their

country and its religion is very full. Creuzer[212] says that the Greek

writers differed in regard to the connection of Attic and Egyptian

culture, only as to How it was, not as to Whether it was. Herodotus says

distinctly and positively[213] that most of the names of the Greek gods

came from Egypt, except some whose names came from the Pelasgians. The

Pelasgians themselves, he adds, gave these Egyptian names to the unnamed

powers of nature whom they before ignorantly worshipped, being directed by

the oracle at Dodona so to do. By "name" here, Herodotus plainly intends

more than a mere appellation. He includes also something of the

personality and character.[214] Before they were impersonal beings, powers

of nature; afterwards, under Egyptian influence, they became persons. He

particularly insists on having heard this from the priestesses of Dodona,

who also told him a story of the black pigeon from Egypt, who first

directed the oracle to be established, which he interpreted, according to

what he had heard in Egypt, to be a black Egyptian woman. He adds that the

Greeks received, not only their oracles, but their public processions,

festivals, and solemn prayers from the Egyptians. M. Maury admits the

influence of Egypt on the worship and ceremonies of Greece, and thinks it

added to their religion a more serious tone and a sentiment of veneration

for the gods, which were eminently beneficial. He doubts the story of

Herodotus concerning the derivation of gods from Egypt, giving as a

sufficient proof the fact that Homer's knowledge of Egyptian geography was

very imperfect.[215] But religious influences and geographical knowledge

are very different things. Because the mediæval Christian writers had an

imperfect knowledge of Palestine, it does not follow that their

Christianity was not influenced in its source by Judaism. The objection to

the derivation of the Greek gods from Egypt, on account of the names on

the monuments being different from those of the Hellenic deities, is

sufficiently answered by Creuzer, who shows that the Greeks translated the

Egyptian word into an equivalent in their own language. Orphic ideas came

from Egypt into Greece, through the colonies in Thrace and

Samothrace.[216] The story of the Argive colony from Egypt, with their

leader Danaus, connects some Egyptian immigration with the old Pelasgic

ruler of that city, the walls of which contained Pelasgic masonry. The

legends concerning Cecrops, Io, and Lelex, as leading colonies from Egypt

to Athens and Megara, are too doubtful to add much to our argument. The

influence of Egypt on Greek religion in later times is universally

admitted.[217]

§ 2. Idea and General Character of Greek Religion.

The idea of Greek religion, which specially distinguishes it from all

others, is the human character of its gods. The gods of Greece are men and

women, idealized men and women, men and women on a larger scale, but still

intensely human. The gods of India, as they appear in the Sacred Books,

are vast abstractions; and as they appear in sculpture, hideous and

grotesque idols. The gods of Egypt seem to pass away into mere symbols and

intellectual generalizations. But the gods of Greece are persons, warm

with life, radiant with beauty, having their human adventures, wars,

loves. The symbolical meaning of each god disappears in his personal

character.

These beings do not keep to their own particular sphere nor confine

themselves to their special parts, but, like men and women, have many

different interests and occupations. If we suppose a number of human

beings, young and healthy and perfectly organized, to be gifted with an

immortal life and miraculous endowments of strength, wisdom, and beauty,

we shall have the gods of Olympus.

Greek religion differs from Brahmanism in this, that its gods are not

abstract spirit, but human beings. It differs also from Buddhism, the god

in which is also a man, in this, that the gods of Greece are far less

moral than Buddha, but far more interesting. They are not trying to save

their souls, they are by no means ascetic, they have no intention of

making progress through the universe by obeying the laws of nature, but

they are bent on having a good time. Fighting, feasting, and making love

are their usual occupations. If they can be considered as governing the

world, it is in a very loose way and on a very irregular system. They

interfere with human affairs from time to time, but merely from whim or

from passion. With the common relations of life they have little to do.

They announce no moral law, and neither by precept nor example undertake

to guide men's consciences.

The Greek religion differs from many other religions also in having no one

great founder or restorer, in having no sacred books and no priestly

caste. It was not established by the labors of a Zoroaster, Gautama,

Confucius, or Mohammed. It has no Avesta, no Vedas, no Koran. Every

religion which we have thus far considered has its sacred books, but that

of Greece has none, unless we accept the works of Homer and Hesiod as its

Bible. Still more remarkable is the fact of its having no priestly caste.

Brahmanism and Egypt have an hereditary priesthood; and in all other

religions, though the priesthood might not be hereditary, it always

constituted a distinct caste. But in Greece kings and generals and common

people offer sacrifices and prayers, as well as the priests. Priests

obtained their office, not by inheritance, but by appointment or election;

and they were often chosen for a limited time.

Another peculiarity of the Greek religion was that its gods were not

manifestations of a supreme spirit, but were natural growths. They did not

come down from above, but came up from below. They did not emanate, they

were evolved. The Greek Pantheon is a gradual and steady development of

the national mind. And it is still more remarkable that it has three

distinct sources,--the poets, the artists, and the philosophers. Jupiter,

or Zeus in Homer, is oftenest a man of immense strength, so strong that if

he has hold of one end of a chain and all the gods hold the other, with

the earth fastened to it beside, he will be able to move them all. Far

more grand is the conception of Jupiter as it came from the chisel of

Phidias, of which Quintilian says that it added a new religious sentiment

to the religion of Greece. Then came the philosophers and gave an entirely

different and higher view of the gods. Jupiter becomes with them the

Supreme Being, father of gods and of men, omnipotent and omnipresent.

One striking consequence of the absence of sacred books, of a sacred

priesthood, and an inspired founder of their religion, was the extreme

freedom of the whole system. The religion of Hellas was hardly a restraint

either to the mind or to the conscience. It allowed the Greeks to think

what they would and to do what they chose. They made their gods to suit

themselves, and regarded them rather as companions than as objects of

reverence. The gods lived close to them on Olympus, a precipitous and

snow-capped range full of vast cliffs, deep glens, and extensive forests,

less than ten thousand feet in height, though covered with snow on the top

even in the middle of July.

According to the Jewish religion, man was made in the image of God; but

according to the Greek religion the gods were made in the image of men.

Heraclitus says, "Men are mortal gods, and the gods immortal men." The

Greek fancied the gods to be close to him on the summit of the mountain

which he saw among the clouds, often mingling in disguise with mankind; a

race of stronger and brighter Greeks, but not very much wiser or better.

All their own tendencies they beheld reflected in their deities. They

projected themselves upon the heavens, and saw with pleasure a race of

divine Greeks in the skies above, corresponding with the Greeks below. A

delicious religion; without austerity, asceticism, or terror; a religion

filled with forms of beauty and nobleness, kindred to their own; with gods

who were capricious indeed, but never stern, and seldom jealous or very

cruel. It was a heaven so near at hand, that their own heroes had climbed

into it, and become demigods. It was a heaven peopled with such a variety

of noble forms, that they could choose among them the protector whom they

liked best, and possibly themselves be selected as favorites by some

guardian deity. The fortunate hunter, of a moonlight night, might even

behold the graceful figure of Diana flashing through the woods in pursuit

of game, and the happy inhabitant of Cyprus come suddenly on the fair form

of Venus resting in a laurel-grove. The Dryads could be seen glancing

among the trees, the Oreads heard shouting on the mountains, and the

Naiads found asleep by the side of their streams. If the Greek chose, he

could take his gods from the poets; if he liked it better, he could find

them among the artists; or if neither of these suited him, he might go to

the philosophers for his deities.

The Greek religion, therefore, did not guide or restrain, it only

stimulated. The Greek, by intercourse with Greek gods, became more a Greek

than ever. Every Hellenic feeling and tendency was personified and took a

divine form; which divine form reacted on the tendency to develop it still

further. All this contributed unquestionably to that wonderful phenomenon,

Greek development. Nowhere on the earth, before or since, has the human

being been educated into such a wonderful perfection, such an entire and

total unfolding of itself, as in Greece. There, every human tendency and

faculty of soul and body opened in symmetrical proportion. That small

country, so insignificant on the map of Europe, so invisible on the map of

the world, carried to perfection in a few short centuries every human art.

Everything in Greece is art; because everything is finished, done

perfectly well. In that garden of the world ripened the masterpieces of

epic, tragic, comic, lyric, didactic poetry; the masterpieces in every

school of philosophic investigation; the masterpieces of history, of

oratory, of mathematics; the masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and

painting. Greece developed every form of human government, and in Greece

were fought and won the great battles of the world. Before Greece,

everything in human literature and art was a rude and imperfect attempt;

since Greece, everything has been a rude and imperfect imitation.

§ 3. The Gods of Greece before Homer.

The Theogony of Hesiod, or Book of Genesis of the Greek gods, gives us the

history of three generations of deities. First come the Uranids; secondly,

the Titans; and thirdly, the gods of Olympus. Beginning as powers of

nature, they end as persons.[218]

The substance of Hesiod's charming account of these three groups of gods

is as follows:--

First of all things was Chaos. Next was broad-bosomed Earth, or Gaia. Then

was Tartarus, dark and dim, below the earth. Next appears Eros, or Love,

most beautiful among the Immortals. From Chaos came Erebus and black

Night, and then sprang forth Ether and Day, children of Erebus and Night.

Then Earth brought forth the starry Heaven, Uranos, like to herself in

size, that he might shelter her around. Gaia, or Earth, also bore the

mountains, and Pontus or the barren Sea.

Then Gaia intermarried with Uranos, and produced the Titans and Titanides,

namely, Ocean, Koeos, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis,

Mnêmosynê, Phoebe with golden coronet, and lovely Thethys. Lastly came

Kronos, or Time; with the Cyclôpes and the hundred-headed giants. All

these children were hid in the earth by Uranos, who dreaded them, till by

a contrivance of Gaia and Kronos, Uranos was dethroned, and the first age

of the gods was terminated by the birth from the sea of the last and

sweetest of the children of the Heaven, Aphroditê, or Immortal

Beauty,--the only one of this second generation who continued to reign on

Olympus; an awful, beauteous goddess, says Hesiod, beneath whose delicate

feet the verdure throve around, born in wave-washed Cyprus, but floating

past divine Cythera. Her Eros accompanied, and fair Desire followed.

Thus was completed the second generation of gods, the children of Heaven

and Earth, called Titans. These had many children. The children of Ocean

and Tethys were the nymphs of Ocean. Hyperion and Theia had, as children,

Helios, Selênê and Eôs, or Sun, Moon, and Dawn. Koeos and Phoebê had Lêtô

and Asteria. One of the children of Krios was Pallas; those of Iapetus

were Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Atlas. Kronos married his sister Rhea,

and their children were Hestia, Dêmêtêr and Hêrê; Hadês, Poseidôn, and

Zeus,--all, except Hadês or Pluto, belonging to the subsequent Olympian

deities.

The Olympian gods, with their cousins of the same generation, have grown

into persons, ceasing to be abstract ideas, or powers of nature. Five were

the children of Kronos, namely, Zeus, Poseidôn, Hêrê, Hestia, and Dêmêtêr;

six were children of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis, Hephæstos and Arês, Hermês

and Athênê. The twelfth of the Olympian group, Aphroditê, belonged to the

second generation, being daughter of Uranos and of the Ocean. Beauty,

divine child of Sky and Sea, was conceived of as older than Power.

These are the three successive groups of deities; the second supplanting

the first, the third displacing the second. The earlier gods we must needs

consider, not as persons, but as powers of nature, not yet humanized.[219]

The last, seated on Olympus, are "fair humanities."

But now, it is remarkable that there must have been, in point of fact,

three stages of religious development, and three successive actual

theologies in Greece, corresponding very nearly to these three legendary

generations of gods.

When the ancestors of the Hellenic race came from Asia, they must have

brought with them a nature-worship, akin to that which subsequently

appeared in India in the earliest hymns of the Vedas. Comparative

Philology, as we have before seen, has established the rule, that whatever

words are common to all the seven Indo-European families must have been

used in Central Asia before their dispersion. From this rule Pictet[220]

has inferred that the original Aryan tribes all worshipped the Heaven, the

Earth, Sun, Fire, Water, and Wind. The ancestors of the Greeks must have

brought with them into Hellas the worship of some of these elementary

deities. And we find at least two of them, Heaven and Earth, represented

in Hesiod's first class of the oldest deities. Water is there in the form

of Pontus, the Sea, and the other Uranids have the same elementary

character.

The oldest hymns in the Vedas mark the second development of the Aryan

deities in India. The chief gods of this period are Indra, Varuna, Agni,

Savitri, Soma. Indra is the god of the air, directing the storm, the

lightning, the clouds, the rain; Varuna is the all-embracing circle of the

heavens, earth, and sea; Savitri or Surja is the Sun, King of Day, also

called Mitra; Agni is Fire; and Soma is the sacred fermented juice of the

moon-plant, often indeed the moon itself.

As in India, so in Greece, there was a second development of gods. They

correspond in this, that the powers of nature began, in both cases, to

assume a more distinct personality. Moreover, Indra, the god of the

atmosphere, he who wields the lightning, the thunderer, the god of storms

and rain, was the chief god in the Vedic period. So also in Greece, the

chief god in this second period was Zeus. He also was the god of the

atmosphere, the thunderer, the wielder of lightning. In the name "Zeus" is

a reminiscence of Asia. Literally it means "the god," and so was not at

first a proper name. Its root is the Sanskrit _Div_, meaning "to shine."

Hence the word _Deva_, God, in the Vedic Hymns, from which comes Θεος and

Δις, Διος in Greek, Deus in Latin. Ζευς Πατερ in Greek is Jupiter in

Latin, coming from the Sanskrit _Djaus-piter._ Our English words "divine,"

"divinity," go back for their origin to the same Sanskrit root, _Div_. So

marvellously do the wrecks of old beliefs come drifting down the stream of

time, borne up in those frail canoes which men call words. In how many

senses, higher and lower, is it true that "in the beginning was _the

Word_."

This most ancient deity, god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, favorite

divinity of the Aryan race in all its branches, became Indra when he

reached India, Jupiter when he arrived in Italy, Zeus when in Epirus he

became the chief god of the Pelasgi, and was worshipped at that most

ancient oracular temple of all Greece, Dodona. To him in the Iliad (XVI.

235) does Achilles pray, saying: "O King Jove, Dodonean, Pelasgian,

dwelling afar off, presiding over wintry Dodona." A reminiscence of this

old Pelasgian god long remained both in the Latin and Greek conversation,

when, speaking of the weather, they called it Zeus, or Jupiter. Horace

speaks of "cold Jupiter" and "bad Jupiter," as we should speak of a cold

or rainy day. We also find in Horace (Odes III. 2: 29) the archaic form of

the word "Jupiter," _Diespiter_, which, according to Lassen (I. 755),

means "Ruler of Heaven"; being derived from Djaus-piter. _Piter_, in

Sanskrit, originally meant, says Lassen, Ruler or Lord, as well as Father.

In Arcadia and Boeotia the Pelasgi declared that their old deities were

born. By this is no doubt conveyed the historic consciousness that these

deities were not brought to them from abroad, but developed gradually

among themselves out of nameless powers of nature into humanized and

personal deities. In the old days it was hardly more than a fetich

worship. Hêrê was worshipped as a plank at Samos; Athênê, as a beam at

Lindus; the Pallas of Attica, as a stake; Jupiter, in one place, as a

rock; Apollo, as a triangle.

Together with Jupiter or Zeus, the Pelasgi worshipped Gaia or Mother

Earth, in Athens, Sparta, Olympia, and other places. One of her names was

Diônê; another was Rhea. In Asia she was Cybele; but everywhere she

typified the great productive power of nature.

Another Pelasgic god was Hêlios, the Sun-God, worshipped with his sister

Sêlêne, the Moon. The Pelasgi also adored the darker divinities of the

lower world. At Pylos and Elis, the king of Hades was worshipped as the

awful Aïdoneus; and Persephonê, his wife, was not the fair Kora of

subsequent times, but the fearful Queen of Death, the murderess,

homologous to the savage wife of Çiva, in the Hindoo Pantheon. To this age

also belongs the worship of the Kabiri, nameless powers, perhaps of

Phoenician origin, connected with the worship of fire in Lemnos and

Samothrace.

The Doric race, the second great source of the Hellenic family, entered

Greece many hundreds of years after[221] the first great Pelasgic

migration had spread itself through Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. It

brought with it another class of gods and a different tone of worship.

Their principal deities were Apollo and Artemis, though with these they

also worshipped, as secondary deities, the Pelasgic gods whose homes they

had invaded. The chief difference between the Pelasgic and Dorian

conception of religion was, that with the first it was more emotional,

with the second more moral; the first was a mystic natural religion, the

second an intellectual human religion. Ottfried Müller[222] says that the

Dorian piety was strong, cheerful, and bright. They worshipped Daylight

and Moonlight, while the Pelasgians also reverenced Night, Darkness, and

Storm. Funeral solemnities and enthusiastic orgies did not suit the Dorian

character. The Spartans had no splendid processions like the Athenians,

but they prayed the gods "to give them what was honorable and good"; and

Zeus Ammon declared that the "calm solemnity of the prayers of the

Spartans was dearer to him than all the sacrifices of the Greeks."[223]

Two facts are to be noticed in connection with this primitive religion.

One is the local distribution of the different deities and modes of

worship through Greece. Every tribe had its own god and its own worship.

In one place it was Zeus and Gaia; in another, Zeus and Cybele; in a

third, Apollo and Artemis. At Samothrace prevailed the worship of the

Heaven and the Earth.[224] Dione was worshipped with Zeus at Dodona.[225]

The Ionians were devoted to Poseidôn, god of the sea. In Arcadia, Athênê

was worshipped as Tritonia. Hermês was adored on Mount Cyllene; Erôs, in

Boeotia; Pan, in Arcadia. These local deities long remained as secondary

gods, after the Pan-Hellenic worship of Olympus had overthrown their

supremacy. But one peculiarity of the Pre-Homeric religion was, that it

consisted in the adoration of different gods in different places. The

religion of Hellas, after Homer, was the worship of the twelve great

deities united on Mount Olympus.

The second fact to be observed in this early mythology is the change of

name and of character through which each deity proceeds. Zeus alone

retains the same name from the first.[226]

Among all Indo-European nations, the Heaven and the Earth were the two

primordial divinities. The Rig-Veda calls them "the two great parents of

the world." At Dodona, Samothrace, and Sparta they were worshipped

together. But while in India, Varuna, the Heavens, continued to be an

object of adoration in the Vedic or second period, in Greece it faded

early from the popular thought. This already shows the opposite genius of

the two nations. To the Hindoos the infinite was all important, to the

Greeks the finite. The former, therefore, retain the adoration of the

Heavens, the latter that of the Earth.

The Earth, Gaia, became more and more important to the Hellenic mind.

Passing through various stages of development, she became, successively,

Gaia in the first generation, Rhea in the second, and Dêmêtêr (Γή μήτηρ),

Mother Earth, in the third. In like manner the Sun is successively

Hyperiôn, son of Heaven and Earth; Hêlios, son of Hyperiôn and Theia; and

Phoebus-Apollo, son of Zeus and Latona. The Moon is first Phoebe, sister

of Hyperiôn; then Selênê, sister of Hêlios; and lastly Artemis, sister of

Apollo. Pallas, probably meaning at first "the virgin," became afterward

identified with Athênê, daughter of Zeus, as Pallas-Athênê. The Urania

Pontus, the salt sea, became the Titan Oceanos, or Ocean, and in another

generation Poseidôn, or Neptune.

The early gods are symbolical, the later are personal. The turning-point

is reached when Kronos, Time, arrives. The children of Time and Earth are

no longer vast shadowy abstractions, but become historical characters,

with biographies and personal qualities. Neither Time nor History existed

before Homer; when Time came, History began.

The three male children of Time were Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês;

representing the three dimensions of space. Height, Breadth, and Depth;

Heaven, Ocean, and Hell. They also represented the threefold progress of

the human soul: its aspiration and ascent to what is noble and good, its

descent to what is profound, and its sympathy with all that is various: in

other words, its religion, its intelligence, and its affection.

The fable of Time devouring his children, and then reproducing them,

evidently means the vicissitudes of customs and the departure and return

of fashions. Whatever is born must die; but what has been will be again.

That Erôs, Love, should be at the origin of things from chaos, indicates

the primeval attraction with which the order of the universe begins. The

mutilation of Uranos, Heaven, so that he ceased to produce children,

suggests the change of the system of emanation, by which the gods descend

from the infinite, into that of evolution, by which they arise out of the

finite. It is, in fact, the end of Asia, and the beginning of Europe; for

emanation is the law of the theologies of Asia, evolution that of Europe.

Aphroditê, Beauty, was the last child of the Heavens, and yet born from

the Ocean. Beauty is not the daughter of the Heavens and the Earth, but of

the Heavens and the Ocean. The lights and shadows of the sky, the tints of

dawn, the tenderness of clouds, unite with the toss and curve of the wave

in creating Beauty. The beauty of outline appears in the sea, that of

light and color in the sky.[227]

§ 4. The Gods of the Poets.

Herodotus says (II. 53), "I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer lived four

hundred years before my time, and not more, and these were they who framed

a theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to

them honors and arts, and declared their several forms. But the poets,

said to be before them, in my opinion, were after them."

That two poets should create a theology and a worship for a great people,

and so unite its separate tribes into a commonwealth of united states,

seems to modern minds an absurdity. But the poets of Greece were its

prophets. They received, intensified, concentrated, the tendencies of

thought already in the air. All the drift was toward Pan-Hellenic worship

and to a humanized theology, when the Homeric writers sang their song.

The Greeks must be conceived of as a nation of poets; hence all their

mythology was poetry. Poetry was their life and joy, written or unwritten,

sung or spoken. They were poets in the deeper sense of the word; not by

writing verses, but by looking at all nature and all life from its poetic

side. Their exquisite mythology arose out of these spontaneous instincts.

The tendency of the Greek mind was to vitalize and harmonize nature.[228]

All the phenomena of nature, all the powers of the human soul, and all the

events of life, became a marvellous tissue of divine story. They walked

the earth, surrounded and overshadowed by heavenly attendants and

supernatural powers. But a striking peculiarity of this immense

spiritualism was that it was almost without superstition. Their gods were

not their terror, but their delight. Even the great gods of Olympus were

around them as invisible companions. Fate itself, the dark Moira, supreme

power, mistress of gods and men, was met manfully and not timorously. So

strong was the human element, the sense of personal dignity and freedom,

that the Greek lived in the midst of a supernatural world on equal terms.

No doubt the elements of mythology are in all nations the same, consisting

of the facts of nature and the facts of life. The heavens and the earth,

day and night, the sun and moon, storms, fire, ocean, and rivers, love and

beauty, life and progress, war, wisdom, doom, and chance,--these, among

all nations, supply the material for myths. But while, with some races,

these powers remain solemn abstractions, above and behind nature, among

the Greeks they descended into nature and turned to poetry, illuminating

all of life.

Let us imagine a Greek, possessed by the spirit of his nation and

acquainted with its legendary history, visiting the holy places of that

ideal land. On the northern boundary he sees the towering summit of

Olympus, on whose solemn heights reside the twelve great gods of his

country. When the dark clouds roll along its defiles, and the lightning

flashes from their black depths, it is Zeus, striking with his thunderbolt

some impious offender. There was held the great council of the Immortals.

When the ocean was quiet, Poseidôn had left it to visit Olympus. There

came Hephæstos, quitting his subterranean fires and gloomy laborers, to

jest and be jested with, sitting by his beautiful queen. There, while the

sun hung motionless in mid-heaven, Apollo descended from his burning

chariot to join the feast. Artemis and Dêmêtêr came from the woods and

fields to unite in the high assembly, and war was suspended while Arês

made love to the goddess of Beauty. The Greek looked at Parnassus,

"soaring snow-clad through its native sky," with its Delphic cave and its

Castalian fount, or at the neighboring summits of Helicon, where Pegasus

struck his hoof and Hippocrênê gushed forth, and believed that hidden in

these sunny woods might perhaps be found the muses who inspired Herodotus,

Homer, Aeschylus, and Pindar. He could go nowhere without finding some

spot over which hung the charm of romantic or tender association. Within

every brook was hidden a Naiad; by the side of every tree lurked a Dryad;

if you listen, you may hear the Oreads calling among the mountains; if you

come cautiously around that bending hill, you may catch a glimpse of the

great Pan himself. When the moonlight showers filled the forests with a

magical light, one might see the untouched Artemis gliding rapidly among

the mossy trunks. Beneath, in the deep abysses of earth, reigned the

gloomy Pluto with the sad Persephonê, home-sick for the upper air. By the

sea-shore Proteus wound his horn, the Sirens sang their fatal song among

the rocks, the Nereids and Oceanides gleamed beneath the green waters, the

vast Amphitrite stretched her wide-embracing arms, and Thetis with her

water-nymphs lived in their submarine grottos. When the morning dawned,

Eôs, or Aurora, went before the chariot of the Sun, dropping flowers upon

the earth. Every breeze which stirred the tree-tops was a god, going on

some errand for Aeolus. The joy of inspired thought was breathed into the

soul by Phoebus; the genial glow of life, the festal mirth, and the glad

revel were the gift of Dionysos. All nature was alive with some touch of a

divine presence. So, too, every spot of Hellas was made interesting by

some legend of Hercules, of Theseus, of Promêtheus, of the great Dioscuri,

of Minos, or Dædalus, of Jason and the Argonauts. The Greeks extended

their own bright life backward through history, and upward through heroes

and demigods to Zeus himself.

In Homer, the gods are very human. They have few traits of divinity,

scarcely of dignity. Their ridicule of Vulcan is certainly coarse; the

threats of Zeus are brutal.

As a family, they live together on Olympus, feasting, talking, making

love, making war, deceiving each other, angry, and reconciled. They feed

on nectar and ambrosia, which makes them immortal; just as the Amrita

makes the Hindoo gods so. So in the Iliad we see them at their feast, with

Vulcan handing each the cup, pouring out nectar for them all. "And then

inextinguishable laughter arose among the immortal gods, when they saw

Vulcan bustling through the mansion. So they feasted all day till sundown;

nor did the soul want anything of the equal feast, nor of the beautiful

harp which Apollo held, nor of the Muses, who accompanied him, responding

in turn with delicious voice."

"But when the splendid light of the sun was sunk, they retired to repose,

each one to his house, which renowned Vulcan, lame of both legs, had

built. But Olympian Zeus went to his couch, and laid down to rest beside

white-armed Hêrê."[229]

Or sometimes they fight together, or with mortals; instances of both

appear in the Iliad. It must be admitted that they do not appear to

advantage in these conflicts. They usually get the worst of it, and go

back to Zeus to complain. In the Twenty-first Book they fight together,

Arês against Athênê, Athênê also against his helper, Aphroditê; Poseidôn

and Hêrê against Apollo and Artemis, Vulcan against the river god,

Scamander. Arês called Athênê impudent, and threatened to chastise her.

She seized a stone and struck him on the neck, and relaxed his knees.

Seven acres he covered falling, and his back was defiled with dust; but

Pallas-Athênê jeered at him; and when Aphroditê led him away groaning

frequently, Pallas-Athênê sprang after, and smote her with her hand,

dissolving her knees and dear heart. Apollo was afraid of Poseidôn, and

declined fighting with him when challenged, for which Artemis rebuked him.

On this, Hêrê tells her that she can kill stags on the mountains, but is

afraid to fight with her betters, and then proceeds to punish her, holding

both the hands of Artemis in one of hers, and beating her over the head

with her own bow. A disgraceful scene altogether, we must confess, and it

is no wonder that Plato was scandalized by such stories.

Thus purely human were these gods; spending the summer's day in feasting

beneath the open sky; going home at sundown to sleep, like a parcel of

great boys and girls. They are immortal indeed, and can make men so

sometimes, but cannot always prevent the death of a favorite. Above them

all broods a terrible power, mightier than themselves, the dark Fate and

irresistible Necessity. For, after all, as human gods they were like men,

subject to the laws of nature. Yet as men, they are free, and in the

feeling of their freedom sometimes resist and defy fate.

The Homeric gods move through the air like birds, like wind, like

lightning. They are stronger than men, and larger. Arês, overthrown by

Pallas, covers seven acres of ground; when wounded by Diomêdês he bellowed

as loud as nine or ten thousand men, says the accurate Homer. The bodies

of the gods, inexpressibly beautiful, and commonly invisible, are,

whenever seen by men, in an aureola of light. In Homer, Apollo is the god

of archery, prophecy, and music. He is the far-darter. He shoots his

arrows at the Greeks, because his prophet had been ill-treated. "He

descended from Olympus," says Homer, "enraged in heart, having his bow and

quiver on his shoulders. But as he moved the shafts rattled on the

shoulders of him enraged; and he went onward like the night. Then he sat

near the ships, and sent an arrow, and dreadful was the clangor of the

silver bow."

Later in the Iliad he appears again, defending the Trojans and deceiving

Achilles. In the Homeric Hymn his birth on Delos is sweetly told; and how,

when he was born, Earth smiled around, and all the goddesses shouted.

Themis fed him on nectar and ambrosia; then he sprang up, called for a

lyre and bow, and said he would declare henceforth to men the will of

Jove; and Delos, exulting, became covered with flowers.[230]

The Second Book of the Iliad begins thus: "The rest, both gods and

horse-arraying men, slept all the night; but Jove sweet sleep possessed

not; but he pondered how he might destroy many at the Greek ships, and

honor Achilles. But this device appeared best to his mind, to send a fatal

dream to Agamemnon. And he said, 'Haste, pernicious dream, to the swift

ships, and bid Agamemnon arm the Achæans to take wide-streeted Troy, since

Juno has persuaded all the gods to her will.'"

This was simply a lie, sent for the destruction of the Greeks.

In the First Book, Jupiter complains to Thetis that Juno is always

scolding him, and good right had she to do so. Presently she comes in and

accuses him of plotting something secretly with Thetis, and never letting

her know his plans. He answers her by accusations of perversity: "Thou art

always suspecting; but thou shalt produce no effect, but be further from

my heart." He then is so ungentlemanly as to threaten her with corporal

punishment. The gods murmur; but Vulcan interposes as a peacemaker,

saying, "There will be no enjoyment in our delightful banquet if you twain

thus contend." Then he arose and placed the double cup in her hands and

said, "Be patient, my mother, lest I again behold thee beaten, and cannot

help thee."

He here refers to a time when Jupiter hung his wife up in mid-heaven with

anvils tied to her heels; and when Vulcan untied them he was pitched from

Olympus down into the island of Lemnos, whence came his lameness. A rude

and brutal head of a household was the poetic Zeus.

No doubt other and much more sublime views of the gods are to be found in

Homer. Thus (Il. XV. 80) he compares the motion of Juno to the rapid

thought of a traveller, who, having visited many countries, says, "I was

here," "I was there." Such also is the description (Il. XIII. 17) of

Neptune descending from the top of Samothrace, with the hills and forests

trembling beneath his immortal feet. Infinite power, infinite faculty, the

gods of Homer possessed; but these were only human faculty and power

pushed to the utmost. Nothing is more beautiful than the description of

the sleep of Jupiter and Juno, "imparadised in each other's arms" (Il.

XIV. 350), while the divine earth produced beneath them a bed of flowers,

softly lifting them from the ground. But the picture is eminently human;

quite as much so as that which Milton has imitated from it.

After Homer and Hesiod, among the Greek poets, come the lyrists. Callinus,

the Ephesian, made a religion of patriotism. Tyrtæus (B.C. 660), somewhat

later, of Sparta, was devoted to the same theme. Pindar, the Theban, began

his career (B.C. 494) in the time of the conquests of Darius, and composed

one of his Pythian odes in the year of the battle of Marathon. He taught a

divine retribution on good and evil; taught that "the bitterest end awaits

the pleasure that is contrary to right,"[231] taught moderation, and that

"a man should always keep in view the bounds and limits of things."[232]

He declared that "Law was the ruler of gods and men." Moreover, he

proclaimed that gods and men were of one family, and though the gods were

far higher, yet that something divine was in all men.[233] And in a

famous fragment (quoted by Bunsen[234]) he calls mankind the majestic

offspring of earth; mankind, "a gentle race, beloved of heaven."

The tragic poet, Aeschylus, is a figure like that of Michael Angelo in

Italian art, grand, sombre, and possessed by his ideas. The one which

rules him and runs darkly through all his tragedies is the supreme power

of Nemesis, the terrible destiny which is behind and above gods and men.

The favorite theme of Greek tragedy is the conflict of fate and freedom,

of the inflexible laws of nature with the passionate longings of man, of

"the emergency of the case with the despotism of the rule." This conflict

appears most vividly in the story of Promêtheus, or Forethought; he,

"whose godlike crime was to be kind"; he who resisted the torments and

terrors of Zeus, relying on his own fierce mind.[235] In this respect,

Prometheus in his suffering is like Job in his sufferings. Each refuses to

say he is wrong, merely to pacify God, when he does not see that he is

wrong. As Promêtheus maintains his inflexible purpose, so Job holds fast

his integrity.

Sophocles is the most devout of the Greek tragedians, and reverence for

the gods is constantly enjoined in his tragedies. One striking passage is

where Antigonê is asked if she had disobeyed the laws of the country, and

replies, "Yes; for they were not the laws of God. They did not proceed

from Justice, who dwells with the Immortals. Nor dared I, in obeying the

laws of mortal man, disobey those of the undying gods. For the gods live

from eternity, and their beginning no man knows. I know that I must die

for this offence, and I die willingly. I must have died at some time, and

a premature death I account a gain, as finishing a life filled with

sorrows."[236] This argument reminds us of the higher-law discussions of

the antislavery conflict, and the religious defiance of the fugitive slave

law by all honest men.

Euripides represents the reaction against the religious tragedy. His is

the anti-religious tragedy. It is a sneering defiance of the religious

sentiment, a direct teaching of pessimism. Bunsen ("God in History") goes

at length into the proof of this statement, showing that in Euripides the

theology of the poets encountered and submitted to the same sceptical

reaction which followed in philosophy the divine teachings of Plato.[237]

After this time Greek poetry ceased to be the organ of Greek religion. It

is true that we have subsequent outbreaks of devout song, as in the hymn

of Cleauthes, the stoic, who followed Zeno as teacher in the Porch (B.C.

260). Though this belongs rather to philosophy than to poetry, yet on

account of its truly monotheistic and also devout quality, I add a

translation here:[238]--

Greatest of the gods, God with many names, God ever-ruling and ruling all things!

Zeus, origin of nature, governing the universe by law,

All hail! For it is right for mortals to address thee;

Since we are thy offspring, and we alone of all

That live and creep on earth have the power of imitative speech.

Therefore will I praise thee, and hymn forever thy power.

Thee the wide heaven, which surrounds the earth, obeys;

Following where thou wilt, willingly obeying thy law.

Thou holdest at thy service, in thy mighty hands,

The two-edged, flaming, immortal thunderbolt,

Before whose flash all nature trembles.

Thou rulest in the common reason, which goes through all,

And appears mingled in all things, great or small,

Which, filling all nature, is king of all existences.

Nor without thee, O Deity, does anything happen in the world,

From the divine ethereal pole to the great ocean,

Except only the evil preferred by the senseless wicked.

But thou also art able to bring to order that which is chaotic,

Giving form to what is formless, and making the discordant friendly;

So reducing all variety to unity, and even making good out of evil.

Thus, through all nature is one great law,

Which only the wicked seek to disobey,--

Poor fools! who long for happiness,

But will not see nor hear the divine commands.

* * * * *

But do thou, O Zeus, all-bestower, cloud-compeller!

Ruler of thunder! guard men from sad error.

Father! dispel the clouds of the soul, and let us follow

The laws of thy great and just reign!

That we may be honored, let us honor thee again,

Chanting thy great deeds, as is proper for mortals.

For nothing can be better for gods or men

Than to adore with perpetual hymns the law common to all.

The result of our investigation thus far is, that beside all the

polytheistic and anthropomorphic tendencies of the old religion, there yet

lingered a faith in one supreme God, ruler of all things. This is the

general opinion of the best writers. For example, Welcker thus speaks of

the original substance of Greek religion:[239]--

"In the remotest period of Greek antiquity, we meet the words θεός and

δαίμων, and the names Ζεός and Κρονίων; anything older than which is

not to be found in this religion. Accordingly, the gods of these tribes

were from the first generally, if not universally, heavenly and

spiritual beings. Zeus was the immortal king of heaven, in opposition

to everything visible and temporal. This affords us a permanent

background of universal ideas, behind all special conceptions or local

appellations. We recognize as present in the beginnings of Greek

history the highest mental aspirations belonging to man. We can thus

avoid the mistaken doubts concerning this religion, which came from the

influence of the subsequent manifestations, going back to the deep root

from which they have sprung. The Divine Spirit has always been

manifested in the feelings even of the most uncultivated peoples.

Afterwards, in trying to bring this feeling into distinct

consciousness, the various childish conceptions and imperfect views of

religious things arise."

§ 5. The Gods of the Artists.

The artists, following the poets, developed still further the divinely

human character of the gods. The architects of the temples gave, in their

pure and harmonious forms, the conception of religious beauty and majesty.

Standing in some open elevated position, their snowy surface bathed in

sunshine, they stood in serene strength, the types of a bright and joyful

religion. A superstitious worship seeks caves and darkness; the noble

majesty of the Greek temples said plainly that they belonged to a religion

of light and peace.

The sculptor worked originally in company with the architect. The statues

were meant to adorn the temples, the temples were made as frames and

pedestals for the statues. The marble forms stood and walked on the

pediments and gave life to the frieze. They animated the exterior, or sat,

calm and strong, in the central shrine.

The poets, in giving a moral and human character to the gods, never quite

forgot their origin as powers of nature. Jupiter Olympus is still the god

of the sky, the thunderer. Neptune is the ruler of the ocean, the

earth-shaker. Phoebus-Apollo is the sun-god. Artemis is the moonlight,

pure, chaste, and cold. But the sculptors finally leave behind these

reminiscences, and in their hands the deities become purely moral beings.

On the brow of Jupiter sits a majestic calm; he is no angry wielder of the

thunderbolt, but the gracious and powerful ruler of the three worlds. This

conception grew up gradually, until it was fully realized by Phidias in

his statues at Olympia and Elis. Tranquil power and victorious repose

appear even in the standing Jupiters, in which last the god appears as

more youthful and active.

The conception of Jupiter by Phidias was a great advance on that of Homer.

He, to be sure, professed to take his idea from the famous passage of the

Iliad where Jove shakes his ambrosial curls and bends his awful brows;

and, nodding, shakes heaven and earth. That might be his text, but the

sermon which he preached was far higher than it. This was the great statue

of Jupiter, his masterpiece, made of ivory and gold for the temple at

Olympia, where the games were celebrated by the united Hellenic race.

These famous games, which occurred every fifth year, lasting five days,

calling together all Greece, were to this race what the Passover was to

the Jewish nation, sacred, venerable, blending divine worship and human

joy. These games were a chronology, a constitution, and a church to the

Pan-Hellenic race. All epochs were reckoned from them; as events occurring

in such or such an Olympiad. The first Olympiad was seven hundred and

seventy-six years before Christ; and a large part of our present knowledge

of ancient chronology depends on these festivals. They bound Greece

together as by a constitution; no persons unless of genuine Hellenic blood

being allowed to contend at them, and a truce being proclaimed for all

Greece while they lasted.

Here at Olympia, while the games continued, all Greece came together; the

poets and historians declaimed their compositions to the grand audience;

opinions were interchanged, knowledge communicated, and the national life

received both stimulus and unity.

And here, over all, presided the great Jupiter of Phidias, within a Doric

temple, sixty-eight feet high, ninety-five wide, and two hundred and

thirty long, covered with sculptures of Pentelic marble. The god was

seated on his throne, made of gold, ebony, and ivory, studded with

precious stones. He was so colossal that, though seated, his head nearly

reached the roof, and it seemed as if he would bear it away if he rose.

There sat the monarch, his head, neck, breast, and arms in massive

proportions; the lower part of the body veiled in a flowing mantle;

bearing in his right hand a statue of Victory, in his left a sceptre with

his eagle on the top; the Hours, the Seasons, and the Graces around him;

his feet on the mysterious Sphinx; and on his face that marvellous

expression of blended majesty and sweetness, which we know not only by the

accounts of eyewitnesses, but by the numerous imitations and copies in

marble which have come down to us. One cannot fail to see, even in these

copies, a wonderful expression of power, wisdom, and goodness. The head,

with leonine locks of hair and thickly rolling beard, expresses power, the

broad brow and fixed gaze of the eyes, wisdom; while the sweet smile of

the lips indicates goodness. The throne was of cedar, ornamented with

gold, ivory, ebony, and precious stones. The sceptre was composed of

every kind of metal. The statue was forty feet high, on a pedestal of

twelve feet. To die without having seen this statue was regarded by the

Greeks as almost as great a calamity as not to have been initiated into

the mysteries.[240]

In like manner the poetic conception of Apollo was inferior to that of the

sculptor. In the mind of the latter Phoebus is not merely an archer, not

merely a prophet and a singer, but the entire manifestation of genius. He

is inspiration; he radiates poetry, music, eloquence from his sublime

figure. The Phidian Jupiter is lost to us, except in copies, but in the

Belvedere Apollo we see how the sculptor could interpret the highest

thought of the Hellenic mind. He who visits this statue by night in the

Vatican Palace at Rome, seeing it by torchlight, has, perhaps, the most

wonderful impression left on his imagination which art can give. After

passing through the long galleries of the Vatican, where, as the torches

advance, armies of statues emerge from the darkness before you, gaze on

you with marble countenance, and sink back into the darkness behind, you

reach at last the small circular hall which contains the Apollo. The

effect of torchlight is to make the statue seem more alive. One limb, one

feature, one expression after another, is brought out as the torches move;

and the wonderful form becomes at last instinct with life. Milman has

described the statue in a few glowing but unexaggerated lines:--

"For mild he seemed, as in Elysian towers,

Wasting, in careless ease, the joyous hours;

Haughty, as bards have sung, with princely sway

Curbing the fierce flame-breathing steeds of day;

Beauteous, as vision seen in dreamy sleep

By holy maid, on Delphi's haunted steep."

* * * * *

All, all divine; no struggling muscle glows,

Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows,

But, animate with Deity alone,

In deathless glory lives the breathing stone."[241]

In such a statue we see the human creative genius idealized. It is a

magnificent representation of the mind of Greece, that fountain of

original thought from which came the Songs of Homer and the Dialogues of

Plato, that unfailing source of history, tragedy, lyric poetry, scientific

investigation. In the Belvedere Apollo we see expressed at once the genius

of Homer, Aristotle, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Pindar, Thales, and Plato.

With Apollo is associated his sister Artemis, or Diana, another exquisite

conception of Greek thought. Not the cold and cruel Diana of the poets;

not she who, in her prudish anger, turned Actæon into a stag, who slew

Orion, who slew the children of Niobe, and demanded the death of

Iphigenia. Very different is the beautiful Diana of the sculptors, the

Artemis, or untouched one, chaste as moonlight, a wild girl, pure, free,

noble; the ideal of youthful womanhood, who can share with man manly

exercises and open-air sports, and add to manly strength a womanly grace.

So she seems in the statue; in swift motion, the air lifting her tunic

from her noble limbs, while she draws a shaft from the quiver to kill a

hind. No Greek could look at such a statue, and not learn to reverence the

purity and nobleness of womanhood.

Pallas-Athênê was the goddess of all the liberal arts and sciences. In

battle she proves too strong for Arês or Mars, as scientific war is always

too strong for that wild, furious war which Mars represented. She was the

civilizer of mankind. Her name Pallas means "virgin," and her name Athênê

was supposed to be the same as the Egyptian Neith, reversed; though modern

scholars deny this etymology.

The Parthenon, standing on the summit of Athens, built of white marble,

was surrounded by columns 34 feet high. It was 230 feet long, 102 feet

wide, and 68 high, and was perhaps the most perfect building ever raised

by man. Every part of its exterior was adorned with Phidian sculpture; and

within stood the statue of Athênê herself, in ivory and gold, by the same

master hand. Another colossal statue of the great goddess stood on the

summit of the Acropolis, and her polished brazen helmet and shield,

flashing in the sun, could be seen far out at sea by vessels approaching

Athens.

The Greek sculptors, in creating these wonderful ideals, were always

feeling after God; but for God incarnate, God in man. They sought for and

represented each divine element in human nature. They were prophets of the

future development of humanity. They showed how man is a partaker of the

divine nature. If they humanized Deity, they divinized humanity.

§ 6. The Gods of the Philosophers.

The problem which the Greek philosophers set themselves to solve was the

origin of things. As we have found a double element of race and religion

running through the history of Greece, so we find a similar dualism in its

philosophy. An element of realism and another of idealism are in

opposition until the time of Plato, and are first reconciled by that great

master of thought. Realism appears in the Ionic nature-philosophy;

idealism in Orphism, the schools of Pythagoras, and the Eleatic school of

Southern Italy.

Both these classes of thinkers sought for some central unity beneath the

outward phenomena. Thales the Milesian (B.C. 600) said it was water. His

disciple, Anaximander, called it a chaotic matter, containing in itself a

motive-power which would take the universe through successive creations

and destructions. His successor, Anaximenes, concluded the infinite

substance to be air. Heraclitus of Ephesus (B.C. 500) declared it to be

fire; by which he meant, not physical fire, but the principle of

antagonism. So, by _water_, Thales must have intended the fluid element in

things. For that Thales was not a mere materialist appears from the

sayings which have been reported as coming from him, such as this: "Of all

things, the oldest is God; the most beautiful is the world; the swiftest

is thought; the wisest is time." Or that other, that, "Death does not

differ at all from life." Thales also taught that a Divine power was in

all things. The successor of Heraclitus, Anaxagoras (B.C. 494), first

distinguished God from the world, mind from matter, leaving to each an

independent existence.

While the Greek colonies in Asia Minor developed thus the Asiatic form of

philosophy, the colonies in Magna Græcia unfolded the Italian or ideal

side. Of these, Pythagoras was the earliest and most conspicuous. Born at

Samos (B.C. 584), he was a contemporary of Thales of Miletus. He taught

that God was one; yet not outside of the world, but in it, wholly in every

part, overseeing the beginnings of all things and their combinations.[242]

The head of the Italian school, known as Eleatics, was Xenophanes (born

B.C. 600), who, says Zeller,[243] both a philosopher and a poet, taught

first of all a perfect monotheism. He declared God to be the one and all,

eternal, almighty, and perfect being, being all sight, feeling, and

perception. He is both infinite and finite. If he were only finite, he

could not _be_; if he were only infinite, he could not _exist_. He lives

in eternity, and exists in time.[244]

Parmenides, scholar and successor of Xenophanes at Elea, taught that God,

as pure thought, pervaded all nature. Empedocles (about B.C. 460)[245]

followed Xenophanes, though introducing a certain dualism into his

physics. In theology he was a pure monotheist, declaring God to be the

Absolute Being, sufficient for himself, and related to the world as unity

to variety, or love to discord. We can only recognize God by the divine

element in ourselves. The bad is what is separate from God, and out of

harmony with him.

After this came a sceptical movement, in which Gorgias, a disciple of

Empedocles (B.C. 404) and Protagoras the Abderite, taught the doctrine of

nescience. The latter said: "Whether there are gods or not we cannot say,

and life is too short to find out."[246] Prodicus explained religion as

founded in utility, Critias derived it from statecraft. They argued that

if religion was founded in human nature, all men would worship the same

gods. This view became popular in Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian

War. Euripides, as we have seen, was a sceptic. Those who denied the

popular gods were persecuted by the Athenians, but the sceptical spirit

was not checked by this course.[247] Anaxagoras escaped with his life only

through the powerful protection of Pericles. Protagoras was sentenced to

death, and his writings were burned. Diogenes was denounced as an atheist,

and a reward of a talent was offered to any one who should kill him. For

an unbelieving age is apt to be a persecuting one. When the kernel of

religion is gone, more stress is laid on keeping the shell untouched.

It was in the midst of these dilapidated opinions that Socrates came, that

wonderful phenomenon in human history. A marvellous vision, glorifying

humanity! He may be considered as having created the science of ethics. He

first taught the doctrine of divine providence, declaring that we can only

know God in his works. He placed religion on the basis of humanity,

proclaiming the well-being of man to be the end of the universe. He

preferred the study of final causes to that of efficient causes. He did

not deny the inferior deities, but regarded them only as we regard angels

and archangels, saints and prophets; as finite beings, above man, but

infinitely below the Supreme Being. Reverence for such beings is quite

consistent with the purest monotheism.

In Plato, says Rixner[248] the two polar tendencies of Greek philosophy

were harmonized, and realism and idealism brought into accord. The school

of realism recognized time, variety, motion, multiplicity, and nature; but

lost substance, unity, eternity, and spirit. The other, the ideal Eleatic

school, recognized unity, but lost variety, saw eternity, but ignored

time, accepted being, but omitted life and movement.

The three views may be thus compared:--

Italian Philosophy, Plato. Ionian or Asiatic Atomic.

or Eleatic.

The One. The One in All. The All.

Unity. Unity and Variety. Variety.

Being. Life. Motion.

Pantheism. Divine in Nature. Naturalism.

Substance. Substance and Manifestation. Phenomena.

The philosophy of Plato was the scientific completion of that of Socrates.

Socrates took his intellectual departure from man, and inferred nature and

God. Plato assumed God, and inferred nature and man. He made goodness and

nature godlike, by making God the substance in each. His was a divine

philosophy, since he referred all facts theoretically and practically to

God as the ground of their being.

The style of Plato singularly combined analysis and synthesis, exact

definition with poetic life. His magnificent intellect aimed at uniting

precision in details with universal comprehension.[249]

Plato, as regards his method of thought, was a strict and determined

transcendentalist. He declared philosophy to be the science of

unconditioned being, and asserted that this was known to the soul by its

intuitive reason, which is the organ of all philosophic insight. The

reason perceives substance, the understanding only phenomena. Being το όν,

which is the reality in all actuality, is in the ideas or thoughts of God;

and nothing exists or appears outwardly, except by the force of this

indwelling idea. The WORD is the true expression of the nature of every

object; for each has its divine and natural name, beside its accidental

human appellation. Philosophy is the recollection of what the soul has

seen of things and their names.

The life and essence of all things is from God. Plato's idea of God is of

the purest and highest kind. God is one, he is Spirit, he is the supreme

and only real being, he is the creator of all things, his providence is

over all events. He avoids pantheism on one side, by making God a distinct

personal intelligent will; and polytheism on the other, by making him

absolute, and therefore one. Plato's theology is pure theism.[250]

Ackermann, in "The Christian Element in Plato,"[251] says: The Platonic

theology is strikingly near that of Christianity in regard to God's being,

existence, name, and attributes. As regards the existence of God, he

argues from the movements of nature for the necessity of an original

principle of motion.[252] But the real Platonic faith in God, like that of

the Bible, rests on immediate knowledge. He gives no definition of the

essence of God, but says,[253] "To find the Maker and Father of this All

is hard, and having found him it is impossible to utter him." But the idea

of Goodness is the best expression, as is also that of Being, though

neither is adequate. The visible Sun is the image and child of the Good

Being. Just so the Scripture calls God the Father of light. Yet the idea

of God was the object and aim of his whole philosophy; therefore he calls

God the Beginning and the End;[254] and "the Measure of all things, much

more than _man_, as some people have said" (referring to Protagoras, who

taught that "man was the measure of all things"). So even Aristotle

declared that "since God is the ground of all being, the first philosophy

is theology"; and Eusebius mentions that Plato thought that no one could

understand human things who did not first look at divine things; and tells

a story of an Indian who met Socrates in Athens and asked him how he must

begin to philosophize. He replied that he must reflect on human life;

whereupon the Indian laughed and said that as long as one did not

understand divine things he could know nothing about human things.

There is no doubt that Plato was a monotheist, and believed in one God,

and when he spoke of gods in the plural, was only using the common form of

speech. That many educated heathen were monotheists has been sufficiently

proved; and even Augustine admits that the mere use of the word "gods"

proved nothing against it, since the Hebrew Bible said, "the God of gods

has spoken."

Aristotle (B.C. 384), the first philologian and naturalist of antiquity,

scholar of Plato, called "the Scribe of Nature," and "a reversed Plato,"

differing diametrically from his master in his methods, arrived at nearly

the same theological result. He taught that there were first truths, known

by their own evidence. He comprised all notions of existence in that of

the κόσμος, in which were the two spheres of the earthly and heavenly. The

earthly sphere contained the changeable in the transient; the heavenly

sphere contained the changeable in the permanent. Above both spheres is

God, who is unchangeable, permanent, and unalterable. Aristotle, however,

omits God as Providence, and conceives him less personally than is done by

Plato.

In the Stoical system, theism becomes pantheism.[255] There is one Being,

who is the substance of all things, from whom the universe flows forth,

and into whom it returns in regular cycles.

Zeller[256] sums up his statements on this point thus: "From all that has

been said it appears that the Stoics did not think of God and the world as

different beings. Their system was therefore strictly pantheistic. The sum

of all real existence is originally contained in God, who is at once

universal matter and the creative force which fashions matter into the

particular materials of which things are made. We can, therefore, think of

nothing which is not either God or a manifestation of God. In point of

being, God and the world are the same, the two conceptions being declared

by the Stoics to be absolutely identical."

The Stoic philosophy was materialism as regards the nature of things, and

necessity as regards the nature of the human will. The Stoics denied the

everlasting existence of souls as individuals, believing that at the end

of a certain cycle they would be resolved into the Divine Being.

Nevertheless, till that period arrives, they conceived the soul as

existing in a future state higher and better than this. Seneca calls the

day of death the birthday into this better world. In that world there

would be a judgment on the conduct and character of each one; there

friends would recognize each other, and renew their friendship and

society.

While the Epicureans considered religion in all its usual forms to be a

curse to mankind, while they believed it impious to accept the popular

opinions concerning the gods, while they denied any Divine Providence or

care for man, while they rejected prayer, prophecy, divination, and

regarded fear as the foundation of religion, they yet believed, as their

master Epicurus had believed, in the existence of the immortal gods. These

beings he regarded as possessing all human attributes, except those of

weakness and pain. They are immortal and perfectly happy; exempt from

disease and change, living in celestial dwellings, clothed with bodies of

a higher kind than ours, they converse together in a sweet society of

peace and content.

Such were the principal theological views of the Greek philosophers. With

the exception of the last, and that of the Sceptics, they were either

monotheistic or consistent with monotheism. They were, on the whole, far

higher than the legends of the poets or the visions of the artists. They

were, as the Christian Fathers were fond of saying, a preparation for

Christianity. No doubt one cause of the success of this monotheistic

religion among the Greek-speaking nations was that Greek philosophy had

undermined faith in Greek polytheism.

This we shall consider in another section.

§ 7. The Worship of Greece.

The public worship of Greece, as of other ancient nations, consisted of

sacrifices, prayers, and public festivals. The sacrifices were for

victories over their enemies, for plentiful harvests, to avert the anger

of some offended deity, for success in any enterprise, and those specially

commanded by the oracles.

In the earliest times fruits and plants were all that were offered.

Afterward the sacrifices were libations, incense, and victims. The

libation consisted of a cup brimming with wine, which was emptied upon the

altars. The incense, at first, was merely fragrant leaves or wood, burnt

upon the altar; afterward myrrh and frankincense were used. The victims

were sheep, oxen, or other animals. To Hecate they offered a dog, to Venus

a dove, to Mars some wild animal, to Ceres the sow, because it rooted up

the corn. But it was forbidden to sacrifice the ploughing ox. The

sacrifices of men, which were common among barbarous nations, were very

rare in Greece.

On great occasions large sacrifices were offered of numerous victims,--as

the hecatomb, which means a hundred oxen. It is a curious fact that they

had a vessel of holy water at the entrance of the temples, consecrated by

putting into it a burning torch from the altar, with which or with a

branch of laurel the worshippers were sprinkled on entering. The

worshippers were also expected to wash their bodies, or at least their

hands and feet, before going into the temple; a custom common also among

the Jews and other nations. So Ezekiel says: "I will sprinkle you with

clean water and you shall be clean." And the Apostle Paul says, in

allusion to this custom: "Let us draw near, having our hearts sprinkled

from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."

All these customs had a natural origin. The natural offering to the gods

is that which we like best ourselves. The Greeks, eminently a social

people, in the enjoyment of their feasts, wished to give a part of

everything to the gods. Loving wine, perfumes, and animal food, they

offered these. As it was proper to wash before feasting with each other,

it seemed only proper to do the same before offering the feast to the

gods.

The essential part of the sacrifice was catching and pouring out the

blood of the victim; for, in the view of the ancients, blood was the seat

of life. Part of the victim was burned, and this was the portion supposed

to be consumed by the god. Another part was eaten by the worshippers, who

thus sat at table with the deity as his friends and companions. The joyful

character of Greek worship also appeared in the use of garlands of

flowers, religious dances and songs.

All the festivals of the Greeks were religious. Some were of the seasons,

as one in February to Zeus, the giver of good weather; and another in

November to Zeus, the god of storms. There were festivals in honor of the

plough, of the threshing-floor; festivals commemorating the victories at

Marathon, Salamis, etc.; of the restoration of democracy by Thrasybulus;

feasts of the clothing of the images, on which occasion it was not lawful

to work; feasts in commemoration of those who perished in the flood of

Deucalion; feasts of nurses, feasts of youth, of women, of trades. Then

there were the great national festivals, celebrated every four years at

Olympia and Delphi, and every three and five years at Nemea and the

isthmus of Corinth. The Panathenæic festival at Athens was held every five

years in honor of Athênê, with magnificent processions, cavalcades of

horsemen, gymnastic games, military dances, recitations of the Homeric

poems, and competition in music. On the frieze of the Parthenon was

represented by the scholars of Phidias the procession of the Peplos. This

was a new dress made for the statue of Athênê by young girls of Athens,

between the ages of seven and eleven years. These girls, selected at a

special ceremony, lived a year on the Acropolis, engaged in their sacred

work, and fed on a special diet. Captives were liberated on this occasion,

that all might share in the festival.

Such festivals constituted the acme of Greek life. They were celebrated in

the open air with pomp and splendor, and visitors came from far to assist

on these occasions. Prizes were given for foot and chariot races; for

boxing, leaping, music, and even for kissing. The temples, therefore, were

not intended for worship, but chiefly to contain the image of the god.

The _cella_, or _adytum_, was small and often dark; but along the

magnificent portico or peristyle, which surrounded the four sides of the

Doric temples, the splendid processions could circulate in full view of

the multitude.[257] The temple was therefore essentially an out-door

building, with its beauty, like that of a flower, exposed to light and

air. It was covered everywhere, but not crowded, with sculpture, which was

an essential part of the building. The pediments, the pedestals on the

roofs, the metopes between the triglyphs, are as unmeaning without the

sculpture as a picture-frame without its picture. So says Mr.

Fergusson;[258] and adds that, without question, color was also everywhere

used as an integral part of the structure.

Priesthood was sometimes hereditary, but was not confined to a class.

Kings, generals, and the heads of a family acted as priests and offered

sacrifices. It was a temporary office, and Plato recommends that there

should be an annual rotation, no man acting as priest for more than one

year. Such a state of opinion excludes the danger of priestcraft, and is

opposed to all hierarchal pretensions. The same, however, cannot be said

of the diviners and soothsayers, who were so much consulted, and whose

opinions determined so often the course of public affairs. They were often

in the pay of ambitious men. Alcibiades had augurs and oracles devoted to

his interests, who could induce the Athenians to agree to such a course as

he desired. For the Greeks were extremely anxious to penetrate the future,

and the power and influence of their oracles is, says Döllinger, a

phenomenon unique in history.

Among these oracles, Delphi, as is well known, took the highest rank. It

was considered the centre of the earth, and was revered by the

Pan-Hellenic race. It was a supreme religious court, whose decisions were

believed to be infallible. The despotism of the Pythian decisions was,

however, tempered by their ambiguity. Their predictions, if they failed,

seldom destroyed the faith of the believers; for always some explanation

could be devised to save the credit of the oracle. Thus, the Pythian

promised the Athenians that they would take all the Syracusans prisoners.

They did not take them; but as a muster-roll of the Syracusan army fell

into their hands, this was considered to fulfil the promise.[259]

Aristides, the rhetorician, was told that the "white maidens" would take

care of him; and receiving a letter which was of advantage, he was fully

convinced that this was the "white maiden." But neither imposition nor

delusion will satisfactorily explain the phenomena connected with oracles.

The foundation of them seems to have been a state allied to the modern

manifestations of magnetic sleep and clairvoyance.

"As the whole life of the Greeks," says Döllinger, "was penetrated by

religion," they instinctively and naturally prayed on all occasions. They

prayed at sunrise and sunset, at meal-times, for outward blessings of all

kinds, and also for virtue and wisdom. They prayed standing, with a loud

voice, and hands lifted to the heavens. They threw kisses to the gods with

their hands.

So we see that the Greek worship, like their theology, was natural and

human, a cheerful and hopeful worship, free from superstition. This

element only arrives with the mysteries, and the worship of the Cthonic

gods. To the Olympic gods supplications were addressed as to free moral

agents, who might be persuaded or convinced, but could not be compelled.

To the under-world deities prayer took the form of adjuration, and

degenerated into magic formulas, which were supposed to force these

deities to do what was asked by the worshipper.

§ 8. The Mysteries. Orphism.

The early gods of most nations are local and tribal. They belong only to

limited regions, or to small clans, and have no supposed authority or

influence beyond. This was eminently the case in Greece; and after the

great Hellenic worship had arrived, the local and family gods retained

also their position, and continued to be reverenced. In Athens, down to

the time of Alexander, each tribe in the city kept its own divinities and

sacrifices. It also happened that the supreme god of one state would be

adored as a subordinate power in another. Every place had its favorite

protector. As different cities in Italy have their different Madonnas,

whom they consider more powerful than the Madonna of their neighbors, so

in Greece the same god was invoked in various localities under different

surnames. The Arcadian Zeus had the surname of Lycæus, derived, probably,

from Λυξ, Lux, light. The Cretan Jupiter was called Asterios. At Karia he

was Stratios. Iolaus in Euripides (the Herakleidæ, 347) says: "We have

gods as our allies not inferior to those of the Argives, O king; for Juno,

the wife of Jove, is their champion, but Minerva ours; and I say, to have

the best gods tends to success, for Pallas will not endure to be

conquered."[260] So, in the "Suppliants" of Aeschylus, the Egyptian Herald

says (838): "By no means do I dread the deities of this place; for they

have not nourished me nor preserved me to old age."[261]

Two modes of worship met in Greece, together with two classes of gods. The

Pelasgi, as we have seen, worshipped unnamed impersonal powers of the

universe, without image or temple. But to this was added a worship which

probably came through Thrace, from Asia and Egypt. This element introduced

religious poetry and music, the adoration of the muses, the rites and

mysteries of Dêmêtêr, and the reverence for the Kabiri, or dark divinities

of the lower world.

Of these, the MYSTERIES were the most significant and important. Their

origin must be referred to a great antiquity, and they continued to be

practised down to the times of the Roman Emperors. They seem not to belong

to the genuine Greek religion, but to be an alien element introduced into

it. The gods of the Mysteries are not the beings of light, but of

darkness, not the gods of Olympus, but of the under-world. Everything

connected with the Mysteries is foreign to the Hellenic mind. This

worship is secret; its spirit is of awe, terror, remorse; its object is

expiation of sin. Finally, it is a hieratic worship, in the hands of

priests.

All this suggests Egypt as the origin of the Mysteries. The oldest were

those celebrated in the island of Samothrace, near the coast of Asia

Minor. Here Orpheus is reputed to have come and founded the Bacchic

Mysteries; while another legend reports him to have been killed by the

Bacchantes for wishing to substitute the worship of Apollo for that of

Dionysos. This latter story, taken in connection with the civilizing

influence ascribed to Orpheus, indicates his introducing a purer form of

worship. He reformed the licentious drunken rites, and established in

place of them a more serious religion. He died a martyr to this purer

faith, killed by the women, who were incited to this, no doubt, by the

priests of the old Bacchic worship.

The worship of Dionysos Zagreus, which was the Orphic form of Bacchism,

contained the doctrines of retribution in another life,--a doctrine common

to all the Greek Mysteries.

It would seem probable, from an investigation of this subject, that two

elements of worship are to be found in the Greek religion, which were

never quite harmonized. One is the worship of the Olympian deities, gods

of light and day, gods of this world, and interested in our present human

life. This worship tended to promote a free development of character; it

was self-possessed, cheerful, and public; it left the worshipper unalarmed

by any dread of the future, or any anxiety about his soul. For the Olympic

gods cared little about the moral character of their worshippers; and the

dark Fate which lay behind gods and men could not be propitiated by any

rites, and must be encountered manfully, as one meets the inevitable.

The other worship, running parallel with this, was of the Cthonic gods,

deities of earth and the under-world, rulers of the night-side of nature,

and monarchs of the world to come. Their worship was solemn, mysterious,

secret, and concerned expiation of sin, and the salvation of the soul

hereafter.

Now, when we consider that the Egyptian popular worship delighted in just

such mysteries as these; that it related to the judgment of the soul

hereafter; that its solemnities were secret and wrapped in dark symbols;

and that the same awful Cthonic deities were the objects of its

reverence;--when we also remember that Herodotus and the other Greek

writers state that the early religion of the Pelasgi was derived from

Egypt, and that Orpheus, the Thracian, brought thence his doctrine,--there

seems no good reason for denying such a source. On the other hand, nothing

can be more probable than an immense influence on Pelasgic worship,

derived through Thrace, from Egypt. This view is full of explanations, and

makes much in the Greek mythology clear which would otherwise be obscure.

The Greek myth of Dêmêtêr and Persephonê, for example, seems to be an

adaptation to the Hellenic mind and land of the Egyptian myth of Osiris

and Isis. Both are symbols, first, of natural phenomena; and, secondly, of

the progress of the human soul. The sad Isis seeking Osiris, and the sad

Dêmêtêr seeking Persephonê constitute evidently the same legend; only

Osiris is the Nile, evaporated into scattered pools by the burning heat,

while Persephonê is the seed, the treasure of the plant, which sinks into

the earth, but is allowed to come up again as the stalk, and pass a part

of its life in the upper air. But both these nature-myths were

spiritualized in the Mysteries, and made to denote the wanderings of the

soul in its search for truth. Similar to these legends was that of

Dionysos Zagreus, belonging to Crete, according to Euripides and other

writers. Zagreus was the son of the Cretan Zeus and Persephonê, and was

hewn in pieces by the Titans, his heart alone being preserved by Athênê,

who gave it to Zeus. Zeus killed the Titans, and enclosed the heart in a

plaster image of his child. According to another form of the story, Zeus

swallowed the heart, and from it reproduced another Dionysos. Apollo

collected the rest of the members, and they were reunited, and restored to

life.

The principal mysteries were those of Bacchus and Ceres. The Bacchic

mysteries were very generally celebrated throughout Greece, and were a

wild nature-worship; partaking of that frenzy which has in all nations

been considered a method of gaining a supernatural and inspired state, or

else as the result of it. The Siva worship in India, the Pythoness at

Delphi, the Schamaism of the North, the whirling dervishes of the

Mohammedans; and some of the scenes at the camp-meetings in the Western

States, belong to the same class as the Bacchic orgies.

The Eleusinian mysteries were very different. These were in honor of

Ceres; they were imported from Egypt. The wanderings of Isis in search of

Osiris were changed to those of Ceres or Dêmêtêr (the mother-earth = Isis)

in search of Persephonê. Both represented in a secondary symbolism the

wanderings of the soul, seeking God and truth. This was the same idea as

that of Apuleius in the beautiful story of Psyche.

These mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis by the Athenians every fourth

year. They were said to have been introduced B.C. 1356, and were very

sacred. All persons were required to be initiated. If they refused it they

were supposed to be irreligious. "Have you been initiated?" was asked in

dangerous situations. The initiated were said to be calm in view of death.

It was the personal religion of the Greeks.

In the greater mysteries at Eleusis the candidates were crowned with

myrtle, and admitted by night into a vast temple, where they were purified

and instructed, and assisted at certain grand solemnities. The doctrines

taught are unknown, but are supposed to have been the unity of God and the

immortality of the soul. But this is only conjecture.

Bacchus is believed to have been originally an Indian god, naturalized in

Greece, and his mysteries to be Indian in their character. The genial life

of nature is the essential character of Bacchus. One of the names of the

Indian Siva is Dionichi, which very nearly resembles the Greek name of

Bacchus, Dionysos. He was taken from the Meros, or thigh of Jupiter. Now

Mount Meru, in India, is the home of the gods; by a common etymological

error the Greeks may have thought it the Greek word for _thigh_, and so

translated it.

The Bacchic worship, in its Thracian form, was always distasteful to the

best of the Greeks; it was suspected and disliked by the enlightened,

proscribed by kings, and rejected by communities. It was an interpolated

system, foreign to the cheerful nature of Greek thought.

As to the value of the mysteries themselves, there was a great difference

of opinion among the Greeks. The people, the orators, and many of the

poets praised them; but the philosophers either disapproved them openly,

or passed them by in silence. Socrates says no word in their favor in all

his reported conversations. Plato complains of the immoral influence

derived from believing that sin could be expiated by such ceremonies.[262]

They seem to have contained, in reality, little direct instruction, but to

have taught merely by a dramatic representation and symbolic pictures.

Who Orpheus was, and when he lived, can never be known. But the

probabilities are that he brought from Egypt into Greece, what Moses took

from Egypt into Palestine, the Egyptian ideas of culture, law, and

civilization. He reformed the Bacchic mysteries, giving them a more

elevated and noble character, and for this he lost his life. No better

account of his work can be given than in the words of Lord Bacon.

"The merits of learning," says he, "in repressing the inconveniences

which grow from man to man, was lively set forth by the ancients in

that feigned relation of Orpheus' theatre, where all beasts and birds

assembled; and, forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some

of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening to the

airs and accords of the harp; the sound thereof no sooner ceased or was

drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own

nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who

are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of

revenge, which, as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to

religion, sweetly touched by eloquence and persuasion of books, of

sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if

these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not

audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion."[263]

Of the Orphic doctrines we are able to give a somewhat better account. As

far back as the sixth century before Christ, there were scattered through

Greece hymns, lyrical poems, and prose treatises, treating of theological

questions, and called Orphic writings. These works continued to be

produced through many centuries, and evidently met an appetite in the

Greek mind. They were not philosophy, they were not myths nor legends, but

contained a mystic and pantheistic theology.[264] The views of the

Pythagoreans entered largely into this system. The Orphic writings

develop, by degrees, a system of cosmogony, in which Time was the first

principle of things, from which came chaos and ether. Then came the

primitive egg, from which was born Phanes, or Manifestation. This being is

the expression of intelligence, and creates the heavens and the earth. The

soul is but the breath which comes from the whole universe, thus

organized, and is imprisoned in the body as in a tomb, for sins committed

in a former existence. Life is therefore not joy, but punishment and

sorrow. At death the soul escapes from this prison, to pass through many

changes, by which it will be gradually purified. All these notions are

alien to the Greek mind, and are plainly a foreign importation. The true

Greek was neither pantheist nor introspective. He did not torment himself

about the origin of evil or the beginning of the universe, but took life

as it came, cheerfully.

The pantheism of the Orphic theology is constantly apparent. Thus, in a

poem preserved by Proclus and Eusebius it is said:[265]--

"Zeus, the mighty thunderer, is first, Zeus is last,

Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle of all things.

From Zeus were all things produced. He is both man and woman;

Zeus is the depth of the earth, and the height of the starry heavens;

He is the breath of all things, the force of untamed fire;

The bottom of the sea; sun, moon, and stars;

Origin of all; king of all;

One Power, one God, one great Ruler."

And another says, still more plainly:--

"There is one royal body, in which all things are enclosed,

Fire and Water, Earth, Ether, Night and Day,

And Counsel, the first producer, and delightful Love,

For all these are contained in the great body of Zeus."

§ 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.

One of the greatest events in the history of man, as well as one of the

most picturesque situations, was when Paul stood on the Areopagus at

Athens, carrying Christianity into Europe, offering a Semitic religion to

an Aryan race, the culmination of monotheism to one of the most elaborate

and magnificent polytheisms of the world. A strange and marvellous scene!

From the place where he stood he saw all the grandest works of human

art,--the Acropolis rose before him, a lofty precipitous rock, seeming

like a stone pedestal erected by nature as an appropriate platform for the

perfect marble temples with which man should adorn it. On this noble base

rose the Parthenon, temple of Minerva; and the temple of Neptune, with its

sacred fountain. The olive-tree of Pallas-Athênê was there, and her

colossal statue. On the plain below were the temples of Theseus and

Jupiter Olympus, and innumerable others. He stood where Socrates had stood

four hundred years before, defending himself against the charge of

atheism; where Demosthenes had pleaded in immortal strains of eloquence in

behalf of Hellenic freedom; where the most solemn and venerable court of

justice known among men was wont to assemble. There he made the memorable

discourse, a few fragments only of which have come to us in the Book of

Acts, but a sketch significant of his argument. He did not begin, as in

our translation, by insulting the religion of the Greeks, and calling it

a superstition; but by praising them for their reverence and piety. Paul

respected all manifestations of awe and love toward those mysteries and

glories of the universe, in which the invisible things of God have been

clearly seen from the foundation of the world. Then he mentions his

finding the altar to the unknown God, mentioned also by Pausanias and

other Greek writers, one of whom, Diogenes Lærtius, says that in a time of

plague, not knowing to what god to appeal, they let loose a number of

black and white sheep, and whereever any one laid down they erected an

altar to an unknown god, and offered sacrifices thereon. Then he announced

as his central and main theme the Most High God, maker of heaven and

earth, spiritual, not needing to receive anything from man, but giving him

all things. Next, he proclaimed the doctrine of universal human

brotherhood. God had made all men of one blood; their varieties and

differences, as well as their essential unity, being determined by a

Divine Providence. But all were equally made to seek him, and in their

various ways to find him, who is yet always near to all, since all are his

children. God is immanent in all men, says Paul, as their life. Having

thus stated the great unities of faith and points of agreement, he

proceeds only in the next instance to the oppositions and criticisms; in

which he opposes, not polytheism, but idolatry; though not blaming them

severely even for that. Lastly, he speaks of Jesus, as a man ordained by

God to judge the world and govern it in righteousness, and proved by his

resurrection from the dead to be so chosen.

Here we observe, in this speech, monotheism came in contact with

polytheism, and the two forms of human religion met,--that which makes man

the child of God, and that which made the gods the children of men.

The result we know. The cry was heard on the sandy shore of Eurotas and in

green Cythnus.--"Great Pan is dead." The Greek humanities, noble and

beautiful as they were, faded away before the advancing steps of the

Jewish peasant, who had dared to call God his Father and man his brother.

The parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan were stronger

than Homer's divine song and Pindar's lofty hymns. This was the religion

for man. And so it happened as Jesus had said: "My sheep hear my voice and

follow me." Those who felt in their hearts that Jesus was their true

leader followed him.

The gods of Greece, being purely human, were so far related to

Christianity. That, too, is a human religion; a religion which makes it

its object to unfold man, and to cause all to come to the stature of

perfect men. Christianity also showed them God in the form of man; God

dwelling on the earth; God manifest in the flesh. It also taught that the

world was full of God, and that all places and persons were instinct with

a secret divinity. Schiller (as translated by Coleridge) declares that

LOVE was the source of these Greek creations:--

"'Tis not merely

The human being's pride that peoples space

With life and mystical predominance,

Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love

This visible nature, and this common world

Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import

Lurks in the legend told my infant years

That lies upon that truth, we live to learn.

For fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace;

Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans,

And spirits, and delightedly believes

Divinities, being himself divine.

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,

The fair humanities of Old Religion,

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms or wat'ry depths;--all these have vanished.

They live no longer in the faith of Reason.

But still the heart doth need a language; still

Doth the old instinct bring back the old names."

_The Piccolomini_, Act II. Scene 4.

As a matter of fact we find the believers in the Greek religion more ready

to receive Christianity than were the Jews. All through Asia Minor and

Greece Christian churches were planted by Paul; a fact which shows that

the ground was somehow prepared for Christianity. It was ready for the

monotheism which Paul substituted for their multitude of gods, and for

their idolatry and image-worship. The statues had ceased to be symbols,

and the minds of the Greeks rested in the image itself. This idolatrous

worship Paul condemned, and the people heard him willingly, as he called

them up to a more spiritual worship. We think, therefore, that the Greek

religion was a real preparation for Christianity. We have seen that it was

itself in constant transition; the system of the poets passing into that

of the artists, and that of the artists into that of the philosophers; so

that the philosophic religion, in turn, was ready to change into a

Christian monotheism.

It may be said, since philosophy had undermined the old religion and

substituted for it more noble ideas, why did it not take the seat of the

dethroned faith, and sufficiently supply its place? If it taught a pure

monotheism and profound ethics, if it threw ample and adequate light on

the problem of God, duty, and immortality, what more was needed? If ideas

are all that we want, nothing more. That Greek philosophy gave way before

Christianity shows that it did not satisfy all the cravings of the soul;

shows that man needs a religion as well as a religious philosophy, a faith

as well as an intellectual system. A religion is one thing, a speculation

is a very different thing. The old Greek religion, so long as it was a

living faith, was enough. When men really believed in the existence of

Olympian Jove, Pallas-Athênê, and Phoebus-Apollo, they had something above

them to which to look up. When this faith was disintegrated, no system of

opinions, however pure and profound, could replace it. Another faith was

needed, but a faith not in conflict with the philosophy which had

destroyed polytheism; and Christianity met the want, and therefore became

the religion of the Greek-speaking world.

Religion is a life, philosophy is thought; religion looks up, philosophy

looks in. We need both thought and life, and we need that the two shall be

in harmony. The moment they come in conflict, both suffer. Philosophy had

destroyed the ancient simple faith of the Hellenic race in their deities,

and had given them instead only the abstractions of thought. Then came

the Apostles of Christianity, teaching a religion in harmony with the

highest thought of the age, and yet preaching it out of a living faith.

Christianity did not come as a speculation about the universe, but as a

testimony. Its heralds bore witness to the facts of God's presence and

providence, of his fatherly love, of the brotherhood of man, of a rising

to a higher life, of a universal judgment hereafter on all good and evil,

and of Jesus as the inspired and ascended revealer of these truths. These

facts were accepted as realities; and once more the human mind had

something above itself solid enough to support it.

Some of the early Christian Fathers called on the heathen poets and

philosophers to bear witness to the truth. Clement of Alexandria[266]

after quoting this passage of Plato, "around the king of all are all

things, and he is the cause of all good things," says that others, through

God's inspiration, have declared the only true God to be God. He quotes

Antisthenes to this effect: "God is not like to any; wherefore no one can

know him from an image." He quotes Cleanthes the Stoic:--

"If you ask me what is the nature of the good, listen:

That which is regular, just, holy, pious,

Self-governing, useful, fair, fitting,

Grave, independent, always beneficial,

That feels no fear or grief; profitable, painless,

Helpful, pleasant, safe, friendly."

"Nor," says Clement, "must we keep the Pythagoreans in the background, who

say, 'God is one; and he is not, as some suppose, outside of this frame of

things, but within it; in all the entireness of his being he pervades the

whole circle of existence, surveying all nature, and blending in

harmonious union the whole; the author of his own forces and works, the

giver of light in heaven, and father of all; the mind and vital power of

the whole world, the mover of all things.'"

Clement quotes Aratus the poet:--

"That all may be secure

Him ever they propitiate first and last.

Hail, Father! great marvel, great gain to man."

"Thus also," says Clement, "the Ascræan Hesiod dimly speaks of God:--

'For he is the king of all, and monarch

Of the immortals, and there is none that can vie with him in power.'

"And Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, says:--

'One, in truth, one is God,

Who made both heaven and the far-stretching earth;

And ocean's blue wave, and the mighty winds;

But many of us mortals, deceived in heart,

Have set up for ourselves, as a consolation in our afflictions,

Images of the gods, of stone, or wood, or brass,

Or gold, or ivory;

And, appointing to these sacrifices and vain festivals,

Are accustomed thus to practise religion.'

"But the Thracian Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, hierophant and poet, at

once, after his exposition of the orgies and his theology of idols,

introduces a palinode of truth with solemnity, though tardily singing the

strain:--

'I shall utter to whom it is lawful; but let the doors be closed,

Nevertheless, against all the profane. But do thou hear,

O Musæus, for I will declare what is true.'

"He then proceeds:--

'He is one, self-proceeding; and from him alone all things proceed,

And in them he himself exerts his activity; no mortal

Beholds him, but he beholds all.'"

Professor Cocker, in his work on "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," has

devoted much thought to show that philosophy was a preparation for

Christianity, and that Greek civilization was an essential condition to

the progress of the Gospel. He points out how Greek intelligence and

culture, literature and art, trade and colonization, the universal spread

of the Greek language, and especially the results of Greek philosophy,

were "schoolmasters to bring men to Christ." He quotes a striking passage

from Pressensé to this effect. Philosophy in Greece, says Pressensé, had

its place in the divine plan. It dethroned the false gods. It purified the

idea of divinity.

Cocker sums up this work of preparation done by Greek philosophy, as

seen,--

"1. In the release of the popular mind from polytheistic notions, and

the purifying and spiritualizing of the theistic idea.

"2. In the development of the theistic argument in a logical form.

"3. In the awakening and enthronement of conscience as a law of duty,

and in the elevation and purification of the moral idea.

"4. In the fact that, by an experiment conducted on the largest scale,

it demonstrated the insufficiency of reason to elaborate a perfect

ideal of moral excellence, and develop the moral forces necessary to

secure its realization.

"5. It awakened and deepened the consciousness of guilt and the desire

for redemption."[267]

The large culture of Greece was evidently adapted to Christianity. The

Jewish mind recognized no such need as that of universal culture, and this

tendency of Christianity could only have found room and opportunity among

those who had received the influence of Hellenic culture.

The points of contact between Christianity and Greek civilization are

therefore these:--

1. The character of God, considered in both as an immanent, ever-working

presence, and not merely as a creating and governing will outside the

universe.

2. The character of man, as capable of education and development, who is

not merely to obey as a servant, but to co-operate as a friend, with the

divine will, and grow up in all things.

3. The idea of duty, as a reasonable service, and not a yoke.

4. God's revelations, as coming, not only in nature, but also in inspired

men, and in the intuitions of the soul; a conception which resulted in the

Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

The good of polytheism was that it saw something divine in nature. By

dividing God into numberless deities, it was able to conceive of some

divine power in all earthly objects. Hence Wordsworth, complaining that

we can see little of this divinity now in nature, cries out:--

"Good God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn."