ArcaMax Publishing > Books > Religion > Ten Great Religions, An Essay in Comparative Theology > Section 8
Section 8 of 15 - Table of Contents
Chapter VII.
The Gods of Greece.
Sec. 1. The Land and the Race.
Sec. 2. Idea and General Character of Greek Religion.
Sec. 3. The Gods of Greece before Homer.
Sec. 4. The Gods of the Poets.
Sec. 5. The Gods of the Artists.
Sec. 6. The Gods of the Philosophers.
Sec. 7. The Worship of Greece.
Sec. 8. The Mysteries. Orphism.
Sec. 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.
Sec. 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, AEolians, 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
Dione of Dodona, Zeus and Here of Argos, Hephaestos and Athene of Athens,
Demeter and Cora of Eleusis, Hermes 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
Hellenes, 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 mediaeval 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]
Sec. 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.
Sec. 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,
Mnemosyne, Phoebe with golden coronet, and lovely Thethys. Lastly came
Kronos, or Time; with the Cyclopes 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, Aphrodite, 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, Selene and Eos, or Sun, Moon, and Dawn. Koeos and Phoebe had Leto
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, Demeter and Here; Hades, Poseidon, and
Zeus,--all, except Hades 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, Poseidon, Here, Hestia, and Demeter;
six were children of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis, Hephaestos and Ares, Hermes
and Athene. The twelfth of the Olympian group, Aphrodite, 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 [Greek:
Theos] and [Greek: Dis, Dios] in Greek, Deus in Latin. [Greek: Zeus
Pater] 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. Here was worshipped as a plank at Samos; Athene, 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
Dione; another was Rhea. In Asia she was Cybele; but everywhere she
typified the great productive power of nature.
Another Pelasgic god was Helios, the Sun-God, worshipped with his sister
Selene, 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 Aidoneus; and Persephone, his wife, was not the fair Kora of
subsequent times, but the fearful Queen of Death, the murderess,
homologous to the savage wife of Civa, 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 Mueller[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 Poseidon, god of the sea. In Arcadia, Athene
was worshipped as Tritonia. Hermes was adored on Mount Cyllene; Eros, 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 Demeter ([Greek: De
meter]), Mother Earth, in the third. In like manner the Sun is
successively Hyperion, son of Heaven and Earth; Helios, son of Hyperion
and Theia; and Phoebus-Apollo, son of Zeus and Latona. The Moon is first
Phoebe, sister of Hyperion; then Selene, sister of Helios; and lastly
Artemis, sister of Apollo. Pallas, probably meaning at first "the virgin,"
became afterward identified with Athene, daughter of Zeus, as
Pallas-Athene. The Urania Pontus, the salt sea, became the Titan Oceanos,
or Ocean, and in another generation Poseidon, 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, Poseidon, and Hades;
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 Eros, 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.
Aphrodite, 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]
Sec. 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, Poseidon had left it to visit Olympus. There
came Hephaestos, 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 Demeter came from the woods and
fields to unite in the high assembly, and war was suspended while Ares
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 Hippocrene 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 Persephone, 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,
Eos, 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 Prometheus, of the great Dioscuri,
of Minos, or Daedalus, 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 Here."[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,
Ares against Athene, Athene also against his helper, Aphrodite; Poseidon
and Here against Apollo and Artemis, Vulcan against the river god,
Scamander. Ares called Athene 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-Athene jeered at him; and when Aphrodite led him away groaning
frequently, Pallas-Athene sprang after, and smote her with her hand,
dissolving her knees and dear heart. Apollo was afraid of Poseidon, and
declined fighting with him when challenged, for which Artemis rebuked him.
On this, Here 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. Ares, overthrown by
Pallas, covers seven acres of ground; when wounded by Diomedes 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 Achaeans 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. Tyrtaeus (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 Prometheus, 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 Prometheus 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 Antigone 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 [Greek:
theos] and [Greek: daimon], and the names [Greek: Zeos] and [Greek:
Kronion]; 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."
Prev
Next
All
Printer Friendly Version | Send this page to a friend | Discuss this Book
Your email address is safe with us. View our Privacy policy.
 |
 |
|
|
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Sections: 35 What's this? Table of Contents |
 FictionNon FictionShort StoriesPoetryPlaysSci FiPhilosophyBiography |
Body Mass
