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Section 9 of 15 - Table of Contents
Sec. 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 Actaeon 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-Athene was the goddess of all the liberal arts and sciences. In
battle she proves too strong for Ares 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 Athene
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 Athene 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.
Sec. 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 Graecia 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
[Greek: to on], 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 [Greek: kosmos], 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.
Sec. 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 Panathenaeic festival at Athens was held every
five years in honor of Athene, 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 Athene 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 Doellinger, 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 Doellinger, "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.
Sec. 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 Lycaeus, derived, probably,
from [Greek: Lux], Lux, light. The Cretan Jupiter was called Asterios.
At Karia he was Stratios. Iolaus in Euripides (the Herakleidae, 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 Demeter, 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 Demeter and Persephone, 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
Demeter seeking Persephone constitute evidently the same legend; only
Osiris is the Nile, evaporated into scattered pools by the burning heat,
while Persephone 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 Persephone, and was
hewn in pieces by the Titans, his heart alone being preserved by Athene,
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 Demeter (the mother-earth = Isis)
in search of Persephone. 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."
Sec. 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-Athene 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 Laertius, 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-Athene, 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 Ascraean 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 Musaeus, 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 Pressense to this effect. Philosophy in Greece, says Pressense, 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 wreathed horn."
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