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GREEK RELIGION
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See also:GREEK See also:RELIGION . The See also:recent development of anthropological See also:science and of the See also:comparative study of religions has enabled us at last to assign to See also:ancient Greek religion its proper See also:place in the See also:classification of See also:creeds and to appreciate its importance for the See also:history of See also:civilization. In spite of all the diversities of See also:local cults we may find a See also:general See also:definition of the theological See also:system of the Hellenic communities, and with sufficient accuracy may describe it as an anthropomorphic polytheism, preserving many traces of a pre-anthropomorphic See also:period, unchecked by any exacting See also:dogma or tradition of See also:revelation, and therefore pliantly adapting itself to all the changing circumstance of the social and See also:political history of the See also:race, and easily able to assimilate See also:alien ideas and forms. Such a religion, continuing in whole or in See also:part throughout a period of at least 2000 years, was more capable of progress than others, possibly higher, that have crystallized at an See also:early period into a fixed dogmatic type; and as, owing to its essential See also:character, it could not be convulsed by any inner revolution that might obliterate the deposits of its earlier See also:life, it was likely to preserve the imprints of the successive ages of culture, and to reveal more clearly than any other testimony the See also:evolution of the race from savagery to civilization. Hence it is that Greek religion appears to teem with incongruities, the highest forms of religious life being often confronted with the most See also:primitive. And for this See also:reason the student of See also:savage See also:Prose writers In the vernacutar. See also:anthropology and the student of the higher religions of the See also:world are equally rewarded by its study. See also:Modern See also:ethnology has arrived at the conviction that the Hellenic nation, like others that have played See also:great parts in history, was the product of a blend of populations, the conquering tribes of See also:Aryan descent coming from the See also:north and settling among and upon certain pre-Hellenic Mediterranean See also:stocks. The conclusion that is naturally See also:drawn from this is that Hellenic religion is also the product of a blend of early Aryan or Indo-Germanic beliefs with the cult-ideas and practices of the Mediterranean . See also:area that were from of old indigenous in the lands which the later invaders conquered. But to disentangle these two component parts of the whole, which might seem to be the first problem for the history of the development of this religion, is by no means an easy task; we may advance further towards its See also:solution, when the mysterious pre-Hellenic Mediterranean See also:language or See also:group of See also:languages, of which traces remain in Hellenic place-names, and which may be lying uninterpreted on the See also:brick-tablets of the See also:palace of See also:Cnossus, has found its interpreter. For the first question is naturally one of language. But the comparative study of the Indo-See also:European speech-group, great as its philological triumphs have been, has been meagre in its contributions to our See also:positive knowledge of the See also:original belief of the primitive stock. It is not possible.to reconstruct a See also:common Indo-European religion. The greater part of the See also:separate Aryan cult-systems may have See also:developed after the See also:diffusion and may have been the result of contact in prehistoric days with non-Aryan peoples. And many old religious etymological equations, such as Ovpavos = See also:Sanskrit See also:Varuna, `Ep .d s = Sarameyas, See also:Athena=Ahana, were uncritically made and have been abandoned. The See also:chief fact that See also:philology has revealed concerning the religious vocabulary of the Aryan peoples is that many of them are found to have designated a high See also:god by a word derived from a See also:root meaning "See also:bright," and which appears in See also:Zeus, See also:Jupiter, Sanskrit Dyaus. This is important enough, but we should not exaggerate its importance, nor draw the unwarranted inference that therefore the primitive Indo-Europeans worshipped one supreme God, the See also:Sky-See also:Father. Besides the word " Zeus," the only other names of the Hellenic See also:pantheon that can be explained wholly or partly as words of Aryan formation are See also:Poseidon, See also:Demeter, See also:Hestia, See also:Dionysus (whose name and cult were derived from the Aryan stock of the Thraco-Phrygians) and probably See also:Pan. But other names, such as Athena, See also:Ares, See also:Apollo, See also:Artemis, See also:Hera, See also:Hermes, have no discovered See also:affinities with other Aryan speech-See also:groups; and yet there is nothing suspiciously non-Aryan is the formation of these words, and they may all have belonged to the earliest Hellenic-Aryan vocabulary. In regard to others, such as See also:Rhea, See also:Hephaestus and See also:Aphrodite, it is somewhat more probable that they belonged to an older pre-Hellenic stock that survived in See also:Crete and other islands, and here and there on the mainland; while we know that Zeus derived certain unintelligible titles in Cretan cult from the indigenous Eteo-cretan speech. A See also:minute See also:consideration of a large See also:mass of See also:evidence justifies the conclusion that the See also:main tribes of the Aryan Hellenes, pushing down from the north, already possessed certain deities in common such as Zeus, Poseidon and Apollo with whom they associated certain goddesses, and that they maintained the cult of Hestia or " See also:Holy See also:Hearth." Further, a comparison of the developed religions of the respective Aryan peoples suggests that they tended to give predominance to the male divinity, although we have equally See also:good reason to assert that the cult of goddesses, and especially of the See also:earth-goddess, is a genuinely " Aryan " product. But when the tribes of this See also:family poured into the Greek See also:peninsula, it is probable that they would find in certain centres of a very ancient civilization, such as Argolis and Crete, the dominant cult of a See also:female divinity.' The recent This has often been explained as a result of Mutterrecht, or reckoning descent through the female: for reasons against this See also:hypothesis see L. R. Farnell in Archiv See also:fur vergleichende Religionswissenschaft (19o4); cf. A. J. See also:Evans, " Mycenaean See also:Tree and See also:Pillar Cult," in Journ. of Hellenic Studies (1901).
excavations on the site of the Hera See also:temple at See also:Argos prove that a powerful goddess was worshipped here many centuries before it is probable that the Hellenic invader appeared. He may have even found the name Hera there, or may have brought it with him and applied it to the indigenous divinity. Again, we are certain that the great See also:mother-goddess of Crete, discovered by Dr See also:Arthur Evans, is the ancestress of Rhea and of the Greek " Mother of the gods ": and it is a reasonable conjecture that she accounts for many of the forms of Artemis and perhaps for Athena. But the evidence by no means warrants us in assuming as an See also:axiom that wherever we find a dominant goddess-cult, as that of Demeter at See also:Eleusis, we are confronted with a non-Hellenic religious phenomenon. The very name " Demeter " and the study of other Aryan religions prove the prominence of the See also:worship of the earth-goddess in our own family of the nations. Finally, we must reckon with the possibility that the other great nations which fringed the Mediterranean, Hittite, Semitic and See also:Egyptian peoples, See also:left their impress on early Greek religion, although former scholars may have made rash use of this hypothesis.'
Recognizing then the great perplexity of these problems concerning the ethnic origins of Hellenic religion, we may at least reduce the tangle of facts to some See also:order by See also:Animism. distinguishing its See also:lower from its higher forms, and
thus provide the material for some theory of evolution. We may collect. and sift the phenomena that remain over from a pre-anthropomorphic period, the imprints of a savage past, the beliefs and practices that belong to the animistic or even the pre-animistic period, See also:fetishism, the worship of animals, human See also:sacrifice. We shall at once be struck with the contrast between such civilized cults as those of Zeus, Athena, Apollo, high See also:personal divinities to whom the attributes of a progressive morality could be attached, and practices that See also:long survived in backward communities, such as the Arcadian worship of the See also:thunder and the winds, the cult of Zeus KEpauv6s " the thunder " at Mantinea and Zeus Kairir iras in See also:Laconia, who is none other than the mysterious meteoric See also: A noteworthy product of primitive animistic feeling is the universally prevalent cult of Hestia, who is originally " Holy Hearth " pure and See also:simple, and who even under the developed polytheism, in which she played no small part, was never established as a separate anthropomorphic personage. The animistic belief that certain material objects can be charged with a divine potency or spirit gives rise to fetishism, a See also:term which properly denotes the worshipful or superstitious use of objects made by See also:art and invested with mysterious See also:power, so as to be used like amulets for the purposes of protective magic or for higher purposes of communion with the divinity. From the earliest discoverable period down to the See also:present See also:day fetishism has been a powerful See also:factor in the religion of the Graeco-See also:Roman world. The importance of the sacred stone and pillar in the " Mycenaean " or " Minoan " period which preceded See also:Homer has been impressively shown by Dr Arthur Evans, and the same fetishistic worship continued throughout the historic ages of classic paganism, the See also:rude aniconic See also:emblem of pillar or tree-See also:trunk surviving often by the See also:side of the iconic masterpiece. It is a reasonable conjecture that the earliest anthropomorphic images of divinities, which were beginning to make their See also:appearance by the See also:time of Homer, were themselves evolved by slow transformation from the upright sacred See also:column. And the See also:altar itself may have arisen as another See also:form of this; the simple heap of stones, such 2 V. See also:Berard has recently revived the discredited theory of a prevalent Phoenician See also:influence in his ingenious but uncritical See also:work, L'Origine See also:des cultes arcadiens. M. P. Foucart believes in very early borrowing from See also:Egypt, as explaining much in the religion of Demeter and Dionysus; see See also:Les Grands Mysteres d'Eleu.is and, Le Culte de Dionysos enAttique. Fetish- ism. as those erected to Hermes by the way-side and called `Epµaioi X64ot, may have served both as a place of worship and as an agalmma that could attract and absorb a divine potency into itself. Hence the fetishistic power of the altar was fully recognized in Greek See also:ritual, and hence also in the cult of Apollo Agyieus the god and the altar are called by the same name. It has been supposed that the ancestors of the historic Greeks, before they were habituated to conceive of their divinities as in human form, may have been accustomed to invest them with See also:animal attributes and traits. We must not indeed suppose it to be a general See also:law of religious evolution that " theriomorphism " must always precede See also:anthropomorphism and that the latter transcends and obliterates the former. The two systems can exist side by side, and savages of See also:low religious development can conceive of their deities as assuming at one time human, at another bestial, shape. Now the developed Greek religion was devotedly anthropomorphic, and herein See also:lay its strength and its weakness; nevertheless, the advanced Hellene could imagine his Dionysus entering temporarily into the See also:body of the sacrificial See also:bull or See also:goat, and the men of See also:Phigalia in See also:Arcadia were attached to their See also:horse-headed Demeter, and the primitive Laconians possibly to a See also:ram-headed Apollo. Theriolatry in itself, i.e. the worship of certain animals as of divine power in their own right, apart from any association with higher divinities, can scarcely be traced among the Greek communities at any period. They are not found to have paid reverence to any See also:species, though individual animals could acquire temporarily a divine character through communion with the altar or with the god. The See also:wolf might at one time have been regarded as the incarnation of Apollo, the wolf-god, and here and there we find faint traces of a wolf-sacrifice and of offerings laid out for wolves. But the occasional propitiation of See also:wild beasts may fall See also:short of actual worship. The Athenian who slew a wolf might give it a sumptuous funeral, probably to avoid a See also:blood-See also:feud with the wolf's relatives, yet the Athenian See also:state offered rewards for a wolf's See also:head. Nor did any Greek individual or state worship flies as a class, although a small See also:oblation might be thrown to the flies before the great sacrifice to Apollo on the Leucadian See also:rock, to please them and to persuade them not to worry the worshippers at the great solemnity, where the reek of roast flesh would be likely to attract them. Theriolatry suggests See also:totemism; and though we now know that the former can arise and exist quite independently of the latter, recent anthropologists have interpreted the Totem- apparent sanctity or See also:prestige of certain animals in Ism.
parts of Greek See also:mythology and religion as the See also:deposit of an earlier totemistic system. But this See also:interpretation, originated and maintained with great acumen by See also:Andrew See also:Lang and W. See also:Robertson See also: by the time of See also:Porphyry. The facts are very complex and need See also:critical handling, and a satisfying scientific explanation of them all is still to be sought. We can now observe the higher aspects of the advanced polytheism. And at the outset we must distinguish between mythology and religion strictly understood, between the stories about the divinities and the private or public religious service. No doubt the former are often a reflection of the latter, in many cases being suggested by the ritual which they may have been invented to interpret, and often envisaging important cult-ideas. Such for example are the myths about the See also:purification and trial of See also:Orestes, See also:Theseus, Ixion, the See also:story of Demeter's sorrow, of the sufferings and See also:triumph of Dionysus, and those about the abolition of human sacrifice. Yet Greek mythology as a whole was irresponsible, without reserve, and unchecked by dogma or sacerdotal See also:prohibition; and frequently it sank below the level of the current religion, which was almost See also:free from the ' impurities which See also:shock the modern reader of Hellenic myths. Nor again did any one feel himself called upon to believe any particular myth; in fact, faith, understood in the sense in which the term is used in See also:Christian See also:theology, as the will to believe certain dogmatic statements about the nature and See also:action of divinity, is a concept which was neither named nor recognized in Hellenic See also:ethics or religious See also:doctrine; only, if a See also:man proclaimed his disbelief in the existence of the gods and refused to join in the ritual of the community, he would become " suspect," and might at times be persecuted by his See also:fellows. Greek religion was not so much an affair of doctrine as of ritual, religious formulae of which the cult-titles of the divinities were an important component, and See also:prayer; and the most illuminative See also:sources of our knowledge of it are the ritual-See also:inscriptions and other state-documents, the private dedications, the monuments of religious art and certain passages in the literature, philology and See also:archaeology being equally necessary to the equipment of the student. We are tempted to turn to Homer as the earliest authority. And though Homer is not primitive and does not present even an approximately See also:complete See also:account of Greek religion, we can gather from his poems a picture of an advanced riots polytheism which in form and structure at least is Homer. that which was presented to the world of See also:Aeschylus. We discern a pantheon already to some extent systematized, a certain See also:hierarchy and family of divinities in which the supremacy of Zeus is established as incontestable. And the anthropomorphic impulse, the strongest trend in the Greek religious See also:imagination, which filled the later world with fictitious personages, generating transparent shams such as an Ampidromus for the ritual of the Ampidromia, Amphiction for the Amphictiones, a See also:hero Kpaµos for the gild of potters, is already at its height in the Homeric poems. The deities are already clear-cut, individual personalities of distinct ethos, plastically shaped figures such as the later See also:sculpture and See also:painting could work upon, not vaguely conceived numina like the forms of the old Roman religion. Nor can we See also:call them for the most part nature-deities like the personages of the Vedic system, thinly disguised " personifications " of natural phenomena. Athena is not the See also:blue sky nor Apollo the See also:sun; they are simply Athena and Apollo, divine personages with certain See also:powers and character, as real for their See also:people as See also:Christ and the Virgin for Christendom. By the side of these, though generally in a subordinate position, we find that Homer recognized certain divinities that we may properly call nature-powers, such as Helios, Gaia and the See also:river-deities, forms descending probably from a remote animistic period, but maintaining themselves within the popular religion till the end of Paganism. Again, though Homer may talk and think at times with levity and banalite about his deities, his deeper utterances impute an advanced morality to the supreme God. His Zeus is on the whole a power of righteousness, dealing with men by a righteous law of See also:nemesis, never being himself the author of evil—an See also:idea revealed in the opening passage of the Odyssey—but protecting the good and punishing the wicked. Vengeance, indeed, was one of the attributes of divinity both for Homer and the See also:average Greek of the later period, as it is in Judaic and Christian theology, though See also:Plato and See also:Euripides protested strongly against such a view. But the Homeric Zeus is equally a god of pity and See also:mercy, and the man who neglects the prayers of the sorrowful and afflicted, who violates the sanctity of the suppliant and See also:guest, or oppresses the poor or the wanderer, may look for divine See also:punishment. Though not regarded as the See also:physical author of the universe or the Creator, he is in a moral sense the father of gods and men. And though the sense of See also:sin and the need of piacular sacrifice are expressed in the Homeric poems, the relations between gods and men that they reveal are on the whole genial and social; the deity sits unseen at the good man's festal sacrifice, and there is a simple See also:apprehension of the idea of divine communion. There is also indeed a glimmering of the dark background of the nether world, and the chthonian powers that might send up the Erinys to fulfil the curse of the wronged. Yet on the whole the religious See also:atmosphere is generally cheerful and bright; freer than that of the later ages from the taint of magic and superstition; nor is Homer troubled much about the life after See also:death; he scarcely recognizes the cult of the dead,' and is not oppressed by fear of the See also:ghost-world. If we look now broadly over the salient facts of the Greek public and private worship of the historic period we find much in it that agrees with Homeric theology. His The See also:post- " Olympian " system retains a certain life almost to Homeric period. the end of Paganism, and it is a serious See also:mistake to suppose that it had lost its hold upon the people of the 5th and 4th century B.C. We find it, indeed, enriched in the post-Homeric period with new figures of prestige and power ; Dionysus, of whom Homer had only faintly heard, becomes a high god with a worship full of promise for the future. Demeter and Kore, the mother and the girl, whom Homer knew well enough but could not use for his epic purposes, attract the ardent affections and hopes of the people; and Asclepius, whom the old poet did not recognize as a god, wins a conspicuous place in the later shrines. But much that has been said of the Homeric may be said of the later classical theology. The deities remain anthropomorphic, and appear as clearly defined individuals. A certain hierarchy is recognized; Zeus is supreme, even in the See also:city of Athena, but each of the higher divinities played many parts, and local See also:enthusiasm could frustrate the depart-See also:mental system of divine functions; certain members of the pantheon had a preference for the life of the See also:fields, but as the polis emerged from the See also:village communities, Demeter, Hermes, Artemis and others, the gods and goddesses of the husbandmen and shepherds, become powers of the See also:council-chamber and the See also:market-place. The moral ideas that we find in the Homeric religion are amply attested by cult-records of the later period. The deities are regarded on the whole as beneficent, though revengeful if wronged or neglected; the cult-titles used in prayer, which more than any other witnesses reveal the thought and wish of the worshipper, are nearly always euphemistic, the doubtful See also:title of Demeter Erinys being possibly an exception. The important cults of Zeus 'IuEacos and Hpovrpozracos, the suppliant's protecting deity, embody the ideas of pity and mercy that mark advanced religion; and many momentous steps in the development of morality and law were either suggested or assisted by the state-religion. For example; the sanctity of the See also:oath, the main source of the See also:secular virtue of truthfulness, was originally a religious See also:sanction, and though the Greek may have been prone to See also:perjury, yet the Hellenic like the Hebraic religious ethics regarded it as a heinous sin. The sanctity of
1 This became very powerful from the 7th century onward, and there are reasons for supposing that it existed in the pre-Homeric, or Mycenaean, period; vide Rohde's See also:Psyche (new edition), Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenaean See also:Age.family duties, the sacredness of the life of the kinsman, were ideas fostered by early Hellenic religion before they generated principles of secular ethics. In the post-Homeric period, the development of the doctrine of purity, which was associated with the Apolline religion, combining with a growing dread of the ghost-world, stimulated and influenced in many important ways the evolution of the Greek law concerning See also:homicide.2 And the beginnings of See also:international law and morality were rooted in religious sanctions and See also:taboo. In fact, Greek state-life was indebted in manifold ways to Greek religion, and the study of the Greek oracles would alone See also:supply sufficient testimony of this. In many cases the very origin of the state was religious, the earliest polis sometimes having arisen under the See also:shadow of the temple.
Yet as Greek religion was always in the service of the state, and the See also:priest a state-See also:official, society was the See also:reverse of theocratic. Secular advance, moral progress and the See also: Obliterated as the old Hellenic religion appeared to be by See also:Christianity, it nevertheless retained a certain life, though transformed, under the new creed to which it See also:lent much of its See also:hieratic organization and religious terminology. The indebtedness of Christianity to See also:Hellenism is one of the most interesting problems of comparative religion; and for an adequate estimate a minute knowledge of the ritual and the mystic cults of Hellas is one of the essential conditions. 2 vols. (4th edition by C. See also:Robert, 1887), all antiquated in regard to theory, but still of some value for collection of materials. Recent Literature—(a) General See also:Treatises: O. Gruppe, " Griechische Mythologie and Religionsgeschichte " in Iwan von Mailer's Handbuch der kiassischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 2. 2 (19o2–1906); L. R. Farnell's Cults of the Greek States, 4 vols. (1896–1906, vol. 5, 1908) ; See also:Miss Jane See also:Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (ed. 1908); Chantepie de laSaussaye's Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte (Greek See also:section, 1904); (b) See also:Special See also:Works or See also:Dissertations: articles in See also:Roscher's Ausfiihrliches Lexikon der griechischen and romischen Mythologie, and Pauly-Wissowa Encyklopadie (1894– ) ; Immerwahr, Kulte and Mythen Arkadiens (1891); Wide, Lakonische Kulte (1893); de Visser, De Graecorum diis non referentibus speciem humanam (See also:Leiden, 1900). Greek Ritual and Festivals—A. See also:Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (1898) ; P. Stengel, " See also:Die griechischen Sacralaltertiimer " in Iwan von See also:Min'er's Handbuch, v. 3 (1898); W. H. D. Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings (1902). Greek Religious Thought and See also:Speculation—L. See also: Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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