Gods of Ancient Greece
In the second millenium, BC, the inhabitants of these lands had already conceived of some at least of their divinities in anthropomorphic forms; that is to say, they thought of their gods and represented them in the fashion of human beings, so that when the Hellenic civilization of the later period developed, the people were in many ways in an advanced religious stage.
On the other hand there survived among the ancient Greeks to the latest period many primitive elements, such as the worship of sacred stones, trees, symbols, etc. The monuments of the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations seem to give evidence of widespread animal worship and of the cult of monsters, part man and part beast. This worship survived in part into the historic period; probably some of the sacred animals of later times bear witness to it; even in the 5th century, the god Dionysus was celebrated in song as a divine bull. In agricultural festivals also many primitive rites survived, such as the widespread phallos worship. Therefore Greek religion of the classical period and through all the centuries to the end of antiquity contained much that belongs to the lower strata of religious development side by side with higher concepts of divinity.
As to the origin of the Greek gods, it is impossible to speak with certainty on many points. Without question the worship of natural phenomena, of inanimate objects, of ancestors, and of sacred animals and trees all contributed to make up the sum total, but this list does not exhaust all _ the factors which entered into Greek religious thought and expression. To the Greek the world was filled with a multitude of superhuman beings who were responsible for all phenomena. Most of these divinities were limited and local, but since some were manifested in every field of activity, man was always in social relations to them; he was obliged to seek their favor, or to propitiate them by offerings and by prayer. A few gods among the total attained to a universial character, so that they were worshiped in every part of the Greek world; but, even so, most of these gods had seats to which their worship was especially attached, as Athena to Athens, or Hera to Argos.
In the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' are found a group of gods bound together in an organization similar to that of the Homeric state. At the head is Zeus, the father of gods and of men, whose power far surpasses that of any other divinity, but who, however, is not wholly omnipotent or omniscent. To him the elements are subject and his nod makes the universe tremble. He is the chief of all: he presides over his aristocratic state like a Homeric king, while the other Olympian divinities make up the council, and the minor gods form the popular assembly. With him Apollo and Athena hold the first rank. Hera, the sister and wife of Zeus, however, belongs in the second with Poseidon, the god of the sea. Ares and Aphrodite represent the two passions of rage in battle and of sexual love. Artemis, the sister of Apollo, is of lower rank, as is Hephaestus, the god of fire. Hermes is a kind of upper servant of the great gods, who executes their commissions; there are still other divinities of inferior position.
Demeter and Dionysus, who are so important in later centuries, have not yet been admitted to Olympus in the Homeric epics. The god of the lower world is Hades; he presides in the realm of the dead, which is conceived to be beneath the earth.
All these divinities are represented as stronger, larger, and wiser than mortals; but not wholly superior to them, for like them they are subject to the passions of the mind and body. Their pre-eminence over mortals consists chiefly in their immortality. This Homeric pantheon seems to have been created in part by a selection, made from the greater local divinities, who were universalized by the poet and given the characters which his art fixed for all later time. The Homeric poems acquired such universal influence wherever Greeks went, that the chief local divinity was assimilated to one of the Homeric gods and given the characteristics which that divinity possesses in the epics. At Olympia Phidias fashioned his Zeus after the Homeric description, and at Athens he represented Athena in the manner in which the epic bard had made her.
These great epics then represented the gods, in a sense, in an artificial organization. Hesiod, however, introduces us to a somewhat different world and to conditions as they really existed. We find in him many divinities not mentioned in Homer; and the worship of the dead and of heroes, which the epic poet passed over, is made much of by the later writer.
It is eyident that Zeus was, from an unknown period, the most universal of the Greek gods. The superior position which he occupies in Homer was still further exalted, until he became altogether supreme, and even appears as the all-embracing divinity including all minor gods, comprehending within himself all divine powers. Indeed at times the Greeks approached monotheism. Yet it is necessary _ to bear in mind that to the ordinary Greek his local gods were most important, and although he might recognize a similarity between his divinity and the same divinity in some other place, his attitude remained very much like that of the Greek peasant to-day toward his local saint.
The greater gods like Zeus and Athena doubtless absorbed countless numbers of local divinities, and yet even these gods retained in a way their local habitations to the end of paganism. Olympus was the home of Zeus above all other places. The Athenians, at least, regarded Athens as the home of Athena, while Hera was domiciled in Argos from unknown antiquity. Apollo had two homes, at Delphi and at Delos; the former was his chief oracular center from which for centuries his pronouncements, as interpreted by his priests, influenced affairs to the remotest borders of the Greek world; at Delos the god presided over the ancient religious centre of the X.%can. Asclepios had his great home at Epidaurus in Argolis. To this place for centuries the sick and cripples came to be healed by a vision or a miracle, and in later times by regular therapeutic treatment. A branch was established on the island of Cos, and early in the 3d century the Romans induced the god to begin the practice of his art on the island in the Tiber.
At Eleusis, northwest of Athens, there was celebrated at an early period an agricultural festival in honor of Demeter and her daughter. Out of these agricultural rites, intended to secure abundant crops through the favor of the goddesses, arose the Eleusian mysteries in which the initiates received assurance of a happv life hereafter. Similar mysteries, presided over by these two divinities, or by others, existed in many parts of Greece, but none attained to the importance of those at Eleusis.
The heroes formed a class of superhuman beings midway between mortals and the gods, often half-divine by origin; they received celestial honors after death. The most famous of these were Hercules and Theseus, both of whom undertook severe toils for the advantage of mortals and so conferred lasting benefit on mankind, in return for which they received divinity.
In the Minoan and Mycenean periods it is clear that the spirits of the dead were worshipped or propitiated by offerings at the tombs; these practices were universal in later Greece. Gifts of wine, milk, and honey were regularly made, and the nearest of kin celebrated anniversary meals in honor of the deceased. In general the spirits of the dead were regarded as baneful powers rather than beneficient divinities.
With the rise and development of philosophic thought the enlightened Greeks greatly modified their belief in the gods of the common people, so that in Plato we find something very akin to monotheism. Later philosophies, like the Stoic, provided for a multitude of gods, although they asserted the supremacy and allcomprehensive character of the divine principle, so that under the Roman Empire the educated part of the_ ancient world held to a henotheistic view, which, however, did not exclude an elaborate polytheism; that is to say, they believed that the divine was one, but that it manifested itself in countless ways and in countless places, and that for convenience it was allowable to give to these various manifestations of the One the names of the many gods of popular belief. Such views, however, were limited to the more highly educated, for common men continued to believe in a vast number of individual divinities throughout antiquity, and indeed brought this belief over into Christianity.
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