Ancient Greek Religion
Greeks never were an eminently religions people. Compared with Egyptians, Hebrews, or Hindus, they always carried their religion lightly about them. Their gods early assumed a human and aesthetic character. That part of their history to which the Epic poems belong was their period of strongest and simplest faith. The prevailing spirit of the epic tales, as well as the epic hymns, is piety, but piety towards a familiar and graceful mythology. It might have been otherwise, but that at an earlier date, the hereditary faith of the Hellenic people had been subjected to innovations of a nature to impair its weight and solemnity, which the innovations did not inherit.
The progress of Greek religion falls naturally into three stages, all of them historically important. First there is the primitive Euetheia or Age of Ignorance, before Zeus came to trouble men's minds. In some ways characteristically Greek, in others it is so typical of similar stages of thought elsewhere that one is tempted to regard it as the normal beginning of all religion, or almost as the normal raw material out of which religion is made. Secondly there is the Olympian or classical stage, a stage in which, for good or ill, blunderingly or successfully, this primitive vagueness was reduced to a kind of order. This is the stage of the great Olympian gods, who dominated art and poetry, ruled the imagination of Rome, and extended a kind of romantic dominion even over the Middle Ages.
Thirdly there is the Hellenistic period, reaching roughly from Plato to St. Paul or the earlier Gnostics, a period based on the consciousness of manifold failure, and consequently touched both with morbidness and with that spiritual exaltation which is so often the companion of morbidness. It had behind it the failure of the Olympian theology, the failure of the free city-state, now crushed by semi-barbarous military monarchies; it lived through the gradual realization of two other failures — the failure of human government, even when backed by the power of Rome or the wealth of Egypt, to achieve a good life for man; and lastly the failure of the great propaganda of Hellenism, in which the long-drawn effort of Greece to educate a corrupt and barbaric world seemed only to lead to the corruption or barbarization of the very ideals which it sought to spread.
The ideas of a perfect god, revelation, creeds, dogmas, conscience, divine love, etc., were not present in the Greek religion. The Greeks believed in gods who were interested in the welfare of certain men, and these men longed for the protection and sympathy of that god, to whom they prayed and sacrificed. Shrines of these various deities were everywhere. Religious practices were numerous; but religion rested lightly on men's shoulders. Religious rites and festivals were most frequently occasions of joy.
The old Hellenic religion was a worship of nature. Its gods were Heaven and Earth, Sea and Land, Sun and Moon, Day and Night, and the Dawn, rivers and mountains, and so on, being identical in kind with those of the Vedic hymns.
At the head of the new religion was a God of entirely dliferent character, separate from and independent of nature, ruling over all things but allegorical of nothing. Such were also the gods who came into the system with him. Apollo, for example, took the place of Helius (the Sun) and Artemis, of Selene, (the Moon). The new gods were personal and anthropomorphic, rulers over nature, and not themselves powers or elements of nature. They are not the mere growth of the old gods into anthropomorphic personality. For they come into power in addition to the old. In some cases they displace the old, in others they overrule them, and some divide jurisdiction with them: Zeus displaces Cronus, Poseidon overrules Oceanus, Athena succeeds Metis, and Dionysus divides the honors of vegetation with Demeter, herself remodelled by the same process of innovation.
Zeus was the father, the paternal ruler. The other gods were mere ministers in the divine government of the world. To the Greeks, man was like god, and god like man. So they could enter into definite relations with their gods; they recognized that communion underlies worship. The myths about the gods were believed to be true — at least by the vast majority — just as sincerely as a modern Christian child believes in Santa Claus. But the myth was never an article of creed; it was kept free from the influence of theology.
The Greeks conceived the word as the result of a development, in which the more complex forms grew out of simpler forms. The gods themselves were descended from Heaven and Earth. Each god is prominent as a personality because he personifies clearly some human relation.
Zeus was the god of the family. The stranger and the suppliant were under his protection. Hera, his wife, as goddess of marriage, was worshipped by women with initiative rites. Apollo, the embodiment of youth, was worshipped by boys on arriving at maturity. The Delphic Appollo was patron of prophecy, music and the healing art. To Artemis women prayed for help in childbirth. She was the only god to whom wild beasts were ever sacrificed. Hunters prayed for her blessing. Of all the sea gods, Poseidon was the only one who had a seat in the Olympian council. The usual victim at his altar was the bull. The rearing of horses was his special care. The heavenly bodies were not worshipped in Greece, except in Rhodes the sun (Helios) was the chief deity.
Demeter, originally "mother-earth," was primarily the goddess of grain. In the Eleusinian worship she and her daughter Persephone, were also goddesses of souls. Dionysus was the god of wine, and also of returning vegetation. Hermes was the god of flocks. His worship was especially prominent in Arcadia, where he was born, and in Thrace. He was also the god of trade and of gain; and he was the guide of souls to Hades. Pan the son of Hermes, was another Arcadian god of shepherds and goatherds. He himself had goats' legs and beard. His haunts were the crags and wooded glens, and he loved the springs and the nymphs that haunted them, as well as the dances and music of the goatherd. After the "panic" terror, by which Pan aided the Athenians at Marathon and Salamis, he was worshipped in a grotto on the northwestern side of the Acropolis.
Aphrodite was honored as the goddess of human love and of marriage. To her women prayed for all feminine charms. Ares was the god of war, Hephaestus the god of fire and the smith's art; Prometheus was honored in Attica with Hephaetus as the giver of fire and of civilization made possible by this gift. Hestia was worshipped in every household as the goddess of the home and of family life. Asclcpios, Apollo's son, was the god of healing. Eileithyia presided over childbirth. Persephone was the gentle daughter of Demeter, Artemis the virgin loving the wildness of nature.
Athena was the goddess of war. Under the name of Ergane she endowed women with skill in weaving and embroidering. The olive was her best gift to the Athenians. At the Panathenaeic festival She was represented as the patron goddess of Athens, of its martial glory, its technical skill in manufacture and its political wisdom. Athena and Athens, the goddess and the city, were practically one. The man who died in battle for the city died in the service of the goddess.
Unless one bears in mind the power which the city exercised over the imagination of the citizen, the most important strain in Greek religion and religious art will not be recognized. Where the religious unit was larger than the political unit, a new unit was formed to carry on the interstate worship. There was no "church" apart from the family, tribe, nation or amphictyony. This checked individualism in religion. Piety was a civic duty. The sense of personal sin, faith in a god who cares for the individual, love for a god, these could not develop under such conditions. Religion could not be a selfish matter, for it benefited the state, not the individual.
Greek religion as such was guiltless of system and wholly devoid of method. For worship the gods had definite shrines where they had specific names. Religion and morality were separate and distinct, though they tended later to become united. The god of each shrine was treated as if he were independent of the other gods. There were as many religions as cities; and the cult of a city made no appeal to an outsider. Each god was worshipped independently — as if the other gods did not exist, just as in some Catholic countries one saint is worshipped while others are apparently forgotten.
The temples and shrines were supervised by the state; priests were appointed and temples built by the people as a whole; and religious law was administered in courts established and maintained by the authority of the state. Greek religion remained to the end an untheological religion; the only authority for ritual was the tradition of each particular shrine, handed down from remote antiquity. From the interchange of ideas there arose two types of sacrifice, one a joyous festival in honor of the god, the other a solemn rite to appease an angry deity. But everybody was free to think of the gods as he chose. The comic poet, Aristophanes, could make fun of them — that was immaterial so long as the public worship continued undisturbed.
The Greeks did not worship physical objects. Zeus was father of gods and men; rain came from Zeus; the thunderbolt was his weapon; his home was in Olympus. Dionysus was the god of wine, Poseidon of the sea. Nevertheless, Dionysus was a human god, visiting one place after another; Poseidon was a lover of horses and fond of the battlefield; Apollo was the prophet who revealed to men the divine will, and he was the great musician, the healer of disease and the god of shepherds; Aphrodite was the most human of all the gods, the spirit in whom was manifested human love as a fundamental principle of the universe. The religion of the Greeks was not a worship of nature, but a worship of spirits in nature. The gods differed from man only in degree. In Homer they exhibit the same passions as men: Love, hate, jealousy, revenge, guile; they are greater only in might. Leto is the mother proud of her children, Hera the queenly wife, Persephone the gentle daughter; Poseidon granted safety to sailors; Athena and Hephaestus taught men the arts and crafts; Demeter showed them how to cultivate grain.
The relation of the gods to each other was similar to the relation which exists between members of a council That the gods belonged in the same society with men working together toward a common goal—this was the conception of the Greeks regarding the principle of divine government in the world. And there were evolutions and revolutions among the gods as among men; earth had its counterpart in heaven. Even gymnastic contests and horse-racing came within the pale of religion. Every side of man found expression in religion. Political assemblies began with worship. Marriage and the rearing of children were under the protection of the gods. If men wanted bread, they worshipped Demeter; wine, Dionysus; health, Asclepios; care for sheep, Apollo, Pan or Hermes. If they desired to know the future, they consulted oracles. The bringing of votive offerings to the gods was in the same spirit as the bringing of tribute to human rulers. The procession at the festivals was like the triumphal procession with which all students of history are familiar. The use of the common meal as a form of worship is not unlike the Lord's Supper, although it was not the sacredness of food that was emphasized so much as the vital bond of union between the god and his worshippers.
The gods sometimes revealed themselves to men; but "not to all men do the gods appear visibly" ('Odyssey,' III, 375 f). Zeus and Hera, however, remain on Olympus. Iris and Hermes are messengers to men; Apollo and Athena appear occasionally to carry out their plans or the plans of Zeus. When the gods appear in visible presence to men, they usually assume the guise of some particular individual. Thus Aphrodite takes on the form of an old woman on one occasion, Poseidon of Calchas, Athena of Mentor (Odyssey). Sometimes the gods came directly to earth in propria persona: Aphrodite in the 'Iliad,' is wounded by Diomedes, Ares dazed by a blow from Athena.
Signs of nature were more important than those obtained by divination. In the 'Iliad,' thunder revealed the will of Zeus. Lightning on the right indicated the favor of the king of gods. An eclipse of the moon so affected Nicias that he would not withdraw his army before Syracuse. At Athens the assembly would adjourn if rain signified that Zeus was unpropitious. Only the superstitious, however, paid much attention to such signs. The science of astrology had practically no adherents in Greece. In Homer, the chief method of learning the will of the gods was the observance of the flight of birds: The eagle of Zeus, the hawk of Apollo, the heron flying in the night Prometheus claimed that he taught men divination.
The position of the seer in the army was only less important than that of the general. Dreams that come through the gates of ivory are deceitful, those that pass through the gates of polished horn are true. Achilies dreamed that Patroclus urged the burial of his body. In Homer dreams are sent by the greater gods directly. In Homer, too, the seer is a man inspired by the gods. It is the favor of the god that usually grants this gift. The seer's chief task is to interpret signs, dreams and omens. In later times, the presence of the seer in the army was important, because some official interpreter of the divine will lent greater sanction.
Mountain tops suggested the presence of Zeus; caverns, gods from the world below. The gods of Homer dwell on Olympus; but each deity had also a favorite spot on earth. A dense grove might be the dwelling place of a god. In the early period the god was worshipped beside the altar in the open air; later the deity had an abode (the temple). Certain properties, from which an income was derived, belonged to the god. He owned and leased houses, factories, sheep, poultry or rights in fishing. The management and collection of rentals was in the hands of the priest. There were 200 shrines in Athens alone. Athena was worshipped at each of her various seats in a different aspect of her nature. The temple was not a place for congregational worship. Some symbol or image marked the god's presence. The statue itself was not worshipped, but the god himself. To remove forcibly an innocent person from the altar to which he had fled for refuge was sacrilege.
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