§ 1
By the tacit admission of one of the ablest opponents of the theory of foreign influence, Hellenic religion as fixed by Homer for the Hellenic world was partly determined by Asiatic influences. Ottfried Müller decided not only that Homer the man (in whose personality he believed) was probably a Smyrnean, whether of Æolic or Ionic stock,[19] but that Homer’s religion must have represented a special selection from the manifold Greek mythology, necessarily representing his local bias.[20] Now, the Greek cults at Smyrna, as in the other Æolic and Ionic cities of Asia Minor, would be very likely to reflect in some degree the influence of the Karian or other Asiatic cults around them.[21] The early Attic conquerors of Miletos allowed the worship of the Karian Sun-God there to be carried on by the old priests; and the Attic settlers of Ephesos in the same way adopted the neighbouring worship of the Lydian Goddess (who became the Artemis or “Great Diana” of the Ephesians), and retained the ministry of the attendant priests and eunuchs.[22] Smyrna was apparently not like these a mixed community, but one founded by Achaians from the Peloponnesos; but the genera] Ionic and Æolic religious atmosphere, set up by common sacrifices,[23] must have been represented in an epic brought forth in that region. The Karian civilization had at one time spread over a great part of the Ægean, including Delos and Cyprus.[24] Such a civilization must have affected that of the Greek conquerors, who only on that basis became civilized traders.[25]
It is not necessary to ask how far exactly the influence may have gone in the Iliad: the main point is that even at that stage of comparatively simple Hellenism the Asiatic environment, Karian or Phoenician, counted for something, whether in cosmogony or in furthering the process of God-grouping, or in conveying the cult of Cyprian Aphrodite,[26] or haply in lending some characteristics to Zeus and Apollo and Athênê,[27] an influence none the less real because the genius of the poet or poets of the Iliad has given to the whole Olympian group the artistic stamp of individuality which thenceforth distinguishes the Gods of Greece from all others. Indeed, the very creation of a graded hierarchy out of the independent local deities of Greece, the marrying of the once isolated Pelasgic Hêrê to Zeus, the subordination to him of the once isolated Athênê and Apollo—all this tells of the influence of a Semitic world in which each Baal had his wife, and in which the monarchic system developed on earth had been set up in heaven.[28] But soon the Asiatic influence becomes still more clearly recognizable. There is reason to hold with Schrader that the belief in a mildly blissful future state, as seen even in the Odyssey[29] and in the Theogony ascribed to Hesiod,[30] is “a new belief which is only to be understood in view of oriental tales and teaching.”[31] In the Theogony, again, the Semitic element increases,[32] Kronos being a Semitic figure;[33] while Semelê, if not Dionysos, appears to be no less so.[34] But we may further surmise that in Homer, to begin with, the conception of Okeanos, the earth-surrounding Ocean-stream, as the origin of all things,[35] comes from some Semitic source; and that Hesiod’s more complicated scheme of origins from Chaos is a further borrowing of oriental thought—both notions being found in ancient Babylonian lore, whence the Hebrews derived their combination of Chaos and Ocean in the first verses of Genesis.[36] It thus appears that the earlier oriental[37] influence upon Greek thought was in the direction of developing religion,[38] with only the germ of rationalism conveyed in the idea of an existence of matter before the Gods,[39] which we shall later find scientifically developed. But the case is obscure. Insofar as the Theogony, for instance, partly moralizes the more primitively savage myths,[40] it may be that it represents the spontaneous need of the more highly evolved race to give an acceptable meaning to divine tales which, coming from another race, have not a quite sacrosanct prescription, though the tendency is to accept them. On the other hand, it may have been a further foreign influence that gave the critical impulse.
“It is plain enough that Homer and Hesiod represent, both theologically and socially, the close of a long epoch, and not the youth of the Greek world, as some have supposed. The real signification of many myths is lost to them, and so is the import of most of the names and titles of the elder Gods, which are archaic and strange, while the subordinate personages generally have purely Greek names” (Professor Mahaffy, History of Classical Greek Literature, 1880, i, 17).