§ 9
The overthrow of the “free” political life of Athens was followed by a certain increase in intellectual activity, the result of throwing back the remaining store of energy on the life of the mind. By this time an almost open unbelief as to the current tales concerning the Gods would seem to have become general among educated people, the withdrawal of the old risk of impeachment by political factions being so far favourable to outspokenness. It is on record that the historian Ephoros (of Cumæ in Æolia: fl. 350 B.C.), who was a pupil of Isocrates, openly hinted in his work at his disbelief in the oracle of Apollo, and in fabulous traditions generally.[295] In other directions there were similar signs of freethought. The new schools of philosophy founded by Zeno the Stoic (fl. 280: d. 263 or 259) and Epicurus (341–270), whatever their defects, compare not ill with those of Plato and Aristotle, exhibiting greater ethical sanity and sincerity if less metaphysical subtlety. Of metaphysics there had been enough for the age: what it needed was a rational philosophy of life. But the loss of political freedom, although thus for a time turned to account, was fatal to continuous progress. The first great thinkers had all been free men in a politically free environment: the atmosphere of cowed subjection, especially after the advent of the Romans, could not breed their like; and originative energy of the higher order soon disappeared. Sane as was the moral philosophy of Epicurus, and austere as was that of Zeno, they are alike static or quietist,[296] the codes of a society seeking a regulating and sustaining principle rather than hopeful of new achievement or new truth. And the universal skepticism of Pyrrho has the same effect of suggesting that what is wanted is not progress, but balance. It is significant that he, who carried the Sokratic profession of Nescience to the typical extreme of doctrinal Nihilism, was made high-priest of his native town of Elis, and had statues erected in his honour.[297]
Considered as freethinkers, all three men tell at once of the critical and of the reactionary work done by the previous age. Pyrrho, the universal doubter, appears to have taken for granted, with the whole of his followers, such propositions as that some animals (not insects) are produced by parthenogenesis, that some live in the fire, and that the legend of the Phœnix is true.[298] Such credences stood for the arrest of biological science in the Sokratic age, with Aristotle, so often mistakenly, at work; while, on the other hand, the Sokratic skepticism visibly motives the play of systematic doubt on the dogmas men had learned to question. Zeno, again, was substantially a monotheist; Epicurus, adopting but not greatly developing the science of Demokritos,[299] turned the Gods into a far-off band of glorious spectres, untroubled by human needs, dwelling for ever in immortal calm, neither ruling nor caring to rule the world of men.[300] In coming to this surprising compromise, Epicurus, indeed, probably did not carry with him the whole intelligence even of his own school. His friend, the second Metrodoros of Lampsakos, seems to have been the most stringent of all the censors of Homer, wholly ignoring his namesake’s attempts to clear the bard of impiety. “He even advised men not to be ashamed to confess their utter ignorance of Homer, to the extent of not knowing whether Hector was a Greek or a Trojan.”[301] Such austerity towards myths can hardly have been compatible with the acceptance of the residuum of Epicurus. That, however, became the standing creed of the sect, and a fruitful theme of derision to its opponents. Doubtless the comfort of avoiding direct conflict with the popular beliefs had a good deal to do with the acceptance of the doctrine.
This strange retention of the theorem of the existence of anthropomorphic Gods, with a flat denial that they did anything in the universe, might be termed the great peculiarity of average ancient rationalism, were it not that what makes it at all intelligible for us is just the similar practice of modern non-Christian theists. The Gods of antiquity were non-creative, but strivers and meddlers and answerers of prayer; and ancient rationalism relieved them of their striving and meddling, leaving them no active or governing function whatever, but for the most part cherishing their phantasms. The God of modern Christendom had been at once a creator and a governor, ruling, meddling, punishing, rewarding, and hearing prayer; and modern theism, unable to take the atheistic or agnostic plunge, relieves him of all interference in things human or cosmic, but retains him as a creative abstraction who somehow set up “law,” whether or not he made all things out of nothing. The psychological process in the two cases seems to be the same—an erection of æsthetic habit into a philosophic dogma, and an accommodation of phrase to popular prejudice.
Whatever may have been the logical and psychological crudities of Epicureanism, however, it counted for much as a deliverance of men from superstitious fears; and nothing is more remarkable in the history of ancient philosophy than the affectionate reverence paid to the founder’s memory[302] on this score through whole centuries. The powerful Lucretius sounds his highest note of praise in telling how this Greek had first of all men freed human life from the crashing load of religion, daring to pass the flaming ramparts of the world, and by his victory putting men on an equality with heaven.[303] The laughter-loving Lucian two hundred years later grows gravely eloquent on the same theme.[304] And for generations the effect of the Epicurean check on orthodoxy is seen in the whole intellectual life of the Greek world, already predisposed in that direction.[305] The new schools of the Cynics and the Cyrenaics had alike shown the influence in their perfect freedom from all religious preoccupation, when they were not flatly dissenting from the popular beliefs. Antisthenes, the founder of the former school (fl. 400 B.C.), though a pupil of Sokrates, had been explicitly anti-polytheistic, and an opponent of anthropomorphism.[306] Aristippos of Cyrene, also a pupil of Socrates, who a little later founded the Hedonic or Cyrenaic sect, seems to have put theology entirely aside. One of the later adherents of the school, Theodoros, was like Diagoras labelled “the Atheist”[307] by reason of the directness of his opposition to religion; and in the Rome of Cicero he and Diagoras are the notorious atheists of history.[308] To Theodoros, who had a large following, is attributed an influence over the thought of Epicurus,[309] who, however, took the safer position of a verbal theism. The atheist is said to have been menaced by Athenian law in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, who protected him; and there is even a story that he was condemned to drink hemlock;[310] but he was not of the type that meets martyrdom, though he might go far to provoke it.[311] Roaming from court to court, he seems never to have stooped to flatter any of his entertainers. “You seem to me,” said the steward of Lysimachos of Thrace to him on one occasion, “to be the only man who ignores both Gods and kings.”[312]
In the same age the same freethinking temper is seen in Stilpo of Megara (fl. 307), of the school of Euclides, who is said to have been brought before the Areopagus for the offence of saying that the Pheidian statue of Athênê was “not a God,” and to have met the charge with the jest that she was in reality not a God but a Goddess; whereupon he was exiled.[313] The stories told of him make it clear that he was an unbeliever, usually careful not to betray himself. Euclides, too, with his optimistic pantheism, was clearly a heretic; though his doctrine that evil is non-ens[314] later became the creed of some Christians. Yet another professed atheist was the witty Bion of Borysthenes, pupil of Theodoros, of whom it is told, in a fashion familiar to our own time, that in sickness he grew pious through fear.[315] Among his positions was a protest or rather satire against the doctrine that the Gods punished children for the crimes of their fathers.[316] In the other schools, Speusippos (fl. 343), the nephew of Plato, leant to monotheism;[317] Strato of Lampsakos, the Peripatetic (fl. 290), called “the Naturalist,” taught sheer pantheism, anticipating Laplace in declaring that he had no need of the action of the Gods to account for the making of the world;[318] Dikaiarchos (fl. 326–287), another disciple of Aristotle, denied the existence of separate souls, and the possibility of foretelling the future;[319] and Aristo and Cleanthes, disciples of Zeno, varied likewise in the direction of pantheism; the latter’s monotheism, as expressed in his famous hymn, being one of several doctrines ascribed to him.[320]
Contemporary with Epicurus and Zeno and Pyrrho, too, was Evêmeros (Euhemerus), whose peculiar propaganda against Godism seems to imply theoretic atheism. As an atheist he was vilified in a manner familiar to modern ears, the Alexandrian poet Callimachus labelling him an “arrogant old man vomiting impious books.”[321] His lost work, of which only a few extracts remain, undertook to prove that all the Gods had been simply famous men, deified after death; the proof, however, being by way of a fiction about old inscriptions found in an imaginary island.[322] As above noted,[323] the idea may have been borrowed from skeptical Phoenicians, the principle having already been monotheistically applied by the Bible-making Jews,[324] though, on the other hand, it had been artistically and to all appearance uncritically acted on in the Homeric epopees. It may or may not then have been by way of deliberate or reasoning Evêmerism that certain early Greek and Roman deities were transformed, as we have seen, into heroes or hetairai.[325] In any case, the principle seems to have had considerable vogue in the later Hellenistic world; but with the effect rather of paving the way for new cults than of setting up scientific rationalism in place of the old ones. Quite a number of writers like Palaiphatos, without going so far as Evêmeros, sought to reduce myths to natural possibilities and events, by way of mediating between the credulous and the incredulous.[326] Their method is mostly the naïf one revived by the Abbé Banier in the eighteenth century of reducing marvels to verbal misconceptions. Thus for Palaiphatos the myth of Kerberos came from the facts that the city Trikarenos was commonly spoken of as a beautiful and great dog; and that Geryon, who lived there, had great dogs called Kerberoi; Actæon was “devoured by his dogs” in the sense that he neglected his affairs and wasted his time in hunting; the Amazons were shaved men, clad as were the women in Thrace, and so on.[327] Palaiphatos and the Herakleitos who also wrote De Incredibilibus agree that Pasiphae’s bull was a man named Tauros; and the latter writer similarly explains that Scylla was a beautiful hetaira with avaricious hangers-on, and that the harpies were ladies of the same profession. If the method seems childish, it is to be remembered that as regards the explanation of supernatural events it was adhered to by German theologians of a century ago; and that its credulity in incredulity is still to be seen in the current view that every narrative in the sacred books is to be taken as necessarily standing for a fact of some kind.
One of the inferrible effects of the Evêmerist method was to facilitate for the time the adoption of the Egyptian and eastern usage of deifying kings. It has been plausibly argued that this practice stands not so much for superstition as for skepticism, its opponents being precisely the orthodox believers, and its promoters those who had learned to doubt the actuality of the traditional Gods. Evêmerism would clinch such a tendency; and it is noteworthy that Evêmeros lived at the court of Kassander (319–296 B.C.) in a period in which every remaining member of the family of the deified Alexander had perished, mostly by violence; while the contemporary Ptolemy I of Egypt received the title of Sotêr, “Saviour,” from the people of Rhodes.[328] It is to be observed, however, that while in the next generation Antiochus I of Syria received the same title, and his successor Antiochus II that of Theos, “God,” the usage passes away; Ptolemy III being named merely Evergetês, “the Benefactor” (of the priests), and even Antiochus III only “the Great.” Superstition was not to be ousted by a political exploitation of its machinery.[329]
In Athens the democracy, restored in a subordinate form by Kassander’s opponent, Demetrius Poliorkêtes (307 B.C.), actually tried to put down the philosophic schools, all of which, but the Aristotelian in particular, were anti-democratic, and doubtless also comparatively irreligious. Epicurus and some of his antagonists were exiled within a year of his opening his school (306 B.C.); but the law was repealed in the following year.[330] Theophrastos, the head of the Aristotelian school, was indicted in the old fashion for impiety, which seems to have consisted in denouncing animal sacrifice.[331] These repressive attempts, however, failed; and no others followed at Athens in that era; though in the next century the Epicureans seem to have been expelled from Lythos in Crete and from Messenê in the Peloponnesos, nominally for their atheism, in reality probably on political grounds.[332] Thus Zeno was free to publish a treatise in which, besides far out-going Plato in schemes for dragooning the citizens into an ideal life, he proposed a State without temples or statues of the Gods or law courts or gymnasia.[333] In the same age there is trace of “an interesting case of rationalism even in the Delphic oracle.”[334] The people of the island of Astypalaia, plagued by hares or rabbits, solemnly consulted the oracle, which briefly advised them to keep dogs and take to hunting. About the same time we find Lachares, temporarily despot at Athens, plundering the shrine of Pallas of its gold.[335] Even in the general public there must have been a strain of surviving rationalism; for among the fragments of Menander (fl. 300), who, in general, seems to have leant to a well-bred orthodoxy,[336] there are some speeches savouring of skepticism and pantheism.[337]
It was in keeping with this general but mostly placid and non-polemic latitudinarianism that the New Academy, the second birth, or rather transformation, of the Platonic school, in the hands of Arkesilaos and the great Carneades (213–129), and later of the Carthaginian Clitomachos, should be marked by that species of skepticism thence called Academic—a skepticism which exposed the doubtfulness of current religious beliefs without going the Pyrrhonian length of denying that any beliefs could be proved, or even denying the existence of the Gods.
For the arguments of Carneades against the Stoic doctrine of immortality see Cicero, De natura Deorum, iii, 12, 17; and for his argument against theism see Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. ix, 172, 183. Mr. Benn pronounces this criticism of theology “the most destructive that has ever appeared, the armoury whence religious skepticism ever since has been supplied” (The Philosophy of Greece, etc., p. 258). This seems an over-statement. But it is just to say, as does Mr. Whittaker (Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets, 1911, p. 60; cp. p. 86), that “there has never been a more drastic attack than that of Carneades, which furnished Cicero with the materials for his second book, On Divination”; and, as does Prof. Martha (Études Morales sur l’antiquité, 1889, p. 77), that no philosophic or religious school has been able to ignore the problems which Carneades raised.
As against the essentially uncritical Stoics, the criticism of Carneades is sane and sound; and he has been termed by judicious moderns “the greatest skeptical mind of antiquity”[338] and “the Bayle of Antiquity”;[339] though he seems to have written nothing.[340] There is such a concurrence of testimony as to the victorious power of his oratory and the invincible skill of his dialectic[341] that he must be reckoned one of the great intellectual and rationalizing forces of his day, triumphing as he did in the two diverse arenas of Greece and Rome. His disciple and successor Clitomachos said of him, with Cicero’s assent, that he had achieved a labour of Hercules “in liberating our souls as it were of a fierce monster, credulity, conjecture, rash belief.”[342] He was, in short, a mighty antagonist of thoughtless beliefs, clearing the ground for a rational life; and the fact that he was chosen with Diogenes the Peripatetic and Critolaos the Stoic to go to Rome to plead the cause of ruined Athens, mulcted in an enormous fine, proved that he was held in high honour at home. Athens, in short, was not at this stage “too superstitious.” Unreasoning faith was largely discredited by philosophy.
On this basis, in a healthy environment, science and energy might have reared a constructive rationalism; and for a time astronomy, in the hands of Aristarchos of Samos (third century B.C.), Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the second keeper of the great Alexandrian library (2nd cent. B.C.), and above all of Hipparchos of Nikaia, who did most of his work in the island of Rhodes, was carried to a height of mastery which could not be maintained, and was re-attained only in modern times.[343] Thus much could be accomplished by “endowment of research” as practised by the Ptolemies at Alexandria; and after science had declined with the decline of their polity, and still further under Roman rule, the new cosmopolitanism of the second century of the empire reverted to the principle of intelligent evocation, producing under the Antonines the “Second” School of Alexandria.
But the social conditions remained fundamentally bad; and the earlier greatness was never recovered. “History records not one astronomer of note in the three centuries between Hipparchos and Ptolemy”; and Ptolemy (fl. 140 C.E.) not only retrograded into astronomical error, but elaborated on oriental lines a baseless fabric of astrology.[344] Other science mostly decayed likewise. The Greek world, already led to lower intellectual levels by the sudden ease and wealth opened up to it through the conquests of Alexander and the rule of his successors, was cast still lower by the Roman conquest. Pliny, extolling Hipparchos with little comprehension of his work, must needs pronounce him to have “dared a thing displeasing to God” in numbering the stars for posterity.[345] In the air of imperialism, stirred by no other, original thought could not arise; and the mass of the Greek-speaking populations, rich and poor, gravitated to the level of the intellectual[346] and emotional life of more or less well-fed slaves. In this society there rapidly multiplied private religious associations—thiasoi, eranoi, orgeones—in which men and women, denied political life, found new bonds of union and grounds of division in cultivating worships, mostly oriental, which stimulated the religious sense and sentiment.[347]
Such was the soil in which Christianity took root and flourished; while philosophy, after the freethinking epoch following on the fall of Athenian power, gradually reverted to one or other form of mystical theism or theosophy, of which the most successful was the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria.[348] When the theosophic Julian rejoiced that Epicureanism had disappeared,[349] he was exulting in a symptom of the intellectual decline that made possible the triumph of the faith he most opposed. Christianity furthered a decadence thus begun under the auspices of pagan imperialism; and “the fifth century of the Christian era witnessed an almost total extinction of the sciences in Alexandria”[350]—an admission which disposes of the dispute as to the guilt of the Arabs in destroying the great library.
Here and there, through the centuries, the old intellectual flame burns whitely enough: the noble figure of Epictetus in the first century of the new era, and that of the brilliant Lucian in the second, in their widely different ways remind us that the evolved faculty was still there if the circumstances had been such as to evoke it. Menippos in the first century B.C. had played a similar part to that of Lucian, in whose freethinking dialogues he so often figures; but with less of subtlety and intellectuality. Lucian’s was indeed a mind of the rarest lucidity; and the argumentation of his dialogue Zeus Tragædos covers every one of the main aspects of the theistic problem. There is no dubiety as to his atheistic conclusion, which is smilingly implicit in the reminder he puts in the mouth of Hermes, that, though a few men may adopt the atheistic view, “there will always be plenty of others who think the contrary—the majority of the Greeks, the ignorant many, the populace, and all the barbarians.” But the moral doctrine of Epictetus is one of endurance and resignation; and the almost unvarying raillery of Lucian, making mere perpetual sport of the now moribund Olympian Gods, was hardly better fitted than the all-round skepticism of the school of Sextus Empiricus to inspire positive and progressive thinking.
This latter school, described by Cicero as dispersed and extinct in his day,[351] appears to have been revived in the first century by Ænesidemos, who taught at Alexandria.[352] It seems to have been through him in particular that the Pyrrhonic system took the clear-cut form in which it is presented at the close of the second century by the accomplished Sextus “Empiricus”—that is, the empirical (i.e., experiential) physician,[353] who lived at Alexandria and Athens (fl. 175–205 C.E.). As a whole, the school continued to discredit dogmatism without promoting knowledge. Sextus, it is true, strikes acutely and systematically at ill-founded beliefs, and so makes for reason;[354] but, like the whole Pyrrhonian school, he has no idea of a method which shall reach sounder conclusions. As the Stoics had inculcated the control of the passions as such, so the skeptics undertook to make men rise above the prejudices and presuppositions which swayed them no less blindly than ever did their passions. But Sextus follows a purely skeptical method, never rising from the destruction of false beliefs to the establishment of true. His aim is ataraxia, a philosophic calm of non-belief in any dogmatic affirmation beyond the positing of phenomena as such; and while such an attitude is beneficently exclusive of all fanaticism, it unfortunately never makes any impression on the more intolerant fanatic, who is shaken only by giving him a measure of critical truth in place of his error. And as Sextus addressed himself to the students of philosophy, not to the simple believers in the Gods, he had no wide influence.[355] Avowedly accepting the normal view of moral obligations while rejecting dogmatic theories of their basis, the doctrine of the strict skeptics had the effect, from Pyrrho onwards, of giving the same acceptance to the common religion, merely rejecting the philosophic pretence of justifying it. Taken by themselves, the arguments against current theism in the third book of the Hypotyposes[356] are unanswerable; but, when bracketed with other arguments against the ordinary belief in causation, they had the effect of leaving theism on a par with that belief. Against religious beliefs in particular, therefore, they had no wide destructive effect.
Lucian, again, thought soundly and sincerely on life; his praise of the men whose memories he respected, as Epicurus and Demonax (if the Life of Demonax attributed to him be really his), is grave and heartfelt; and his ridicule of the discredited Gods was perfectly right so far as it went. It is certain that the unbelievers and the skeptics alike held their own with the believers in the matter of right living.[357] In the period of declining pagan belief, the maxim that superstition was a good thing for the people must have wrought a quantity and a kind of corruption that no amount of ridicule of religion could ever approach. Polybius (fl. 150 B.C.) agrees with his complacent Roman masters that their greatness is largely due to the carefully cultivated superstition of their populace, and charges with rashness and folly those who would uproot the growth;[358] and Strabo, writing under Tiberius—unless it be a later interpolator of his work—confidently lays down the same principle of governmental deceit,[359] though in an apparently quite genuine passage he vehemently protests the incredibility of the traditional tales about Apollo.[360] So far had the doctrine evolved since Plato preached it. But to countervail it there needed more than a ridicule which after all reached only the class who had already cast off the beliefs derided, leaving the multitude unenlightened. The lack of the needed machinery of enlightenment was, of course, part of the general failure of the Græco-Roman civilization; and no one man’s efforts could have availed, even if any man of the age could have grasped the whole situation. Rather the principle of esoteric enlightenment, the ideal of secret knowledge, took stronger hold as the mass grew more and more comprehensively superstitious. Even at the beginning of the Christian era the view that Homer’s deities were allegorical beings was freshly propounded in the writings of Herakleides and Cornutus (Phornutus); but it served only as a kind of mystical Gnosis, on all fours with Christian Gnosticism, and was finally taken up by Neo-Platonists, who were no nearer rationalism for adopting it.[361]
So with the rationalism to which we have so many uneasy or hostile allusions in Plutarch. We find him resenting the scoffs of Epicureans at the doctrine of Providence, and recoiling from the “abyss of impiety”[362] opened up by those who say that “Aphrodite is simply desire, and Hermes eloquence, and the Muses the arts and sciences, and Athênê wisdom, and Dionysos merely wine, Hephaistos fire, and Dêmêtêr corn”;[363] and in his essay On Superstition he regretfully recognizes the existence of many rational atheists, confessing that their state of mind is better than that of the superstitious who abound around him, with their “impure purifications and unclean cleansings,” their barbaric rites, and their evil Gods. But the unbelievers, with their keen contempt for popular folly, availed as little against it as Plutarch himself, with his doctrine of a just mean. The one effectual cure would have been widened knowledge; and of such an evolution the social conditions did not permit.
To return to a state of admiration for the total outcome of Greek thought, then, it is necessary to pass from the standpoint of simple analysis to that of comparison. It is in contrast with the relatively slight achievement of the other ancient civilizations that the Greek, at its height, still stands out for posterity as a wonderful growth. That which, tried by the test of ideals, is as a whole only one more tragic chapter in the record of human frustration, yet contains within it light and leading as well as warning; and for long ages it was as a lost Paradise to a darkened world. It has been not untruly said that “the Greek spirit is immortal, because it was free”:[364] free not as science can now conceive freedom, but in contrast with the spiritual bondage of Jewry and Egypt, the half-barbaric tradition of imperial Babylon, and the short flight of mental life in Rome. Above all, it was ever in virtue of the freedom that the high things were accomplished; and it was ever the falling away from freedom, the tyranny either of common ignorance or of mindless power, that wrought decadence. There is a danger, too, of injustice in comparing Athens with later States. When a high authority pronounces that “the religious views of the Demos were of the narrowest kind,”[365] he is not to be gainsaid; but the further verdict that “hardly any people has sinned more heavily against the liberty of science” is unduly lenient to Christian civilization. The heaviest sins of that against science, indeed, lie at the door of the Catholic Church; but to make that an exoneration of the modern “peoples” as against the ancient would be to load the scales. And even apart from the Catholic Church, which practically suppressed all science for a thousand years, the attitude of Protestant leaders and Protestant peoples, from Luther down to the second half of the nineteenth century, has been one of hatred and persecution towards all science that clashed with the sacred books.[366] In the Greek world there was more scientific discussion in the three hundred years down to Epicurus than took place in the whole of Christian Europe in thirteen hundred; and the amount of actual violence used towards innovators in the pagan period, though lamentable enough, was trifling in comparison with that recorded in Christian history, to say nothing of the frightful annals of witch-burning, to which there is no parallel in civilized heathen history. The critic, too, goes on to admit that, while “Sokrates, Anaxagoras, and Aristotle fell victims in different degrees to the bigotry of the populace,” “of course their offence was political rather than religious. They were condemned not as heretics, but as innovators in the state religion.” And, as we have seen, all three of the men named taught in freedom for many years till political faction turned popular bigotry against them. The true measure of Athenian narrowness is not to be reached, therefore, without keeping in view the long series of modern outrages and maledictions against the makers and introducers of new machinery, and the multitude of such episodes as the treatment of Priestley in Christian Birmingham, little more than a century ago. On a full comparison the Greeks come out not ill.
It was, in fact, impossible that the Greeks should either stifle or persecute science or freethought as it was either stifled or persecuted by ancient Jews (who had almost no science by reason of their theology) or by modern Christians, simply because the Greeks had no anti-scientific hieratic literature. It remains profoundly significant for science that the ancient civilization which on the smallest area evolved the most admirable life, which most completely transcended all the sources from which it originally drew, and left a record by which men are still charmed and taught, was a civilization as nearly as might be without Sacred Books, without an organized priesthood, and with the largest measure of democratic freedom that the ancient world ever saw.
[1] Cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. 205, 207, 212. [↑]
[2] Cp. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 533. [↑]
[3] Cp. K. O. Müller, Literature of Ancient Greece, ed. 1847, p. 77. [↑]
[4] Duncker, Gesch. des Alterth. 2 Aufl. iii, 209–10, 252–54, 319 sq.; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii, 181, 365, 369, 377, 380, 535 (see also ii, 100, 102, 105, 106, 115 note, etc.); W. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Lit. 3te Aufl. p. 12; Gruppe, Die griech. Culte und Mythen, 1887, p. 165 sq. [↑]
[5] E. Curtius, Griech. Gesch. i, 28, 29, 35, 40, 41, 101, 203, etc.; Meyer, ii, 369. [↑]
[6] See the able and learned essay of S. Reinach, Le Mirage Orientate, reprinted from L’Anthropologie, 1893. I do not find that its arguments affect any of the positions here taken up. See pp. 40–41. [↑]
[7] Meyer, ii. 369; Benn, The Philosophy of Greece, 1898, p. 42. [↑]
[8] Cp. Bury, History of Greece, ed. 1906, pp. vi, 10, 27, 32–34, 40, etc.; Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, 1907, ch. ix; Maisch, Manual of Greek Antiquities, Eng. tr. §§ 8, 9, 10, 60; H. R. Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece, 1901, pp. 31, 32. [↑]
[9] Cp. K. O. Müller, Hist. of the Doric Race, Eng. tr. 1830, i, 8–10; Busolt, Griech. Gesch. 1885, i, 33; Grote, Hist. of Greece, 10-vol. ed. 1888, iii, 3–5, 35–44; Duncker, iii, 136, n.; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, i, 299–310 (§§ 250–58); E. Curtius, i, 29; Schömann, Griech. Alterthümer, as cited, i, 2–3, 89; Burrows, ch. ix. [↑]
[10] Cp. Meyer, ii, 97; and his art. “Baal” in Roscher’s Ausführl. Lex. Mythol. i, 2867. [↑]
[11] The fallacy of this tradition, as commonly put, was well shown by Renouvier long ago—Manuel de philosophie ancienne, 1844, i, 3–13. Cp. Ritter, as cited below. [↑]
[12] Cp. on one side, Ritter, Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. i, 151; Renan, Études d’hist. religieuse, pp. 47–48; Zeller, Hist. of Greek Philos. Eng. tr. 1881, i, 43–49; and on the other, Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. Eng. tr. i, 31, and the weighty criticism of Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 126–27 (Eng. tr. i, 9, note 5). [↑]
[13] Cp. Curtius, i, 125; Bury, introd. and ch. i. [↑]
[15] As to the primary mixture of “Pelasgians” and Hellenes, cp. Busolt, i, 27–32; Curtius, i, 27; Schömann, i, 3–4; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, ed. 1839, i, 51–52, 116. K. O. Müller (Doric Race, Eng. tr. i, 10) and Thirlwall, who follows him (i, 45–47), decide that the Thracians cannot have been very different from the Hellenes in dialect, else they could not have influenced the latter as they did. This position is clearly untenable, whatever may have been the ethnological facts. It would entirely negate the possibility of reaction between Greeks, Kelts, Egyptians, Semites, Romans, Persians, and Hindus. [↑]
[16] Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912, p. 59. [↑]
[17] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. ii, 583. [↑]
[18] The question is discussed at some length in the author’s Evolution of States, 1912. [↑]
[19] Lit. of Anc. Greece, pp. 41–47. The discussion of the Homeric problem is, of course, alien to the present inquiry. [↑]
[20] Introd. to Scientif. Mythol. Eng. tr. pp. 180, 181, 291. Cp. Curtius, i, 126. [↑]
[21] Cp. Curtius, i, 107, as to the absence in Homer of any distinction between Greeks and barbarians; and Grote, 10-vol. ed. 1888, iii, 37–38, as to the same feature in Archilochos. [↑]
[22] Duncker, Gesch. des Alt., as cited, iii. 209–10; pp. 257, 319 sq. Cp. K. O. Müller, as last cited, pp. 181, 193; Curtius, i, 43–49, 53, 54, 107, 365, 373, 377, etc.; Grote, iii, 39–41; and Meyer, ii, 104. [↑]
[23] Duncker, iii, 214; Curtius, i, 155, 121; Grote, iii, 279–80. [↑]
[24] Busolt, Griech. Gesch. 1885, i, 171–72. Cp. pp. 32–34; and Curtius, i, 42. [↑]
[25] On the general question cp. Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, pp. 151 ff., 157, 158 ff., 656 ff., 672 ff. [↑]
[26] Preller, Griech. Mythol. 2 Aufl. i, 260; Tiele, Outlines, p. 211; R. Brown, Jr., Semit. Influ. in Hellenic Mythol. 1898, p. 130; Murray, Hist. of Anc. Greek Lit. p. 35; H. R. Hall, Oldest Civilization of Greece, 1901, p. 290. [↑]
[27] See Tiele, Outlines, pp. 210, 212. Cp., again, Curtius, Griech. Gesch. i, 95, as to the probability that the “twelve Gods” were adjusted to the confederations of twelve cities; and again p. 126. [↑]
[28] “Even the title ‘king’ (Αναξ) seems to have been borrowed by the Greek from Phrygian.... It is expressly recorded that τύραννος is a Lydian word. Βασιλεύς (‘king’) resists all attempts to explain it as a purely Greek formation, and the termination assimilates it to certain Phrygian words.” (Prof. Ramsay, in Encyc. Brit. art. Phrygia). In this connection note the number of names containing Anax (Anaximenes, Anaximandros, Anaxagoras, etc.) among the Ionian Greeks. [↑]
[30] It is now agreed that this is merely a guess. The document, further, has been redacted and interpolated. [↑]
[31] Prehist. Antiq. of the Aryan Peoples, Eng. tr. p. 423. Wilamowitz holds that the verses Od. xi, 566–631, are interpolations made later than 600 B.C. [↑]
[32] Tiele, Outlines, p. 209; Preller, p. 263. [↑]
[33] Meyer says on the contrary (Gesch. des Alt. ii, 103, Anm.) that “Kronos is certainly a Greek figure”; but he cannot be supposed to dispute that the Greek Kronos cult is grafted on a Semitic one. [↑]
[34] Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 54, 181. Cp. Cox, Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, p. 260, note. It has not, however, been noted in the discussions on Semelê that Semlje is the Slavic name for the Earth as Goddess. Ranke, History of Servia, Eng. tr. p. 43. [↑]
[35] Iliad, xiv, 201, 302. [↑]
[36] Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 367 sq.; Ancient Empires, p. 158. Note p. 387 in the Lectures as to the Assyrian influence, and p. 391 as to the Homeric notion in particular. Cp. W. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Literatur, § 68. [↑]
[37] It is unnecessary to examine here the view of Herodotos that many of the Greek cults were borrowed from Egypt. Herodotos reasoned from analogies, with no exact historical knowledge. But cp. Renouvier, Manuel, i, 67, as to probable Egyptian influence. [↑]
[38] Cp. Meyer, ii, §§ 453–60, as to the eastern initiative of Orphic theology. [↑]
[39] It is noteworthy that the traditional doctrine associated with the name of Orpheus included a similar materialistic theory of the beginning of things. Athenagoras, Apol. c. 19. Cp. Renouvier, Manuel de philos. anc. i, 69–72; and Meyer, ii, 743. [↑]
[40] Cp. Meyer, ii, 726. As to the oriental elements in Hesiod see further Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, 1887, pp. 577, 587, 589, 593. [↑]
[41] Cp. however, Bury (Hist. of Greece, pp. 6, 65), who assumes that the Greeks brought the hexameter with them to Hellas. Contrast Murray, Four Stages, p. 61. [↑]
[42] Mahaffy, History of Classical Greek Literature, 1880, i, 15. [↑]
[43] Id. p. 16. Cp. W. Christ, as cited, p. 79. [↑]
[46] Od. vi, 240; Il. v, 185. [↑]
[48] In Od. xiv, 18, αντίθεοι means not “opposed to the Gods,” but “God-like,” in the ordinary Homeric sense of noble-looking or richly attired, as men in the presence of the Gods. Cp. vi, 241. Yet a Scholiast on a former passage took it in the sense of God-opposing. Clarke’s ed. in loc. Liddell and Scott give no use of ἄθεος, in the sense of denying the Gods, before Plato (Apol. 26 C. etc.), or in the sense of ungodly before Pindar (P. iv, 288) and Æschylus (Eumen. 151). For Sophocles it has the force of “God-forsaken”—Oedip. Tyr. 254 (245), 661 (640), 1360 (1326). Cp. Electra, 1181 (1162). But already before Plato we find the terms ἄπιστος and ἄθεος, “faithless” or “infidel” and “atheist,” used as terms of moral aspersion, quite in the Christian manner (Euripides, Helena, 1147), where there is no question of incredulity. [↑]
[49] Cp. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2nd ed. i, 14–15. and cit. there from Professor Jebb. [↑]
[50] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, ii, 724–27; Grote, as cited, i, 279–81. [↑]
[52] The tradition is confused. Stesichoros is said first to have aspersed Helen, whereupon she, as Goddess, struck him with blindness: thereafter he published a retractation, in which he declared that she had never been at Troy, an eidolon or phantasm taking her name; and on this his sight was restored. We can but divine through the legend the probable reality, the documents being lost. See Grote, as cited, for the details. For the eulogies of Stesichoros by ancient writers, see Girard, Sentiment religieux en Grèce, 1869, pp. 175–79. [↑]
[53] Cp. Meyer (1901), iii. § 244. [↑]
[56] He dedicated statues to Zeus, Apollo, and Hermes. Pausanias, ix, 16, 17. [↑]
[58] A ruler of Libyan stock, and so led by old Libyan connections to make friends with Greeks. He reigned over fifty years, and the Greek connection grew very close. Curtius, i, 344–45. Cp. Grote, i, 144–55. [↑]
[59] Grote, 10-vol. ed. 1888, i, 307, 326, 329, 413. Cp. i, 27–30; ii, 52; iii, 39–41, etc. [↑]
[60] K. O. Müller, Introd. to Mythology, p. 192. [↑]
[61] “Then one [of the Persians] who before had in nowise believed in [or, recognized the existence of] the Gods, offered prayer and supplication, doing obeisance to Earth and Heaven” (Persae, 497–99). [↑]
[62] Agamemnon, 370–372. This is commonly supposed to be a reference to Diagoras the Melian (below, p. 159). [↑]
[63] Agam. 170–72 (160–62). [↑]
[64] So Whittaker, Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets, 1911, pp. 42–43. [↑]
[65] So Buckley, in Bohn trans. of Æschylus, p. 100. He characterizes as a “skeptical formula” the phrase “Zeus, whoever he may be”; but goes on to show that such formulas were grounded on the Semitic notion that the true name of God was concealed from man. [↑]
[66] Grote, ed. 1888, vii, 8–21. See the whole exposition of the exceptionally interesting 67th chapter. [↑]
[67] Cp. Meyer, ii, 431; K. O. Müller, Introd. to Mythol. pp. 189–92; Duncker, p. 340; Curtius, i, 384; Thirlwall, i, 200–203; Burckhardt, Griech. Culturgesch. 1898, ii. 19. As to the ancient beginnings of a priestly organization, see Curtius, i, 92–94, 97. As to the effects of its absence, see Heeren, Polit. Hist. of Anc. Greece, Eng. tr. 1829, pp. 59–63; Burckhardt, as cited, ii, 31–32; Meyer, as last cited; Zeller, Philos. der Griechen, 3te Aufl. i, 44 sq. Lange’s criticism of Zeller’s statement (Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 124–26, note 2) practically concedes the proposition. The influence of a few powerful priestly families is not denied. The point is that they remained isolated. [↑]
[68] Cp. K. O. MÜller, Introd. to Mythol. p. 195; Curtius, i, 387, 389, 392; Duncker, iii, 519–21, 563; Thirlwall, i, 204; Barthélemy St. Hilaire, préf. to tr. of Metaphys. of Aristotle, p. 14. Professor Gilbert Murray, noting that Homer and Hesiod treated the Gods as elements of romance, or as facts to be catalogued, asks: “Where is the literature of religion: the literature which treated the Gods as Gods? It must,” he adds, “have existed”; and he holds that we “can see that the religious writings were both early and multitudinous” (Hist. of Anc. Greek Lit. p. 62; cp. Meyer and Mahaffy as cited above, pp. 125–26. “Writings” is not here to be taken literally; the early hymns were unwritten). The priestly hymns and oracles and mystery-rituals in question were never collected; but perhaps we may form some idea of their nature from the “Homeridian” and Orphic hymns to the Gods, and those of the Alexandrian antiquary Callimachus. It is further to be inferred that they enter into the Hesiodic Theogony. (Decharme, p. 3, citing Bergk.) [↑]
[69] Meyer, ii, 426; Curtius, i, 390–91, 417; Thirlwall, i, 204; Grote, i, 48–49. [↑]
[71] Cp. Curtius, i, 392–400, 416; Duncker, iii, 529. [↑]
[72] Curtius, i, 112; Meyer, ii, 366. [↑]
[73] Curtius, i, 201, 204, 205, 381; Grote, iii, 5; Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 23 (Eng. tr. i, 23). [↑]
[74] Herodotos, i, 170; Diogenes Laërtius, Thales, ch. i. [↑]
[75] On the essentially anti-religious rationalism of the whole Ionian movement, cp. Meyer, ii, 753–57. [↑]
[76] The First Philosophers of Greece, by A. Fairbanks, 1898, pp. 2, 3, 6. This compilation usefully supplies a revised text of the ancient philosophic fragments, with a translation of these and of the passages on the early thinkers by the later, and by the epitomists. A good conspectus of the remains of the early Greek thinkers is supplied also in Grote’s Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates, ch. i; and a valuable critical analysis of the sources in Prof. J. Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy. [↑]
[77] Cp. Lange, Gesch. des Mat. i, 126 (Eng. tr. i, 8, n.). Mr. Benn (The Greek Philosophers, i, 8) and Prof. Decharme (p. 39) seem to read this as a profession of belief in deities in the ordinary sense. But cp. R. W. Mackay, The Progress of the Intellect, 1850, i, 338. Burnet (ch. i, § 11) doubts the authenticity of this saying, but thinks it “extremely probable that Thales did say that the magnet and amber had souls.” [↑]
[78] Mackay, as cited, p. 331. [↑]
[80] Diogenes Laërtius, Thales, ch. 9. [↑]
[83] Cp. Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 2nd. ed. introd. § 3. To Thales is ascribed by the Greeks the “discovery” of the constellation Ursus Major. Diog. ch. 2. As it was called “Phoenike” by the Greeks, his knowledge would be of Phoenician derivation. Cp. Humboldt, Kosmos, Bohn tr. iii, 160. [↑]
[84] Diog. Laërt. ch. 3. On this cp. Burnet, introd. § 6. [↑]
[85] Herod. i, 170. Cp. Diog. Laërt. ch. 3. [↑]
[88] Fairbanks, pp. 9–10. Mr. Benn (Greek Philosophers, i, 9) decides that the early philosophers, while realizing that ex nihilo nihil fit, had not grasped the complementary truth that nothing can be annihilated. But even if the teaching ascribed to Anaximandros be set aside as contradictory (since he spoke of generation and destruction within the infinite), we have the statement of Diogenes Laërtius (bk. ix, ch. 9, § 57) that Diogenes of Apollonia, pupil of Anaximenes, gave the full Lucretian formula. [↑]
[89] Diogenes Laërtius, however (ii, 2), makes him agree with Thales. [↑]
[90] Fairbanks, pp. 9–16. Diogenes makes him the inventor of the gnomon and of the first map and globe, as well as a maker of clocks. Cp. Grote, i, 330, note. [↑]
[91] See below, p. 158, as to Demokritos’ statement concerning the Eastern currency of scientific views which, when put by Anaxagoras, scandalized the Greeks. [↑]
[92] Fairbanks, pp. 17–22. [↑]
[93] See Windelband, Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. 1900, p. 25, citing Diels and Wilamowitz-Möllendorf. Cp. Burnet, introd. § 14. [↑]
[94] It will be observed that Mr. Cornford’s book, though somewhat loosely speculative is very freshly suggestive. It is well worth study, alongside of the work of Prof. Burnet, by those interested in the scientific presentation of the evolution of thought. [↑]
[95] Diog. Laërt. ix, 19; Fairbanks, p. 76. [↑]
[96] Herodotos, i, 163–67; Grote, iii, 421; Meyer, ii, § 438. [↑]
[97] Cp. Guillaume Bréton, Essai sur la poésie philosophique en Grèce, 1882, pp. 23–25. The life period of Xenophanes is still uncertain. Meyer (ii, § 466) and Windelband (Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. p. 47) still adhere to the chronology which puts him in the century 570–470, making him a young man at the foundation of Elea. [↑]
[98] Cousin, developed by G. Bréton, work cited, p. 31 sq., traces Xenophanes’s doctrine of the unity of things to the school of Pythagoras. It clearly had antecedents. But Xenophanes is recorded to have argued against Pythagoras as well as Thales and Epimenides (Diog. Laërt. ix, 2, §§ 18, 20). [↑]
[99] Metaphysics, i, 5; cp. Fairbanks, pp. 79–80. [↑]
[100] One of several so entitled in that age. Cp. Burnet, introd. § 7. [↑]
[101] Metaph., as cited; Plato, Soph. 242 D. [↑]
[102] Long fragment in Athenæus, xi, 7; Burnet, p. 130. [↑]
[105] Fairbanks, p. 67, Fr. 5, 6; Clem. Alex. Stromata, bk. v, Wilson’s tr. ii, 285–86. Cp. bk. vii, c. 4. [↑]
[107] Cicero, De divinatione, i, 3, 5; Aetius, De placitis reliquiæ, in Fairbanks, p. 85. [↑]
[108] Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii, 23, § 27. A similar saying is attributed to Herakleitos, on slight authority (Fairbanks, p. 54). [↑]
[109] Cicero, Academica, ii, 39; Lactantius, Div. Inst. iii, 23. Anaxagoras and Demokritos held the same view. Diog. Laërt, bk. ii, ch. iii, iv (§ 8); Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosoph. ii, 25. [↑]
[110] Cp. Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, i, 340. [↑]
[111] Diog. Laërt. in life of Pyrrho, bk. ix, ch. xi, 8 (§ 72). The passage, however, is uncertain. See Fairbanks, p. 70. [↑]
[112] Fairbanks. Fr. 1. Fairbanks translates with Zeller: “The whole [of God].” Grote: “The whole Kosmos, or the whole God.” It should be noted that the original in Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. ix, 144) is given without the name of Xenophanes, and the ascription is modern. [↑]
[113] Grote, as last cited, p. 18. [↑]
[114] Fairbanks, Fr. 19. In Athenæus, x, 413. [↑]
[115] Polybius, iv, 40; Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, viii, 126; Fairbanks, pp. 25, 27; Frag. 4, 14. Cp. 92, 111, 113. [↑]
[116] Diog. Laërt. ix, i, 2. [↑]
[119] Id. Frag. 43, 44, 46, 62. [↑]
[120] Diog. Laërt. last cited. This saying is by some ascribed to the later Herakleides (see Fairbanks, Fr. 119 and note); but it does not seem to be in his vein, which is wholly pro-Homeric. [↑]
[121] Clem. Alex. Protrept. ch. 2, Wilson’s tr. p. 41. The passage is obscure, but Mr. Fairbanks’s translation (Fr. 127) is excessively so. [↑]
[122] Clemens, as cited, p.32; Fairbanks, Fr. 124, 125, 130. Cp. Burnet, p. 139. [↑]
[124] Cp. Burnet, pp. 175–90. [↑]
[125] Theaetetus, 180 D. See good estimates of Parmenides in Benn’s Greek Philosophers, i, 17–19, and Philosophy of Greece in Relation to the Character of its People, pp. 83–95; in J. A. Symonds’s Studies of the Greek Poets, 3rd ed. 1893, vol. i, ch. 6; and in Zeller, i, 580 sq. [↑]
[126] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 26. [↑]
[127] Mr. Benn finally gives very high praise to Melissos (Philos. of Greece, pp. 91–92); as does Prof. Burnet (Early Gr. Philos. p. 378). He held strongly by the Ionian conception of the eternity of matter. Fairbanks, p. 125. [↑]
[128] Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, ch. iv, 3 (§ 24). [↑]
[129] Diog. Laërt. ix, 3 (§ 21). [↑]
[130] As to this see Windelband, Hist. Anc. Philos. pp. 91–92. [↑]
[131] Cp. Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, i. 340. [↑]
[132] “The difference between the Ionians and Eleatæ was this: the former endeavoured to trace an idea among phenomena by aid of observation; the latter evaded the difficulty by dogmatically asserting the objective existence of an idea” (Mackay, as last cited). [↑]
[133] Cp. Mackay, i, 352–53, as to the survival of veneration of the heavenly bodies in the various schools. [↑]
[135] Meyer, ii, 9, 759 (§§ 5, 465). [↑]
[137] Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. 1886, p. 210. [↑]
[138] Compare Meyer, ii, § 502, as to the close resemblances between Pythagoreanism and Orphicism. [↑]
[139] Meyer, i, 186; ii, 635. [↑]
[140] Fairbanks, pp. 145, 151, 155, etc. [↑]
[143] Prof. Burnet insists (introd. p. 30) that “the” Greeks must be reckoned good observers because their later sculptors were so. As well say that artists make the best men of science. [↑]
[144] Metaph. i, 5; Fairbanks, p. 136. “It is quite safe to attribute the substance of the First Book of Euclid to Pythagoras.” Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 2nd ed. p. 117. [↑]
[145] Diog. Laërt. Philolaos (bk. viii, ch. 7). [↑]
[146] L. U. K. Hist. of Astron. p. 20; A. Berry’s Short Hist. of Astron. 1898, p. 25; Narrien’s Histor. Acc. of the Orig. and Prog. of Astron. 1850, p. 163. [↑]
[147] See Benn, Greek Philosophers, i, 11. [↑]
[148] Diog. Laërt. in life of Philolaos; Cicero, Academica, ii, 39. Cicero, following Theophrastus, is explicit as to the teaching of Hiketas. [↑]
[149] Hippolytos, Ref. of all Heresies, i, 13. Cp. Renouvier, Manuel de la philos. anc. i, 201, 205, 238–39. [↑]
[150] Pseudo-Plutarch, De Placitis Philosoph. iii, 13, 14. [↑]
[151] Ueberweg, i, 49. Cp. Tertullian (Apol. ch. 11), who says Pythagoras taught that the world was uncreated; and the contrary statement of Aetius (in Fairbanks, pp. 146–47). [↑]
[152] Berry, Short Hist. of Astron. pp. 22, 25. The question is ably handled by Renouvier, Manuel, i, 199–205. [↑]
[153] Diog. Laërt., viii, i, 8. [↑]
[154] The whole question is carefully sifted by Grote, iv, 76–94. Prof. Burnet (Early Greek Philos. 2nd ed. pp. 96–98) sums up that the Pythagorean Order was an attempt to overrule or supersede the State. [↑]
[155] Cp. Burnet, p. 97, note 3. Prof. Burnet speaks of the Pythagorean Order as a “new religion” appealing to the people rather than the aristocrats, who were apt to be “freethinking.” But on the next page he pictures the “plain man” as resenting precisely the religious neology of the movement. The evidence for the adhesion of aristocrats seems pretty strong. [↑]
[157] Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, ed. 1885, iv, 163. [↑]
[158] Diog. Laërt. bk. viii, ch. i, 19 (§ 21). [↑]
[159] Ennius, Fragmenta, ed. Hesselius, 1707, pp. 1, 4–7; Horace, Epist. ii, 1, 52; Persius, Sat. vi. [↑]
[160] Grote, History, iv, 97. [↑]
[161] Scholiast on Iliad, xx, 67; Tatian, Adv. Græcos, c. 48 (31); W. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Literatur, 3te Aufl. p. 63; Grote, ch. xvi (i, 374). [↑]
[163] K. O. Müller, Dorians, Eng. tr. ii, 365–68; Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, Eng. tr. ed. 1894, iii, 113. [↑]
[164] Grote. i, 338, note. [↑]
[165] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 22. [↑]
[166] Philolaos, as we saw, is said to have been prosecuted, but is not said to have been condemned. [↑]
[167] Fairbanks, pp. 245, 255, 261; Diog. Laërt. bk. ii, ch. iii, 4 (§ 8). [↑]
[168] Fairbanks, pp. 230–45. Cp. Grote, Plato, i, 54, and Ueberweg, i, 66, as to nature of the Nous of Anaxagoras. [↑]
[169] Grote, i, 374; Hesychius, s.v. Agamemnona; cp. Diog. Laërt. bk. ii, ch. iii, 7 (§ 11); Tatian, Adv. Græcos, c. 37 (21). [↑]
[170] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 6. [↑]
[172] Id. c. 16. The old man is said to have uttered the reproach: “Perikles, those who want to use a lamp supply it with oil.” [↑]
[173] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 4. [↑]
[174] Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. iv, 277. [↑]
[175] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 32. [↑]
[176] Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, ch. ix (§ 57), citing the Defence of Sokrates by Demetrius Phalereus. [↑]
[177] Id. bk. ii, ch. iii, 9 (§ 12), citing Sotion. Another writer of philosophers’ lives, Hermippus (same cit.), said he had been thrown into prison; and yet a third, Hieronymus, said he was released out of pity because of his emaciated appearance when produced in court by Perikles. [↑]
[178] Diog. Laërt. last cit. 10 (§ 14). [↑]
[180] Drews, Gesch. des Monismus im Altertum, p. 205. [↑]
[181] Even in the early progressive period “the same time which set up rationalism developed a deep religious influence in the masses.” (Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. ii, 728. Cp. iii, 425; also Grote, vii, 30; and Benn, Philosophy of Greece, 1898, pp. 69–70.) [↑]
[182] Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 32. [↑]
[183] Cp. Grote, v, 24; Curtius, ii, 208–209. [↑]
[184] Plutarch, as cited. Plutarch also states, however, that the only occasion on which Perikles gave way to emotion in public was that of the death of his favourite son. [↑]
[185] Holm (Griechische Geschichte, ii, 335) decides that Perikles sought to Ionise his fellow Athenians; and Dr. Burnet, coinciding (Early Greek Philosophy, 1892, p. 277), suggests that he and Aspasia brought Anaxagoras to Athens with that aim. [↑]
[187] “Der Kleinasiatische Rationalist Herodot” is the exaggerated estimate of A. Bauer, in Ilberg’s Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, ix (1902), 235, following Eduard Meyer (iv, § 448), who, however (§ 447), points to the lack of scientific thought or training in Herodotos as in Thukydides. Ignorance of Nature remained a Greek characteristic. [↑]
[188] Bk. viii, ch. 77. Cp. viii, 20, 96; ix, 43. [↑]
[189] Cp. Meyer, iv, § 446, as to the inadequacy of Athenian culture, and the unchanging ignorance of the populace on matters of physical science. [↑]
[190] Plutarch, Against the Stoics, ch. 31; Simplicius, Physica, i, 6. [↑]
[191] Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. 4. [↑]
[192] Refutation of all Heresies, i, 14. [↑]
[193] Cp. Aristotle, Metaphysics, i, 3; De anima, i, 2. [↑]
[194] Decharme, Critique des trad. relig. p. 137, citing scholiast on Aristoph., Clouds, 96. [↑]
[195] See the point discussed by Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 128–29, 131–32, notes 10 and 31 (Eng. tr. i, 15, 39). Ritter and Preller say “Protagoras floret circa a. 450–430”; “Democritus natus circa a. 460 floret a. 430–410, obit. circa a. 357.” [↑]
[196] Cp. Ueberweg, i, 68–69; Renouvier, Manuel de la philos. anc. i, 238. [↑]
[199] Lange, i, 10–11 (tr. p. 17); Clem. Alex. Stromata, i, 15; Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, § 35. [↑]
[200] On this also see Lange, i, 128 (tr. p. 15, note). [↑]
[201] Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, ch. vii, 2 (§ 34). Cp. Renouvier, i, 239–41. [↑]
[202] See in particular the De principiis atque originibus (Works, Routledge’s 1-vol. ed. 1905, pp. 649–50). [↑]
[203] Meyer, who dwells on his scientific shortcomings (Gesch. des Alt. v. § 910), makes no account of this, his vital doctrine. [↑]
[204] Fairbanks, pp. 189–91. The idea is not put by Empedokles with any such definiteness as is suggested by Lange, i, 23–25 (tr. pp. 33–35), and Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. Eng. tr. i, 62, n. But Ueberweg’s exposition is illuminating. [↑]
[205] Fairbanks, pp. 136, 169. [↑]
[209] See a good study of Empedokles in J. A. Symonds’ Studies of the Greek Poets, 3rd ed. 1893, vol. i, ch. 7; and another in Renouvier, Manuel, i, 163–82. [↑]
[210] Cp. Grote, Plato, i, 73, and note. [↑]
[211] Cp. Renouvier, i, 239–62; Lange, p. 11 (tr. p. 17). [↑]
[213] Diogenes Laërtius, bk. ix, ch. viii, § 3 (51); cp. Grote, vii, 49, note. [↑]
[214] For a defence of Protagoras against Plato, see Grote, vii, 43–54. [↑]
[215] Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, ix, 56. [↑]
[216] Beckmann, History of Inventions, Eng. tr. 1846, ii, 513. [↑]
[217] Diod. Sic. xiii, 6; Hesychius, cit. in Cudworth, ed. Harrison, i, 131. [↑]
[218] Ueberweg, i, 80; Thukydides, v, 116. The bias of Sextus Empiricus is further shown in his account of Diagoras as moved in his denunciation by an injury to himself. [↑]
[219] It is told by Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. ix, 53) that Diagoras is said to have invented the dithyramb (in praise of Iacchos), and to have begun a poem with the words, “All things come by the daimon and fortune.” But Sextus writes with a fixed skeptical bias. [↑]
[220] Grote, vi, 13, 32, 33, 42–45. [↑]
[221] Athenagoras, Apol., ch. 4; Clem. Alex., Protrept. ch. 2. See the documentary details in Meyer, iv, 105. [↑]
[222] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 1, 23, 42; iii, 37 (the last reference gives proof of his general rationalism); Lactantius, De irâ Dei, c. 9. In calling Sokrates “the Melian,” Aristophanes (Clouds, 830) was held to have virtually called him “the atheist.” [↑]
[223] Diod. xiii, 6; Suidas, s.v. Diagoras; Aristophanes, Birds, 1073. It is noteworthy that in their fury against Diagoras the Athenians put him on a level of common odium with the “tyrants” of past history. Cp. Burckhardt, Griechische Culturgeschichte, i, 355. [↑]
[224] Grote, vi, 476–77. As to the freethinking of Kritias, see Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. ix, 54. According to Xenophon (Memorabilia, i, 2), Kritias made his decree in revenge for Sokrates’s condemnation of one of his illicit passions. Prof. Decharme (pp. 122–24) gives a good account of him. [↑]
[225] Diog. Laërt. bk. ii, ch. iv; Hippolytos, Refutation of all Heresies, i, 8; Renouvier, Manuel, i, 233–37. [↑]
[226] Cp. Cudworth, Intellectual System, ed. Harrison, i, 32; Renouvier, Manuel, i, 233, 289; ii, 268, 292; Tatian, Adv. Græcos, c. 48 (31); Diog. Laërt. bk. ii, ch. iii, 7 (§ 11); Grote, i, 374, 395, note; Hatch, Infl. of Greek Ideas, p. 60. [↑]
[227] Haigh, Tragic Drama of the Greeks, p. 206. Cp. Burnett, p. 278. [↑]
[228] Diog. Laërt. bk. ii (§ 22). [↑]
[229] “He never so utterly abandoned the religion of his country as to find it impossible to acquiesce in at least some part of traditional religion.” Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. 1886. p. 222. [↑]
[230] Haigh, The Attic Theatre, 1889, p. 316. [↑]
[232] “He had also acquired in no small degree that love of dexterous argumentation and verbal sophistry which was becoming fashionable in the Athens of the fifth century. Not unfrequently he exhibits this dexterity when it is clearly out of place.” Haigh, Tragic Drama of the Greeks, p. 235. Cp. Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. p. 223. Schlegel is much more censorious. [↑]
[233] Ion., 436–51, 885–922; Andromache, 1161–65; Electra, 1245–46; Hercules Furens, 339–47; Iphigenia in Tauris, 35, 711–15. [↑]
[234] Hercules Furens, 344, 1341–46; Iphigenia in Tauris, 380–91. [↑]
[237] Ion, 374–78, 685; Helena, 744–57; Iphigenia in Tauris, 570–75; Electra, 400; Phœnissæ, 772; Fragm. 793; Bacchæ, 255–57; Hippolytus, 1059. It is noteworthy that even Sophocles (Œd. Tyr., 387) makes a character taunt Tiresias the soothsayer with venality. [↑]
[238] Philoctetes, fr. 793; Helena, 1137–43; Bellerophon, fr. 288. [↑]
[240] Helena, 1013; Fragm. 890, 905, 935; Troades, 848–88. [↑]
[241] A. Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Literature, Bohn tr. p. 117. [↑]
[242] This charge is on a par with that of Hygiainon, who accused Euripides of impiety on the score that one of his characters makes light of oaths. Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii, 15. [↑]
[243] K. O. Müller, Hist. of the Lit. of Anc. Greece, 1847, p. 359. The complaint is somewhat surprising from such a source. The only play with an entirely invented plot mentioned by Aristotle is Agathon’s Flower (Aristotle, Poetic, ix); and such plays would not have been eligible for representation at the great festivals. [↑]
[244] Cp. Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. pp. 223–24. [↑]
[245] Haigh. The Attic Theatre, p. 191. Cp. Müller, pp. 362–64. [↑]
[246] See, however, the æsthetic theorem of Prof. Murray, Euripides and his Age, pp. 221–27. [↑]
[247] It seems arguable that the aversion of Aristophanes to Euripides was primarily artistic, arising in dislike of some of the features of his style. On this head his must be reckoned an expert judgment. The old criticism found in Euripides literary vices; the new seems to ignore the issue. But a clerical scholar pronounces that “Aristophanes was the most unreasoning laudator temporis acti. Genius and poet as he was, he was the sworn foe to intellectual progress.” Hence his hatred of Euripides and his championship of Æschylus. (Rev. Dr. W. W. Merry, introd. to Clar. Press ed. of The Frogs, 1892.) [↑]
[248] Girard, Essai sur Thucydide, 1884, pp. 258–59. [↑]
[249] Cp. Haigh, The Attic Theatre, p. 315. In the same way Ktesilochos, the pupil of Apelles, could with impunity make Zeus ridiculous by exhibiting him pictorially in child-bed, bringing forth Dionysos (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv, 40. § 15). [↑]
[251] Cp. Benn, Philos. of Greece, p. 171. [↑]
[252] Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, Eng. tr. 3rd ed. p. 227: Hegel, as there cited Grote, Plato, ed. 1885, i, 423. [↑]
[253] Cp. Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics, i, 181 sq., 291, 293, 299, etc. [↑]
[254] Grote, History, i, 334; Xenophon, Memorabilia, i, 1, §§ 6–9. [↑]
[255] Cp. Benn. The Philosophy of the Greeks, 1898, p. 160. [↑]
[256] Grote, i, 334–35; Hippocrates, De Aeribus, Aquis, Locis, c. 22 (49). [↑]
[257] Plato, Phædrus, Jowett’s tr. 3rd ed. i. 434; Grote, History, i, 393. [↑]
[258] Compare, however, the claim made for him, as promoting “objectivity,” by Prof. Drews, Gesch. des Monismus im Altertum, 1913. P. 213. [↑]
[260] “The predominatingly theistic character of philosophy ever since has been stamped on it by Socrates, as it was stamped on Socrates by Athens” (Benn, Philos. of Greece, p. 168). [↑]
[261] Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools, as cited, p. 231. The case against Sokrates is bitterly urged by Forchhammer, Die Athenen und Sokrates, 1837; see in particular pp. 8–11. Cp. Grote, Hist. vii, 81. [↑]
[262] “Had not all the cultivated men of the time passed through a school of rationalism which had entirely pulled to pieces the beliefs and the morals of their ancestors?” Zeller, as last cited, pp. 231–33. Cp. Haigh, Tragic Drama, p. 261. [↑]
[263] See Aristophanes’s Frogs, 888–94. [↑]
[264] Æschines, Timarchos, cited by Thirlwall, iv, 277. Cp. Xenophon, Mem. i, 2. [↑]
[265] “Nothing could well be more unpopular and obnoxious than the task which he undertook of cross-examining and convicting of ignorance every distinguished man whom he could approach.” Grote, vii. 95. Cp. pp. 141–44. Cp. also Trevelyan’s Life of Macaulay, ed. 1881, p. 316: and Renouvier, Manuel de la philos. anc. 1, iv, § iii. See also, however, Benn, Phil. of Greece, pp. 162–63. For a view of Sokrates’s relations to his chief accuser, which partially vindicates or whitewashes the latter, see Prof. G. Murray’s Anc. Greek Lit. pp. 176–77. There is a good monograph by H. Bleeckly, Socrates and the Athenians: An Apology, 1884, which holds the balances fairly. [↑]
[266] On the desire of Sokrates to die see Grote, vii, 152–64. [↑]
[267] The assertion of Plutarch that after his death the prosecutors of Sokrates were socially excommunicated, and so driven to hang themselves (Moralia: Of Envy and Hatred), is an interesting instance of moral myth-making. It has no historic basis; though Diogenes (ii, 23 § 43) and Diodorus Siculus (xiv, 37), late authorities both, allege an Athenian reaction in Sokrates’ favour. Probably the story of the suicide of Judas was framed in imitation of Plutarch’s. [↑]
[268] Grote, History, i, 94. [↑]
[269] Id. i, 194. Not till Strabo do we find this myth disbelieved; and Strabo was surprised to find most men holding by the old story while admitting that the race of Amazons had died out. Id. p. 197. [↑]
[270] Life of Thukydides, by Marcellinus, ch. 22, citing Antyllas. Cp. Girard, Essai sur Thucydide, p. 239; and the prefaces of Hobbes and Smith to their translations. [↑]
[272] “His writings,” remarks Dr. Hatch, “contain the seeds of nearly all that afterwards grew up on Christian soil” (Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, 1890, p. 182). [↑]
[273] Clem. Alex. Stromata, v, 14; Fairbanks, pp. 146–47; Grote, Plato, ch. 38. [↑]
[274] Cp. Grote, Plato, iv, 162, 381. Professor Bain, however (Practical Essays, 1884, p. 273), raises an interesting question by his remark, as to the death of Sokrates: “The first person to feel the shock was Plato. That he was affected by it to the extent of suppressing his views on the higher questions we can infer with the greatest probability. Aristotle was equally cowed.” [↑]
[275] Diog. Laër. bk. ix, ch. vii, § 8 (40). [↑]
[276] Republic, bk. ii, 377, to iii, 393; Jowett’s tr. 3rd ed. iii, 60 sq., 68 sq. In bk. x, it is true, he does speak of the poets as unqualified by knowledge and training to teach truth (Jowett’s tr. iii, 311 sq.); but Plato’s “truth” is not objective, but idealistic, or rather fictitious-didactic. [↑]
[277] Id. Jowett. pp. 59, 69, etc. [↑]
[278] Id. bk. iii; Jowett, pp. 103–105. [↑]
[279] Laws, x; Jowett, v, 295–98. [↑]
[280] Received myths are forbidden; and the preferred fictions are to be city law. Cp. the Laws, ii, iii; Jowett, v, 42, 79. [↑]
[281] Laws, Jowett’s tr. 3rd ed. v, 271–72. Cp. the comment of Benn, i, 271–72. [↑]
[282] Republic, bk. ii, 379; Jowett, iii, 62. [↑]
[283] Laws, x, 906–907, 910; Jowett, v, 293–94, 297–98. [↑]
[284] On the inconsistency of the whole doctrine see see Grote’s Plato, iv, 379–97. [↑]
[285] Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. Eng. tr. i, 25. Cp. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, i, 38–39 (tr. i, 52–54), and the remarkable verdict of Bacon (De Augmentis, bk. iii, ch. 4; Works, 1-vol. ed. 1905, p. 471; cp. Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, p. 96) as to the superiority of the natural philosophy of Demokritos over those of Plato and Aristotle. Bacon immediately qualifies his verdict; but he repeats it, as regards both Aristotle and Plato, in the Novum Organum, bk. i, aph. 96. See, however, Mr. Benn’s final eulogy of Plato as a thinker, i, 273, and Murray’s Anc. Greek Lit. pp. 311–13. [↑]
[286] Laws, x, 908; Jowett, v, 295. [↑]
[287] Grote, History, vii, 168. [↑]
[288] Cp. Grote, Aristotle, 2nd ed. p. 10. [↑]
[289] Origen, Against Celsus, ii, 13; cp. i, 65; iii, 75; vii, 3. [↑]
[290] Grote, Aristotle, p. 13. [↑]
[291] Benn, Greek Philosophers, i, 352. Mr. Benn refutes Sir A. Grant’s view that Aristotle’s creed was a “vague pantheism”; but that phrase loosely conveys the idea of its non-religiousness. It might be called a Lucretian monotheism. Cp. Benn, i, 294; and Drews, Gesch. des Monismus, p. 257. [↑]
[292] Metaphysics, xi (xii), 8, 13 (p. 1074, b). The passage is so stringent as to raise the question how he came to run the risk in this one case. It was probably a late writing, and he may have taken it for granted that the Metaphysics would never be read by the orthodox. [↑]
[293] Cp. the severe criticisms of Benn, vol. i, ch. vi; Berry, Short Hist. of Astron. p. 33; and Lange, Ges. des Mater. i, 61–68, and notes, citing Eucken and Cuvier. Aristotle’s science is very much on a par with that of Bacon, who saw his imperfections, but fell into the same kinds of error. Both insisted on an inductive method; and both transgressed from it. See, however, Lange’s summary, p. 69, also p. 7, as to the unfairness of Whewell; and ch. v of Soury’s Bréviaire de l’histoire du Matérialisme, 1881, especially end. [↑]
[295] Strabo, bk. ix, ch. iii, § 11. Strabo reproaches Ephoros with repeating the current legends all the same; but it seems clear that he anticipated the critical tactic of Gibbon. [↑]
[296] As to the Stoics, cp. Zeller, § 34, 4; Benn, The Philosophy of Greece, pp. 255–56. As to Epicurus, cp. Benn, p. 261. [↑]
[297] Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, ch. xi, 5, § 64. The lengthy notice given by Diogenes shows the impression Pyrrho’s teaching made. See a full account of it, so far as known, in the Rev. J. Owen’s Evenings with the Skeptics, 1881, i, 287 sq., and the monograph of Zimmerman, there cited. [↑]
[298] These propositions occur in the first of the ten Pyrrhonian tropoi or modes (Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, ch. xi, 9), of which the authorship is commonly assigned to Ænesidemos (fl. 80–50). Cp. Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics, i, 290, 322–23. But as given by Diogenes they seem to derive from the early Pyrrhonian school. [↑]
[299] Thus, where Democritos pronounced the sun to be of vast size, Epicurus held it to be no larger than it seemed (Cicero, De Finibus, i, 6)—a view also loosely ascribed to Herakleitos (Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, ch. i, 6, § 7). See, however, Wallace’s Epicureanism (“Ancient Philosophies” series), 1889, pp. 176 sq., 186 sq., 266, as to the scientific merits of the system. [↑]
[300] The Epicurean doctrine on this and other heads is chiefly to be gathered from the great poem of Lucretius. Prof. Wallace’s excellent treatise gives all the clues. See p. 202 as to the Epicurean God-idea. [↑]
[301] Grote, History, i, 395, note; Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi sec. Epicur. [↑]
[302] Compare Wallace, Epicureanism, pp. 64–71, and ch. xi; and Mackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 4th ed. p. 29. [↑]
[303] De rerum natura, i, 62–79. [↑]
[304] Alexander seu Pseudomantis, cc. 25, 38, 47, 61, cited by Wallace, pp. 249–50. [↑]
[305] The repute of the Epicureans for irreligion appears in the fact that when Romanized Athens had consented to admit foreigners to the once strictly Athenian mysteries of Eleusis, the Epicureans were excluded. [↑]
[306] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 13; Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata, v, 14; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Mathematicos, ix, 51, 55. [↑]
[307] Diog. Laërt. bk ii, ch. viii, §§ 7, 11–14 (86, 97–100). He was also nicknamed “the God.” Id. and ch. xii, 5 (§ 116). [↑]
[308] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 1, 23, 42. [↑]
[309] Diogenes, as last cited, § 12 (97). [↑]
[310] Id. §§ 15, 16 (101–102). [↑]
[311] Professor Wallace’s account of the court of Lysimachos of Thrace as a “favourite resort of emancipated freethinkers” (Epicureanism, p. 42) is hardly borne out by his authority, Diogenes Laërtius, who represents Lysimachos as unfriendly towards Theodoros. Hipparchia the Cynic, too, opposed rather than agreed with the atheist. [↑]
[312] Diog., last cit. Cp. Cicero, Tusculans, ii, 43. Philo Judæus (Quod Omnis Probus Liber, c. 18; cp. Plutarch, De Exilio, c. 16) has a story of his repelling taunts about his banishment by comparing himself to Hercules, who was put ashore by the alarmed Argonauts because of his weight. But he is further made to boast extravagantly, and in doing so to speak as a believer in myths and deities. The testimony has thus little value. [↑]
[313] Diog. bk. ii, ch. xii, § 5 (116). [↑]
[314] Id. ch. x, § 2 (106). [↑]
[315] Id. ch. xii, § 5 (117) and bk. iv, ch. vii, §§ 4, 9, 10 (52, 54, 55). [↑]
[316] Plutarch, De defectu orac. ch. 19. Bion seems to have made an impression on Plutarch, who often quotes him, though it be but to contradict him. [↑]
[317] Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 13. [↑]
[318] Id. ib.; Academics, iv, 38. [↑]
[319] Cicero, Tusculans, i, 10, 31; Academics, ii, 39; and refs. in ed. Davis. [↑]
[320] Sir A. Grant’s tr. of the hymn is given in Capes’s Stoicism (“Chief Ancient Philosophies” series), 1880, p. 41; and the Greek text by Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, p. 262. Cp. Cicero, De nat. Deor. i, 14. [↑]
[321] Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosoph. i, 7. [↑]
[322] Eusebius, Præp. Evang. bk. ii, ch. 2; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, ch. 23. [↑]
[324] It may be noted that Diogenes of Babylon, a follower of Chrysippos, applied the principle to Greek mythology. Cicero, De nat. Deor. i, 15. [↑]
[325] Above, p. 80, note 4. [↑]
[326] See Grote, i, 371–74 and notes. [↑]
[327] Palaiphatos, De Incredibilibus: De Actæone, De Geryone, De Cerbero, De Amazonibus, etc. [↑]
[328] E. R. Bevan (art. “The Deification of Kings in the Greek Cities” in Eng. Histor. Rev. Oct. 1901, p. 631) argues that the practice was not primarily eastern, but Greek. See, however, Herodotos, vii, 136; Arrian, Anabas. Alexand. iv, 11; Q. Curtius, viii, 5–8; and Plutarch, Artaxerxes, ch. 22, as to the normal attitude of the Greeks, even as late as Alexander. [↑]
[329] See Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, chs. 22, 23, for the later Hellenistic tone on the subject of apotheosis apart from the official practice of the empire. [↑]
[330] Gibbon, ch. xl. Bohn ed. iv, 353, and note. [↑]
[331] Mahaffy, Greek Life, pp. 133–35; Diog. Laërt. bk. ii, ch. v, 5 (§ 38). [↑]
[332] Wallace, Epicureanism (pp. 245–46), citing Suidas, s.v. Epicurus. [↑]
[333] Diogenes Laërtius, bk. vii, ch. i, 28 (§ 33); cp. Origen, Against Celsus, bk. i, ch. 5; Clemens Alex, Stromata, bk. v, ch. ii. [↑]
[334] Mahaffy, as cited, p. 135, n.; Athenæus, ix, 63 (p. 400). [↑]
[335] (297 B.C.) Burckhardt, Griechische Culturgeschichte, i, 213; Pausanias, i, 29. [↑]
[336] Cp. G. Guizot, Ménandre, 1855, pp. 324–27, and App. [↑]
[337] Cp. Guizot, pp. 327–31, and the fragments cited by Justin Martyr, De Monarchia, ch. 5. [↑]
[338] Whittaker, as cited, p. 85. [↑]
[339] Martha, as cited, p. 78. [↑]
[340] Diog. Laërt. bk. iv, ch. ix, 8 (§ 65). [↑]
[341] Diog. Laërt. bk. iv, ch. ix, 4, 5 (§ 63); Noumenios in Euseb. Præp. Evang. xiv, 8; Cicero, De Oratore, ii, 38; Lucilius, cited by Lactantius, Div. Inst. [↑]
[342] Cicero, Academics, ii, 34. [↑]
[343] Berry, Short Hist. of Astron. pp. 34–62; Narrien, Histor. Account, as cited, ch. xi; L. U. K. Hist. of Astron. ch. vi. It is noteworthy that Hipparchos, like so many of his predecessors, had some of his ideas from Babylonia. Strabo, proœm., § 9. [↑]
[344] Ptolemy normally lumps unbelief in religion with all the vices of character. Cp. the Tetrabiblos, iii, 18 (paraphrase of Proclus). [↑]
[346] Lucian’s dialogue Philopseudes gives a view of the superstitions of average Greeks in the second century of our era. Cp. Mr. Williams’s note to the first Dialogue of the Dead, in his tr. p. 87. [↑]
[347] See M. Foucart’s treatise, Des assoc. relig. chez les Grecs, 1873, 2e ptie. [↑]
[348] On the early tendency to orthodox conformity among the unbelieving Alexandrian scholars, see Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, pp. 260–61. [↑]
[349] Frag. cited by Wallace, p. 258. [↑]
[350] Rev. Baden Powell, Hist. of Nat. Philos. 1834, p. 79. [↑]
[351] De Oratore, iii, 17; De Finibus, ii, 12, 13. [↑]
[352] See Saisset, Le Scepticisme, 1865, pp. 22–27, for a careful discussion of dates. [↑]
[353] His own claim was to be of the “methodical” school. Hypotyp. i, 34. [↑]
[354] See his doctrine expounded by Owen, Evenings with the Skeptics, i, 332 sq. [↑]
[356] These seem to be derived from Carneades. Cp. Ueberweg, i, 217. [↑]
[357] “The general character of the Greek Skeptics from Sokrates to Sextos is quite unexceptionable” (Owen, Evenings, i, 352). [↑]
[358] Polybius, bk. vi, ch. lvi. Cp. bk. xvi, Frag. 5 (12), where he speaks impatiently of the miracle-stories told of certain cults, and, repeating his opinion that some such stories are useful for preserving piety among the people, protests that they should be kept within bounds. [↑]
[359] Bk. i, ch. ii, § 8. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, ch. 8) puts the more decent principle that all the apparent absurdities have good occult reasons. [↑]
[360] Bk. ix, ch. iii, § 12. Cp. bk. x, ch. iii, § 23. The hand of an interpolator frequently appears in Strabo (e.g., bk. ix, ch. ii, § 40; ch. iii, § 5); and the passage cited in bk. i is more in the style of the former than of the latter. [↑]
[361] See Dr. Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas upon the Christian Church, 1890, pp. 60–64, notes; also above, pp. 143 and 161, note. [↑]
[362] De defect. orac. c. 19; Isis and Osiris, ch. 67. [↑]
[363] De Amore, c. 13; Isis and Osiris, chs. 66, 67; and De defect. orac. c. 13. [↑]
[364] Schmidt, Gesch. der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im erst. Jahr., 1847, p. 22. [↑]
[365] Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 1892, p. 276. Cp. 2nd ed. p. 294. [↑]
[366] It is to be presumed that Dr. Burnet, when penning his estimate, had not in memory such a record as Dr. A. D. White’s History of the Warfare between Science and Theology. [↑]