The Religious Thought of the Greeks, from Homer to the Triumph of Christianity

by Clifford Herschel Moore

The form of government which is pictured in the Homeric poems is one in which the king and nobles alone have an effective voice. The humbler folk meet to hear the decision of the few, which they are expected to accept without a murmur. On only one occasion does a common man, Thersites, venture to raise his voice against his betters, and then he is made the laughing-stock of his fellows and is beaten into a sad silence by Odysseus. But the Homeric organization of society was gradually superseded by aristocracies in which the power of wealth ultimately claimed a position beside nobility of birth. The development of industry and trade in Ionia and on the mainland of Greece proper created a new wealthy class which was a rival of the old nobility whose riches had been in herds and lands. The political struggles which accompanied these changes were highly educative to considerable bodies of citizens, who were expending their efforts in improving the condition of their own class or of themselves rather than in maintaining the advantage of some prince or noble. In this way there was developed a political and social self-consciousness. When kings were superseded by aristocracies, magistracies, limited in scope and duration, had necessarily been employed. Thus political machinery and organization developed. These political changes and the failure of ancient customs to fit new social and economic conditions naturally led to a demand for written law, which alone can be the basis of even justice and protection. So we hear of many “law-givers” in Greece during the seventh and sixth centuries b.c., of whom the most famous were Zaleucus among the western Locrians, Charondas of Catane, and Draco of Athens, followed about thirty years later by Solon. Now written law usually tends to become ultimately the embodiment of rules for all, not simply for one class alone, so that the written codes marked a long step in the advance of the common man toward equality with the noble. It is true that the aristocracies in many parts of Greece were later followed by the rule of tyrants, but the tyrannies themselves fostered the development of the lower classes on whose well-being and support the existence of the tyrannies depended.

Of the law-givers I have just mentioned one belonged to Catane, a Greek city in Sicily. This fact suggests another important movement which demands our notice. I mean the planting of colonies. The great era of Hellenic colonization fell between the eighth and sixth centuries, and was in a sense but a continuation of that earlier wave of expansion which had carried the Greeks to Cyprus and to the nearer shores of Asia Minor. Among the causes which led to the establishment of colonies the chief seem to have been defects in the land system, whereby many were deprived of a share in their ancestral estates, political conditions often oppressive, and trade, which was now coming largely into the hands of Greeks because of the disasters which were inflicted on their former rivals, the Phoenicians, by their eastern neighbors. From Megara and Miletus, from Chalcis and Eretria, began an outpouring of eager traders, of the landless, the needy, the discontented, and the adventurous, who eventually planted colonies entirely around the Mediterranean and Euxine Seas. Between these colonies and the mother cities a rich stream of traffic flowed; the growth of trade stimulated manufactures and increased wealth. In the colonies there existed from the beginning greater equality than in the older communities, the land system was more equitable, and many men of humble birth came to wealth and power. Furthermore, with travel and success in new communities there was an expansion of mind, a sense of power acquired by prosperity, such as can always be observed under similar conditions. These developments had their reflex influence on the society of the mother cities, and both at home and in the colonies there came to pass those political and social changes to which I have referred above. But the most important result of these things for our present consideration was the fact that by these developments large numbers of men were awakened to self-consciousness, and that the first period of individualism in Greece was begun.

Whenever individuals come to self-consciousness, and have the leisure and security which were enjoyed in many Greek cities of this time as the result of improved social and economic conditions, men find not only the opportunity but also the occasion for reflection. This was the case in our period. Men began to think and question about themselves and the world around them, to reflect not only concerning the political and social world in which they lived, to ask what their place in it was, but also to inquire still deeper into the meaning of things. They debated with themselves questions relating to the gods, the nature and justice of their rule; and most significant for our present interest they began to ask whence men came and whither they were going. One great monument of this period is Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” of which I spoke in my last lecture. It is also important to remember that the seventh and sixth centuries were the age of the so-called Seven Wise Men, to whom were assigned many moral precepts which became revered proverbs in Greece. These sayings, no less than the works of Hesiod and the Gnomic Poets, bear witness to an age of increasing reflection.

In the seventh century Ionia controlled the trade between Asia and Europe. Its chief center was Miletus. Here in the first half of the sixth century before our era began Greek philosophy, with Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes as the leaders. The modest task which they set themselves was nothing less than the solution of the universe. Their philosophic views are of no special interest to us now; but it is a fact of supreme importance that here for the first time in Greece appeared men whose reflection had made them bold enough to wrestle with the whole problem of nature including man, and to propose solutions entirely at variance with the traditional views. This philosophic development was one result of the factors which we have been considering—factors which produced also new ethical and religious movements that do concern us directly.

With the emergence of Greece in the seventh century from the dark ages that followed the Mycenaean civilization, we find that certain beliefs, expressed or only hinted at in the Homeric poems, come to the surface, and that religious ideas imported from without make themselves manifest. The cult of the dead for example is almost passed over in silence by the Homeric poems. At the funeral pyre of Patroclus Achilles offered jars of oil and honey, and slew horses, dogs, and twelve Trojan youths[71]; but nowhere else is such a sacrifice mentioned in the Iliad. Likewise in the Odyssey the only instance of any similar offering is in the description of Odysseus’ visit to the borders of the realm of Hades to consult the shade of the seer Teiresias, where it is said that he dug a square pit, poured into it a triple chrism, and then after prayer and vows let the blood of a ram and a black ewe flow into it to attract the shades.[72] Yet we know from archeological and other evidence that the worship of the dead was common in Greece from the Minoan and Mycenaean times throughout antiquity. Ceremonial purification also, of which there are but few instances in Homer—and none of these is magical—now appears common, as a notion of impurity attaches to many conditions and acts which require expiation. The change in sentiment with regard to murder will serve as an illustration. In the Homeric poems killing brought no pollution either to the murderer or to his land; but in the Cyclic epics, which date from the seventh and sixth centuries b.c., bloodguilt required expiation just as in the later tragedies. So in the Aethiopis Achilles went to Lesbos to be cleansed from the stain of having slain Thersites. In fostering and directing rites of purification the oracle of Apollo at Delphi played an important part. There was developing, indeed there had been developing from an unknown period, a sense of defilement and of the necessity of cleansing. At this point, however, I must again speak a word of caution. We need to remember that morality develops slowly. It is undoubtedly a far cry from the morality of the seventh century to Plato’s definition of the impure man as the one whose soul is base, or to that motto which in a later century was written over the entrance of the shrine of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, “Piety consisteth in holy thoughts.” We must bear in mind that to the man of the seventh and sixth century sin and purification were primarily if not wholly ceremonial matters, and that his concept of future happiness was largely material. But the consequence of his feeling was great in future centuries.

Other phenomena of the seventh and sixth centuries require our notice at this point. We saw in the preceding lecture that the gaze of the Homeric man was fixed on this world with its victories and its defeats, that he viewed splendid action on the field and wise counsel in the assembly of the princes as the individual’s highest province and his supreme happiness. The world beyond this had no rewards comparable with those of this life; the greatest boon man could hope from the future was that his exploits here might become the subject of song for coming generations. Suffering he regarded as necessary that a higher purpose might be attained. “The will of Zeus was accomplished” was the explanation beyond which man might not go; he must find his comfort in such unity as that thought gave to the world. Hence arises that pathos and sadness which strike us again and again in Homer. But the new age sought relief by shifting its gaze from this world to the next and by expecting there the recompenses and balances which make life just and complete; for it the future life furnished an escape from the sufferings of this present existence. Moreover under the manifold influences which I have tried to sketch above, men began to be impressed with the unity which apparently underlay the variety of the phenomenal world. This is the problem of philosophy. It is true that the early Greek philosophers devoted themselves chiefly to the material world, of which they regarded man as a part; but in religion there resulted a tendency to pantheism, which saw behind the multitude of divinities one all-embracing god. Moreover there were not lacking thinkers to struggle with the question as to the way in which man could bring himself into accord with the unity of the world. So in spite of the individualism of this age we find it also an age of mysticism—which is the very opposite of individualism. The mystic always holds in greater or less degree the belief that by destroying that which sets off the individual from his fellows, that is, by uprooting personality through the destruction of the passions, or by some ecstatic state which takes one out of himself, man may attain to union with god and therefore to salvation. This belief may lead even to a religion without gods, or it may be bound to a belief in divinity. In Greece these tendencies were not fully developed for a considerable time, but we can see that in the seventh and sixth centuries the longing for future happiness, the desire for salvation, and the mystic means thereto were already potent elements in Greek thought. They showed themselves in various ways; one outlet for the religious longing was found in the religion of Dionysus, especially as it was incorporated in the beliefs of the Orphic sect.

Dionysus came late into Greek religion. As we have seen, in Homer he was not a member of the Olympic circle. Mythology has preserved many stories which bear witness to the opposition which his worship received as it spread over Greece. The newcomer, like Ares and the Muses, was a Thracian. His worship was introduced by immigrants and spread gradually to the south. Apparently the cult of the god was brought into Greece by more than one wave of immigration, and by more than one route. Thebes and Orchomenos in Boeotia were early centers of his worship, from which Delphi was later influenced. In the Peloponnesus probably Argolis received the new comer first. Even before the god was established in southern Greece he may have been carried to Crete directly from his northern home. The islands of the Aegean, the cities of Asia Minor, and ultimately the remote colonies knew the divinity. In Attica tradition said that his first home was in the country demes, notably at Icaria, where Americans excavated his shrine over twenty-five years ago. Probably the early rulers at Athens received the god into the city, but it was the Pisistratidae who especially favored his worship and gave him a home on the south side of the Acropolis, where the fifth century saw presented all the glories of the Attic stage.

The new god came as the god of all living things, of plants, trees, the lower animals, as well as of man. In short he was a nature divinity whose death was seen in the dead vegetation of winter and whose rebirth appeared with the revival of spring. His orgiastic rites no doubt were originally, in part at least, intended to recall the dead god to life. But in all such religions there is the tendency to see in the rebirth of the dead god the warrant of man’s future life. The hope is easily awakened that as the vegetation, whose life disappears in the ground, is revivified in the spring, so man, whose body also is laid in the earth, may be recalled to new life. The Dionysiac myth set forth the story of the god’s death and rebirth. It was natural then that men should feel that if they could secure union with the god, lose themselves in the divine, they too might attain immortality. Herodotus tells us that among the Thracian peoples the Getae believed that men at death went to dwell with their chief divinity beneath the earth.[73] Such hope of immortality Dionysus brought with him from his Thracian home.

The worship of this god was wholly unlike that of the Olympian gods. Under his influence his devotees, mostly women, in divine madness left their homes and daily tasks to roam the wild mountainside, clad no longer in their ordinary dress but wearing the skins of wild beasts, their flowing hair bound with ivy and wild bryony. In their excitement they were unconscious of time and place, unfettered by the normal limitations of human powers and sensibilities. Wild music stimulated their orgiastic dance; in frenzy they tore living creatures limb from limb, and devoured the raw dripping flesh, calling meantime on the god by name. This mad revel was continued until the participants fell exhausted to the ground.

We can well understand how these things shocked the earliest Hellenic spectators and why it was that in becoming a Greek god, Dionysus lost much of his wilder Thracian nature and the more savage elements of his cult. To this amelioration the Delphic oracle doubtless contributed. Yet it is certain that the ecstatic rites were known on Mt. Cithaeron and on the heights of Parnassos down to a late date. Elsewhere for the most part the excesses of the cult were checked and ordered by law. The Greeks had come to see that there was something more than extravagant madness in the wild Dionysiac revel. The possessed devotee was set free for the moment from the tangled net of daily life, gained for a brief time new and superhuman powers, a very foretaste of immortality. Not least of all he was made one with all nature that united to worship the one god. Now this escape from the daily round of human affairs, this desire for union with divinity, has constantly made its appearance in various times and under varied conditions; as we all know, it has led to extraordinary religious outbursts in both pagan and Christian ages.