This remark of Herodotus illustrates the hostile ridicule cast by Aristophanês (in the Nubes) upon Socratês, on the score of alleged impiety, because he belonged to a school of philosophers (though in point of fact he discountenanced that line of study) who introduced physical laws and forces in place of the personal agency of the gods. The old man Strepsiades inquires from Socratês, Who rains? Who thunders? To which Socratês replies, “Not Zeus, but the Nephelæ, i. e. the clouds: you never saw rain without clouds.” Strepsiades then proceeds to inquire—“But who is it that compels the clouds to move onward? is it not Zeus?” Socratês—“Not at all; it is æthereal rotation.” Strepsiades—“Rotation? that had escaped me: Zeus then no longer exists, and Rotation reigns in his place.”
| Streps. | Ὁ δ᾽ ἀναγκάζων ἐστὶ τίς αὐτὰς (Νεφέλας), οὐχ ὁ Ζεὺς, ὥστε φέρεσθαι; |
| Socrat. | Ἥκιστ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ αἰθέριος δῖνος. |
| Streps. | Δῖνος; τουτί μ᾽ ἐλελήθει— |
| Ὁ Ζεὺς οὐκ ὢν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντ᾽ αὐτοῦ Δῖνος νυνὶ βασιλεύων. |
To the same effect v. 1454, Δῖνος βασιλεύει τὸν Δί᾽ ἐξεληλακώς—“Rotation has driven out Zeus, and reigns in his place.”
If Aristophanês had had as strong a wish to turn the public antipathies against Herodotus as against Socratês and Euripidês, the explanation here given would have afforded him a plausible show of truth for doing so; and it is highly probable that the Thessalians would have been sufficiently displeased with the view of Herodotus to sympathize in the poet’s attack upon him. The point would have been made (waiving metrical considerations)—
Σεισμὸς βασιλεύει, τὸν Ποσειδῶν᾽ ἐξεληλακώς.
The comment of Herodotus upon the Thessalian view seems almost as if it were intended to guard against this very inference.
Other accounts ascribed the cutting of the defile of Tempê to Hêraklês (Diodôr. iv. 18).
Respecting the ancient Grecian faith, which recognized the displeasure of Poseidôn as the cause of earthquakes, see Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 2; Thucydid. i. 127; Strabo, xii. p. 579; Diodôr. xv. 48-49. It ceased to give universal satisfaction even so early as the time of Thalês and Anaximenês (see Aristot. Meteorolog. ii. 7-8; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 15; Seneca, Natural. Quæst. vi. 6-23); and that philosopher, as well as Anaxagoras, Democritus and others, suggested different physical explanations of the fact. Notwithstanding a dissentient minority, however, the old doctrine still continued to be generally received: and Diodôrus, in describing the terrible earthquake in 373 B. C., by which Helikê and Bura were destroyed, while he notices those philosophers (probably Kallisthenês, Senec. Nat. Quæst. vi. 23) who substituted physical causes and laws in place of the divine agency, rejects their views, and ranks himself with the religious public, who traced this formidable phænomenon to the wrath of Poseidôn (xv. 48-49).
The Romans recognized many different gods as producers of earthquakes; an unfortunate creed, since it exposed them to the danger of addressing their prayers to the wrong god: “Unde in ritualibus et pontificiis observatur, obtemperantibus sacerdotiis caute, ne alio Deo pro alio nominato, cum quis eorum terram concutiat, piacula committantur.” (Ammian. Marcell. xvii. 7.)
[937] Herod. ii. 116. δοκέει δέ μοι καὶ Ὅμηρος τὸν λόγον τοῦτον πυθέσθαι· ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως εὐπρεπὴς ἐς τὴν ἐποποιΐην ἦν τῷ ἑτέρῳ τῷ περ ἐχρήσατο· ἑς ὃ μετῆκε αὐτὸν, δηλώσας ὡς καὶ τοῦτον ἐπισταῖτο τὸν λόγον.