[85] Homer, Iliad xxiv. 527.
[86] The opinion is memorable, which Herodotus puts into the mouth of the wisest and best man of his age — Solon. Ὦ Κροῖσε, ἐπιστάμενόν με τὸ θεῖον πᾶν ἐὸν φθονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες, ἐπειρωτᾶς ἀνθρωπηΐων πραγμάτων περί; (Herod. i. 32). Krœsus was overtaken by a terrible divine judgment because he thought himself the happiest of men (i. 34). The Gods strike at persons of high rank and position: they do not suffer any one except themselves to indulge in self-exaltation (vii. 10). Herodotus ascribes the like sentiment to another man distinguished for prudence — Amasis king of Egypt (iii. 40-44-125). Compare Pausanias, ii. 33, and Æschyl. Pers. 93, Supplices, 388, Hermann. Herodotus and Pausanias proclaim the envy and jealousy of the Gods more explicitly than other writers. About the usual disposition to regard the jealousy of the Gods as causing misfortunes and suffering, see Thucyd. ii. 54, vii. 77; especially when a man by rash speech or act brings grave misfortune on himself, he is supposed to be under a misguiding influence by the Gods, expressed by Herodotus in the remarkable word θεοβλαβής (Herodot. i. 127, viii. 137; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 3; Soph. Œd. Kol. 371). The poverty in which Xenophon found himself when he quitted the Cyreian army, is ascribed by himself, at the suggestion of the prophet Eukleides, to his having omitted to sacrifice to Zeus Meilichius during the whole course of the expedition and retreat. The next day Xenophon offered an ample sacrifice to this God, and good fortune came upon him immediately afterwards; he captured Asidates the Persian, receiving a large ransom, with an ample booty, and thus enriched himself (Xenoph. Anab. vii. 8, 4-23). Compare about θεῶν φθόνος, Pindar, Pyth. x. 20-44; Demosthenes cont. Timokratem, p. 738; Nägelsbach, Die Nach-Homerische Theologie der Griechen, pp. 330-355.
Repugnance of ordinary Athenians in regard to the criticism of Sokrates on the religious legends.
When therefore the Platonic Sokrates in this treatise affirms authoritatively, — and affirms without any proof — his restricted version of the agency of the Gods, calling upon his countrymen to reject all that large portion of their religious belief, which rested upon the assumption of a wider agency, as being unworthy of the real attributes of the Gods, — he would confirm, in the minds of ordinary Athenians, the charge of culpable innovation in religion, preferred against him by his accusers. To set up à priori a certain type (either Platonic or Epikurean) of what the Gods must be, different from what they were commonly believed to be, — and then to disallow, as unworthy and incredible, all that was inconsistent with this type, including a full half of the narratives consecrated in the emotional belief of the public — all this could not but appear as “impious rationalism,” on the part of “the Sophist Sokrates”.[87] It would be not less repugnant to the feelings of ordinary Greeks, and would appear not more conclusive to their reason, than the arguments of rationalising critics upon many narratives of the Old Testament appear to orthodox readers of modern times — when these critics disallow as untrue many acts therein ascribed to God, on the ground that such acts are unworthy of a just and good being.
[87] Æschines cont. Timarch. Σωκράτη τὸν σοφιστήν.
Lucretius, i. 80.
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Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forté rearis Impia te rationis inire elementa, viamque Indugredi sceleris — |
Plato, in Leges, v. 738 B, recognises the danger of disturbing the established and accredited religious φῆμαι, as well as the rites and ceremonies.
Aristophanes connects the idea of immorality with the freethinkers and their wicked misinterpretations.
Though the Platonic Sokrates, repudiating most of the narratives believed respecting Gods and Heroes, as being immoral and suggesting bad examples to the hearers, proposes to construct a body of new fictions in place of them — yet, if we turn to the Clouds of Aristophanes, we shall find that the old-fashioned and unphilosophical Athenian took quite the opposite view. He connected immoral conduct with the new teaching, not with the old: he regarded the narratives respecting the Gods as realities of an unrecorded past, not as fictions for the purposes of the training-school: he did not imagine that the conduct of Zeus, in chaining up his father Kronus, was a proper model to be copied by himself or any other man: nay, he denounced all such disposition to copy, and to seek excuse for human misconduct in the example of the Gods, as abuse and profanation introduced by the sophistry of the freethinkers.[88] In his eyes, the religious traditions were part and parcel of the established faith, customs and laws of the state; and Sokrates, in discrediting the traditions, set himself up as a thinker above the laws. As to this feature, the Aristophanic Sokrates in the Clouds, and the Platonic Sokrates in the Republic, perfectly agree — however much they differ in other respects.