Although the religious life of the Greeks was always complex, there is not to be found in Homer the broad distinction drawn afterwards between public and private gods. It is noticeable that the later Greeks sought to draw into their homes the beneficent influence of one or other of the greater gods, whose protection and guidance were claimed in times of need by all members of the household. Secondary influences, though none the less strongly felt, were those of the past heroes of the house, sometimes only just dead, to be propitiated at the family tombs or hearth. Anxiety on this head, and the deeply-rooted belief in the real need to the dead of attentions from the living, were, it will be seen, most powerful factors in the development of Greek society.
Ancestor-worship not obvious in Homer.
The worship of ancestors or household gods as such is not evident in the visible religious exercises of the Homeric poems. But this can hardly be a matter of surprise. The Greek chieftains mentioned in the poems are so nearly descended from the gods themselves, are in such immediate relation each with his guardian deity, and are so indefatigable in their attentions thereto, that it would surely be [pg 006] extremely irrelevant if any of the libations or hecatombs were perverted to any intermediate, however heroic, ancestor from the all-powerful and ever ready divinity who was so often also himself the boasted founder of the family.[11]
Offerings of food to the gods,
The libations and hecatombs themselves, however, seem to serve much the same purpose as the offerings to the manes or household gods, and relieved the luxurious craving for sustenance in the immortals, left unsatisfied by their ethereal diet of nectar and ambrosia.[12]
and to the dead.
Yet it is strange that if libations and sacrifices were paid to the dead periodically at their tombs, no mention of the occurrence is to be found in Homer. That the dead were believed to appreciate such attentions may be gathered from the directions given by Circe to Odysseus.
“Then pour a drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead (μελικρήτῳ), and thereafter with sweet wine, and for the third time with water, and sprinkle white meal thereon.... and promise thou wilt offer in thy halls[13] a barren heifer, the best thou hast, and fill the pyre with treasure, and wilt sacrifice apart to Teiresias alone a black sheep without spot, the fairest of your flock.”
The continuance of his name quite as important as offerings of food.
This done, the ghosts flock up to drink of the blood of the victim. But the ghost of Elpenor, who met his death at the house of Circe by falling from the roof in his drunken haste to join his already departed [pg 007] comrades, and who had therefore received no burial at their hands, demands no libations or sacrifices for the refreshment of his thirsty soul, but merely burial with tears and a barrow upon the shore of the gray sea, that his name may be remembered by men to come.