Chapter 4

For the whole problem is to find out τὰ πάτρια, the ways that our fathers followed. And suppose the Old Men themselves fail us, what must we needs do? Here we come to a famous and peculiar Greek custom, for which I have never seen quoted any exact parallel or any satisfactory explanation. If the Old Men fail us, we must go to those older still, go to our great ancestors, the ἥρωες, the Chthonian people, lying in their sacred tombs, and ask them to help. The word χρᾶν means both 'to lend money' and 'to give an oracle', two ways of helping people in an emergency. Sometimes a tribe might happen to have a real ancestor buried in the neighbourhood; if so, his tomb would be an oracle. More often perhaps, for the memories of savage tribes are very precarious, there would be no well-recorded personal tomb. The oracle would be at some place sacred to the Chthonian people in general, or to some particular personification of them, a Delphi or a cave of Trophônius, a place of Snakes and Earth. You go to the Chthonian folk for guidance because they are themselves the Oldest of the Old Ones, and they know the real custom: they know what is Presbiston, what is Themis. And by an easy extension of this knowledge they are also supposed to know what is. He who knows the law fully to the uttermost also knows what will happen if the law is broken. It is, I think, important to realize that the normal reason for consulting an oracle was not to ask questions of fact. It was that some emergency had arisen in which men simply wanted to know how they ought to behave. The advice they received in this way varied from the virtuous to the abominable, as the religion itself varied. A great mass of oracles can be quoted enjoining the rules of customary morality, justice, honesty, piety, duty to a man's parents, to the old, and to the weak. But of necessity the oracles hated change and strangled the progress of knowledge. Also, like most manifestations of early religion, they throve upon human terror: the more blind the terror the stronger became their hold. In such an atmosphere the lowest and most beastlike elements of humanity tended to come to the front; and religion no doubt as a rule joined with them in drowning the voice of criticism and of civilization, that is, of reason and of mercy. When really frightened the oracle generally fell back on some remedy full of pain and blood. The medieval plan of burning heretics alive had not yet been invented. But the history of uncivilized man, if it were written, would provide a vast list of victims, all of them innocent, who died or suffered to expiate some portent or _monstrum_--some reported τέρας--with which they had nothing whatever to do, which was in no way altered by their suffering, which probably never really happened at all, and if it did was of no consequence. The sins of the modern world in dealing with heretics and witches have perhaps been more gigantic than those of primitive men, but one can hardy rise from the record of these ancient observances without being haunted by the judgement of the Roman poet:

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,

and feeling with him that the lightening of this cloud, the taming of this blind dragon, must rank among the very greatest services that Hellenism wrought for mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[6:1] Professor Émile Durkheim in his famous analysis of the religious emotions argues that when a man feels the belief and the command as something coming from without, superior, authoritative, of infinite import, it is because religion is the work of the tribe and, as such, superior to the individual. The voice of God is the imagined voice of the whole tribe, heard or imagined by him who is going to break its laws. I have some difficulty about the psychology implied in this doctrine: surely the apparent externality of the religious command seems to belong to a fairly common type of experience, in which the personality is divided, so that first one part of it and then another emerges into consciousness. If you forget an engagement, sometimes your peace is disturbed for quite a long time by a vague external annoyance or condemnation, which at last grows to be a distinct judgement--'Heavens! I ought to be at the Committee on So-and-so.' But apart from this criticism, there is obviously much historical truth in Professor Durkheim's theory, and it is not so different as it seems at first sight from the ordinary beliefs of religious men. The tribe to primitive man is not a mere group of human beings. It is his whole world. The savage who is breaking the laws of his tribe has all his world--totems, tabus, earth, sky and all--against him. He cannot be at peace with God.

The position of the hero or martyr who defies his tribe for the sake of what he thinks the truth or the right can easily be thought out on these lines. He defies this false temporary Cosmos in loyalty to the true and permanent Cosmos.

See Durkheim, 'Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse', in _Travaux de l'Année Sociologique_, 1912; or G. Davy, 'La Sociologie de M. Durkheim', in _Rev. Philosophique_, xxxvi, pp. 42-71 and 160-85.

[8:1] I suspect that most reforms pass through this stage. A man somehow feels clear that some new course is, for him, right, though he cannot marshal the arguments convincingly in favour of it, and may even admit that the weight of obvious evidence is on the other side. We read of judges in the seventeenth century who believed that witches ought to be burned and that the persons before them were witches, and yet would not burn them--evidently under the influence of vague half-realized feelings. I know a vegetarian who thinks that, as far as he can see, carnivorous habits are not bad for human health and actually tend to increase the happiness of the species of animals eaten--as the adoption of Swift's _Modest Proposal_ would doubtless relieve the economic troubles of the human race, and yet feels clear that for him the ordinary flesh meal (or 'feasting on corpses') would 'partake of the nature of sin'. The path of progress is paved with inconsistencies, though it would be an error to imagine that the people who habitually reject any higher promptings that come to them are really any more consistent.

[9:1] _Transactions of the Third International Congress of Religions_, Oxford, 1908, pp. 26-7.

[10:1] _The Buddhist Dharma_, by Mrs. Rhys Davids.

[10:2] See _Die Mutaziliten, oder die Freidenker im Islam_, von H. Steiner, 1865. This Arab was clearly under the influence of Plotinus or some other Neo-Platonist.

[11:1] Cf. E. Reisch, _Entstehung und Wandel griechischer Göttergestalten_. Vienna, 1909.

[12:1] Parm. Fr. 8, 3-7 (Diels{2}).

[12:2] Xen. Fr. 24 (Diels{2}).

[12:3] Xen. Fr. 15.

[12:4] Aesch. _Cho._ 60; Eur. _Hel._ 560; Bac. 284; Soph. _O.T._ 871. Cf. also ἡ φρόνησις ἁγαθὴ θεὸς μέγας. Soph. Fr. 836, 2 (Nauck).

ὁ πλοῦτος, ἀνθρωπίσκε, τοῖς σοφοῖς θεός. Eur. _Cycl._ 316.

ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός. Eur. Fr. 1018.

φθόνος κάκιστος κάδικώτατος θεός. Hippothoön. Fr. 2.

A certain moment of time: ἀρχὴ καὶ θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἱδρυμένη σῴζει πάντα. Pl. Leg. 775 E.

τὰ μῶρα γὰρ πάντ' ἐστὶν Ἀφροδίτη βροτοῖς. Eur. _Tro._ 989.

ἧλθεν δὲ δαὶς θάλεια πρεσβίστη θεῶν. Soph. Fr. 548.

[14:1] See J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena_, i, ii, iv; Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen_, 1898, pp. 308-22 (Thesmophoria), 384-404 (Anthesteria); 421-6 (Diasia). See also Pauly Wissowa, s.v.

[14:2] _Prolegomena_, p. 15 f.

[15:1] Luc. _Icaro-Menippos_ 24 schol. ad loc.

[16:1] Frequently dual, τὼ Θεσμοφόρω, under the influence of the 'Mother and Maiden' idea; Dittenberger _Inscr. Sylloge_ 628, Ar. _Thesm._ 84, 296 _et passim_. The plural αἱ Θεσμοφόροι used in late Greek is not, as one might imagine, a projection from the whole band of worshippers; it is merely due to the disappearance of the dual from Greek. I accept provisionally the derivation of these θεσμοί from θεσ- in θέσσασθαι, θέσφατος, θέσκελος, πολύθεστος, ἀπόθεστος, &c.: cf. A. W. Verrall in _J. H. S._ xx, p. 114; and _Prolegomena_, pp. 48 ff., 136 f. But, whatever the derivation, the Thesmoi were the objects carried.

[16:2] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 44 ff.; A. B. Cook, _J. H. S._ xiv, pp. 153-4; J. E. Harrison, _Themis_, p. 5. See also A. Lang, _Homeric Hymns_, 1899, p. 63.

[17:1] _Feste der Stadt Athen_, p. 390 f. On Seed Jars, Wine Jars and Funeral Jars, see _Themis_, pp. 276-88, and Warde Fowler, 'Mundus Patet,' in _Journ. Roman Studies_, ii, pp. 25 ff. Cf. below, p. 28 f.

[17:2] Dieterich, _Muttererde_, 1905, p. 48 f.

[18:1] Dr. Frazer, _The Magic Art_, ii. 137, thinks it not certain that the γάμος took place during the Anthesteria, at the same time as the oath of the γεραιραί. Without the γάμος, however, it is hard to see what the βασίλιννα and γεραιραί had to do in the festival; and this is the view of Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen_, pp. 391-3; Gruppe in Iwan Müller, _Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte_, i. 33; Farnell, _Cults_, v. 217.

[18:2] One might perhaps say, in all three. Ἀνθίστηρος τοῦ Πυθοχρηστοῦ κοινόν is the name of a society of worshippers in the island of Thera, _I. G. I._ iii. 329. This gives a god Anthister, who is clearly identified with Dionysus, and seems to be a projection of a feast Anthisteria = Anthesteria. The inscription is of the second century B. C. and it seems likely that Anthister-Anthisteria, with their clear derivation from ἀνθίζειν, are corruptions of the earlier and difficult forms Ἀνθέστηρ-Ἀνθεστήρια. It is noteworthy that Thera, an island lying rather outside the main channels of civilization, kept up throughout its history a tendency to treat the 'epithet' as a full person. Hikesios and Koures come very early; also Polieus and Stoichaios without the name Zeus; Delphinios, Karneios, Aiglatas, and Aguieus without Apollo.

See Hiller von Gaertringen in the _Festschrift für O. Benndorff_, p. 228. Also Nilsson, _Griechische Feste_, 1906, p. 267, n. 5.

[20:1] Miss Harrison, 'Bird and Pillar Worship in relation to Ouranian Divinities', _Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religion_, Oxford, 1908, vol. ii, p. 154; Farnell, _Greece and Babylon_, 1911, pp. 66 ff.

[20:2] First published by R. Paribeni, 'Il Sarcofago dipinto di Hagia Triada', in _Monumenti antichi della R. Accademia dei Lincei_, xix, 1908, p. 6, T. i-iii. See also _Themis_, pp. 158 ff.

[20:3] Ar. _Equites_, 82-4--or possibly of apotheosis. See _Themis_, p. 154, n. 2.

[21:1] _Themis_, p. 145, fig. 25; and p. 152, fig. 28 b.

[21:2] O. Kern, _Inschriften v. Magnesia_, No. 98, discussed by O. Kern, _Arch. Anz._ 1894, p. 78, and Nilsson, _Griechische Feste_, p. 23.

[21:3] _Religion of the Semites_, 1901, p. 338; Reuterskiold, in _Archiv f. Relig._ xv. 1-23.

[21:4] _Nili Opera_, _Narrat._ iii. 28.

[22:1] See Aristophanes' _Birds_, e. g. 685-736: cf. the practice of augury from birds, and the art-types of Winged Kêres, Victories and Angels.

[23:1] Romans, i. 25; viii. 20-3.

[23:2] Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, 1906, ii. 284; ibid., 130; Moret, _Caractère religieux de la Monarchie Égyptienne_; Dieterich, _Mithrasliturgie_, 1903.

[24:1] A. B. Cook in _J. H. S._ 1894, 'Animal Worship in the Mycenaean Age'. See also Hogarth on the 'Zakro Sealings', _J. H. S._ 1902; these seals show a riot of fancy in the way of mixed monsters, starting in all probability from the simpler form. See the quotation from Robertson Smith in Hogarth, p. 91.

[24:2] _Feste der Stadt Athen_, p. 416.

[24:3] _Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908, pp. 77, 78.

[25:1] A. B. Cook, _Class. Rev._ xvii, pp. 275 ff.; A. J. Reinach, _Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions_, lx, p. 178; S. Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes, &c._, ii. 160-6.

[25:2] One may suggest in passing that this explains the enormous families attributed to many sacred kings of Greek legend: why Priam or Danaus have their fifty children, and Heracles, most prolific of all, his several hundred. The particular numbers chosen, however, are probably due to other causes, e. g. the fifty moon-months of the Penteteris.

[26:1] See _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, by F. M. Davenport. New York, 1906.

[27:1] E. Doutté, _Magie et religion dans l'Afrique du Nord_, 1909, p. 601.

[27:2] Cicero, _de Nat. Deorum_, ii. 2; iii. 5, 6; Florus, ii. 12.

[27:3] Plut. _Theseus_, 35; Paus. i. 32. 5. Herodotus only mentions a bearded and gigantic figure who struck Epizelos blind (vi. 117).

[27:4] Eusebius, _Vit. Constant._, l. i, cc. 28, 29, 30; _Nazarius inter Panegyr. Vet._ x. 14. 15.

[28:1] Aesch. _Suppl._ 1, cf. 478 Ζεὺς ἱκτήρ. _Rise of the Greek Epic_{3}, p. 275 n. Adjectival phrases like Ζεὺς Ἱκεσιος, Ἱκετήςιος, Ἱκταῖος are common and call for no remark.

[28:2] Hymn of the Kouretes, _Themis_, passim.

[29:1] See in general I. King, _The Development of Religion_, 1910; E. J. Payne, _History of the New World_, 1892, p. 414. Also Dieterich, _Muttererde_, esp. pp. 37-58.

[29:2] See Dieterich, _Muttererde_, J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena_, chap. vi, 'The Making of a Goddess'; _Themis_, chap. vi, 'The Spring Drômenon'. As to the prehistoric art-type of this goddess technically called 'steatopygous', I cannot refrain from suggesting that it may be derived from a mountain Δ turned into a human figure, as the palladion or figure-8 type came from two round shields. See p. 52.

[30:1] _Hymn Orph._ 8, 10 ὡροτρόφε κοῦρε.

[30:2] For the order in which men generally proceed in worship, turning their attention to (1) the momentary incidents of weather, rain, sunshine, thunder, &c.; (2) the Moon; (3) the Sun and stars, see Payne, _History of the New World called America_, vol. i, p. 474, cited by Miss Harrison, _Themis_, p. 390.

[31:1] On the subject of Initiations see Webster, _Primitive Secret Societies_, New York, 1908; Schurtz, _Altersklassen und Männerbunde_, Berlin, 1902; Van Gennep, _Rites de Passage_, Paris, 1909; Nilsson, _Grundlage des Spartanischen Lebens_ in Klio xii (1912), pp. 308-40; Themis, p. 337, n. 1. Since the above, Rivers, _Social Organization_, 1924.

[31:2] Cf. Dr. Rivers on _mate_, 'Primitive Conception of Death', _Hibbert Journal_, January 1912, p. 393.

[31:3] Cf. Cardinal Virtues, Pindar, _Nem._ iii. 72:

ἐν παισὶ νέοισι παῖς, ἐν ἀνδράσιν ἀνήρ, τρίτον ἐν παλαιτέροισι μέρος, ἕκαστον οἶον ἔχομεν βρότεον ἔθνος. ἐλᾶ δὲ καὶ τέσσαρας ἀρετὰς ὁ θνατὸς αἰών,

also Pindar, _Pyth._ iv. 281.

[32:1] See Woodward in _B. S. A._ xiv, 83. Nikagoras won four (successive?) victories as μικκιχιζόμενος, πρόπαις, παῖς, and μελλείρην, i. e. from his tenth to fifteenth year. He would then at 14 or 15 become an _iran_. Plut. _Lyc._ 17 gives the age of an _iran_ as 20. This agrees with the age of an ἔφηβος at Athens as '15-20', '14-21', 'about 16'; see authorities in Stephanus s. v. ἔφηβος. Such variations in the date of 'puberty ceremonies' are common.

[32:2] See _Rise of the Greek Epic_, Appendix on Hym. Dem.; and W. R. Halliday, _C. R._ xxv, 8. Nilsson's valuable article has appeared since the above was written (see note 1, p. 31).

[33:1] Anaximander apud Simplic. phys. 24, 13; Diels, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_, i. 13. See especially F. M. Cornford, _From Religion to Philosophy_ (Cambridge, 1912), i; also my article on English and Greek Tragedy in _Essays of the Oxford English School_, 1912. This explanation of the τρίτος σωτήρ is my conjecture.

[33:2] 1 Cor. xv. 36; Rom. vi. generally, 3-11.

[34:1] _Il._ M. 326 f. μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν, βροτὸν οὐδ' ὑπαλύξαι.

[34:2] Frg. Ap. Plut. _Consol. ad Apoll._ xxvi . . . ὅτι "πλείη μὲν γαῖα κακῶν πλείη δὲ θάλασσα" καὶ "τοιάδε θνητοῖσι κακὰ κακῶν ἀμφί τε κῆρες εἰλεῦνται, κενεὴ δ' εἴσδυσις οὐδ' ἀθέρι" (MS. αἰθέρι).

[35:1] Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, 267; F. Cumont, 'Les Actes de S. Dasius', in _Analecta Bollandiana_, xvi. 5-16: cf. especially what St. Augustine says about the disreputable hordes of would-be martyrs called _Circumcelliones_. See Index to Augustine, vol. xi in Migne: some passages collected in Seeck, _Gesch. d. Untergangs der antiken Welt_, vol. iii, Anhang, pp. 503 ff.

II

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

I. _Origin of the Olympians_

The historian of early Greece must find himself often on the watch for a particular cardinal moment, generally impossible to date in time and sometimes hard even to define in terms of development, when the clear outline that we call Classical Greece begins to take shape out of the mist. It is the moment when, as Herodotus puts it, 'the Hellenic race was marked off from the barbarian, as more intelligent and more emancipated from silly nonsense'.[39:1] In the eighth century B. C., for instance, so far as our remains indicate, there cannot have been much to show that the inhabitants of Attica and Boeotia and the Peloponnese were markedly superior to those of, say, Lycia or Phrygia, or even Epirus. By the middle of the fifth century the difference is enormous. On the one side is Hellas, on the other the motley tribes of 'barbaroi'.

When the change does come and is consciously felt we may notice a significant fact about it. It does not announce itself as what it was, a new thing in the world. It professes to be a revival, or rather an emphatic realization, of something very old. The new spirit of classical Greece, with all its humanity, its intellectual life, its genius for poetry and art, describes itself merely as being 'Hellenic'--like the Hellenes. And the Hellenes were simply, as far as we can make out, much the same as the Achaioi, one of the many tribes of predatory Northmen who had swept down on the Aegean kingdoms in the dawn of Greek history.[40:1]

This claim of a new thing to be old is, in varying degrees, a common characteristic of great movements. The Reformation professed to be a return to the Bible, the Evangelical movement in England a return to the Gospels, the High Church movement a return to the early Church. A large element even in the French Revolution, the greatest of all breaches with the past, had for its ideal a return to Roman republican virtue or to the simplicity of the natural man.[40:2] I noticed quite lately a speech of an American Progressive leader claiming that his principles were simply those of Abraham Lincoln. The tendency is due in part to the almost insuperable difficulty of really inventing a new word to denote a new thing. It is so much easier to take an existing word, especially a famous word with fine associations, and twist it into a new sense. In part, no doubt, it comes from mankind's natural love for these old associations, and the fact that nearly all people who are worth much have in them some instinctive spirit of reverence. Even when striking out a new path they like to feel that they are following at least the spirit of one greater than themselves.

The Hellenism of the sixth and fifth centuries was to a great extent what the Hellenism of later ages was almost entirely, an ideal and a standard of culture. The classical Greeks were not, strictly speaking, pure Hellenes by blood. Herodotus, and Thucydides[41:1] are quite clear about that. The original Hellenes were a particular conquering tribe of great prestige, which attracted the surrounding tribes to follow it, imitate it, and call themselves by its name. The Spartans were, to Herodotus, Hellenic; the Athenians on the other hand were not. They were Pelasgian, but by a certain time 'changed into Hellenes and learnt the language'. In historical times we cannot really find any tribe of pure Hellenes in existence, though the name clings faintly to a particular district, not otherwise important, in South Thessaly. Had there been any undoubted Hellenes with incontrovertible pedigrees still going, very likely the ideal would have taken quite a different name. But where no one's ancestry would bear much inspection, the only way to show you were a true Hellene was to behave as such: that is, to approximate to some constantly rising ideal of what the true Hellene should be. In all probability if a Greek of the fifth century, like Aeschylus or even Pindar, had met a group of the real Hellenes or Achaioi of the Migrations, he would have set them down as so many obvious and flaming barbarians.

We do not know whether the old Hellenes had any general word to denote the surrounding peoples ('Pelasgians and divers other barbarous tribes'[42:1]) whom they conquered or accepted as allies.[42:2] In any case by the time of the Persian Wars (say 500 B. C.) all these tribes together considered themselves Hellenized, bore the name of 'Hellenes', and formed a kind of unity against hordes of 'barbaroi' surrounding them on every side and threatening them especially from the east.

Let us consider for a moment the dates. In political history this self-realization of the Greek tribes as Hellenes against barbarians seems to have been first felt in the Ionian settlements on the coast of Asia Minor, where the 'sons of Javan' (Yawan = Ἰάων) clashed as invaders against the native Hittite and Semite. It was emphasized by a similar clash in the further colonies in Pontus and in the West. If we wish for a central moment as representing this self-realization of Greece, I should be inclined to find it in the reign of Pisistratus (560-527 B. C.) when that monarch made, as it were, the first sketch of an Athenian empire based on alliances and took over to Athens the leadership of the Ionian race.

In literature the decisive moment is clear. It came when, in Mr. Mackail's phrase, 'Homer came to Hellas'.[42:3] The date is apparently the same, and the influences at work are the same. It seems to have been under Pisistratus that the Homeric Poems, in some form or other, came from Ionia to be recited in a fixed order at the Panathenaic Festival, and to find a canonical form and a central home in Athens till the end of the classical period. Athens is the centre from which Homeric influence radiates over the mainland of Greece. Its effect upon literature was of course enormous. It can be traced in various ways. By the content of the literature, which now begins to be filled with the heroic saga. By a change of style which emerges in, say, Pindar and Aeschylus when compared with what we know of Corinna or Thespis. More objectively and definitely it can be traced in a remarkable change of dialect. The old Attic poets, like Solon, were comparatively little affected by the epic influence; the later elegists, like Ion, Euenus, and Plato, were steeped in it.[43:1]

In religion the cardinal moment is the same. It consists in the coming of Homer's 'Olympian Gods', and that is to be the subject of the present essay. I am not, of course, going to describe the cults and characters of the various Olympians. For that inquiry the reader will naturally go to the five learned volumes of my colleague, Dr. Farnell. I wish merely to face certain difficult and, I think, hitherto unsolved problems affecting the meaning and origin and history of the Olympians as a whole.