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

What relation now did the teachings of Jesus bear to the religious beliefs and hopes of the Jewish people? Certainly his words on most matters did not appear to his hearers oppo...

Let us then first examine the central thought of Plato’s philosophy—the “doctrine of ideas.” Developing the doctrines of earlier philosophers, especially those of Heraclitus and...

Let us now consider briefly the most important Homeric gods. At the head of the divine order stands Zeus, “father of gods and of men” (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε), “most exalted of...

That is, the chorus here pray that they may always show their piety and reverence by obeying the divine laws. This sentiment is repeated more than once in the extant tragedies;...

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...

When we come to Pindar’s view of the life after death, we find that he has a more exalted vision than the poets of an earlier day. The ideas of immortality, of future rewards an...

The Pythagorean school had ceased to have a separate existence by the fourth century B.C., but the ideas which the school had cherished were not lost. In the last century before...

The Mithraic worship was carried on in small chapels which would seldom hold as many as a hundred worshippers at once, so that when the number of devotees was considerable more...

Xenophanes of Colophon (flor. c. 540 B.C.) was the first to enter the lists. Driven into exile by civil disturbances at about the age of twenty-five, he lived most of his life i...

With regard to the centuries during which these oriental religions flourished our evidence, aside from that for the Great Mother, shows clearly that some entered southern Italy...

During the third and second centuries education came to mean first of all the study of the Greek language and literature. I have just spoken of some of the evidence we possess w...

In their explanation of the universe the Stoics held to a materialism which they borrowed from the teachings of Heraclitus, who had maintained that only matter had any existence...

By her victory at Zama in 202 B.C. Rome made her position as mistress of the western Mediterranean secure; and in the next century she extended her political dominion over Greec...

What were some of the supports and satisfactions which Stoicism offered serious men in the disordered political and social world of the early Empire? First of all, it laid stres...

In the preceding lecture we considered together various manifestations of the mystic tendencies which developed in Greece during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Now we must...

[321] Harnack and some other scholars incline to regard the prologue as “not the key to [the Gospel’s] comprehension”; but when we consider the importance which John attaches to...

From the foregoing it will appear that the Gnostic movement represented in general exaggerations of the normal Christian tenets, produced by an attempt to combine Christianity w...

In this book eight lectures given before the Lowell Institute in Boston during the late autumn of 1914 are combined with material drawn from a course of lectures delivered the p...

Hesiod’s other poem, the Works and Days, is of high moral import. It owes its title to the fact that it gives directions for various kinds of occupations and that it also contai...

Before we go on to consider other movements of the sixth century, let us summarize briefly the contributions of the Orphics to Greek religious thought. In the first place they d...

The greatest spokesman of this time was Euripides. Although he was the younger contemporary of Sophocles, who outlived him by a few months, Euripides belongs to a new age. The f...

In the preceding discussion I have used the word God freely, but it may fairly be asked how far such use is justified, and furthermore whether Plato was a pantheist or a polythe...

In ethics Aristotle taught that the highest human good was that happiness which results when man’s mind under the direction of reason is active toward virtuous ends; that moral...

[293] Lydus, _de mens._ IV, 59. Cf. Cumont, _The Oriental Religions_, pp. 55 ff. Some scholars doubt the evidence and would place the introduction of the festivals in the time o...

F IIII NP LVDI FLORAE FERIAE·EX·S·C·QVOD·EO·DI[E AEDICVL]A·ET·[ARA] VESTAE·IN·DOMV·IMP·CAESARIS·AVGV[STI PO]NTIF·MA[X] DEDICATAST·QVIRINIO ET VALGIO CoS EODEM DIE·AEDIS·FLORAE·Q...

Again Christianity knew its saviour and redeemer not as some god whose history was contained in a myth filled with rude, primitive, and even offensive elements, as were the stor...

Paganism: influence on Christian thought, 349 ff.; service to Christianity, 355 f. Pan, 83, 130. Panaetius, 186 f., 243. Panathenaic festival, 111. Pandora, 36 f. Pantheism, 13,...