Atheism in Pagan Antiquity Part 3

On the other hand, there is a tradition that he maintained that "according to nature" there was only one G.o.d, but "according to the law" several-a purely sophistic view. He inveighed against the worship of images, too, and maintained that G.o.d "did not resemble any thing," and we know that his school rejected all worship of the G.o.ds because the G.o.ds "were in need of nothing." This conception, too, is presumably traceable to Antisthenes. In all this the theological interest is evident. As soon as this interest sets in, the harmonious relation to the popular faith is upset, the discord between its higher and lower ideas becomes manifest, and criticism begins to a.s.sert itself. In the case of Antisthenes, if we may believe tradition, it seems to have led to monotheism, in itself a most remarkable phenomenon in the history of Greek religion, but the material is too slight for us to make anything of it. The later Cynics afford interesting features in ill.u.s.tration of atheism in antiquity, but this is best left to a later chapter.

About the relations of the Megarians to the popular faith we know next to nothing. One of them, Stilpo, was charged with impiety on account of a bad joke about Athene, and convicted, although he tried to save himself by another bad joke. As his point of view was that of a downright sceptic, he was no doubt an atheist according to the notions of antiquity; in our day he would be called an agnostic, but the information that we have about his religious standpoint is too slight to repay dwelling on him.

As to the relation of the Cyrenaic school to the popular faith, the general proposition has been handed down to us that the wise man could not be "deisidaimon," _i.e._ superst.i.tious or G.o.d-fearing; the Greek word can have both senses. This does not speak for piety at any rate, but then the relationship of the Cyrenaics to the G.o.ds of popular belief was different from that of the other followers of Socrates. As they set up pleasure-the momentary, isolated feeling of pleasure-as the supreme good, they had no use for the popular conceptions of the G.o.ds in their ethics, nay, these conceptions were even a hindrance to them in so far as the fear of the G.o.ds might prove a restriction where it ought not to. In these circ.u.mstances we cannot wonder at finding a member of the school in the list of _atheoi_. This is Theodorus of Cyrene, who lived about the year 300. He really seems to have been a downright denier of the G.o.ds; he wrote a work _On the G.o.ds_ containing a searching criticism of theology, which is said to have exposed him to unpleasantness during a stay at Athens, but the then ruler of the city, Demetrius of Phalerum, protected him. There is nothing strange in a manifestation of downright atheism at this time and from this quarter. More remarkable is that interest in theology which we must a.s.sume Theodorus to have had, since he wrote at length upon the subject. Unfortunately it is not evident from the account whether his criticism was directed mostly against popular religion or against the theology of the philosophers. As it was a.s.serted in antiquity that Epicurus used his book largely, the latter is more probable.

Whereas in the case of the "imperfect Socratics" as well as of all the earlier philosophers we must content ourselves with more or less casual notes, and at the best with fragments, and for Socrates with second-hand information, when we come to Plato we find ourselves for the first time in the presence of full and authentic information. Plato belongs to those few among the ancient authors of whom everything that their contemporaries possessed has been preserved to our own day. There would, however, be no cause to speak about Plato in an investigation of atheism in antiquity, had not so eminent a scholar as Zeller roundly a.s.serted that Plato did not believe in the Greek G.o.ds-with the exception of the heavenly bodies, in the case of which the facts are obvious. On the other hand, it is impossible here to enter upon a close discussion of so large a question; I must content myself with giving my views in their main lines, with a brief statement of my reasons for holding them.

In the mythical portions of his dialogues Plato uses the G.o.ds as a given poetic motive and treats them with poetic licence. Otherwise they play a very inferior part in the greater portion of his works. In the _Euthyphron_ he gives a sharp criticism of the popular conception of piety, and in reality at the same time very seriously questions the importance and value of the existing form of worship. In his chief ethical work, the _Gorgias_, he subjects the fundamental problems of individual ethics to a close discussion without saying one word of their relation to religion; if we except the mythic part at the end the G.o.ds scarcely appear in the dialogue. Finally, in his _Republic_ he no doubt gives a detailed criticism of popular mythology as an element of education, and in the course of this also some positive definitions of the idea of G.o.d, but throughout the construction of his ideal community he entirely disregards religion and worship, even if he occasionally takes it for granted that a cult of some sort exists, and in one place quite casually refers to the Oracle at Delphi as authority for its organisation in details. To this may further be added the negative point that he never in any of his works made Socrates define his position in regard to the sophistic treatment of the popular religion.

In Plato's later works the case is different. In the construction of the universe described in the _Timaeus_ the G.o.ds have a definite and significant place, and in the _Laws_, Plato's last work, they play a leading part. Here he not only gives elaborate rules for the organisation of the worship which permeate the whole life of the community, but even in the argument of the dialogue the G.o.ds are everywhere in evidence in a way which strongly suggests bigotry. Finally, Plato gives the above-mentioned definitions of impiety and fixes the severest punishment for it-for downright denial of the G.o.ds, when all attempts at conversion have failed, the penalty of death.

On this evidence we are tempted to take the view that Plato in his earlier years took up a critical att.i.tude in regard to the G.o.ds of popular belief, perhaps even denied them altogether, that he gradually grew more conservative, and ended by being a confirmed bigot. And we might look for a corroboration of this in a peculiar observation in the _Laws_. Plato opens his admonition to the young against atheism by reminding them that they are young, and that false opinion concerning the G.o.ds is a common disease among the young, but that utter denial of their existence is not wont to endure to old age. In this we might see an expression of personal religious experience.

Nevertheless I do not think such a construction of Plato's religious development feasible. A decisive objection is his exposition of the Socratic point of view in so early a work as the _Apology_. I at any rate regard it as psychologically impossible that a downright atheist, be he ever so great a poet, should be able to draw such a picture of a deeply religious personality, and draw it with so much sympathy and such convincing force. Add to this other facts of secondary moment. Even the close criticism to which Plato subjects the popular notions of the G.o.ds in his _Republic_ does not indicate denial of the G.o.ds as such; moreover, it is built on a positive foundation, on the idea of the goodness of the G.o.ds and their truth (which for Plato manifests itself in immutability).

Finally, Plato at all times vigorously advocated the belief in providence.

In the _Laws_ he stamps unbelief in divine providence as impiety; in the _Republic_ he insists in a prominent pa.s.sage that the G.o.ds love the just man and order everything for him in the best way. And he puts the same thought into Socrates's mouth in the _Apology_, though it is hardly Socratic in the strict sense of the word, _i.e._ as a main point in Socrates's conception of existence. All this should warn us not to exaggerate the significance of the difference which may be pointed out between the religious standpoints of the younger and the older Plato. But the difference itself cannot, I think, be denied; there can hardly be any doubt that Plato was much more critical of popular belief in his youth and prime than towards the close of his life.

Even in Plato's later works there is, in spite of their conservative att.i.tude, a very peculiar reservation in regard to the anthropomorphic G.o.ds of popular belief. It shows itself in the _Laws_ in the fact that where he sets out to _prove_ the existence of the G.o.ds he contents himself with proving the divinity of the heavenly bodies and quite disregards the other G.o.ds. It appears still more plainly in the _Timaeus_, where he gives a philosophical explanation of how the divine heavenly bodies came into existence, but says expressly of the other G.o.ds that such an explanation is impossible, and that we must abide by what the old theologians said on this subject; they being partly the children of G.o.ds would know best where their parents came from. It is observations of this kind that induced Zeller to believe that Plato altogether denied the G.o.ds of popular belief; he also contends that the G.o.ds have no place in Plato's system. This latter contention is perfectly correct; Plato never identified the G.o.ds with the ideas (although he comes very near to it in the _Republic_, where he attributes to them immutability, the quality which determines the essence of the ideas), and in the _Timaeus_ he distinguishes sharply between them. No doubt his doctrine of ideas led up to a kind of divinity, the idea of the good, as the crown of the system, but the direct inference from this conception would be pure monotheism and so exclude polytheism.

This inference Plato did not draw, though his treatment of the G.o.ds in the _Laws_ and _Timaeus_ certainly shows that he was quite clear that the G.o.ds of the popular faith were an irrational element in his conception of the universe. The two pa.s.sages do not ent.i.tle us to go further and conclude that he utterly rejected them, and in the _Timaeus_, where Plato makes both cla.s.ses of G.o.ds, both the heavenly bodies and the others, take part in the creation of man, this is plainly precluded. The playful turn with which he evades inquiry into the origin of the G.o.ds thus receives its proper limitation; it is entirely confined to their origin.

Such, according to my view, is the state of the case. It is of fundamental importance to emphasise the fact that we cannot conclude, because the G.o.ds of popular belief do not fit into the system of a philosopher, that he denies their existence. In what follows we shall have occasion to point out a case in which, as all are now agreed, a philosophical school has adopted and stubbornly held to the belief in the existence of G.o.ds though this a.s.sumption was directly opposed to a fundamental proposition in its system of doctrine. The case of Plato is particularly interesting because he himself was aware and has pointed out that here was a point on which the consistent scientific application of his conception of the universe must fail. It is the outcome-one of many-of what is perhaps his finest quality as a philosopher, namely, his intellectual honesty.

An indirect testimony to the correctness of the view here stated will be found in the way in which Plato's faithful disciple Xenocrates developed his theology, for it shows that Xenocrates presupposed the existence of the G.o.ds of popular belief as given by Plato. Xenocrates made it his general task to systematise Plato's philosophy (which had never been set forth publicly by himself as a whole), and to secure it against attack. In the course of this work he was bound to discover that the conception of the G.o.ds of popular belief was a particularly weak point in Plato's system, and he attempted to mend matters by a peculiar theory which became of the greatest importance for later times. Xenocrates set up as G.o.ds, in the first place, the heavenly bodies. Next he gave his highest principles (pure abstracts such as oneness and twoness) and the elements of his universe (air, water and earth) the names of some of the highest divinities in popular belief (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Demeter). These G.o.ds, however, did not enter into direct communication with men, but only through some intermediate agent. The intermediate agents were the "demons," a cla.s.s of beings who were higher than man yet not perfect like the G.o.ds. They were, it seems, immortal; they were invisible and far more powerful than human beings; but they were subject to human pa.s.sions and were of highly differing grades of moral perfection. These are the beings that are the objects of the greater part of the existing cult, especially such usages as rest on the a.s.sumption that the G.o.ds can do harm and are directed towards averting it, or which are in other ways objectionable; and with them are connected the myths which Plato subjected to so severe a criticism. Xenocrates found a basis for this system in Plato, who in the _Symposium_ sets up the demons as a cla.s.s of beings between G.o.ds and men, and makes them carriers of the prayers and wishes of men to the G.o.ds. But what was a pa.s.sing thought with Plato serving only a poetical purpose was taken seriously and systematised by Xenocrates.

It can hardly be said that Xenocrates has gained much recognition among modern writers on the history of philosophy for his theory of demons. And yet I cannot see that there was any other possible solution of the problem which ancient popular belief set ancient philosophy, if, be it understood, we hold fast by two hypotheses: the first, that the popular belief and worship of the ancients was based throughout on a foundation of reality; and second, that moral perfection is an essential factor in the conception of G.o.d. The only inconsistency which we may perhaps bring home to Xenocrates is that he retained certain of the popular names of the G.o.ds as designations for G.o.ds in his sense; but this inconsistency was, as we shall see, subsequently removed. In favour of this estimate of Xenocrates's doctrine of demons may further be adduced that it actually was the last word of ancient philosophy on the matter. The doctrine was adopted by the Stoics, the Neo-Pythagoreans, and the Neo-Platonists. Only the Epicureans went another way, but their doctrine died out before the close of antiquity. And so the doctrine of demons became the ground on which Jewish-Christian monotheism managed to come to terms with ancient paganism, to conquer it in theory, as it were.

This implies, however, that the doctrine of demons, though it arose out of an honest attempt to save popular belief philosophically, in reality brings out its incompatibility with philosophy. The religion and worship of the ancients could dispense with neither the higher nor the lower conceptions of its G.o.ds. If the former were done away with, recognition, however full, of the existence of the G.o.ds was no good; in the long run the inference could not be avoided that they were immoral powers and so ought not to be worshipped. This was the inference drawn by Christianity in theory and enforced in practice, ultimately by main force.

Aristotle is among the philosophers who were prosecuted for impiety. When the anti-Macedonian party came into power in Athens after the death of Alexander, there broke out a persecution against his adherents, and this was also directed against Aristotle. The basis of the charge against him was that he had shown divine honour after his death to the tyrant Hermias, whose guest he had been during a prolonged stay in Asia Minor. This seems to have been a fabrication, and at any rate has nothing to do with atheism. In the writings of Aristotle, as they were then generally known, it would a.s.suredly have been impossible to find any ground for a charge of atheism.

Nevertheless, Aristotle is one of the philosophers about whose faith in the G.o.ds of popular religion well-founded doubts may be raised. Like Plato, he acknowledged the divinity of the heavenly bodies on the ground that they must have a soul since they had independent motion. Further, he has a kind of supreme G.o.d who, himself unmoved, is the cause of all movement, and whose const.i.tuent quality is reason. As regards the G.o.ds of popular belief, in his _Ethics_ and his _Politics_ he a.s.sumes public worship to be a necessary const.i.tuent of the life of the individual and the community. He gave no grounds for this a.s.sumption-on the contrary, he expressly declared that it was a question which ought not to be discussed at all: he who stirs up doubts whether honour should be paid to the G.o.ds is in need not of teaching but of punishment. (That he himself took part in worship is evident from his will.) Further, in his ethical works he used the conceptions of the G.o.ds almost in the same way as we have a.s.sumed that Socrates did, _i.e._ as the ethical ideal and determining the limits of the human. He never entered upon any elaborate criticism of the lower elements of popular religion such as Plato gave. So far everything is in admirable order. But if we look more closely at things there is nevertheless nearly always a little "but" in Aristotle's utterances about the G.o.ds. Where he operates with popular notions he prefers to speak hypothetically or to refer to what is generally a.s.sumed; or he is content to use only definitions which will also agree with his own philosophical conception of G.o.d. But he goes further; in a few places in his writings there are utterances which it seems can only be interpreted as a radical denial of the popular religion. The most important of them deserves to be quoted _in extenso_:

"A tradition has been handed down from the ancients and from the most primitive times, and left to later ages in the form of myth, that these substances (_i.e._ sky and heavenly bodies) are G.o.ds and that the divine embraces all nature. The rest consists in legendary additions intended to impress the mult.i.tude and serve the purposes of legislation and the common weal; for these G.o.ds are said to have human shape or resemble certain other beings (animals), and they say other things which follow from this and are of a similar kind to those already mentioned. But if we disregard all this and restrict ourselves to the first point, that they thought that the first substances were G.o.ds, we must acknowledge that it is a divinely inspired saying. And as, in all probability, every art and science has been discovered many times, as far as it is possible, and has perished again, so these notions, too, may have been preserved till now as relics of those times. To this extent only can we have any idea of the opinion which was held by our fathers and has come down from the beginning of things."

The last sentences, expressing Aristotle's idea of a life-cycle and periods of civilisation which repeat themselves, have only been included in the quotation for the sake of completeness. If we disregard them, the pa.s.sage plainly enough states the view that the only element of truth in the traditional notions about the G.o.ds was the divinity of the sky and the heavenly bodies; the rest is myth. Aristotle has nowhere else expressed himself with such distinctness and in such length, but then the pa.s.sage in question has a place of its own. It comes in his _Metaphysics_ directly after the exposition of his philosophical conception of G.o.d-a position marked by profound earnestness and as it were irradiated by a quiet inner fervour. We feel that we are here approaching the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the thinker. In this connexion, and only here, he wished for once to state his opinion about the religion of his time without reserve. What he says here is a precise formulation of the result arrived at by the best Greek thinkers as regards the religion of the Greek people. It was not, they thought, pure fabrication. It contained an element of truth of the greatest value. But most of it consisted of human inventions without any reality behind them.

A point of view like that of Aristotle would, I suppose, hardly have been called atheism among the ancients, if only because the heavenly bodies were acknowledged as divine. But according to our definition it is atheism. The "sky"-G.o.ds of Aristotle have nothing in common with the G.o.ds of popular belief, not even their names, for Aristotle never names them.

And the rest, the whole crowd of Greek anthropomorphic G.o.ds, exist only in the human imagination.

Aristotle's successors offer little of interest to our inquiry.

Theophrastus was charged with impiety, but the charge broke down completely. His theological standpoint was certainly the same as Aristotle's. Of Strato, the most independent of the Peripatetics, we know that in his view of nature he laid greater stress on the material causes than Aristotle did, and so arrived at a different conception of the supreme deity. Aristotle had severed the deity from Nature and placed it outside the latter as an incorporeal being whose chief determining factor was reason. In Strato's view the deity was identical with Nature and, like the latter, was without consciousness; consciousness was only found in organic nature. Consequently we cannot suppose him to have believed in the divinity of the heavenly bodies in Aristotle's sense, though no direct statement on this subject has come down to us. About his att.i.tude towards popular belief we hear nothing. A denial of the popular G.o.ds is not necessarily implied in Strato's theory, but seems reasonable in itself and is further rendered probable by the fact that all writers seem to take it for granted that Strato knew no G.o.d other than the whole of Nature.

We designated Socratic philosophy, in its relation to popular belief, as a reaction against the radical free-thought of the sophistic movement. It may seem peculiar that with Aristotle it develops into a view which we can only describe as atheism. There is, however, an important difference between the standpoints of the sophists and of Aristotle. Radical as the latter is at bottom, it is not, however, openly opposed to popular belief-on the contrary, to any one who did not examine it more closely it must have had the appearance of accepting popular belief. The very a.s.sumption that the heavenly bodies were divine would contribute to that effect; this, as we have seen, was a point on which the popular view laid great stress. If we add to this that Aristotle never made the existence of the popular G.o.ds matter of debate; that he expressly acknowledged the established worship; and that he consistently made use of certain fundamental notions of popular belief in his philosophy-we can hardly avoid the conclusion that, notwithstanding his personal emanc.i.p.ation from the existing religion, he is a true representative of the Socratic reaction against sophistic. But we see, too, that there is a reservation in this reaction. In continuity with earlier Greek thought on religion, it proceeded from the absolute definitions of the divine offered by popular belief, but when criticising anthropomorphism on this basis it did not after all avoid falling out with popular belief. How far each philosopher went in his antagonism was a matter of discretion, as also was the means chosen to reconcile the philosophical with the popular view. The theology of the Socratic schools thus suffered from a certain half-heartedness; in the main it has the character of a compromise. It would not give up the popular notions of the G.o.ds, and yet they were continually getting in the way. This dualism governs the whole of the succeeding Greek philosophy.

CHAPTER VI

During the three or four centuries which pa.s.sed between the downfall of free h.e.l.las and the beginning of the Roman Empire, great social and political changes took place in the ancient world, involving also vital changes in religion. The chief phenomenon in this field, the invasion of foreign, especially oriental, religions into h.e.l.las, does not come within the scope of this investigation. On the one hand, it is an expression of dissatisfaction with the old G.o.ds; on the other, the intrusion of new G.o.ds would contribute to the ousting of the old ones. There is no question of atheism here; it is only a change within polytheism. But apart from this change there is evidence that the old faith had lost its hold on men's minds to no inconsiderable extent. Here, too, there is hardly any question of atheism properly speaking, but as a background to the-not very numerous-evidences of such atheism in our period, we cannot well ignore the decline of the popular faith. Our investigation is rendered difficult on this point, and generally within this period, by the lack of direct evidence. Of the rich h.e.l.lenistic literature almost everything has been lost, and we are restricted to reports and fragments.

In order to gain a concrete starting-point we will begin with a quotation from the historian Polybius-so to speak the only Greek prose author of the earlier h.e.l.lenistic period of whose works considerable and connected portions are preserved. Polybius wrote in the latter half of the second century a history of the world in which Rome took the dominant place. Here he gave, among other things, a detailed description of the Roman const.i.tution and thus came to touch upon the state of religion in Rome as compared with that in Greece. He says on this subject:

"The greatest advantage of the Roman const.i.tution seems to me to lie in its conception of the G.o.ds, and I believe that what among other peoples is despised is what holds together the Roman power-I mean superst.i.tion. For this feature has by them been developed so far in the direction of the 'horrible,' and has so permeated both private and public life, that it is quite unique. Many will perhaps find this strange, but I think they have acted so with an eye to the ma.s.s of the people. For if it were possible to compose a state of reasonable people such a procedure would no doubt be unnecessary, but as every people regarded as a ma.s.s is easily impressed and full of criminal instincts, unreasonable violence, and fierce pa.s.sion, there is nothing to be done but to keep the ma.s.ses under by vague fears and such-like hocus-pocus. Therefore it is my opinion that it was not without good reason or by mere chance that the ancients imparted to the ma.s.ses the notions of the G.o.ds and the underworld, but rather is it thoughtless and irrational when nowadays we seek to destroy them."

As a proof of this last statement follows a comparison between the state of public morals in Greece and in Rome. In Greece you cannot trust a man with a few hundred pounds without ten notaries and as many seals and double the number of witnesses; in Rome great public treasure is administered with honesty merely under the safeguard of an oath.

As we see, this pa.s.sage contains direct evidence that in the second century in h.e.l.las-in contradistinction to Rome-there was an attempt to break down the belief in the G.o.ds. By his "we" Polybius evidently referred especially to the leading political circles. He knew these circles from personal experience, and his testimony has all the more weight because he does not come forward in the role of the orthodox man complaining in the usual way of the impiety of his contemporaries; on the contrary, he speaks as the educated and enlightened man to whom it is a matter of course that all this talk about the G.o.ds and the underworld is a myth which n.o.body among the better cla.s.ses takes seriously. This is a tone we have not heard before, and it is a strong indirect testimony to the fact that Polybius is not wrong when he speaks of disbelief among the upper cla.s.ses of Greece.

In this connexion the work of Polybius has a certain interest on another point. Where earlier-and later-authors would speak of the intervention of the G.o.ds in the march of history, he operates as a rule with an idea which he calls Tyche. The word is untranslatable when used in this way. It is something between chance, fortune and fate. It is more comprehensive and more personal than chance; it has not the immutable, the "lawbound"

character of fate; rather it denotes the incalculability, the capriciousness a.s.sociated, especially in earlier usage, with the word fortune, but without the tendency of this word to be used in a good sense.

This Tyche-religion-if we may use this expression-was not new in h.e.l.las.

Quite early we find Tyche worshipped as a G.o.ddess among the other deities, and it is an old notion that the G.o.ds send good fortune, a notion which set its mark on a series of established phrases in private and public life. But what is of interest here is that shifting of religious ideas in the course of which Tyche drives the G.o.ds into the background. We find indications of it as early as Thucydides. In his view of history he lays the main stress, certainly, on human initiative, and not least on rational calculation, as the cause of events. But where he is obliged to reckon with an element independent of human efforts, he calls it Tyche and not "the immortal G.o.ds." A somewhat similar view we find in another great political author of the stage of transition to our period, namely, Demosthenes. Demosthenes of course employs the official apparatus of G.o.ds: he invokes them on solemn occasions; he quotes their authority in support of his a.s.sertions (once he even reported a revelation which he had in a dream); he calls his opponents enemies of the G.o.ds, etc. But in his political considerations the G.o.ds play a negligible part. The factors with which he reckons as a rule are merely political forces. Where he is compelled to bring forward elements which man cannot control, he shows a preference for Tyche. He certainly occasionally identifies her with the favour of the G.o.ds, but in such a way as to give the impression that it is only a _facon de parler_. Direct p.r.o.nouncements of a free-thinking kind one would not expect from an orator and statesman, and yet Demosthenes was once bold enough to say that Pythia, the mouthpiece of the Delphic Oracle, was a partisan of Macedonia, an utterance which his opponent Aeschines, who liked to parade his orthodoxy, did not omit to cast in his teeth. On the whole, Aeschines liked to represent Demosthenes as a G.o.dless fellow, and it is not perhaps without significance that the latter never directly replied to such attacks, or indirectly did anything to impair their force.

During the violent revolutions that took place in h.e.l.las under Alexander the Great and his successors, and the instability of social and political conditions consequent thereon, the Tyche-religion received a fresh impetus. With one stroke h.e.l.las was flung into world politics. Everything grew to colossal proportions in comparison with earlier conditions. The small h.e.l.lenic city-states that had hitherto been each for itself a world shrank into nothing. It is as if the old G.o.ds could not keep pace with this violent process of expansion. Men felt a craving for a wider and more comprehensive religious concept to answer to the changed conditions, and such an idea was found in the idea of Tyche. Thoughtful men, such as Demetrius of Phalerum, wrote whole books about it; states built temples to Tyche; in private religion also it played a great part. No one reflected much on the relation of Tyche to the old G.o.ds. It must be remembered that Tyche is a real layman's notion, and that h.e.l.lenistic philosophy regarded it as its task precisely to render man independent of the whims of fate.

Sometimes, however, we find a positive statement of the view that Tyche ruled over the G.o.ds also. It is characteristic of the state of affairs; men did not want to relinquish the old G.o.ds, but could not any longer allow them the leading place.

If we return for a moment to Polybius, we shall find that his conception of Tyche strikingly ill.u.s.trates the distance between him and Thucydides.

In the introduction to his work, on its first page, he points out that the universally acknowledged task of historical writing is partly to educate people for political activities, partly to teach them to bear the vicissitudes of fortune with fort.i.tude by reminding them of the lot of others. And subsequently, when he pa.s.ses on to his main theme, the foundation of the Roman world-empire, after having explained the plan of his work, he says: "So far then our plan. But the _co-operation of fortune_ is still needed if my life is to be long enough for me to accomplish my purpose." An earlier-or a later-author would here either have left the higher powers out of the game altogether or would have used an expression showing more submission to the G.o.ds of the popular faith.

In a later author, Pliny the Elder, we again find a characteristic utterance throwing light upon the significance of the Tyche-religion.

After a very free-thinking survey of the popular notions regarding the G.o.ds, Pliny says: "As an intermediate position between these two views (that there is a divine providence and that there is none) men have themselves invented another divine power, in order that speculation about the deity might become still more uncertain. Throughout the world, in every place, at every hour of the day, Fortune alone is invoked and named by every mouth; she alone is accused, she bears the guilt of everything; of her only do we think, to her is all praise, to her all blame. And she is worshipped with railing words-she is deemed inconstant, by many even blind; she is fickle, unstable, uncertain, changeable; giving her favours to the unworthy. To her is imputed every loss, every gain; in all the accounts of life she alone fills up both the debit and the credit side, and we are so subject to chance that Chance itself becomes our G.o.d, and again proves the incert.i.tude of the deity." Even if a great deal of this may be put down to rhetoric, by which Pliny was easily carried away, the solid fact itself remains that he felt justified in speaking as if Dame Fortune had dethroned all the old G.o.ds.

That this view of life must have persisted very tenaciously even down to a time when a strong reaction in the direction of positive religious feeling had set in, is proved by the romances of the time. The novels of the ancients were in general poor productions. Most of them are made after the recipe of a little misfortune in each chapter and great happiness in the last. The two lovers meet, fall in love, part, and suffer a series of troubles individually until they are finally united. The power that governs their fates and shapes everything according to this pattern is regularly Tyche, never the G.o.ds. The testimony of the novels is of special significance because they were read by the general ma.s.s of the educated cla.s.ses, not by the select who had philosophy to guide them.

Another testimony to the weakening of popular faith in the h.e.l.lenistic age is the decay of the inst.i.tution of the Oracle. This, also, is of early date; as early as the fifth and fourth century we hear much less of the interference of the oracles in political matters than in earlier times.

The most important of them all, the Delphic Oracle, was dealt a terrible blow in the Holy War (356-346 B.C.), when the Phocians seized it and used the treasures which had been acc.u.mulated in it during centuries to hire mercenaries and carry on war. Such proceedings would a.s.suredly have been impossible a century earlier; no soldiers could have been hired with money acquired in such a way, or, if they could have been procured, all h.e.l.las would have risen in arms against the robbers of the Temple, whereas in the Holy War most of the states were indifferent, and several even sided with the Phocians. In the succeeding years, after Philip of Macedonia had put an end to the Phocian scandal, the Oracle was in reality in his hands-it was during this period that Demosthenes stigmatised it as the mouthpiece of Philip. In the succeeding centuries, too, it was dependent on the various rulers of h.e.l.las and undoubtedly lost all public authority. During this period we hear very little of the oracles of h.e.l.las until the time before and after the birth of Christ provides us with definite evidence of their complete decay.

Thus Strabo, who wrote during the reign of Augustus, says that the ancients attached more importance to divination generally and oracles more particularly, whereas people in his day were quite indifferent to these things. He gives as the reason that the Romans were content to use the Sibylline books and their own system of divination. His remark is made _a propos_ of the Oracle in Libya, which was formerly in great repute, but was almost extinct in his time. He is undoubtedly correct as to the fact, but the decline of the oracular system cannot be explained by the indifference of the Romans. Plutarch, in a monograph on the discontinuance of the oracles, furnishes us with more detailed information. From this it appears that not only the Oracle of Ammon but also the numerous oracles of Boeotia had ceased to exist, with one exception, while even for the Oracle at Delphi, which had formerly employed three priestesses, a single one amply sufficed. We also note the remark that the questions submitted to the Oracle were mostly unworthy or of no importance.

The want of consideration sometimes shown to sacred places and things during the wars of the h.e.l.lenistic period may no doubt also be regarded as the result of a weakening of interest in the old G.o.ds. We have detailed information on this point from the war between Philip of Macedonia and the Aetolians in 220-217 B.C. The Aetolians began by destroying the temples at Dium and Dodona, whereupon Philip retaliated by totally wrecking the federal sanctuary of the Aetolians at Thermon. Of Philip's admiral Dicaearchus we are told by Polybius that wherever he landed he erected altars to "G.o.dlessness and lawlessness" and offered up sacrifice on them.

Judging by the way he was hated, his practice must have answered to his theory.

One more phenomenon must be mentioned in this context, though it falls outside the limits within which we have hitherto moved, and though its connexion with free-thought and religious enlightenment will no doubt, on closer examination, prove disputable. This is the decay of the established worship of the Roman State in the later years of the Republic.

In the preceding pages there has been no occasion to include conditions in Rome in our investigation, simply because nothing has come down to us about atheism in the earlier days of Rome, and we may presume that it did not exist. Of any religious thought at Rome corresponding to that of the Greeks we hear nothing, nor did the Romans produce any philosophy.

Whatever knowledge of philosophy there was at Rome was simply borrowed from the Greeks. The Greek influence was not seriously felt until the second century B.C., even though as early as about the middle of the third century the Romans, through the performance of plays translated from the Greek, made acquaintance with Greek dramatic poetry and the religious thought contained therein. Neither the latter, nor the heresies of the philosophers, seem to have made any deep impression upon them. Ennius, their most important poet of the second century, was no doubt strongly influenced by Greek free-thinking, but this was evidently an isolated phenomenon. Also, by birth Ennius was not a native of Rome but half a Greek. The testimony of Polybius (from the close of the second century) to Roman religious conservatism is emphatic enough. Its causes are doubtless of a complex nature, but as one of them the peculiar character of the Roman religion itself stands out prominently. However much it resembled Greek religion in externals-a resemblance which was strengthened by numerous loans both of religious rites and of deities-it is decidedly distinct from it in being restricted still more to cultus and, above all, in being entirely devoid of mythology. The Roman G.o.ds were powers about the rites of whose worship the most accurate details were known or could be ascertained if need were, but they had little personality, and about their personal relations people knew little and cared less. This was, aesthetically, a great defect. The Roman G.o.ds afforded no good theme for poetry and art, and when they were to be used as such they were invariably replaced by loans from the Greeks. But, as in the face of Greek free-thought and Greek criticism of religion, they had the advantage that the vital point for attack was lacking. All the objectionable tales of the exploits of the G.o.ds and the a.s.sociated ideas about their nature which had prompted the Greek attack on the popular faith simply did not exist in Roman religion. On the other hand, its rites were in many points more primitive than the Greek ones, but Greek philosophy had been very reserved in its criticism of ritual. We may thus no doubt take it for granted, though we have no direct evidence to that effect, that even Romans with a Greek education long regarded the Greek criticism of religion as something foreign which was none of their concern.

That a time came when all this was changed; that towards the end of the Republic great scepticism concerning the established religion of Rome was found among the upper cla.s.ses, is beyond doubt, and we shall subsequently find occasion to consider this more closely. In this connexion another circ.u.mstance demands attention, one which, moreover, has by some been a.s.sociated with Greek influence among the upper cla.s.ses, namely, the decay of the established worship of the Roman State during the last years of the Republic. Of the actual facts there can hardly be any doubt, though we know very little about them. The decisive symptoms are: that Augustus, after having taken over the government, had to repair some eighty dilapidated temples in Rome and reinst.i.tute a series of religious rites and priesthoods which had ceased to function. Among them was one of the most important, that of the priest of Jupiter, an office which had been vacant for more than seventy-five years (87-11 B.C.), because it excluded the holder from a political career. Further, that complaints were made of private persons encroaching on places that were reserved for religious worship; and that Varro, when writing his great work on the Roman religion, in many cases was unable to discover what G.o.d was the object of an existing cult; and generally, according to his own statement he wrote his work, among other things, in order to save great portions of the old Roman religion from falling into utter oblivion on account of the indifference of the Romans themselves. It is obvious that such a state of affairs would have been impossible in a community where the traditional religion was a living power, not only formally acknowledged by everybody, but felt to be a necessary of life, the spiritual daily bread, as it were, of the nation.

To hold, however, that the main cause of the decay of the established religion of Rome was the invasion of Greek culture, together with the fact that the members of the Roman aristocracy, from whom the priests were recruited and who superintended the cult, had become indifferent to the traditional religion through this influence, this, I think, is to go altogether astray. We may take it for granted that the governing cla.s.ses in Rome would not have ventured to let the cult decay if there had been any serious interest in it among the ma.s.ses of the population; and it is equally certain that Greek philosophy and religious criticism did not penetrate to these ma.s.ses. When they became indifferent to the national religion, this was due to causes that had nothing to do with free-thought.

The old Roman religion was adapted for a small, narrow and h.o.m.ogeneous community whose main const.i.tuent and real core consisted of the farmers, large and small, and minor artisans. In the last centuries of the Republic the social development had occasioned the complete decay of the Roman peasantry, and the free artisans had fared little better. In the place of the old Rome had arisen the capital of an empire, inhabited by a population of a million and of extraordinarily mixed composition. Not only did this population comprise a number of immigrant foreigners, but, in consequence of the peculiar Roman rule that every slave on being set free attained citizenship, a large percentage of the citizens must of necessity have been of foreign origin. Only certain portions of the Roman religion, more especially the cult of the great central deities of the State religion, can have kept pace with these changed conditions; the remainder had in reality lost all hold on Roman society as it had developed in process of time, and was only kept alive by force of habit. To this must be added the peculiar Roman mixture of mobility and conservatism in religious matters. The Roman superst.i.tion and uncertainty in regard to the G.o.ds led on the one hand to a continual setting up of new cults and new sanctuaries, and on the other hand to a fear of letting any of the old cults die out. In consequence thereof a great deal of dead and worthless ritual material must have acc.u.mulated in Rome in the course of centuries, and was of course in the way during the rapid development of the city in the last century of the Republic. Things must gradually have come to such a pa.s.s that a thorough reform, above all a reduction, of the whole cult had become a necessity. To introduce such a reform the republican government was just as unsuited as it was to carry out all the other tasks imposed by the development of the empire and the capital at that time. On this point, however, it must not be forgotten that the governing cla.s.s not only lacked ability, for political reasons, to carry out serious reforms, but also the will to do so, on account of religious indifference, and so let things go altogether to the bad. The consequence was anarchy, in this as in all other spheres at that time; but at the same time the tendency towards the only sensible issue, a restriction of the old Roman State-cult, is plainly evident. The simultaneous strong infusion of foreign religions was unavoidable in the mixed population of the capital.

That these influences also affected the lower cla.s.ses of the citizens is at any rate a proof that they were not indifferent to religion.