Five Stages of Greek Religion Part 2

p?t??a, the way of our ancestors, the thing that has always been done and is therefore divinely right. In ordinary life, of course, Themis is clear. Every one knows it. But from time to time new emergencies arise, the like of which we have never seen, and they frighten us. We must go to the Gerontes, the Old Men of the Tribe; they will perhaps remember what our fathers did. What they tell us will be _Presbiston_, a word which means indifferently 'oldest' and 'best'--a?e? d? ?e?te???

?f?ad???s??, 'Young men are always being foolish'. Of course, if there is a Basileus, a holy King, he by his special power may perhaps know best of all, though he too must take care not to gainsay the Old Men.

For the whole problem is to find out t? p?t??a, 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 ???e?, the Chthonian people, lying in their sacred tombs, and ask them to help. The word ???? 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 Trophonius, 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 ma.s.s 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 t??a?--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 h.e.l.lenism wrought for mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[6:1] Professor emile Durkheim in his famous a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

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 elementaires de la vie religieuse', in _Travaux de l'Annee Sociologique_, 1912; or G. Davy, 'La Sociologie de M. Durkheim', in _Rev. Philosophique_, x.x.xvi, pp. 42-71 and 160-85.

[8:1] I suspect that most reforms pa.s.s 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 Gottergestalten_. 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 ? f????s?? ??a?? ?e?? ??a?. Soph. Fr. 836, 2 (Nauck).

? p???t??, ?????p?s?e, t??? s?f??? ?e??. Eur. _Cycl._ 316.

? ???? ??? ??? ?st?? ?? ???st? ?e??. Eur. Fr. 1018.

f????? ????st?? ??d???tat?? ?e??. Hippothoon. Fr. 2.

A certain moment of time: ???? ?a? ?e?? ?? ?????p??? ?d????? s??e? p??ta. Pl. Leg.

775 E.

t? ??a ??? p??t' ?st?? ?f??d?t? ??t???. Eur. _Tro._ 989.

???e? d? da?? ???e?a p?es?st? ?e??. 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, t? Tes?f???, under the influence of the 'Mother and Maiden' idea; Dittenberger _Inscr. Sylloge_ 628, Ar. _Thesm._ 84, 296 _et pa.s.sim_. The plural a? Tes?f???? 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 ?es?? from ?es- in ??ssas?a?, ??sfat??, ??s?e???, p????est??, ?p??est??, &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 ???? took place during the Anthesteria, at the same time as the oath of the ?e?a??a?. Without the ????, however, it is hard to see what the as?????a and ?e?a??a? had to do in the festival; and this is the view of Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen_, pp. 391-3; Gruppe in Iwan Muller, _Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte_, i. 33; Farnell, _Cults_, v. 217.

[18:2] One might perhaps say, in all three. ????st???? t?? ???????st??

?????? is the name of a society of worshippers in the island of Thera, _I. G. I._ iii. 329. This gives a G.o.d 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 ?????e??, are corruptions of the earlier and difficult forms ????st??-???est???a. 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 fur 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 Sarcof.a.go 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 Keres, Victories and Angels.

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

[23:2] Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, 1906, ii. 284; ibid., 130; Moret, _Caractere religieux de la Monarchie egyptienne_; 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.