Five Stages of Greek Religion Part 3

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

[24:3] _Anthropology and the Cla.s.sics_, 1908, pp. 77, 78.

[25:1] A. B. Cook, _Cla.s.s. 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 pa.s.sing 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. Doutte, _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 ?e?? ??t??. _Rise of the Greek Epic_{3}, p. 275 n. Adjectival phrases like ?e?? ??es???, ??et?????, ??ta??? are common and call for no remark.

[28:2] Hymn of the Kouretes, _Themis_, pa.s.sim.

[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 G.o.ddess'; _Themis_, chap. vi, 'The Spring Dromenon'. As to the prehistoric art-type of this G.o.ddess technically called 'steatopygous', I cannot refrain from suggesting that it may be derived from a mountain ? 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 ???t??fe ????e.

[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, _Alterskla.s.sen und Mannerbunde_, Berlin, 1902; Van Gennep, _Rites de Pa.s.sage_, 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:

?? pa?s? ????s? pa??, ?? ??d??s?? ????, t??t??

?? pa?a?t????s? ????, ??ast?? ???? ???e?

??te?? ?????. ??? d? ?a? t?ssa?a? ??et??

? ??at?? a???,

also Pindar, _Pyth._ iv. 281.

[32:1] See Woodward in _B. S. A._ xiv, 83. Nikagoras won four (successive?) victories as ????????e???, p??pa??, pa??, and e??e????, 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 ?f??? at Athens as '15-20', '14-21', 'about 16'; see authorities in Stepha.n.u.s s. v. ?f???. Such variations in the date of 'p.u.b.erty 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 t??t?? s?t?? is my conjecture.

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

[34:1] _Il._ M. 326 f. ???a?, ?? ??? ?st? f??e??, ??t?? ??d' ?pa???a?.

[34:2] Frg. Ap. Plut. _Consol. ad Apoll._ xxvi . . . ?t? "p?e?? ?? ?a?a ?a??? p?e?? d? ???a.s.sa" ?a? "t???de ???t??s? ?a?? ?a??? ?f? te ???e?

e??e??ta?, ?e?e? d' e?sd?s?? ??d' ?????" (MS. a?????).

[35:1] Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, 267; F.

c.u.mont, 'Les Actes de S. Dasius', in _a.n.a.lecta Bollandiana_, xvi. 5-16: cf. especially what St. Augustine says about the disreputable hordes of would-be martyrs called _Circ.u.mcelliones_. See Index to Augustine, vol.

xi in Migne: some pa.s.sages 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 Cla.s.sical Greece begins to take shape out of the mist. It is the moment when, as Herodotus puts it, 'the h.e.l.lenic race was marked off from the barbarian, as more intelligent and more emanc.i.p.ated 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 h.e.l.las, 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 cla.s.sical Greece, with all its humanity, its intellectual life, its genius for poetry and art, describes itself merely as being 'h.e.l.lenic'--like the h.e.l.lenes. And the h.e.l.lenes 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 a.s.sociations, and twist it into a new sense. In part, no doubt, it comes from mankind's natural love for these old a.s.sociations, 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 h.e.l.lenism of the sixth and fifth centuries was to a great extent what the h.e.l.lenism of later ages was almost entirely, an ideal and a standard of culture. The cla.s.sical Greeks were not, strictly speaking, pure h.e.l.lenes by blood. Herodotus, and Thucydides[41:1] are quite clear about that. The original h.e.l.lenes 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, h.e.l.lenic; the Athenians on the other hand were not. They were Pelasgian, but by a certain time 'changed into h.e.l.lenes and learnt the language'. In historical times we cannot really find any tribe of pure h.e.l.lenes in existence, though the name clings faintly to a particular district, not otherwise important, in South Thessaly. Had there been any undoubted h.e.l.lenes 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 h.e.l.lene was to behave as such: that is, to approximate to some constantly rising ideal of what the true h.e.l.lene should be. In all probability if a Greek of the fifth century, like Aeschylus or even Pindar, had met a group of the real h.e.l.lenes 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 h.e.l.lenes 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 h.e.l.lenized, bore the name of 'h.e.l.lenes', 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 h.e.l.lenes against barbarians seems to have been first felt in the Ionian settlements on the coast of Asia Minor, where the 'sons of Javan' (Yawan = ????) clashed as invaders against the native Hitt.i.te 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 h.e.l.las'.[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 cla.s.sical 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 G.o.ds', 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.

Herodotus in a famous pa.s.sage tells us that Homer and Hesiod 'made the generations of the G.o.ds for the Greeks and gave them their names and distinguished their offices and crafts and portrayed their shapes' (2.

53). The date of this wholesale proceeding was, he thinks, perhaps as much as four hundred years before his own day (_c._ 430 B. C.) but not more. Before that time the Pelasgians--i. e. the primitive inhabitants of Greece as opposed to the h.e.l.lenes--were worshipping G.o.ds in indefinite numbers, with no particular names; many of them appear as figures carved emblematically with s.e.x-emblems to represent the powers of fertility and generation, like the Athenian 'Herms'. The whole account bristles with points for discussion, but in general it suits very well with the picture drawn in the first of these essays, with its Earth Maidens and Mothers and its projected Kouroi. The background is the pre-h.e.l.lenic 'Urdummheit'; the new shape impressed upon it is the great anthropomorphic Olympian family, as defined in the Homeric epos and, more timidly, in Hesiod. But of Hesiod we must speak later.

Now who are these Olympian G.o.ds and where do they come from? Homer did not 'make' them out of nothing. But the understanding of them is beset with problems.