Seers and Oracles (Part 2)

Another great averter of evil was Apollo, the god of sanctity and purifications. A connection with the cult of stones was peculiar to this god, and holy stones were common in Greece. Xenophon speaks of certain men who did not venerate temples or altars and of others who venerated stones, pieces of wood, and animals. 21 Theophrastus mentions superstitious people who poured oil on stones standing at the crossroads, fell on their knees before them, and greeted them with a kiss of the hand. 22 The omphalos of Apollo at Delphi is especially famous. In origin it was neither a tomb nor the center of the world, but simply one holy stone among many which was made famous by the fame of the god. Holy stones stood before the doors of houses. Perhaps they did in prehistoric times also. Square-cut stones have been found before the gates of the Homeric Troy by Dörpfeld, as well as by recent American excavators. 23 Since they could have served no practical purpose, it is supposed that their purpose was religious. We may perhaps venture to go further. Hrozný has published the inscriptions of four Hittite altars and read their pictographs. 24 Among other gods there is mentioned one whose name is read Apulunas. He is a god of the gates. If this be so, then the oriental origin of Apollo, which has often been asserted but which has also been vehemently contested, is proved beyond doubt. This oriental Apollo was the protector of the gates; so was the Apollo of classical Greece.

Before every Greek house a high conical stone was erected

[paragraph continues] (Fig. 30). It was called Apollo Agyieus (Apollo of the street) because it stood in the street before the door of the house. Oil was poured on it, and it was decorated with fillets. Hence, it was sometimes called an altar, and sometimes an altar was erected at its side. We do not know whether the holy stone is older than Apollo himself. At all events, the stone protected the house against evil, and in the classical age it was sacred to Apollo, the great averter of evil.

Before the house an image of the triple Hecate was very often erected (Fig. 33). Aristophanes tells us that when a woman left her house she made a prayer to Hecate. 25 We shall have more to say of this goddess later. The Greeks always regarded her as the special goddess of magic and witchcraft. A power that can produce ghosts and magical evils can also avert them, and this is the reason why images of Hecate were set up at crossroads and before houses.

In this chapter I have dealt with the religion of the house and the family. I may perhaps pertinently conclude it by a few words about the social aspect of ancient Greek religion. In contrast to oriental peoples and to some others, the Greeks had no professional priests and no temples with their own property and administration. The head of the family was the priest of his house and the king was the high priest of the state as long as kingship existed and longer; for when the political power was taken from the king, he was usually allowed to keep his religious duties. Even if professionals, such as seers and sacrificial priests, were called in, they were only advisers. From the beginning, religion and society, or the state, were not two separate entities among the Greeks but two closely related aspects of the same entity.

If we consider these facts, an unexpected question emerges. The house cult was only a small part of Greek religion. Who

looked after all the other cults of the gods in the old days? Of course many of the cults, including some which might have been inherited from the Mycenaean age, were under the care of the king. Furthermore, we must not attribute to earlier times great temples and statues like those of the classical age. The cult places were groves, springs, caves, and the like, with a simple altar of unworked stones or sods. We hear of this state of things in Homer, who relates that sacrifices were performed at a spring beneath a plane tree and that votive gifts were suspended from the branches of the trees in the grove. If such a cult place became popular and was visited by many people and if the god received many gifts, a small building was erected to house him and his paraphernalia. This is what we mean when we speak of a temple of those times. A building of this sort might be erected by the people in common. But in several cases we know that the cult was under the care of a certain family, which was, of course, the family owning the ground where the cult place was.

A great many cults were the property of a certain family. We know that this was true in Attica, 26 about which our information is much better than about other states of Greece, and we may suppose that the same was true everywhere. To adduce some examples, the Eleusinian Mysteries belonged to the Eumolpidae; the Mysteries at Phlya belonged to the Lycomidae; the priestess of Athena Polias and the priest of Poseidon in the Erechtheum were taken from the Eteobutadae, whence it is inferred that this family was the old royal house of Athens; and the Bouzygae performed the sacred plowing at the foot of the Acropolis. Herodotus says that he does not know the origin of Isagoras, the rival of Cleisthenes, but that

his family sacrificed to Zeus Karios. 27 A certain cult was characteristic of a certain family.

Such a state of things is characteristic of the rule of the nobility, to whom the political power belonged at the commencement of the archaic age. The lower classes, the people without ancestors, turned to modest rural sanctuaries or even to the cults maintained by the nobility, on whom they were dependent. They apparently formed a kind of cult association, of which the members were called orgeones (worshippers). In regard to the cult, Solon seems to have put these associations on an equal footing with the noble families. 28 The noble families were divided into phratries, or brotherhoods, whose members were called phrateres (brothers). The political reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes democratically extended this organization to the people without ancestors. Every Athenian citizen belonged to a brotherhood. This political reorganization must have involved a reorganization of the family cult.

I have already said that the newly elected Athenian archons were asked if they possessed a Zeus Herkeios, an Apollo Patroos, and family tombs and where these were situated. Zeus Herkeios was, as we have seen, the protector of the courtyard. Apollo Patroos was the agyieus, the stone pillar erected before the door of the house. The purpose of these questions was to ascertain that the man was a citizen. In an age when written records were unknown, citizenship was proved by the ownership of a house and ground. Such proof could be given only by men who owned landed property. But the people without ancestors had no landed property. The democratic reform did not alter the form of the examination, but it altered the form of the cult so that it embraced all the people. The old house gods were taken over by the phratries. The phratries maintained

a cult of the gods of the phratries. These gods were called patrooi (inherited from the ancestors) or phratrioi (gods of the brotherhood). The Athenians venerated Zeus Herkeios, whom others called Patroos or Phratrios, and Apollo Patroos, who was supposed to be the mythical ancestor of the Athenian people. To these was added the city goddess Athena with the epithet of Phratia.

It may perhaps be objected that the matters just mentioned do not belong to popular religion as we understand it. But in ancient Greece they did, for the cult of the phratry gods was the cult of all the people, since it was the cult of the small subdivisions of the Attic state. The origin of these gods is to be found in the family and house cult. This cult is little known. In the classical age it consisted mainly of the daily routine, and its importance vanished when politics and the great cults became predominant. The aim of this chapter has been to reveal its fundamental significance for a correct understanding of the religion and the life of the Greek people.

Footnotes

65:1 Hesiod, Opera, vs. 365, and Homeric Hymn to Hermes. vs. 36.

66:2 Best known is the town excavated by M. N. Valmin on Malthi and described in his work, The Swedish Messenia Expedition (Lund, 1938).

67:3 See my paper, "Zeus Kataibates," Rheinisches Museum, XLIII (1908), 315 ff. For the various aspects of Zeus mentioned here see also the great work by A. B. Cook, Zeus.

68:4 Revue archèologique, IX (1937), 195.

68:5 Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum, Vol. III, No. 991.

68:6 Pseudo-Herakles, frag. 519, in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta (Leipzig, 1880-88).

68:7 Anticleides, in Athenaeus, XI, p. 473b.

68:8 See my book, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion (Lund, 1927), especially pp. 469 ff.

69:9 Herodotus, VI, 127.

69:10 Pausanias, III, 16, 3.

70:11 Hesychius s.v. Δειπάτυρος· ὁ θεὸς Τυμφαίοις. The Tymphaeans were a tribe in Epirus.

71:12 See my Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, pp. 279 ff.

72:13 In early Minoan times there seems sometimes to have been a fixed hearth; later only portable fire pots existed. See P. Demargne, "Culte funéraire et foyer domestique dans la Crète minoenne," Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, LVI (1932), 60 ff.

72:14 By F. Solmsen, Untersuchungen zur griechischen Laut- and Verslehre (Strassburg, 1901), pp. 191, 213.

73:15 Herodotus, I, 177.

74:16 Frag. 96, in Bergk, Poetae lyrici Graeci.

74:17 Demosthenes, XIX, 189.

74:18 Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, 3d ed. (London, 1927).

74:19 Prolegomena, pp. 84 ff.

74:20 Theogony, vss. 535 ff. See Ada Thomsen, "Der Trug des Prometheus," Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XII (1909), 460 ff.

79:21 Memorabilia, I, 1, 14.

79:22 Characteres, 16.

79:23 W. Dörpfeld, Troja and Ilion (Athens, 1902), p. 134 and Figs. 44, 45; C. W. Blegen in Amer. Journ. of Archaeology, XXXVIII (1934), 241, Fig. 18, and XLI (1937), 593, Fig. 36.

79:24 B. Hrozný, "Les Quatre Autels 'hittites' hiéroglyphiques d’Emri Ghazi et d’Eski Kisla," Archiv orientalin, VIII (1936), 171 ff.

80:25 Lysistrata, vs. 64.

81:26 The examples are collected by J. Toepffer, Attische Genealogie (Berlin, 1889).

82:27 Herodotus, V, 66.

82:28 See my Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 672.

THE CITIES; THE PANEGYREIS

In a previous chapter I strongly emphasized the fact that in early times Greece was a country of tillers of the soil and of herdsmen, who subsisted on the products of their own labor. To these, of course, we must add the owners of the great landed estates, the nobility. But I have not forgotten that Greece was also a country of city-states. In some of the towns industrial and commercial activities were started, and these towns played the leading role in the development of Greek culture and even in religion. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Greece was apparently overpopulated. The products of its soil were not sufficient for the increasing number of its inhabitants. We know from Hesiod how straitened were the circumstances of the small farmers. The stress was relieved not only by emigration and the founding of colonies around the Mediterranean, but also by the rise of industry and commerce in certain towns. At that time the laborers in the many workshops were not slaves, as they were in the classical age. The poor country population crowded into the towns, where they could find work and earn a livelihood which, although poor, was more certain than that provided by the seasonal labor of agriculture. This is the background of the social and political changes of the early historical age in Greece. The power of the nobility broke down. In the towns which were ahead in the development of industry and commerce

tyrants arose. The rule of the tyrants was founded on the broad mass of the city population, and the tyrants strove to promote the interests of the masses. But this was only an interlude. The tyrants were expelled before the early age reached its end, and democracy, or at least a mitigated aristocracy, was established. 1

After this time the cities were the leaders in Greek culture, although many parts of Greece remained rural and backward. We have heard how the cities took over parts of the old rural religion in their festivals and modified them accordingly. The great gods, who protected the state and the citizens, had their home in the city, and their greatness was enhanced by art and literature. We should not forget these gods, but we should also like to know what the man in the street thought and what he believed in. There was a popular religion of the townspeople also, though little is said of it.

The great gods of the Greeks came down from various peoples and ages. Some of them were derived from the pre-Greek population, others were Greek, and still others were immigrants. Most of them were very complex. Many of them were venerated by the rural population. We have met several of them already. But the cults of the countryside were not responsible for their greatness. For this they were indebted to the cults of the cities and to art and literature. According to Herodotus, 2 Homer and Hesiod created the Greek gods, and this statement is true to a certain degree. Homer impressed his representations of the gods indelibly on the Greek mind. I may add that the great temples of the gods adorned with works of art were, of course, erected in the cities, except for a few erected in places which attracted a

stream of visitors for special reasons--Olympia, Delphi, Delos, and at a later time Epidaurus. I shall return to these later. The sanctuaries described by Homer were simple rustic sanctuaries--an altar in a grove, on the trees of which votive offerings were suspended. Great temples were erected at the earliest in the seventh century B.C. That there was a certain connection between this building activity and the rule of the tyrants was already remarked by Aristotle, who says that the tyrants erected great buildings in order to give occupation to the people. Their wish to make a show of their power and glory was certainly another reason. The great temple at Corinth, of which seven heavy columns are still standing, belongs to the age of the tyrants. 3 At Athens, Pisistratus rebuilt the temple of Athena on a magnificent scale and began building a colossal temple of Zeus Olympios.

Very little is known concerning the policies of the tyrants in religious matters, but we can be sure that they followed the course along which democracy proceeded further, that of humoring the people by instituting elaborate festivals and games. This is known to be true of Athens, where Pisistratus introduced the Great Dionysia and made considerable additions to the magnificent celebration of the Panathenaea.

After the great victory over the Persians, Athens took the lead in commerce and culture. Its people were, of course, proud of its great achievements and of the empire which it had acquired. Patriotic and even chauvinistic feelings sprang up, and in this age they could find expression only in religion. The state and the gods were a unity. The gods had given victory, power, and glory to the Athenian state. The Athenians gloried in being the most pious of all peoples and in celebrating

the most numerous and magnificent festivals in honor of the gods. They were able to do this because they could afford the costs. Great sacrifices, in which hundreds of animals were sometimes slaughtered, accompanied the cult observances. Portions of the sacrifices were distributed among the people, who were even permitted to take them home. The people feasted at the expense of the gods, and they soon learned the ad-vantages of this kind of piety. The great temples erected in this age, of which the most famous is the Parthenon, enhanced not only the glory of the gods but also the glory of the capital of the empire.

In the long run this kind of religion was no boon to the great gods. Religion was to a certain degree secularized. When Aristophanes mentions the festivals, he speaks only of the feasting and the markets connected with them, and in one passage he refers to certain ceremonies of the Dipolia as to something antediluvian. 4 The great gods became greater and more glorious, but religious feeling gave way to feelings of patriotism and to display in festivals and sacrifices. The state gods, the great gods, thus became more remote from human beings. We shall soon see examples of this in the case of the city goddess Athena.

The population of the large industrial and commercial towns consisted to a great extent of laborers, or, to speak more exactly, of artisans, for the ancient factories were mere workshops and the methods of production were those of handicraft. The crafts also needed divine protection. We know a little about this, especially in regard to one craft which was of extreme importance in this age, that of the potter. It gave its name to a large district in the city of Athens, the Kerameikos. In the seventh century it was of equal importance at Corinth. From the beginning the potters addressed themselves

to the great gods of the town. In a sanctuary of Poseidon at Corinth was found a great mass of painted clay tablets, some of which represent scenes connected with the potters' art--the making and firing of vessels, their exportation, and so forth. 5 The tablets are votive offerings dedicated to Poseidon by potters.

The potters feared lesser gods and daemons who might destroy their work. Among the relics of popular poetry preserved in the biography of Homer ascribed to Herodotus there is a potters' song. It begins with a prayer that Athena may hold her hand over the potters' oven, and that the vessels may be well fired, receive a beautiful black color, and yield a good profit when they are sold. But if the potters do not reward the poet, he conjures up daemons to destroy the vessels in the oven: Smaragos, who makes them crack; Syntrips, who smashes them; Asbestos, the inextinguishable one; Sabaktes, who shatters them; and Omodamos. The significance of the last is not clear, though the first part of the compound refers to crude clay. Finally the poet threatens to bring in the witch Circe and the ferocious centaurs. He uses the common mythology, of course; but it is interesting to note not only that Athena is the potters' protectress, but also, and especially, that the potters believed in a lot of mischievous goblins which were apt to destroy their work. Perhaps some such goblin is depicted on one of the tablets from the sanctuary of Poseidon.

In Athens, Athena was the protectress of the artisans. This was quite natural, for she was already so in Homer. She protected the weaving of the women and the art of the gold-smiths and the coppersmiths. An Attic vase shows her in a potter's workshop (Fig. 34). For the popularity of Athena among the artisans at this time some verses of Sophocles are

characteristic: "Come out in the street you, all the people of the handicraftsmen, who venerate the daughter of Zeus, Ergane, with sacrificial baskets and beside the heavy anvil, beaten with hammers." 6 Evidently Sophocles hints at some popular festival of Athena celebrated by the artisans in the streets of the town. There was such a festival, the Chalkeia. The word signifies the festival of the coppersmiths. It belonged to Athena, but at a later date another god of the Athenian artisans, Hephaistos, was associated with Athena. 7 These two even had a common temple. In Homer, Hephaistos is the divine goldsmith. He probably came from the island of Lemnos or, perhaps, from Asia Minor. In origin he was a daemon of fire coming up from the earth. Gas which takes fire and burns is considered by many peoples to be divine. Later a volcano was considered to be his smithy. He had almost no cults in Greece except in Athens. No doubt the Athenian artisans took up his cult and placed him at the side of Athena. He seemed, perhaps, to be nearer to them than the great city goddess. But in the early age it was she who was the protectress of the Athenian craftsmen.

Many thousand shards of vases have been found in the debris left on the Acropolis after its devastation by the Persians; some of these vases were certainly dedicated by their makers. In the same debris a great many inscriptions have been found on bases on which votive gifts had been placed. Among the people who set them up were craftsmen. From the point of view taken here their diminishing number in later times is very significant. The second and third volumes of the Attic inscriptions, which commence with the year 403 B.C., contain only thirty-three dedications to Athena, and of these

twenty-two belong to the fourth century B.C., one to the Hellenistic age, and ten to the Roman age. 8 The few inscriptions from the time after 403 B.C. reflect the decline of Athenian industry and Athenian importance, but the small number from the fourth century B.C. is also significant. It cannot be explained except on the ground that Athena had become too exalted to be a goddess of the common people.

Man needs gods who are near to him. In the countryside there were minor gods to whom the simple peasants prayed and made offerings. There were minor gods in the town also, and they were certainly venerated. But these minor gods were too insignificant; they were not able to satisfy the human need for divine help and protection. When a gap exists it is usually filled, and as the Greek gods did not meet the needs of the Greek people, other gods were brought in from other peoples with whom the Greeks had intercourse. First came Hecate from the southwestern corner of Asia Minor, as early as the early archaic age. Propaganda was resorted to on behalf of her cult, as is apparent in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and in a long passage inserted into Hesiod's Theogony, in which she is praised as omnipotent. 9 That Hecate originated in Caria is proved by the fact that proper names compounded with her name are very frequent in this district and rare or absent elsewhere. 10 We do not know what kind of goddess Hecate was in Caria. In Greece the attempt to make a great goddess of her did not succeed. She was always the goddess of witchcraft and sorcery who walked at the crossroads on moonless nights, accompanied by evil ghosts and barking dogs. Offerings were thrown out to her at the crossroads, and her image was triple because she had to look

in three directions. She was often called Enodia (she of the roads). Some scholars think that Enodia was a native Greek goddess of witchcraft, 11 but their arguments are not very convincing. At all events Hecate was accepted by the Greeks because there was a place for a goddess of witchcraft and ghosts. Her popularity is accounted for by this fact, and it proves that base superstition was only too common among the Greeks.

The Greeks also knew about other gross and uncanny specters: Mormo, with whom imprudent nurses were wont to frighten small children; Gello; Karko; Sybaris; Empousa, who according to Aristophanes was able to change herself into a beast, a dog, a snake, or a fair woman; Onoskelis, who had an ass's leg. These monsters attacked men, sucked their blood, and ate their entrails. Educated people did not trouble about them, but they found a refuge in nursery tales and were cherished by the people. It is characteristic that they became still more popular in the Roman age, during which superstition continually increased. A generic name for such beings was lamia, and whereas the great gods are forgotten, the lamia still lives on among the Greek people. The lamia is mentioned in the Middle Ages, and nowadays it is customary to frighten children with the name. If a child dies suddenly, it is said that the lamia strangled it. An ugly or insatiable woman is called a lamia. 12 Such ghosts seem to be immortal. The gods were not so.

We return to the foreign gods who migrated into Greece. The Great Mother of Asia Minor came to Athens before the Persian Wars, and a temple, the Metroon, was built for her 13

[paragraph continues] (Fig. 35). Pindar celebrates her and mentions her orgiastic cult with its cymbals, castanets, and torches. 14 He also celebrates Ammon, the god from the Great Oasis who had ram's horns, knowledge of whom was probably transmitted by the Cyrenaeans, for from Cyrene there was a road to the Great Oasis. 15 His oracle was frequented by the Greeks when their belief in their own oracles began to wane, and the Athenians brought him a sacrifice on behalf of the state in the fourth century B.C. These cults seem, however, not to have been very important for popular belief. The Great Mother was thoroughly assimilated to the Greek Mother, Demeter, and her cult lost its orgiastic character. In this case there was a return to native customs. Ammon seems hardly to have been popular in the strict sense of the word.

Other foreign gods were popular. The Cabiri 16 are mentioned in the fifth century B.C. Aristophanes, in his comedy The Peace, makes Trygaios turn to the spectators and ask the help of those who had been initiated into the mysteries of the Cabiri on the island of Samothrace, for he sees a great storm approaching. There must have been such men in the audience and the mysteries of the Cabiri must have been well known. The Cabiri were venerated by the Greeks as protectors of seafarers. Although they were a seafaring people, the Greeks were apparently not content with their own sea-gods.

The Thracian goddess Bendis was introduced by Thracians living at Peiraeus (Fig. 36). She was so respected that the state approved a great festival for her, which is described

by Plato, 17 and paid large sums for sacrifices to her. There is, however, nothing to indicate that she had any real religious importance. Another Thracian goddess, Kotyto, was perhaps a little more popular at Corinth and in Sicily. 18 One of the rites in her cult was baptism, and her cult seems to have had an orgiastic character. The Phrygian god Sabazios, who was another form of Dionysus, is better known because of the graphic description of his cult in Demosthenes' speech against Aeschines. He is mentioned by Aristophanes also. Demosthenes says that Aeschines read the holy books when his mother performed the initiations, wore a fawnskin at night, mixed the wine, purified those who were to be initiated, wiped them with clay and bran, and made them rise and cry out, "I escaped the evil, I found the better." By day he led the crowds through the streets, crowned with fennel and poplar twigs, carried snakes in his hands, danced, and cried out: euoi, saboi. Scenes like this were to be seen in the streets of Athens at that time. Apparently, not a few people felt the appeal of such orgiastic cults.

Very characteristic of the age is the sudden rise of the cult of Asclepius at the end of the fifth century B.C. (Fig. 38). He was a healing hero, mentioned by Homer only as the father of the surgeons Machaon and Podaleirios. Apollo was the great god of healing for the Greeks, but in many places various heroes served as gods of healing, like the saints in Mohammedan countries today. Asclepius supplanted them all. His most famous sanctuary was at Epidaurus, but he had many derivative cults (Fig. 37). There was one on the island of Aegina, one at Sicyon, one at Delphi, one at Pergamum, and no less than three in Attica--one at Peiraeus, one near

[paragraph continues] Eleusis, and one on the southern slope of the Acropolis. He came to Athens in 420 B.C., being introduced by Telemachos of Acharnae and received by the poet Sophocles, who because of this was made a hero under the name of Dexion, the Receiver. All these derivative cults, founded within a brief space of time, did not interfere with the growth of his chief cult at Epidaurus. In the secluded valley in which the sanctuary was situated, buildings of an astonishingly large number and size were erected at the beginning of the fourth century B.C.--a temple adorned with sculptures by one of the best artists of the age, Timotheus, a very beautiful theatre, and the famous tholos. The costs, which were quite considerable, must have been defrayed by the income from the people who flocked to Epidaurus in order to be healed of their diseases.

The masses were perhaps materialistic in this age. The Sophists had begun to criticize belief in the gods and to prove its irrationality by arguments. Aristophanes and other comic poets mocked the gods in an incredible manner. The general public laughed at their jests and were somewhat impressed by the criticism of the Sophists, but the old belief lurked in the background. The Athenian people believed that the gods had given them victory and had created their empire. They knew the advantages of this, and they experienced them in the great mass sacrifices. Generally they treated the unbelievers and mockers leniently, but on certain occasions a real religious hysteria broke out. The most outstanding examples are the trials for the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries and for the smashing of the herms shortly before the Athenian fleet sailed for Sicily. Certainly these trials had a political background, and so had the other trials for denial of the gods. We shall come back to them later. The good Athenian citizens believed that they believed in the gods, but their belief was fading away.

But man needs divine help and comfort. 19 The great gods had become too exalted to give help in the concerns of daily life. Even if men were materialistic they still needed aid and solace at least in sickness. In our own day we have seen people stream to certain places and churches to which they are attracted by miraculous healings. In modern Greece they go to the famous Panagia Euangelistria on the island of Tenos. When human skill is of no avail, men put their trust in the divine, in miracles. At this time, when the old bonds imposed by tradition and the state were beginning to be loosened and broken, men were not content with the gods of the state and the family, with whom they were linked from birth. They sought new gods for themselves. If the gods of the ancestors could not help them, they turned to other gods. These circumstances explain the sudden popularity of Asclepius, the great healer and comforter in sickness and distress. They also explain why foreign gods began to migrate into Greece.

We have seen that certain of these foreign gods represented mystic and orgiastic cults. The Greek civic cult was sober and well regulated. There was not much in it that was orgiastic and mystic, with the exception of the Eleusinian Mysteries. But religion has its emotional side, and if this is repressed it finally breaks out. This is the reason why the cults mentioned took hold on some people, though in general they were despised. On the whole, women are more emotional than men, a fact which is very apparent in Greek religion. The Dionysiac orgies were suppressed in the historical age and were celebrated chiefly in art and literature, but there are traces enough to show that the Dionysiac frenzy had once spread like fire in dry grass and had especially affected the women.

Greek society was an extremely male society, especially in Athens and the Ionian cities. Women were confined to their houses and seldom went outdoors. But religion did not exclude them. There were priestesses in many cults, and women regularly took part in the festivals and sacrifices. Some festivals were reserved for them. Virgins carried the sacred implements and provisions at the sacrifices. These kanephoroi, as they were called, appeared in all processions. Women even had to be allowed to take part in certain nocturnal festivals. The violating of a virgin on such an occasion is a common motif in the New Comedy. Aristophanes informs us that the women were proud of the sacred ceremonies in which they had taken part. 20

Nevertheless, women had only a subordinate position. Men had fashioned the religion according to their own ideas and had left too little room for emotionalism. The women had a longing for an emotional religion, and Aristophanes tells us that they found means of satisfying it. He says that when the women gathered in the sanctuaries of Bacchos, Pan, Genetyllis, or Kolias (Genetyllis and Kolias were special goddesses of women) it was hardly possible to get through because of the cymbals, and he gives us to understand that the women were devoted to the cults of Sabazios and Adonis. 21 Sabazios has already been mentioned. Adonis, according to the myth, was the beloved of Aphrodite and was killed in his youth while hunting. His cult came from the Orient and was highly emotional. One of the customs associated with the cult was the growing of plants in pots, where they sprouted quickly and soon withered (Fig. 39) They were symbolic of the vegetation cycle, which Adonis represented. The women bewailed him, tore their clothes,

and beat their breasts. According to Plutarch, they did this when the Athenian fleet was about to sail for Sicily. 22

It may be added that Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, was one of the deities to whom the women were especially devoted. Aristophanes makes a woman pray to Hecate before the door when she leaves her house, 23 and he records a game performed by women in her honor. 24 The reason for her popularity with women is that in ancient Greece sorcery and witchcraft were the concern of women. It is a notable fact that we hear of witches but not of sorcerers.

Thus we see that the religion of the women had its special features in the classical age. It was much more emotional than the ordinary religion. Women had scarcely any influence on the religious development of this age, but one may guess that they contributed to the dissemination, which was then beginning, of mystic and orgiastic forms of religion. 25 In late antiquity such forms became increasingly popular. In the long run, therefore, the exclusion of women was disastrous to the old religion.

I wish now to discuss briefly a subject which students of Greek religion generally pass over lightly because it seems to have little to do with religion, although religion is its foundation. I mean the great festivals and meetings which the Greeks called panegyreis (gatherings of all). 26 They took place in some sacred precinct, they were dedicated to some god, and they were accompanied by sacrifices. In some of these gatherings games were the most important element. There were great festivals, huge sacrifices, and games in many cities

above all in the great and prosperous cities such as Athens--but properly speaking these were not panegyreis. It was characteristic of a panegyris that people flocked to it from more than one state. In fact people came from all neighboring towns and even from all Greece. The sanctuaries in which the panegyreis took place were thus in a certain measure common to all parts of the Greek race, although the sanctuaries were administered by the city in whose territory they were situated. This gave rise to conflicts. The control of the Olympic games was contested more than once. Pisa, to which Olympia belonged, was in early times conquered by the Eleans. Sometimes a league of neighboring states was formed in order to protect one of these sanctuaries. Such a league was called an amphictyony. Examples are the league of Calauria and, most famous of all, the league which took care of Delphi. The latter was originally formed in order to protect a small sanctuary of Demeter at Anthela near Thermopylae, but its protection was extended to the great sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. Delphi was situated in the territory of Crisa. The Crisaeans were charged with harassing and extorting money from the pilgrims who went to Delphi. At any rate, there were conflicts, and in the early part of the sixth century B.C. a war broke out in which Crisa was destroyed. Delphi became free and was placed under the protection of the Amphictyons. Their part in the politics of a later age is well known and is of slight importance in this connection. I have recalled these facts in order to show how important these great assembly places were for what one might call the international life of the Greeks. The basis of their importance was religion.

The great games--the Olympia, the Pythia, the Isthmia, and the Nemea--were preëminently panegyreis in this sense. Most famous are the Olympic games. The interest in the games

themselves was so great that one hardly thinks of the religious element. But we should bear in mind the great temples erected at Olympia, the great sacrifices offered, and the many cults attended to by numerous priests. All this is described at length by Pausanias. The celebration at Olympia was the largest panegyris of the Greeks. People from all towns and cities came together, and even the colonies took a large part in the assembly. The great games were of the highest importance for impressing upon the Greek mind a consciousness of the unity of the Greek nation. All men were admitted provided that they spoke Greek, although women were excluded. Anyone who had something on his mind that he wanted to lay before the nation found the best opportunity for doing so at the games. It was here that Gorgias, during the storms of the Peloponnesian War, exhorted the Greeks to concord. Here many other Sophists exhibited their art. Here also the rhapsodist Cleomenes is said to have recited to the public the Katharmoi of Empedocles. The importance of the Olympic games and similar assemblies for the development of national feeling and the cultivation of interrelationships and even for the cultural life of the Greeks can hardly be overestimated.

It must be added that a truce was proclaimed for a few months in order to make it possible for everyone to visit the great games. This was quite necessary, because the Greek cities were constantly warring against each other. A truce was likewise proclaimed on the occasion of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Among the Dorians the month of Karneios, in which the Karneia was celebrated, was a holy month, during which an armistice was to prevail. In the Hellenistic age several cities tried to institute panegyreis and to get them acknowledged by the other Greek states. Embassies were sent to such festivals from other states. Many inscriptions referring to such diplomatic exchanges have come down to us.

[paragraph continues] They were in some measure a substitute for large-scale politics, from which the Greek cities were excluded in that age.

At all panegyreis there were fairs, and in some cases the fair seems to have been the chief attraction. This was apparently so at the great panegyris on the island of Delos, at which all Ionians assembled. At the panegyris of the Aetolians at Thermos there was a great fair. Moreover, it seems that a market was held at all great festivals. Aristophanes speaks of them. Sometimes the word "panegyris" signifies simply "fair." In later times special regulations were made for these fairs. A motley sort of life took place at such assemblies. The great throng of people who collected together needed shelter and food, for a panegyris lasted several days. Tents and barracks were erected. Skenein (to set up a tent or barrack) is the common word for taking part in such an assembly. Hawkers and cooks set up their booths. Jugglers and acrobats gave exhibitions. At certain sanctuaries situated in remote and desert places buildings were erected to serve as lodginghouses and banquet halls.

Surely all this seems to have very little to do with religion. But the panegyreis had a religious foundation in the cult of the gods, and although they seem to be secular, they represent a side of Greek religion which should not be ignored. I may recall what I said earlier about the intimate relations between the cult of the gods and secular life in ancient Greece, relations which are of such a character that they sometimes astonish us. We are strongly under the influence of Protestant and Puritan ideas, which make a sharp division between matters pertaining to God and the affairs of our mundane life. They do not allow sacred and secular occupations to be intermingled. It is otherwise in southern Europe, and especially in Greece. Whoever has seen a modern Greek panegyreis is strongly reminded of the ancient ones. The cult is new, being

that of the Panagia or some saint, but the life is the same. Tents, bowers, and booths are erected, and the people feast and make merry. Of course religion has been secularized, but this form of religion, which seems to us hardly to be religion at all, has shown an extreme tenacity. It satisfies the need which men feel to get together, to enjoy themselves, to feast, and to make merry, and likewise the need of interrupting and lighting up the monotonous course of daily life. These are social needs which should not be overlooked, and Greek religion should not be blamed because it fulfilled them. In this respect it was more lasting than in any other.

In concluding this chapter I may remark that I have treated the changes which Greek popular religion underwent from a social point of view. The increase of the population in certain towns and the life of the towns remodeled the old rustic cults and made them insufficient for the new wants which arose through the change in social conditions. The development of the power and glory of the city exalted the great gods too far above the common people. Such people needed a religion which was nearer to them, gods who could help them in the affairs of daily life, and a cult in which the emotional element had its due share. The way was opened for new gods. On the other hand Greek religion did have a social aspect. The cult of the gods provided opportunities for assembling and feasting and for mutual intercourse between people from neighboring towns and even from all Greek countries. The panegyreis were an extremely important part of Greek social life, and the service which Greek religion rendered through them should not be undervalued.

Footnotes

85:1 See my Dill lecture, The Age of the Early Greek Tyrants (Belfast, 1936).

85:2 Herodotus, II, 53.

86:3 Weinberg in Hesperia, VIII (1939), 191 ff., seems on archaeological grounds to have proved that this temple was built about 540 B.C. and that it was preceded by an earlier temple.

87:4 Nubes, vs. 984.

88:5 Published in Antike Denkmäler, II (1908), Pls. 23, 24.

89:6 Frag. 760, in Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta.

89:7 L. Malten, "Hephaistos," Jahrbuch des Deutschen archäol. Instituts, XXVII (1912), 232 ff.

90:8 Noted by A. Körte in Gnomon, XI (1935), 639.

90:9 Theogony, vss. 411-52.

90:10 E. Sittig, De Graecorum nominibus theophoris (Dissertation, Halle, 1911), pp. 61 ff.

91:11 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin, 1931-32), I, 169 ff.

91:12 Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, pp. 173 ff.

91:13 See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 687 ff.

92:14 For Magna Mater see Pindar, Pythia, III, vss. 77 ff., and frags. 79, 80, 95, in Bergk, Poetae lyrici Graeci.

92:15 For Ammon see Pausanias, IX, 16, 1.

92:16 See O. Kern, "Kabeiros and Kabeiroi," in A. Pauly, Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, new ed. by G. Wissowa (Stuttgart, 1894-).

93:17 Republic, p. 327; and Inscriptiones Graecae, Editio minor, Vols. II-III, Pt. 2, No. 1496, A, a, l. 86, and b, l. 117.

93:18 S. Srebrny, "Kult der thrakischen Göttin Kotyto in Korinth and Sicilien," Mélanges Franz Cumont (Brussels, 1936), pp. 423 ff.

95:19 See my paper, "Reflexe von dem Durchbruch des Individualismus in der griechischen Religion um die Wende des 5. and 4. Jhts. v. Chr.," Mélanges Franz Cumont, pp. 365 ff.

96:20 Lysistrata, vss. 641 ff.

96:21 Ibid., vss. 388 ff.

97:22 Nicias, 13, and Alcibiades, 18.

97:23 Lysistrata, vs. 64.

97:24 Ibid., vs. 700.

97:25 Cf. what is related of the mother of Aeschines by Demosthenes, XVIII, 259 ff., and of the priestess Ninos by Demosthenes, XVIII, 281 and scholion.

97:26 Little attention has been paid to this subject. See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 778 ff.

LEGALISM AND SUPERSTITION; HELL

I have spoken of the religion of the countryside. Its cults certainly do not exhibit the gods in their highest aspects, nor do the rustic customs belong to the higher strata of religion. But they are near the bedrock of primitive ideas and they have survived the high gods, lasting on into our own day in Greece, as very similar forms of religion have in other European countries. I have spoken also of the religion of the townspeople. I have emphasized the fact that when a great number of people came together in a town and engaged in industry and commerce, their mode of life was profoundly changed as a result of their separation from nature and the cultivation of the soil and that as a consequence their religious needs and outlook also changed. There were other religious movements which were not a result of the difference between town and country, although they were connected with social conditions. This is especially true of the early age before the Persian Wars. I have said that this was, in part at least, an age of poverty and social distress. On the other hand it was an age of brisk and diversified activity, of sea voyages and colonization, of discoveries and of progress in all directions. The foundations of Greek science were laid at this time. Religion, too, was involved in these changes and developments. The new movements in Greek religion originated in this age, and they did not leave popular religion untouched.

In times of distress and need man is prone to seek relief and consolation in religion. The hardships of the age we are considering certainly intensified its religious movements and helped to spread certain ideas widely among the people. There are two main streams of contrasting ideas which appear in all religion, including that of the Greeks. Man may seek union with God in mystic and ecstatic forms of religion, or he may seek to make peace with God and win His favor by fulfilling His commandments to the last item. The latter is legalism. The mystic and ecstatic movement is well known and has often been expounded, as in the admirable and much read book by Erwin Rohde. 1 Its herald was Dionysus, whose popularity was based on the longing of humanity for mystic and ecstatic experiences. The violent diffusion of the Dionysiac orgies took place in so early an age that it has left traces only in myths and cults. When our historical information begins the Dionysiac frenzy had already been tamed by the joint activity of the state and the Delphic oracle. Mysticism was not dead, only repressed, and it took refuge in certain religious movements of an almost sectarian character, especially Orphism. Although these movements seem to have been widespread in the early age, they cannot be called popular in the strict sense of the word, and I must pass over them here. 2

There were some very curious men, characteristic of this age, who were not unlike the medicine men of primitive peoples. They went around fasting and doing wonders, and their souls were able to leave their bodies, make journeys, and enter them again. At the same time they were purificatory priests connected with Apollo. They were mystics, of course,

but they were also associated with legalism, for purification from trespasses is a necessary complement of legalism and is imposed by it.

The legalistic tendency has been much less noticed than the mystical and ecstatic, but it is at least as important, and it finally carried the day in its higher, political forms. Here I propose to treat of its popular forms, which were in great part suppressed. We turn to the oldest work of Greek poetry next to Homer, Hesiod's Works and Days. 3 Hesiod was a peasant from a miserable village in Boeotia, although he had learned the minstrel's profession. He wrote for his fellows, giving them good counsel in regard to their occupation and their life. He passionately preaches labor, by which man earns his livelihood, and justice, which allows him to enjoy its fruits. It is interesting to see that the wisdom of Hesiod is often expressed in the same forms as the wisdom of the peasants of other nations. He has a like predilection for proverbs, maxims, and enigmatical expressions; for example, he calls the snail "he who carries his house." He takes notice of the stars, the migrating birds, and other indications of the change of the seasons.

It is not this, however, which is of interest in this connection, but his rules for the religious life and for the conduct of man, two things which for him are inseparable. There are in his writings expressions of a piety pervading the life of man such as is seldom found among the Greeks. He prescribes a prayer to Demeter and Zeus in the earth when the hand is laid to the plow to begin the autumn sowing, in order that the ears of corn may be full and heavy. This is a hallowing of labor which is not far from Protestant ideas. He prescribes the bringing of animal sacrifices to the gods in a chaste and pure manner according to each man's ability and

the pouring out of libations and offering of frankincense in the morning when one rises and in the evening when one retires. This seems like ardent piety. But ritualism, which is only another name for legalism, is much more prominent in Hesiod. He gives rules for good behavior, mixed with religious rules. These are on a superstitious level, being characterized by a fear of offending gods or daemons. The words cited above, which testify to a genuine piety, are followed by a collection of maxims concerning intercourse with friends, neighbors, and relatives. At the end of the poem there is another collection of maxims beginning with more rules. You must not cross a river without praying while looking into its water, or without washing your hands, for the gods are angry with those who cross a river without washing away their wickedness and washing their hands. You must not take your food from a vessel which has not been consecrated. Ordinary rules of purity are numerous, for example the prohibition against pouring out a libation to Zeus with unwashed hands. There are also a number of superstitious rules, most of which are well known from modern folklore: you may not cut your nails at a sacrificial meal, a boy may not sit down on that which it is not permitted to move, a man may not bathe in a bath for women.

Such prescriptions occur elsewhere. They were especially taken up by the exoteric school of the Pythagoreans, the so-called akousmatikoi. 4 Pious and ritual and superstitious and merely secular rules of conduct are blended without any distinction. Especially interesting from our point of view is the addition to Hesiod's poem, which is properly called The Days. It is generally recognized that it was not composed by Hesiod himself, and this is probably true of the second collection of maxims also. But the date of composition is not

much later, and from our point of view the diversity of authorship does not matter. On the contrary it is valuable because it proves that the same train of thought was common and that the same ideas were widely disseminated. The Days enumerates most of the days of the lunar month, though not all of them, and characterizes them in accordance with the maxim that a day is sometimes a mother, sometimes a stepmother. The Days prescribes on which days certain of the tasks of agriculture and stockbreeding should be performed and describes the significance of the days for family life and birth. It is very similar to the popular astrological predictions which are found in late antiquity, printed in handbooks (Bauernpraktik) and not yet completely forgotten. We do not include these things in religion. In late antiquity it was otherwise, for these predictions are part of astrology, which in that age was a dominant form of religion, culminating in sun worship. The calendar of lucky and unlucky days in Hesiod also belongs to a religious system, probably of Babylonian origin. Its religious importance is proved by the fact that certain days of the lunar month are designated as birthdays of the gods. Two such birthdays are mentioned in Hesiod.

About the same time the calendars of the Greek states were regulated, probably at the instigation of the Delphic oracle. 5 The eight year intercalary cycle was introduced, and the festivals were fixed on certain days of the lunar month. This regulation of the calendar is connected with the belief in the different virtues of the days of the lunar month, but there is a notable difference. Apollo paid attention to the cult of the gods only. The people wanted the guidance of religion in all matters, even those belonging to practical life. Apollo did not satisfy this demand. He cared only for the cult.

According to our notions, much of this has little or nothing to do with religion, but all these rules are to a certain degree cognate. They are an outcome of legalism, of the endeavor to lay down definite prescriptions for all actions. In religion this is called ritualism, and ritualism, extended to the whole of human life, is a dominant factor in certain religions. But the Greek gods, fortunately for their people, did not care about the details of daily life, provided that the simple prescriptions of the cult were observed. Apollo required purity of hands, especially in regard to bloodguilt, and he did a great work in impressing upon the people a respect for human life. But the ritualism which Apollo promoted concerned cult, not daily life. Hesiod refers not to Apollo but to Zeus as the protector of his prescriptions. In Hesiod there appears a tendency towards a more severe kind of ritualism, such as is found among the Jews, fastening its fetters on the whole of man's life. But it was only a tendency, for the Greeks were too sensible to push legalism to the bitter end. It is, however, very interesting to see how strongly this tendency took hold of the people and how the representatives of religion, especially the Delphic oracle, saved it from these restraints, endorsing ritualism in cult only, not in daily life. The appeal of cultual ritualism was, however, so great in that age that Apollo at Delphi founded his dominant position upon it.

The tendency to legalism as well as to mysticism belongs to the early age before the Persian Wars. In the last century of this era social conditions began to improve. In politics the lead was taken by statesmen belonging to the middle class who wanted peace and quiet. In the sphere of religion they were supported by the Delphic oracle, the leading authority in religious matters. This oracle maintained the ancestral customs and the more orderly forms of cult and

religion, and it was hostile to the excesses both of legalism and of mysticism. The representatives of this trend were the so-called Seven Sages, and their slogans, which were inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, were "Nothing too much" and "Know thyself," that is, know that thou art only a man. An Apolline piety was developed which taught the inferiority of man to the gods. Man must bow to the will of the gods and he must not be proud of his pious works and of his offerings to them.

A great change came about with the victory over the Persians. It was a victory of the Greek gods and heroes, that is of the Greek state religion. If we know the character of this religion, of which I have spoken earlier, we know that the consequence was the still further repression of the mystical and legalistic movements which had sprung from the depths of the popular mind.

Another dominant issue in the early age was the problem of justice. Although its greatest importance lay on the social plane, it influenced religion also in many respects. I cannot expatiate on this here. I will only make the following brief remarks. From of old, Zeus was the protector of justice, and he is celebrated as such by Hesiod, Aeschylus, and many others. But he was a theoretical more than a practical protector. His rule was too arbitrary to allow him to appear as a true guardian of justice, and the same was true of the behavior of the Greek gods in general. The demand for social justice was a demand for the equalization of social rights. One of its motives was a very human envy of the rich and mighty. It found an argument in the vicissitudes of human life. The higher a man rose, the greater was his fall. This was proved by the fate of many men, not to speak of the tyrants. So the conception of the hybris of man and the nemesis of the gods came into existence. The translations "wantonness"

and "jealousy" do not quite hit the mark. Hybris is the feeling of being supported by good luck, nemesis is the feeling of something unjust, improper. The idea of hybris and the corresponding idea of nemesis are akin to the slogan "Know thyself." Both teach man the humble position which befits him.

These ideas are very often found in literature, and it may be asked how far they belonged not only to the educated classes but also to the people. The people demanded justice, but the battle for justice was fought on the social rather than on the religious plane. The conceptions of hybris and nemesis had a popular background in what the Greeks called baskania, the belief, still common in southern Europe, that excessive praise is dangerous and a cause of misfortune. Even we are accustomed to saying "touch wood" if things go exceptionally well with us. It was customary, and is so still, to avert such a danger by spitting into one's bosom or by making an obscene gesture. The impressive scene in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, in which the king fears to tread on purple carpets when entering his palace lest the envy of some evil eye should harm him, is taken from real life. 6 Herodotus' story of the tyrant Polycrates contains a folk-tale motif which is still current. 7 When King Amasis heard of Polycrates' exceptional good luck he advised him to offset it by throwing away something which he valued very highly. Polycrates obeyed and threw a costly ring into the sea, but it was found again in the stomach of a fish which was brought to him a few days later by a fisherman. When Amasis heard this he renounced so dangerous a friendship, and Polycrates ended his life on the cross. This belief was popular, but it may be doubted if it was religious in the true sense of the

word. Fate is the work of the gods; but in Herodotus, at least, this is never said of a specific god, but always of "the gods" collectively or of "the divine" in the abstract. The belief comes very near to fatalism. It is a kind of philosophy of life and its vicissitudes rather than a religious conception.

I remarked that certain kinds of legalism come very near to superstition and that Hesiod has prescriptions which are also current in modern folklore. We are accustomed to making a clear-cut distinction between religion and superstition. Superstition is something which is not allowed in a Christian and which is unworthy of him. The situation was somewhat different in ancient Greece. The Greek word which we usually translate by "superstition" is deisidaimonia, fear of the daimones. But these include the gods also, as in Homer and elsewhere. Consequently the word can and sometimes must be translated "fear of the gods." Xenophon still uses it in this good sense when he praises King Agesilaus for his deisidaimonia, his reverence for the gods. 8 In Theophrastus' characterization of the deisidaimon 9 the sense has deteriorated and the word can rightly be translated by "superstition." The superstitious man is one who, if something happens, washes his hands, sprinkles himself with holy water, and walks about the whole day with laurel leaves in his mouth. If a weasel crosses his path, he waits for another person walking the same way or he throws three stones over the road. If he sees a snake in his house, he invokes Sabazios if it is a pareias. If it is a so-called holy snake, he erects a hero shrine on the place. He pours out oil on the stones at the crossroads when he passes and, falling on his knees, he venerates them before he continues on his way. If a mouse has gnawed a hole in his flour sack, he goes to the exegete and asks what

to do. If the exegete replies that he is to give it to the leatherworker to be repaired, he does not listen to him but turns away and carries out purifications and the like. We see that popular superstitions and the purificatory customs of the common religion were mixed up, and from the last sentence quoted it appears that official representatives of religion treated such exaggerated fears humorously. In ancient Greece the difference between religion and superstition was a difference of degree rather than of kind. There were also merely popular superstitions, but even these were not sharply distinguishable from certain religious ideas.

The general opinion is that the Greeks of the classical age were happily free from superstition. I am sorry that I am obliged to refute this opinion. There was a great deal of superstition in Greece, even when Greek culture was at its height and even in the center of that culture, Athens. Superstition is very seldom mentioned in the literature of the period simply because great writers found such base things not worth mentioning. But the Greeks borrowed Hecate from Caria because they needed a goddess of witchcraft and ghosts, and in the classical age her triple image was erected before every house in order to avert evils of that kind. Aristophanes is a witness to the fact that witchcraft was well known. 10 He makes Strepsiades say that he wants to buy a Thessalian witch to bring down the moon and shut it up, and he mentions necromantics, the calling up of the dead to foretell the future, a kind of mantic which was almost completely absent from Greece in early times.

Very important is the tract on the holy disease, that is, epilepsy. It is one of the earliest in the collection ascribed to Hippocrates, 11 and was probably written by him. At any

rate it belongs to the fifth century B.C. It should be read by everyone who wants to become acquainted with the religious situation of the time. The author says that the men who call this disease holy are of the same kind as the magicians, charlatans, and purificatory and begging priests and that they cover up their ignorance and helplessness by the pretext that this disease is holy. They resort to purifications and spells. They prescribe the avoidance of black garments and of putting one foot on another or one hand on another. These are the methods of magic, well known from folklore. The author further tells us that some people pretended to be able by certain secret rites to bring down the moon, eclipse the sun, cause storm or calm, bring rain or drought, call forth water, or make the earth sterile. He includes a catalogue of magical achievements of the sort described in the Roman age and generally believed to belong to that age only. As a matter of fact they were much older, although they were more in evidence at a later time, when the soberness of the old religion had vanished. Our author informs us that these people had drawn the gods also into the circle of their superstitious ideas. If the sick man bellows or has convulsions, they say that the Great Mother is responsible. If his cries resemble neighing, Poseidon is the cause; if they resemble the chirping of birds, Apollo Nomios is to blame; and if he foams at the mouth and kicks with his feet, it is Ares' doing. Finally, if he has evil dreams by night, sees frightful figures, and leaps up from his bed, they say that he has been attacked by Hecate or by some hero.

The last words call for some comment. Ghost stories like those current even in our day were current in antiquity also. In literature they do not appear until the Roman age. Their apparent absence in the classical age is deceptive. Ghosts went by the name of heroes, and genuine ghost stories are

related of the heroes. I have mentioned the hero of Temesa, to whom the inhabitants were compelled to sacrifice yearly the fairest virgin of their town until a well-known pugilist by the sheer force of his fists drove him into the sea, and Orestes, whom no Athenian liked to meet by night because he was likely to give him a thrashing and to rob him of his clothes. There was also Actaeon, who devastated the fields of the Boeotians until on the advice of the oracle his statue was chained to a rock. Plautus' comedy Mostellaria, which was copied from the Greek poet Philemon, is a ghost story of a very common type. A guest-friend has been killed and buried in a certain house. He walks about at night, disquieting and frightening people, so that nobody dares to live in the haunted house.

The account in Hippocrates concerns disease, and in cases where human resources fail superstition flourishes strongly even in our day. Even Pericles, who was above such base things, had to tolerate the tying of an amulet to him by the women when he was ill. 12 Of the cures in the Asclepieion at Epidaurus, the most miraculous and unbelievable tales are related. 13 I will not enter into the sane and sober views of Hippocrates on religion, although they are worth reading. I turn instead to another author who has much to say about magic and magicians, Plato. He prescribes the severest punishments for men who pretend to be able to call up the dead; to coerce the gods through the magical powers of sacrifices, prayers, and spells; and to destroy individuals, whole families, and towns. He speaks of several tricks, spells, and imprecations of black magic and of wax dolls which

are seen at doors, at crossroads, and on tombs. 14 It is a well-known fact, and one frequently mentioned in a later age, that witches and sorcerers used dolls for their purposes, burning them, transfixing them, and so forth, in order to affect with like pain the persons whom they represented. Plato's description is much more suggestive of the witchcraft of late antiquity than of the fourth century B.C., but it is impossible to doubt that he took it from the life of his own times.

This can be corroborated. When Plato speaks of imprecations he uses the word katadeseis. These are leaden tablets inscribed with imprecations directed against persons named on them and deposited in tombs in order to devote these cursed persons to the gods of the nether world. A great number of these tabellae defixionis have been found and published, 15 but it has been too little remarked that many of them belong to the fourth century B.C. A curious unpublished inscription on the shard of a cup, which reads "I put quartan fever on Aristion to the death," is probably as early as the end of the fifth century B.C. Numerous leaden tablets have been found at Athens, and it is a very interesting and important fact that many of the names mentioned on them are names of historically known persons. We find two brothers of the well-known politician Callistratus, who was exiled in 361 B.C.; Callias and Hipponicus, from the wealthy and famous house of the dadouchoi; Demophilus, the prosecutor of Aristotle and Phocion; Demosthenes; Lycurgus; and other orators and politicians. This is astonishing. The names mentioned show that belief in the magical power of these imprecations was not confined to artisans, hawkers, and such

people, who also appear among those cursed. It must have been current even in the best society.

Most of these curses refer to lawsuits. The gods, especially Hecate and Hermes of the nether world, are asked to tie the soul, the intellect, the tongue, and the limbs of the per-son cursed. It is manifest that these imprecations are connected with the degeneration of the Athenian democracy and law courts and with the abuses and cavils of the sycophants. I am obliged to state, although I am very sorry to do it, that superstition and a belief in magic and witchcraft were very common and widespread in the heyday of the classical age. If this was so in Athens, it can hardly have been less so in backward districts of Greece. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that this recrudescence of superstition and magic is connected with the decay of the old religion, which was secularized by the state and attacked by the Sophists. When such a void is created in religion, the opportunity is present for the flourishing of superstition and magic and the immigration of new gods.

The leaden tablets with imprecations were deposited in tombs, a sure sign of the belief in the power of the dead to do harm. Belief in the power of the dead appears in the old tomb cult. It was supposed to belong to the individual who was buried in the tomb and venerated there, and who was called up to help his family. Our notions of the cult of the dead are derived from literature, especially from the tragedies, which cling to what is old. The cult of the dead had, however, been suppressed for political and social reasons and had lost much of its vigor. The belief in ghosts remained. The general Greek idea of the other world was of something else, the dark and gloomy Hades with its pale, dumb, powerless shadows. It was so ingrained in the Greek mind that, in spite of the fact that Christianity has preached quite a different

conception for nearly two thousand years, the nether world of the Greek peasant is the same today. Its lord has kept the name of the ancient ferryman, Charon or Charos, although he is represented as a horseman and hunter. The shadows were powerless. They were supposed to have the same appearance which the man had during his life or at the moment of his death. Odysseus recognizes his deceased comrades in Hades. This is constantly so among all peoples. The life of this world is the pattern after which the other life is pictured, although the shadows may be darker or lighter. There is one exemption from the gloominess of Hades, the bliss awaiting those initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries. But even this consists in a repetition of the celebration of the Mysteries, and nothing was required for it but initiation.

While for Homer the body is the man himself and the soul is a pale shadow worth nothing, the Orphics considered the soul as immortal and the body as its prison. 16 The soul was able to leave the body temporarily in dreams and left it once for all in death. The consequence of this doctrine was a new evaluation of the other life. For the Orphics, also, initiation and the accompanying purification were necessary, but they added a demand for righteousness and moral purity. He who has not been purified in this life will continue in his impurity in the other life. "He will lie in the mud" is the keynote of the new ideas of the other world. There is here a recurrence of the old idea of the repetition of this life, modified only in so far as the repetition in itself is regarded as a punishment. This is not infrequently the case in modern folk-lore.

The Orphic idea is expressed in certain myths, including that of the Danaids. The figures which are generally called Danaids were represented in the picture by Polygnotus at Delphi

as those who had not been initiated and who were compelled in the other life to carry water for their purification, unceasingly and in vain. If the idea took hold on the popular mind, this was because it was coupled with another idea dear to the Greeks, that of retributive justice. In early times the individual was only a link in the chain of the family. Children and children's. children had to pay for the trespasses of their ancestors. There came a time when it seemed unjust that one individual should pay for the trespasses of another. It was demanded that the man who had trespassed should be punished, that he himself and no other should pay for his guilt. We find this demand in Solon. But experience taught that a man who had committed unjust deeds sometimes died without having suffered the fitting punishment. The solution of the dilemma was found in the Orphic doctrine. The punishment due was transferred to the life after death.

Sinners punished in the underworld, such as Tantalus and Sisyphus, are familiar from mythology. Originally they were enemies of the gods who were punished by the gods in the upper world, and only later were they transferred to the underworld. This underworld is described in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, and it was depicted by the great painter Polygnotus in a famous picture at Delphi. 17 But this picture contained something new. It represented a man who, having killed his father, was strangled by him, and a man who, having robbed a temple, was punished by a woman in various ways. Punishments were invented in accordance with the old jus talionis, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, or were taken from human justice. This idea of punishment in the other world was fatally extended, and occasions were found for the invention and addition of ever new modes of torture

and punishment. The driving force was the idea of retributive justice.

Before long the underworld was pictured as a place of horror, a hell in the full sense of the word. Aristophanes describes it in The Frogs. He fills it with frightful beasts, snakes, and monsters like Empousa. There in the mud and ever-flowing mire lie those who have committed wrongs to guest-friends, frauds, or perjury or who have beaten their fathers. Aristophanes also gives a detailed enumeration of the most frightful pains which can be inflicted upon a man, copied from the mythological punishments, and enlarged upon and extended in a grotesque manner.

All this is known well enough, but it is generally set aside on the ground that it is mythology and has as little importance for real belief as myths ordinarily have. But it had a very serious background. Aristophanes would not have been able to give such a long and picturesque description of hell and its horrors if the subject had not been familiar to his audience. Elsewhere in literature such things are not mentioned. Like superstition, they were too base and grotesque. But there are two exceptions, two very important passages which prove beyond doubt that the idea of punishment in the other world had taken strong hold on the popular mind in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The philosopher Democritus says: "Many people who do not know that human nature is dissolved in death, but who know that they have committed much wrong, live constantly in fear and anxiety, composing lying fables concerning the time after death." 18 And in the introduction to his great work the Republic, Plato makes the aged Kephalos say that a man who sees the hour of death approaching is seized by fright and begins to think about

things that had not troubled him before. For while the myths that are told of the underworld, according to which he who has committed wrongs in this world will be punished in that world, seemed ridiculous to him hitherto, now his soul is anxious, for they may be true. He is disquieted and he makes up his account, considering whether he has done wrong to anybody. If he finds that he has committed many unjust actions, he is filled with alarm; he often leaps up from his bed in sleep as children do, and he lives in fear. 19 This is a striking picture and drawn from life. Plato's own detailed accounts of the other world and of metempsychosis must be passed over here, for they are myths created by him and have nothing to do with popular ideas. Their influence on the future, however, was great and fateful.

A reference may be added to the paintings of the Apulian tomb vases, which belong to the fourth century B.C. and are an offshoot of Attic vase painting. They represent the palace of Hades and the mythological criminals punished in the underworld. That such subjects were chosen for tomb monuments proves that these ideas were popular in southern Italy. This is, perhaps, especially due to the strong Orphic influence in that country.

Long ago Dieterich tried to prove that hell was created by the Greeks. 20 Another great scholar, Cumont, has, on the contrary, derived it from the Orient. 21 But if we take the earliest Christian vision of hell, the so-called Apocalypse of St. Peter, which was the starting point of Dieterich's research, it appears that Dieterich was right. The description of the punishments for moral sins, which were sins for the heathens also,

is detailed, and the old keynote, the lying in the mud, recurs constantly in many variations. On the other hand, the description of the punishments of unbelievers is briefer, less detailed, and evidently copied from the former. The background is Greek.

I have dwelt here on the dark and base sides of Greek religion--superstition, magic, and the idea of punishment in the other world. For I am of the opinion that it is necessary to know these also if we are to have a true conception of Greek popular religion. We know that such ideas became dominant in late antiquity. The way was prepared by the decay of the old religion. Man needs some kind of religion. If his old faith is destroyed, he turns to superstition and magic and to new gods who are imported from foreign countries or who rise from the dark depths of the human mind. There were such depths in the Greek mind also. That mind was not so exclusively bright as is sometimes said.

Footnotes

103:1 Psyche; Seelencult and Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen (Freiburg i. B., 1894).

103:2 See my paper, "Early Orphism and Kindred Religious Movements," Harvard Theological Review, XXVIII (1935), 181 ff.

104:3 Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. T. A. Sinclair (London, 1932).

105:4 See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 665 ff.

106:5 See my "Entstehung and religiöse Bedeutung des griechischen Kalenders," Lunds universitets årsskrift, XIV: 2 (1918), No. 21.

109:6 Agamemnon, vss. 945 ff.

109:7 Herodotus, III, 40 ff.

110:8 Agesilaus, XI, 8.

110:9 Characteres, 16.

111:10 Nubes, vss. 749 ff., and Aves, vss. 1553 ff.

111:11 De morbo sacro, I.

113:12 Plutarch, Pericles, 38.

113:13 The inscriptions are collected in Inscriptiones Graecae, Editio minor, Vol. IV, Fasc. i, Nos. 121-27. See also R. Herzog, "Die Wunderheilungen von Epidauros," Philologus, Supplementary Vol. XXII(1931), No. 3.

114:14 Laws, X, p. 909b; see also p. 908d and XI, p. 933.

114:15 The Attic tabellae defixionis have been published by R. Wünsch in an appendix to Inscriptiones Graecae, III. Several important finds have appeared later. See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 757 ff.

116:16 Plato, Cratylus, p. 400c.

117:17 Described by Pausanias, X, 28 ff.

118:18 Frag. 297, in H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1934-37), II, 206-7.

119:19 Plato, Republic, I, pp. 330d ff.

119:20 A. Dieterich, Nekyia; Beiträge zur Erklärung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse (Leipzig, 1893; 2d ed., 1913).

119:21 F. Cumont, After Life in Roman Paganism (New Haven, 1922), pp. 88 ff.

SEERS AND ORACLES

The religious situation in Greece was complicated in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., even in regard to popular religion. It was simple enough in backward districts, where the old faith survived without being disturbed and where the people kept the rustic customs, celebrated the old festivals, and venerated the gods and heroes without doing much thinking about the high gods. The background of this simple faith has survived until our own day. The situation was different elsewhere, especially in the cities, where religion had to encounter political life and the new enlightenment. The people ascribed the greatness and glory of the state, its freedom and independence, to its great gods; they feasted gladly on the sacrifices offered by the state; and they gathered with others at the panegyreis. But the cult of the great gods was too cold. These gods did not offer help in human needs and consolation to a contrite heart. The old bonds of state and family were loosened, the individual became conscious of himself. The state claimed as great authority as ever, but, as a matter of fact, the abuses of democracy turned people away from it and made them try to find the way that pleased them best. Man was no longer born to his gods as in earlier times. He wanted to find his gods for himself. And so he turned to gods who could help him--to Asclepius, the great healer of diseases; to the Cabiri, who brought help in distress at sea; or to gods who were able to stir his religious feelings deeply, as Sabazios could. In this movement the women seem to have played an

important part. The criticism of religious beliefs by the Sophists and the improper jests at the expense of the gods by men like Aristophanes did their work. Atheists were not unknown, nor were statesmen who treated religion as only a means to their ends. The faith of the masses was shaken, but it was not destroyed.

On occasion it broke out violently, and the people were seized by a kind of religious hysteria when they believed that their welfare and that of their city was threatened by impiety against the gods. The Athenian trials for impiety are famous. 1 The trials of Pericles' mistress, Aspasia, and of his friend, the philosopher Anaxagoras, had a very obvious political background. This is apparent also in the trial of Alcibiades for profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries and in the famous trial for the smashing of the herms in 415 B.C. On this occasion a real religious hysteria broke out, for these events took place just before the great fleet sailed for Syracuse. The people feared that the wrath of the gods would imperil this great and dangerous undertaking, or at least they found an evil omen in the event. About the same time the Sophist Protagoras and the atheist Diagoras were condemned for impiety. Most famous of all is the trial and death of Socrates. Socrates was accused of seducing youths and of not having the same gods as the state but other new gods. His accusers were good citizens who tried to heal the terrible wounds left by the war and by the terrorism of the Thirty Tyrants, and they sincerely believed that they would attain their goal by removing the adversary of the old faith and old customs. They made a tragic mistake, for they struck at the man who overcame the sophistical criticism. Such trials also took place later. Even Aristotle was threatened with one.

Except in the case of the simple rustic cults, it was the fate of Greek religion to be closely interconnected with political life. We should remember that the people of whose religion we speak made up the popular assembly and that the assembly made decisions in religious matters, even if in such matters it acknowledged a superior authority and asked the Delphic or some other oracle for advice. This intermingling of religion and politics is especially apparent in another field of religion which was of the greatest importance in practical life. I refer to the foretelling of the future. We can hardly imagine how great its importance was in private as well as in public life. In my opinion it was the part of religion which was of most current interest in that age.

The cities asked the oracles for advice not only in religious but also in other matters, and private persons did so on all occasions of any importance. Furthermore, guidance was sought from sacrifices, birds, dreams, and other omens. We may take Xenophon as an example. He was a brave and well-educated man, a skilled officer, and a good writer, but without philosophical understanding. His religious views were certainly those of the Athenian middle class. He turned to oracles and seers on all occasions. Before Xenophon went to Asia Minor to join the expedition of Cyrus he asked the Delphic oracle to which gods he should sacrifice in order that he might make the voyage and return in safety. 2 When the Army of the Ten Thousand was at discord, he sacrificed and asked the gods if he should go back home. He did likewise when the chief command was offered to him and when he was thinking of settling the soldiers at Kotyora. 3 He firmly believed he was led by presages and omens. A dream in which he saw a thunderbolt strike his father's house was the immediate cause

of his assembling the officers after the death of Cyrus in order to take counsel in the difficult situation of the army. A dream showed him the means of crossing the river Tigris when the army seemed to be cut off by the river and the mountains. 4 When he was riding from Ephesus in order to meet Cyrus, he heard the cry of a seated eagle to the right, and the seer who accompanied him said that it signified glory but many hardships. 5 And, finally, when someone sneezed during an exhortatory speech to the soldiers after the murder of Clearchus, all the soldiers venerated the gods. 6 Xenophon firmly believed in presages, and when they seemed to fail he took pains to explain that they finally proved to be true. I hardly need to refer to the many oracles and presages related by Herodotus.

The wish to be able to cast a glance into the future is common to all humanity. Even in our day there are plenty of soothsayers and sibyls, and many people still believe in dreams and omens. It is no wonder that the ancients did so, too. But we should keep well in mind that while these arts are now despised by educated people and ranked with superstition they were an acknowledged part of Greek religion. The great popularity of the Delphic oracle was based on its supposed ability to foretell the future. There were numerous oracles in Greece, and, to judge from Herodotus, they seem especially to have flourished before and during the Persian Wars. But they were consulted eagerly in the following age too, although a certain decline in their prestige is perhaps to be found in the fact that at this time the Greeks turned to foreign oracles, especially that of Ammon in the Great Oasis. In the Hellenistic age the old oracles of Greece lost their popularity.

The writers preserve only the more important questions put

to the oracles. We can be certain that people applied to the oracles on all occasions which were of some importance to them. But these questions pertaining to ordinary life are lost, with one exception. At Dodona there have been found several leaden tablets inscribed with questions which people asked the oracle. 7 It is interesting to see what they were like. One Heraclides asks whether his wife will bear him a child, and Lysanias asks whether the child with which Amyla is pregnant is his. One man asks if it will be profitable for him to buy a house and land in the town, another if he will do well by breeding sheep, a third if he will make a profit by carrying goods around and doing business where he likes. We see what sort of advice people wanted in family life and business, and we can understand the important part which the oracles played in practical life. We should not forget that other omens and dreams were eagerly observed also.

Whoever has read the accounts of Greek historians knows that no battle was waged, no river crossed, before victims had been slaughtered and the signs of the sacrifice were favorable. If the signs were unfavorable a second and even a third victim were slaughtered until favorable signs appeared, and it sometimes happened that a general held his army back and waited for favorable signs even when the enemy had already begun to attack. It sometimes happened also that a plan was given up if the signs were unfavorable. Seers always accompanied the armies; among the Ten Thousand there were several of them.

To us it seems paradoxical to wait for sacrificial omens before a battle when quick action is required or before a march which is demanded by strategical considerations. The Greeks thought otherwise, or they would have abolished these hindrances to military action. We should not overlook the psychological influence of these god-sent signs on the soldiers and

on their conduct in battle, for the soldiers believed in the signs as Xenophon did. Of course there were cunning seers who interpreted the signs from the victim sacrificed in accordance with military necessity, and there were generals who imposed their will upon the seers and used these sacrifices as a means to their military ends. In the battle at Plataea, Pausanias held his soldiers back, under the pretext that the signs were unfavorable, until the enemy could be attacked by the hoplites at a reasonable distance. But there were also bigoted generals who obeyed the seers rather than military necessity. The most tragic example is Nicias and the defeat of the Athenians before Syracuse. When the retreat was decided on the moon was eclipsed, and the seers interpreted this to mean that the army had to remain on the spot thrice nine days. Nicias obeyed, and the delay sealed their doom. 8 In his biography of Nicias, Plutarch deplores the untimely death of the seer Stilbides because after that no wise seer was at the side of Nicias. 9

There were seers who intrigued on their own account. The seer Silanos, who was asked by Xenophon to consult the gods in regard to his plan to settle the soldiers at Kotyora, frustrated his intention because he wanted to go back to Greece. 10 In a military writer of the same age there is a very instructive prescription to the effect that a general should have a strict eye upon the seers during a siege and not allow them to sacrifice on their own account in the absence of the general. 11 They might have a fatal influence on public opinion.

The part played by the seers in war may seem to be of a special kind, but wars were only too common in Greece. Between the great and historically famous wars some small war

was almost always going on in some corner of the country. The gods were constantly consulted in time of war for the sake of the psychological effect on the minds of the combatants. From the account in Xenophon of the events in Troas, 12 it seems that seers circulated everywhere and offered their services to those who wanted and paid for them. It is striking that the seers whom he mentions were from backward provinces of Greece--Arcadia and Acarnania. Belief in the art was perhaps firmer in these regions. Some seers acquired a great fame. One of these was Tisamenus, who belonged to a famous family of seers from Olympia, the Iamidae, 13 and served as a seer in the great battles fought with the Persians. He even acquired Spartan citizenship.

If the seers were able to influence the minds of men in war, they, of course, had the same power in peace and in political life. Still more important were, however, the numerous oracle mongers, the chresmologoi, who circulated among the people oracles which were anonymous or which were ascribed to some old prophet, such as Musaeus or Bacis, or to some oracle. These oracles were not signs given by the gods in sacrifices or in other ways, but words--verses which the people learned by heart and which went from mouth to mouth. I hardly need to remark what a powerful means this was for influencing public opinion when an important decision was pending. But the part played by oracles and seers in such matters is not sufficiently appreciated, and so I must dwell upon it at some length. The oracles played a part in political agitation similar to that of newspapers and political pamphlets in our own times. Examples of their fateful influence will be given below.

This role of the oracles began before the Persian Wars.

[paragraph continues] Herodotus relates that when the Spartan king Cleomenes in 510 B.C. drove out the sons of Pisistratus and took the Acropolis of Athens, he seized in the temple a collection of oracles which had belonged to the Pisistratidae. 14 These oracles foretold many heavy blows that would be dealt by the Athenians to the Spartans. In this connection I may also recall the fact that the political adversaries of the Pisistratidae, the Alcmaeonidae, whom they had exiled, secured the help of the Delphic oracle and through it of the Spartans. What had happened is clear enough. The Pisistratidae knew that the Spartans were their most powerful enemies, and they collected these oracles not for their own pleasure but in order to prepare the minds of the people for the war with the Spartans which they foresaw--to exhort the people and to give them courage in the fight with the formidable foe.

Another story is told by Herodotus about Onomacritus, who is known chiefly because he seems to have promoted Orphism. He was exiled by Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, because another poet, Lasus of Hermione, had caught him falsely inserting into a collection of oracles ascribed to Musaeus an oracle prophesying that the islands around Lemnos would be engulfed by the sea. I do not think that the real reason for the exile was that Onomacritus had committed a literary forgery. If we recall that Lemnos was occupied by Miltiades about 512 B.C., certainly not without the consent of the Pisistratidae, and that it afforded support to the commercial and political influence of Athens in the northeastern part of the Aegean for which the Pisistratidae cared much (I recall that they seized Sigeum at the mouth of the Hellespont), the political background becomes clear. Such an oracle was unfavorable to their political plans. After his exile Onomacritus went to the court of the Persian king, where he used his

oracles in order to persuade the king to undertake the campaign against Greece. He read a mass of oracles, and if something was unfavorable to the Persians, he concealed it, picking out the most favorable oracles. 15 We see what oracles were good for.

There were many such collections of oracles, and their authority was enhanced by ascribing them to some famous old prophet. The most esteemed of these was Bacis. Herodotus quotes oracles at length only from him and from the Pythia. In one passage he makes an interesting remark which proves that criticism had begun to awaken. Speaking of a notorious ex eventu oracle referring to the battle at Artemisium, Herodotus says that he is unable to deny that oracles are true and that, as Bacis speaks so clearly, he is not willing to put forward or to tolerate any contradiction in this regard. 16 The home of the Sibyl was not in Greece but in Asia Minor. Another collection ascribed to her was brought from the Greek colony of Cumae to Rome at about the same time. It is the famous Sibylline Books. A Sibylline oracle ascribed to 125 B.C. is preserved in Phlegon. 17 It is certainly not genuine. We need only remark that it consists chiefly of prescriptions for sacrifices and purifications, though it also contains certain political allusions. In judging the much discussed problem of the Sibylline Books, it is important to realize that it was only one of the many collections of oracles circulating in Greece at the

end of the sixth century B.C. Of course, such collections circulated also in the Greek colonies.

Thucydides gives an illuminating account of the role of the oracles during the Peloponnesian War. He is a child of the enlightenment of the age of the Sophists and does not believe in them. He mentions them only in order to show their psychological influence and the impression they made on men's minds. It was of course a great advantage for the Spartans that when they asked Apollo at Delphi about the war he declared that they would conquer and that he would help them whether called upon or not. This increased the willingness of Sparta's allies to take part in the war. But this was also an example of the oracle's interference in politics which ended by depriving it of its authority. When the great plague broke out during the first years of the war, there was an animated discussion in regard to the true wording of an old oracle. Should it read: "The Dorian war will come and with it famine (limos)"? Or should the last word be "plague" (loimos)? An oracle of Pythia prohibited people from settling in the Pelargikon on the southern slope of the Acropolis. As this was necessarily done when the country was evacuated and the people crowded into the town, many thought that this infringement of the divine prohibition was the cause of the calamities. Thucydides remarks dryly that, on the contrary, the calamity of the war was the reason why the Pelargikon was inhabited. When the Spartans invaded Attica for the first time and devastated the fields, the Athenians were at discord as to whether they should go and fight the enemy, and the oracle mongers proffered numerous oracles which all were eager to hear. 18

The most outstanding and flagrant example of the role of oracles and seers in political discussions and of their use to influence public opinion occurred in the preparation for the

expedition to Sicily. The undertaking was hotly disputed. There were two parties, one of which found the risk too great and rejected the proposal, while the other adhered to it ardently. The leader of the party favoring the expedition was Alcibiades, whose motives were selfish. Whatever he thought of it, he promoted the plan in order to win glory and power for himself. It was all important for him to control public opinion. He had a seer who prophesied that the Athenians would earn great glory in Sicily. His adversaries and even priests used the same methods. An embassy sent to the oracle of Ammon in the Great Oasis came back with the answer that the Athenians would take all Syracusans. Unfavorable sayings were concealed. 19 One of these oracles, one which came from Dodona, is preserved, together with the interpretation given after the catastrophe. 20 It said that the Athenians would settle on Sikelia. According to the interpretation, the oracle meant a small hill with this name outside the gates of Athens. Thucydides relates that after the great catastrophe the wrath of the people turned not only against the politicians but also against the oracle mongers and seers who, pretending divine inspiration, had raised false hopes in them. 21

Plutarch relates several terrible omens which foreboded the catastrophe, beginning with the smashing of the herms and ending with the women's lament for Adonis about the time when the fleet sailed for Sicily. A man leaped up on the altar of the twelve gods and castrated himself. Ravens picked off a large part of a votive gift which the Athenians had erected at Delphi in memory of their victory over the Persians, a Palladium standing on a date palm of bronze. When, on the advice of the oracle, the Athenians fetched a priestess of

[paragraph continues] Athena from Clazomenae, it turned out that her name was Hesychia (quiet). These stories may have been invented after the terrible end of the expedition, but at all events they are characteristic of the mentality of the age, the search for presages and omens everywhere and the great attention paid to them. Of course, the exegetes were asked to interpret them. The importance of seers, oracles, presages, omens, and the like for the popular mind will, I hope, be evident from these examples.

Seers and oracle mongers were omnipresent. Aristophanes is illuminating in this respect. In his comedy The Birds, when the City of the Birds in the Clouds is founded, among the charlatans who present themselves is an oracle monger who reads beautiful oracles from his book. He is chased away by Peisthetairos with another oracle. The intrigue in Aristophanes' comedy The Knights is a regular battle for the favor of old Demos, the personification of the Athenian people, fought by means of oracle collections. Cleon, the leading politician of this time, is represented as a Paphlagonian slave who has ousted the two other slaves of Demos, Nicias and Demosthenes, the two well-known generals. Cleon feeds the old Demos with oracles and wins his favor. The other two steal his book. In it they find an oracle saying that the leather-seller, that is, the tanner Cleon, will be vanquished by a sausage-seller, who is still more impudent than he. The sausage-seller is sought and found, and now the battle begins. The sausage-seller carries the day because his oracles promise much more to Demos. It is a bold joke, but it has a very serious background and throws light on the means by which the opinions of the people and of the popular assembly were influenced. Evidently seers and oracle mongers had the ear of the people and helped to determine the direction of public opinion.

Many of the seers, oracle mongers, and interpreters of

dreams, presages, and omens were charlatans. But they were not all so contemptible as they are represented by Aristophanes and as moderns are apt to think. Some of them were influential politicians, and among them were the exegetes, the official interpreters of sacred law chosen by the people and the Delphic oracle. The most prominent of these was Lampon, who was a very well-known personage in the latter part of the fifth century B.C. He took a prominent part in the founding of the Athenian colony Thurii, and a decree preserved in an inscription proves that he moved proposals in the popular assembly concerning sacred matters. 22 He was one of the official exegetes. Together with Lampon is mentioned Hierocles. Aristophanes derides Hierocles as an oracle monger, but the people commissioned him to arrange certain sacrifices for Euboea which were prescribed by the oracle and perhaps gave him a plot of land on Euboea. 23 We shall later mention Diopeithes, a friend of Nicias, whom Aristophanes calls avaricious in one passage and a great man in another. 24 He had a namesake at Sparta who must have been a person of consequence, for in the contest over the throne between Agesilaus and Leotychides he produced an oracle of Apollo directing the Spartans to beware of a lame kingship. Agesilaus had a lame leg. But the cunning Lysander outdid the Spartan Diopeithes, saying that the oracle referred to the illegitimate birth of Leotychides, for there was a rumor that he was the son not of King Agis but of Alcibiades. 25

By virtue of their profession these men were the defenders of the old religion when Sophists and unbelievers directed their attacks against it. The trials for atheism were initiated

by the seer Diopeithes. According to the biographer Satyros, Anaxagoras was accused by Thucydides, the son of Melesias, the chief political adversary of Pericles; but according to Plutarch, Diopeithes was the accuser. 26 Probably the two worked together. Diopeithes carried a law in the popular assembly authorizing trials of persons who did not believe in the divine and who disseminated teachings about the celestial phenomena. Here we find the kernel of the matter, the clash between the old religion and the new philosophy. The heavenly bodies were mythological gods who had hardly any cult. The contention that the sun was a glowing lump and the moon another inhabited world could hardly be counted as atheism. On the other hand such celestial phenomena as eclipses had a very important place as omens in the art of the seers. The seers became aware of the danger to their art, which some people had already begun to doubt, of the physical explanation of such phenomena.

Another story about the seer Lampon which is told by Plutarch is very illuminating in regard to the situation. 27 A ram with one horn only was brought to Pericles. According to the notions of the ancients this was an ominous portent. Lampon interpreted it to mean that of the two rivals in Athenian politics, Pericles and Thucydides, the one to whom this ram had been brought should carry the day. But Anaxagoras had the skull of the ram cut open and showed that the brain had the form of an egg with its small end turned toward the root of the single horn. He gave a physical explanation of the portent. Plutarch adds that the people admired the sagacity of Anaxagoras much but shortly afterward, when Thucydides had been ostracized, that of Lampon much more.

The moderns generally think that the clash took place between

the old religion and the criticism advanced by the Sophists. This view is at best one-sided. A very severe criticism of the gods and of their cult had been made by Xenophanes and Heraclitus without doing much harm. The Sophists, in fact, were not so aggressive as these philosophers, although their criticism without doubt undermined faith in the gods. Critias advanced the opinion that some wise man had invented the gods in order to deter men from doing wrong in secret. 28 Prodicus took up the metonymical use of the names of the gods which was already common in Homer and concluded that man considered as a god everything that was useful to him and that hence wine was called Dionysus, fire Hephaistos, bread Demeter, and so forth. 29 Protagoras was cautious, stating that he was not able to say of the gods whether they existed or not, nor what shape they had; he said that much prevents knowing this--the obscurity of the matter and the brevity of human life. 30 This is philosophy and must be passed over in an exposition of popular religion. The discussions of the Sophists were beyond the horizon of the common people, who listened to them partly in amusement and partly in irritation. It is characteristic that Euripides, the spokesman of the new wisdom on the stage, won few victories, while many fell to Sophocles. Sophocles won the favor of the people because he was a good Athenian citizen who believed in the gods. But his religion was conventional, if this word is not taken in a bad sense. It is very characteristic that the only part of religion for which he shows genuine zeal is the belief in oracles.

The intellectual arguments of the Sophists were above the understanding of the common people. The arguments of natural philosophy, at least to a certain degree, were not. Aristophanes

popularized them. In The Clouds he makes Socrates prove that Zeus does not exist by the fact that the thunderbolt hits not the wrongdoers but temples, mountaintops, and tall oaks. This the people understood. In another passage he gives a grotesque explanation of the rain which Zeus pours down. 31

Moderns are astonished that natural philosophy and sophistic are confused, that Aristophanes makes Socrates represent them both. From the point of view of the good Athenian citizen it is not astonishing at all. They were not so educated or lettered as to be able to distinguish between the hairsplitting of the Sophists and the hypotheses of the natural philosophers, of whose doctrines the Sophists were not ignorant. The people confused them, and Aristophanes reflects popular opinion by doing the same, although his exposition of their doctrines in The Clouds was a little too much for the audience. This comedy was not a success.

The real clash took place between that part of religion which interfered most in practical life and with which everyone came in contact every day, namely, the art of foretelling the future, and the attempts of natural philosophy to give physical explanations of celestial and atmospheric phenomena, of portents, and of other events. Such explanations undermined the belief in the art of the seers and made it superfluous. For if these phenomena were to be explained in a natural way, the art of the seers came to naught. Belief in the oracles also was weakened. The prejudices shown by the oracles, as in the case of the favor shown by the Delphic oracle for the Spartans, contributed to the disbelief. The belief in the oracles was the business not only of the priests and seers but also of the politicians. Only one method of foretelling the future--dreams--was not attacked. Everyone believed in dreams, and even

[paragraph continues] Aristotle treated of the divine nature of dreams. 32 Everyone wanted to look into the future, as people still do. The defense of the oracles and of the art of the seers was a very important matter.

Naturally the seers and interpreters of oracles and omens defended their art, and since their art was implied in the old religion, the defense of the old religion also fell to their lot. For the real point where belief and disbelief clashed was the opposition between the art of foretelling the future and the physical explanations of natural philosophy. The clash occurred not in intellectual discussion but in practical life, and consequently it became the business of the whole people. That it was so is proved by the fact that the seers rose up to defend the old religion when they became aware of the danger. Diopeithes introduced the trials for atheism, and the first man to be accused was Anaxagoras, the Ionian natural philosopher who lived at Athens. The denunciation of Socrates contained the same accusation, that he searched for things beneath the earth and above the sky. But in his case a reference to sophistic was added, for he was also accused of making the weaker case appear the stronger.

The trials for atheism were useless. They were not able to check the increasing disbelief, and they ceased in the course of time. They are no honor to Athens, but we should try to understand the situation from which they arose. This situation was created by the interference of religion in practical life and politics, and it explains why men who were at the same time politicians and seers thought it possible to dispel the danger by means of laws and courts. They were supported by the Athenian people, for the people disliked the attacks on the gods who had given glory and power to their city and in emergencies they feared the wrath of these gods. Disbelief in

the gods was manifest in the physical explanations of the phenomena of nature, which the seers interpreted as signs of the wrath of the gods. The people understood this, and the trials for atheism were the consequence. The fate of the old religion was sealed, but the belief in the art of foretelling the future did not cease. In late antiquity it was stronger than ever. It was a part of popular religion, and I have wished to put its importance in the right light.

I have tried to expound the popular religion of the ancient Greeks. To many popular religion is religion in folklore, and I have dwelt at length on this part of the religion. The great gods also have their roots in popular religion, although they come to us magnified by art and literature. Certain moral and social ideas formed a part of the life of the people, and these also found religious expression and were placed under the protection of the gods. They are an important part of popular religion.

Religion is dependent on the conditions of life. When these change new needs arise and old forms wane, and popular religion undergoes corresponding changes. Such changes were effected when people crowded into the towns and began to earn their livelihood not by agriculture and stockbreeding but by industry and commerce. Changes in political life and the rise of democracy also caused certain changes in religion. We should bear in mind that in the democratic states the people formed the popular assembly to which all decisions pertained, even in religious matters. The result was that religion was secularized to a certain degree. But it was not dead. Religion tried to find new forms corresponding to the new needs and the new ideas of the people. This movement was only beginning in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The real turning point is the age of the Sophists. It came to an issue in late antiquity.

I take the liberty to conclude with a simile. Religion is like a grove with tall and stately trees, which reach the sky and strike the eye from afar, and with an undergrowth of brushwood and grass. It is easy to fell the trees, and, like the pines in the proverb which King Croesus referred to when he threatened to eradicate the Milesians like a pine, they do not put forth new shoots, although new trees can be planted instead of the old ones. But the undergrowth persists. The brushwood and the grass may be cut down or even burned off; it springs up again. Every year the undergrowth brings forth the same simple leaves and blossoms. It changes only if the mother soil is changed. This took place in ancient Greece, as it does today, through the rise of new conditions of life, industry, commerce, democracy, and intercourse between peoples and classes. Popular religion changed accordingly. In backward parts of the country, however, the old mode of life and the old popular religion persisted and have continued to persist down to our own day, but they are giving way again because conditions of life are once more being profoundly changed.

Footnotes

122:1 E. Derenne, Les Procès d’impiété intentés aux philosopher à Athènes au Vme et au IVme siècles avant J.-C. (Liege, 1930).

123:2 Anabasis, III, 1, 5 ff.

123:3 Ibid., V, 6, 16 ff.

124:4 Ibid., III, 1, 11 ff.; see also VI, 1, 22, and IV, 3, 8 ff.

124:5 Ibid., VI, 1, 23.

124:6 Ibid., III, 2, 9.

125:7 C. Carapanos, Dodone et ses ruines (Paris, 1878), pp. 68 ff.

126:8 Thucydides, VII, 50.

126:9 Nicias, 23.

126:10 Xenophon, Anabasis, V, 6, 29.

126:11 Aeneas Tacticus, Poliorcetica, 10, 4.

127:12 Anabasis, VII, 8.

127:13 L. Weniger, "Die Seher von Olympia," Archiv Für Religionswissenschaft, XVIII (1915), 53 ff.

128:14 Herodotus, V, 90.

129:15 Herodotus, VII, 6. See also H. Diels, "Über Epimenides von Kreta," Sitzungsberichte der Königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin), 1891, pp. 396 ff., and H. Bengtson, "Einzelpersönlichkeit and athenischer Staat zur Zeit des Peisistratos and des Miltiades," Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philos.-hist. Abt. (Munich), 1939, No. 1, pp. 26 ff.

129:16 Herodotus, VIII, 77.

129:17 The text is printed in H. Diels, Sibyllinische Blätter (Berlin, 1890), pp. 111 ff.

130:18 Thucydides, II, 54, 17, 21.

131:19 Plutarch, Nicias, 13.

131:20 Pausanias, VIII, 11, 12.

131:21 Thucydides, VIII, 1.

133:22 Aristophanes, Nubes, vs. 332 and scholion; Inscriptiones Graecae, Editio minor, Vol. I, No. 76.

133:23 Aristophanes, Pax, vss. 1046 ff., and scholion.

133:24 Equites, vs. 1085, Vespae, vs. 380, and Aves, vs. 988.

133:25 Plutarch, Agesilaus, 3.

134:26 Diogenes Laertius, II, 12 ff.; Plutarch, Pericles, 32.

134:27 Pericles, 6.

135:28 Sisyphus, in Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta, pp. 771 ff.

135:29 Frag. 5, in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, 316.

135:30 Frag. 4, in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, 265.

136:31 Nubes, vss. 399 ff.

137:32 On Dreams and On Prophecy in Sleep.

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. ARCADIAN HERM

2. HERMES PSYCHOPOMPOS

3. HERM OFFERING

4. GOAT DAEMONS

5. ARTEMIS

6. RIVER GOD

7. VOTIVE MASKS

8. PAN AND NYMPHS

9. LANDSCAPE WITH SHRINES

10. HERO IN A SHRINE

11. KERNOS

12. SWINGING FESTIVAL

13. DIONYSUS IN A SHIP

14. WINE OFFERING TO DIONYSUS

15. INITIATION RITES

16. GODS OF ELEUSIS

17. ANODOS OF PHEREPHATTA

18. ANODOS OF KORE

19. BEARDED TRIPTOLEMOS

20. CORN IN A SHRINE

21. REUNION OF DEMETER AND KORE

22. DEPARTURE OF TRIPTOLEMOS

23. TRIPTOLEMOS WITH A PLOW

24. THE CHILD PLOUTON

25. PLOUTON AND PERSEPHONE (PHEREPHATTA)

26. ZEUS KTESIOS

27. ZEUS MEILICHIOS

28. ZEUS MEILICHIOS

29. DIOSCURI

30. APOLLO AGYIEUS

31. DIOSCURI

32. DIOSCURI COMING TO A MEAL

33. TRIPLE HECATE

34. ATHENA ERGANE

35. CYBELE, THE GREAT MOTHER

36. BENDIS

37. OFFERING TO ASCLEPIUS

38. ASCLEPIUS OF MELOS

39. GARDENS OF ADONIS

Acheloos, 11

Acquirer, the, epithet of Zeus, 67, 70

Actaeon, 113

Acts, ancient Greek piety expressed in, 73, 76

Adam, James, 3

Adonis, 96 f., 131

Aeschines, 93, 97 n; quoted, 74

Aeschylus, 68, 70, 108; Agamemnon, 109

Agathos Daimon, 33, 70, 73

Agriculture, pastoral life, 5 ff.; understanding of Greek popular religion must start from, 5; climatic conditions and crops, 6, 51; customs and festivals, 22-41; importance of, 22, 57; basis of Eleusinian Mysteries an agrarian cult, 42, 45, 49, 54, 57 ff.; idea that civilized and peaceful life is created by, 57 ff.

Agyieus, see Apollo Agyieus

Aiora, festival, 33

Alcibaides, 122, 131, 133

All Souls' Day, 31, 34

Alms, customs of asking for, 37, 38

Ammon, 92, 124, 131

Amphictyonies, 98

Anaktes (the Dioscuri), 69

Anaxagoras, 122, 134, 137

Animal sacrifice, 87; meaning and origin, 74 f.

Animal-shaped daemons, 10-13

Anthesteria, festival, 31, 33 f., 35

Anthropology and study of religion, 3

Apocalypse of St. Peter, 119

Apollo, 9, 10, 15, 23, 39, 47, 98, 103, 108, 112; Thargelia dedicated to, 27; as averter of evil, 79 f.; god of healing, 93; ritualism which he promoted concerned only with cult, 106, 107; see also Delphic oracle

Apollo Agyieus, 80, 82

Apollo Patroos, 67, 82, 83

Apulian tomb vases, 55, 119

Apulunas, 79

Arcadian deities, 9, 10

Archedemos, 14, 16

Archilochus, quoted, 74

Archons, newly elected, 66-67, 82 Ares, 112

Aristophanes, 36, 66, 80, 87, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 111, 122; references to Eleusinian Mysteries, 58, 59; attitude toward seers and oracles, 132, 133; exposition of natural philosophy, 136; The Birds, 132; The Clouds, 136; The Frogs, 118; The Knights, 132; The Peace, 92

Aristotle, 4 n, 23, 86, 122, 137

Armistice during festivals, 99

Artemis, 15 ff., 18, 21, 30, 39, 65; foremost of the nymphs, 16, 17; epithets, 16

Artisans and their deities, 87-90

Asclepius, 20, 95, 121; cults and sanctuary, 93 f.

Astrology, 106

Atheism, trials for, 94, 133, 137

Athena, 32, 35, 47, 60, 61, 81, 132; holy snake of, 72; epithet Phratia, 83; temple, 86; protectress of artisans, 88 f.

Athens, praised as cradle of civilization, 56; leadership in commerce and culture, 86; patriotism and piety, 86 f.

Autumn festivals, 24-26, 42, 46, 49; see also Thesmophoria

Bacchos, 47, 62, 96; see also Dionysus

Bacchylides, 69

Bacis, oracles of, 127, 129

Baptism in cult of Kotyto, 93

Bendis, 92

Birds, The, 132

Birth of child, representations of, 61

Brotherhood of humanity, 58, 63

Bucoliasts, 30, 37

Bucolic poetry, 30, 36, 37

Cabiri, the, 92, 121

Calendars, 23, 106

Campbell, Lewis, 3

Carnea, festival, 35; armistice during, 99

Celestial phenomena, physical explanation of, 134 ff.

Centaurs, 12, 13

Chalkeia, festival, 89

Charon, 116

Child, birth of, in art, 61

Choes, festival, 33-34

Chresmologoi, the, 127

Christianity, swept away the great gods, 16; Greek religion and, 20, 31, 73, 75, 76, 100

Christmas, resemblance to Anthesteria, 34

Chytroi, festival, 31, 34

Circle, magic, 28

Cities, so-called, often villages, 5, 22; religion . of, 84-101; life and conditions in, 84 ff.; country population crowded into, unemployment, 84; lead in culture, 84, 85; home of the great gods, 85 ff.; great temples, 86; artisans, 87-89; foreign gods brought in, 90 ff.; skepticism and emotionalism, 94-97; panegyreis, 97-101

Citizenship, proof of, 67, 82 Cleisthenes, 82

Clement of Alexandria, 43, 50; quoted, 45

Climatic conditions, and crops, 6, 51

Clouds, The, 136

Comedy, origin of, 36

Coppersmiths, 88, 89

Corn, as wealth, 51; in Eleusinian rites, 55

Corn deities, 24, 51, 52; see also Demeter; Kore

Cornucopia, 47, 61, 69

Crafts and their deities, 87-90

Critias, 135

Crops, relation to climate, 51; see also Agriculture

Cult places, see Sanctuaries

Cults, care of, 80-83

Cumont, F., 119

Curses on leaden tablets, 114

Daemons, nature, 10 ff.

Danaids, the, 116

Days, The, 105 f.

De-, significance of, 24, 51

Dead, the, beliefs about, 8; offerings to, 8, 30, 34; abode of, 9, 59, 64, 115-20; souls represented by snake, 71; cult of, 115 ff.; see also Ghosts; Heroes

Death, ideas evoked by Eleusinian Mysteries, 59, 63

Deisidaimonia, 110

Delphi, 86, 93, 98, 116, 117

Delphic oracle, 20, 23, 57, 123, 128, 130, 133, 136; attitude toward legalism and mysticism, 106-108; popularity based on ability to foretell future, 124

Demeter, 23, 27, 32, 92, 98, 104, 135; goddess of cereals, 24, 50, 52 n; rites and festivals, 24 ff., 33, 36; Mysteries of, 32, 45; a goddess of the religion of Eleusis, 46 ff.; myth of the rape of daughter of, 48 ff.; Ploutos born of Iasion and, 51, 62; reunion with Kore, 54-55

Democritus, quoted, 118

Demosthenes, 93, 97 n, 114

Descent of Kore, festival, 52; see also Kore

Diagoras, 122

Diet, staple, 22, 32

Dieterich, A., 119

Dionysiac orgies, 95, 103

Dionysus, 13, 32, 35, 39, 60, 93, 135; festivals, 23, 33, 34, 35 ff., 47, 86; Mysteries of, 31, 32, 50; date, functions, 35; costume, 47; mixing up of cult of, with Mysteries of Eleusis, 48, 62; popularity as herald of mystic and ecstatic religion, 103

Diopeithes, 133; trials initiated by, 134, 137

Dioscuri, the, 60, 68 f., 72

Disease, healers of, 20, 93 f., 95; superstitions relating to, 111 ff.

Dörpfeld, W., 79

Drama, origin in rural customs, 36

Dreams, belief in, 124, 125, 136

Earthquakes, 11

Eiresione, 29, 36, 39; see also May bough

Eleusinian Mysteries, 7, 25, 31, 39, 42-64, 95, 99, 116; basis of, an agrarian cult, 42, 45, 49, 54; secret rites, 42 ff.; akin to the Thesmophoria, 42, 44, 46, 49; treatment by Christian authors, 43; belonged to Eumolpidae, 43, 46, 81; modern attempts to find out kernel of, 44; antiquity and persistence of, 46, 63; mixed with cult of Dionysus, 48, 62; kernel of, the ascent of Corn Maiden, 54; deeper ideas of life and death evoked by, 59, 63; trials for profanation of, 94, 122

Eleusis, religion of, 42-64; antiquity of cult, 46, 63; deities, 46 ff., 60; founded upon idea of agriculture as creating civilized and peaceful life, 57

Emotional religion, 95-97

Empedocles, 99

Encirclement, magical rite, 28

Enodia, name for Hecate, 91

Epidaurus, sanctuary at, 86, 93, 94, 113

Epilepsy, 111 f.

Ergane, 89; see also Athena

Erichthonios, 61

Eternity of life, 60, 63, 64

Eubouleus, 47, 48, 49

Eumolpidae, family of the, 43, 46, 81

Euripides, 59, 135

Europe, northern: similarities between beliefs and customs of Greece and, 12, 13, 26, 29, 37, 41, 71

Euthymus, 18

Evans, Sir Arthur, 71

Evil, averters of, 78 ff.

Exegetes, the, 111, 133

Fairs at panegyreis, 100

Families, cults under care of, 46, 81

Family and house cults, 65-83

Family, the model and basis of state organization, 75

Farnell, L. R., 20

Father, epithet of Zeus, 70, 77

Female, see Women

Fence, house, 65, 66

Fertility, festivals and magic, 25, 26, 27, 29, 33, 34, 36, 49

Festivals, rural, 22-41; Eleusinian Mysteries originally an autumn festival, 42, 49; of cities, 87, 89, 92, 97 ff.; women's part in, 96; the panegyreis, 97-101

First fruits, offering of, 27 ff.

Fleece, 7

Flowers, festival of, 33 f., 35; crown of, 40

Folklore, connection with religion, 40, 72, 110

Food of Greeks, 22, 32

Foreigners and strangers, 58, 73, 77

Foreign gods brought into Greece, 90, 91 ff.

Foretelling of the future, 123 ff.; see also Oracles and Seers

Frazer, Sir James, 3

Frogs, The, 118; quoted, 58

Fruits, as food, 22, 32; festivals and offerings, 27 ff., 30, 36

Furtwängler, A., 62

Future, foretelling of the, 123 ff.; see also Oracles and Seers

Games, the great, 97-101

Ge, 62

Generations, eternity of life through, 60, 63

Genetyllis, 96

Ghosts, heroes as, 18, 112; lamia and other specters, 91; goddess of, 111; see also Heroes

Goatlike daemons, 10, 12, 13

"God, the," 46, 47, 48

"Goddess, the," 46, 47, 48

Gods, see Great gods; also under name, e.g., Apollo; Demeter

Golden Fleece, 7

Goldsmiths, 88, 89

Good Daemon, 70, 73

Gorgias, 99

Gospel of St. John, excerpt, 59

Great Dionysia, 36, 86

Great gods, outlived by minor deities, 16, 18, 21, 41; religion in cities, 85 ff.; as state gods became remote from men, 87, 121

Great Mother, 91, 92, 112

Hades, 9, 59, 115, 116, 119

Haloa, festival, 32-33

Harrison, Jane, 3, 74

Harvest festivals, 26 ff.

Healers of disease, 20, 93 f., 95, 112, 113

Hearth, sanctity of, 72 f., 75 ff.; role in public cult, 75

Hecate, 80, III, 112, 115; origin, cult, 90 f.; devotion of women to, 97

Hell, beliefs concerning, 118-20

Hephaistos, 89, 135

Heracles, 60, 78; difference between Theseus and, 57

Heraclitus, 135

Herkeios, epithet of Zeus, 66-67, 78, 82, 83

Hermes, 8, 91 10, 21, 53, 61, 62, 115

Herms, 8, 9, 18; trials for smashing of, 94, 122

Herodotus 72, 73, 81, 85, 109; biography of Homer attributed to, 37i 88; oracles and presages related by, 124, 128, 129

Heroes, nature of, functions, 18 If., 21; ghost stories about, 18, 112; tombs and sanctuaries, 19; similarity to saints, 20; in Eleusinian religion, 47, 60; as gods of healing, 93

Hesiod, cited, 10, 35, 51, 65, 74, 85, 108, 110; references to Demeter, 24; ideal of peace and justice, 57; rules for religious life and conduct of man, 104 ff.; origin, 104; Theogony, 90; Works and Days, 104 ff.

Hestia, 72, 73, 76; position and importance of, 75

Hierocles, 133

Hieron, skyphos by, 56 n

Hippocrates, De morbo sacro, 111 f., 113

Holy disease, 111 f.

Homer, cited, 12, 15, 19, 21, 24, 26, 35, 51, 59, 65, 66, 78, 88, 89, 93, 110, 116, 117, 135; biography of, attributed to Herodotus, 37, 88; sanctuaries described by, 81, 86; called creator of the gods, 85

Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 51, 56, 90; references to the Eleusinian cult, 43, 45, 58; myth of the rape of Demeter's daughter, 48, 49

Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 9, 10, 65

Horse-shaped daemons, 11-13

House and family cults, 65-83

Houses, described, 65 f.; hearth, 72

Hrozný, B., 79

Human sacrifice, 6, 18, 113

Hunting, goddess of, 15

Hybris, conception of, 108 f.

Hyperborean virgins, 38

Hysteria, religious, 94, 122

Iacchos, 47, 54, 62

Iasion, 51, 62

Icarius, 33

Immortality, beliefs concerning, 60, 63, 64, 116

Impiety, trials for, 94, 122, 133, 137

Imprecations on leaden tablets, 114 f.

Initiation rites, Eleusinian, 45, 49

Isocrates, 56

Isthmia, games, 98

Jugs, Festival of the, 33-34

Jupiter, 70; see also Zeus

Justice, problem of, 77, 108 f.; retributive, 117

Kalamaia, festival, 26

Kallias, cited, 56

Karneia, festival, 35; armistice during, 99

Kataibates, epithet of Zeus, 67

Katharmoi, 99

Kephisodotos, statue of "Peace" by, 61, 62

Kernos, 31

Kipling, Rudyard, quoted, 71

Knights, The, 132

Kolias, 96

Kollyba, 31

Kore, Corn Maiden, 24, 32; as Eleusinian goddess, 46 ff.; myth of rape by Plouton, 48 ff.; aspects referring to life and to death, 53; reunion with Corn Mother, 54; see also Persephone

Kotyto, 93

Ktesios, epithet of Zeus, 67-69, 78

Kykeon, 45, 49, 50

Lakrateides, 48

Lamia, 91

Lampon, 133, 134

Lang, Andrew, 3

Laurel branch, 39

Leagues for protection of sanctuaries, 98

Legalism, 103 ff.

Life, ideas of, evoked by Eleusinian Mysteries, 59, 63

Lightning, god of, 67

Loaf offered as first fruit, 27, 28

Lovatelli, Countess, 49

Lunar month, 106

Lying in the mud, 116, 118, 120

Lysimachides, relief by, 46

Magic, weather, 6, 7; fertility, 25, 27, 29, 33, 34, 49; purificatory, 27-28; as cure for diseases, 112; Plato's attitude toward, 113; widespread belief in, 115; see also Witchcraft and sorcery

Magna Mater, see Great Mother

Marathonian tetrapolis, calendar, 19

Masks, votive, 16

Masses, fate of religion determined by, 4

Mater dolorosa, Greek (Demeter), 54

Maximus of Tyre, 23

May bough, 29, 36; customs, 37, 39 f.; symbolism, 38

Meals, sanctity of, 73 f.

Meat, 22

Megaron, described, 66; hearth, 72

Meilichios, epithet of Zeus, 69-70

Melanaigis, epithet of Dionysus, 36

Menander, 68

Miraculous healings, 95

Modern and ancient customs, 23, 26, 37, 38, 41, 71, 72, 100, 110

Modern research, 3 ff.

Moirai, the, 14

Monsters, 91

Morality associated with agriculture, 58, 63

Mostellaria, 113

Mountains, 6, 7, 8, 17

Mud, lying in the, 116, 118, 120

Mystic and ecstatic cults, 63, 95, 97, 103, 108; see also Eleusinian Mysteries

Natural philosophy, clash with religion, 134-38

Nature spirits or gods, 5-21

Nemea, games, 98

Nemesis, conception of, 108 f.

Nicias, 126, 132

Ninnion, tablet of, 54, 60

Nobility, the, 82, 84

Nymphs, 11, 13-17, 18

Odyssey, 59, 117

Olives, 32

Olympia, sanctuary at, 86, 98, 99

Olympic games, 98, 99

Omens, belief in, 123 ff.; see also Oracles

Onomacritus, 128

Oracles and seers, 123-38; military dependence upon, 125, 130; questions to, 125; political role, 127, 130; collections of oracles, 129; critics of, 129, 130; causes that undermined belief in, 136 f.

Orestes, 18, 19, 113

Orgeones, 82

Orgiastic cults, 93, 95, 97

Orphism, 103, 116, 117, 119, 128

Oschophoria, festival, 25, 34, 35

Otto, W. F., 4

Pan, 10, 13, 14, 17, 96

Panagia Euangelistria, 95

Panegyreis, 97-101; religious significance, 97, 100; sanctuaries, 98; importance, national and cultural, 99

Panegyricus, 56

Pankarpia, 30, 68

Panspermia, 30 f., 68

Pasios, epithet of Zeus, 67

Pastoral life and religion, 5-21, 22-41

Pausanias, cited, 56, 99

Peace, The, 92

Peasants, customs and religion, 5 ff., 22 ff.

Persephone, 47, 48, 53, 61; varying forms of name, 53; two aspects referring to life and to death, 53; see also Kore

Peterich, E., 4

Phallus, 36

Pharmakos, 27, 28

Pherephatta, 53

Philologists, research by, 3

Philosophy, natural, 134-138

Phoenix of Colophon, 38

Phratries, 82

Piety, expression of, by Greeks and moderns, 73, 76

Pindar, cited, 59, 92

Pisistratus, 36, 86, 128

Pitza, cave at, 14

Plato, religious importance, 4; attitude toward magic and magicians, 113 f.; influence of accounts of the other world, 119; Republic, 118

Plautus, Mostellaria, 113

Plouton, 47, 48, 51, 52, 61, 62; myth of the rape of Demeter's daughter by, 48 ff.

Ploutos, 51, 61, 62

Plutarch, 36, 42, 97, 126, 131, 134 Politics, see State

Polycrates, 109

Polygnotus, picture at Delphi by, 116, 117

Pompeian frescoes, 17

Poseidon, 11, 18, 21, 81, 88, 112

Potters and their deities, 87-90

Poverty and social distress, age of, 84, 102

Prayer, in words and in acts, 73

Presages, belief in, 123 ff.; see also Oracles and Seers

Priestesses, 96, 97 n

Priesthood, 46, 80 f.

Primitive religion, 3, 5

Prodicus, 135

Profane and sacred intermingled, 40, 76, 100

Protagoras, 122, 135

Prudentius, 60

Psychosabbaton, the, 31

Punishment in the other world, 114-20

Purification a complement of legalism, 104

Purificatory rites, 27 f.

Pyanopsia, festival, 29, 36

Pythia, games, 98

Rain, prayer for, 6, 7

Relics, of saints and heroes, 20

Religion, modern investigations, 3 ff.; primitive elements, 3, 5; systematization, 4; popular, the most long-lived, 16, 18, 21, 32, 41, 139; Christian and Greek forms, 20, 31, 73, 75, 76, 100; connection with folk-lore, 40, 72, 110; sacred and secular intermingled, 40, 76, 100; Eleusinian Mysteries the finest bloom of Greek popular, 42; power and persistence of the most venerable, 63; ancient and modern expressions of piety compared, 73, 76; social aspect, 80 ff., 101; unity of state and, 80, 86, 123, 137; criticism by Sophists and others, 94, 122, 133, 135 f.; trials for impiety, 94, 122, 133, 137; emotional, of women, 95-97; age in which new movements originated, 102; two main streams of contrasting ideas, 103; encounters political life and the new enlightenment, 121 ff.; clash with natural philosophy, 134-138; dependence on, and change with, conditions of life, 138

Republic, 118

Retributive justice, 117

Ritualism, 105, 107; see also Legalism

Rivers, gods and spirits, 10 f.

Rohde, Erwin, 103

Rural, life and religion, 5-21; sanctuaries, 14, 18, 81, 86; customs and festivals, 22-41

Rustic Dionysia, 36

Sabazios, a form of Dionysus, 93, 96, 110, 121

Sacred and profane intermingled, 40, 76, 100

Sacrifice, animal, 87; meaning and origin, 74 f.

Sacrifice, human, 6, 18, 113

Saints, similarity of heroes to, 20

Salaminioi, inscription of, 19

Sanctity, inherent in the place, 76

Sanctuaries, rustic, 14, 18, 81, 86; the temples, 46, 80, 81, 85f., 87; of panegyreis, 98

Satyrs, 12, 13

Sea, deities, 11, 14, 92

Secular and sacred intermingled, 40, 76, 100

Seers and oracles, 123-38; see also Oracles and Seers

Seilenoi, 12-13

Seven Sages, 108

Sexual symbols in Eleusinian Mysteries, 44

Shrines, see Sanctuaries

Sibylline Books, 129

Sickness, healers of, 20, 93 f., 95; superstitions relating to, 111 ff.

Skirophoria, festival, 25

Slaves admitted to Eleusinian Mysteries, 58

Smith, W. Robertson, 74

Snake, in house cult, 67-72; gods in guise of or represented by, 67-72; souls of dead represented by, 71; Minoan snake-goddess, 71; in cult of Athena, 72

Social aspect of religion, 80 ff., 101 Social distress and poverty, 84, 102 Social justice, problem of, 77, 108 f.

Socrates, 136; so-called prison of, 14; trial, 122, 137

Solon, 82, 117

Sophists, 99; attacks against religion, 94, 122, 133, 135 f.; views of, confused with natural philosophy, 136

Sophocles, 58, 66, 88; made a hero under name of Dexion, 94; religious beliefs, 135

Sorcery, see Witchcraft and sorcery

Soter, epithet of Zeus, 70

Soul, the, 116

Specters, 91; see also Ghosts

State and religion, 80, 86, 123, 137; role of oracles, 127 ff.

Stone heaps, 8; see also Herms

Stones, cult of, 79 f.

Strabo, on ancient landscape, 17 f.

Strangers and foreigners, 58, 73, 77

Superstition, defined, fro; distinguished from religion, 110 f.; amount of, beliefs, 111 ff.

Suppliants, 77

Swine, 25, 49

Swinging festival, 33

Tabellae defixionis, 114 f.

Telemachos of Acharnae, 94

Temesa, hero of, 18, 113

Temples, 80, 81; rustic sanctuaries, 14, 18, 81, 86; Mycenaean mystery hall, 46; the great temples, 85 f., 87

Thallophoroi on Parthenon frieze, 40

Thalysia, festival, 24, 26 f., 29, 30

Thargelia, festival, 27 f., 29, 37

Theocritus, 26

Theogony, 90

Theology, 4

Theophrastus, 79, 110

Theseus, 19; functions of, 57

Thesmophoria, festival, 24-26, 32; links with Eleusinian Mysteries, 42, 44, 46, 49

Thetis, 14

Thucydides, 65; attitude toward oracles, 130, 131

Thucydides, statesman, 134

Thunder, 6, 67

Tisamenus, 127

Tomb cult, 115

Towns, see Cities

Tragedy, origin of, 36

Tree cult and nymphs, 14, 16

Trials for impiety, 94, 122, 133, 137

Triptolemos, 47, 55 f., 57, 60, 61

Truces during festivals, 99

Tyrants, rule of, 85, 86

Underworld, beliefs concerning, 9, 59, 64, 115-20

Valmin, M. N., 66 n

Vari, cave at, 14, 16

Vegetation, deities, 35, 50; connection of Kore myth with, 50; cycle represented by Adonis, 96; see also Agriculture

Vesta, 72; see also Hestia

Villages, 5, 22

Virgins, 28, 38, 96

Viticulture, 32; festivals, 32 ff.

Votive masks, 16

War, heroes helpful in, 19; part played by oracles and seers, 125, 130

Water, deities, 10 f., 12, 14 Wayfarers, 8

Wealth, god of, 51, 61; corn as, 51

Weather god, 6-8

Weather magic, 6, 7

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 3

Wine, festivals, 32 ff.; god of, 35

Witchcraft and sorcery, 78, 80, 111, 114, 115; goddess of, 90, 91, 97, 111

Women, religion of, 14, 15, 95-97; festivals of Demeter celebrated by, 25; subordinate position of, 96

Works and Days, 104

Writers, expression of religious thought, 3 f.

Xenophanes, 135

Xenophon, 79, 110; belief in oracles and presages, 123 f., 126, 127

Zeus, 24, 32, 50, 57, 82, 86, 89, 104, 105, 107; as weather god, 6-8, 21, 67, 136; as god of house and family, 66 ff.; epithets of, 66 ff., 83; in guise of snake, 67, 68, 69, 71 f.; the Dioscuri sons of, 68, 72; as father, 70, 77; as protector, 77 f., 108; change in status of, 78

Zeus Akraios, 7

Zeus Herkeios, 66-67, 78, 82, 83

Zeus Kataibates, 67

Zeus Ktesios, 67-69, 78

Zeus Laphystios, 6, 7

Zeus Lykaios, 6

Zeus Maimaktes, 7

Zeus Meilichios, 69-70

Zeus Melosios, 7

Zeus Panhellenios, 7

Zeus Soter, 70

Greek Popular Religion: Page Index

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Illustrations

The Countryside

Rural Customs and Festivals

The Religion of Eleusis

The House and the Family

The Cities; the Panegyreis

Legalism and Superstition; Hell

Seers and Oracles

Illustrations 1-3

Illustrations 4-7

Illustrations 8-10

Illustrations 11-12

Illustrations 13-14

Illustrations 15-16

Illustrations 17-18

Illustrations 19-20

Illustrations 21-23

Illustrations 24-25

Illustrations 26-28

Illustrations 29-33

Illustrations 34-36

Illustrations 37-39