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 FIVE STAGES OF GREEK RELIGION

 BY GILBERT MURRAY

 Boston THE BEACON PRESS

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Anyone who has been in Greece at Easter time, especially among the moreremote peasants, must have been struck by the emotion of suspense andexcitement with which they wait for the announcement "_Christosanestê_, " "Christ is risen!" and the response "_Alêthôs anestê_, " "Hehas really risen!" I have referred elsewhere to Mr. Lawson's old peasantwoman, who explained her anxiety: "If Christ does not rise tomorrow weshall have no harvest this year" (_Modern Greek Folklore_, p. 573). Weare evidently in the presence of an emotion and a fear which, beneathits Christian colouring and, so to speak, transfiguration, is in itsessence, like most of man's deepest emotions, a relic from a very remotepre-Christian past. Every spring was to primitive man a time of terribleanxiety. His store of food was near its end. Would the dead worldrevive, or would it not? The Old Year was dead; would the New Year, theYoung King, born afresh of Sky and Earth, come in the Old King's placeand bring with him the new growth and the hope of life?

I hardly realized, when writing the earlier editions of this book, howcentral, how omnipresent, this complex of ideas was in ancient Greekreligion. Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, and the rest of the "YearGods" were not eccentric divagations in a religion whose proper worshipwas given to the immortal Olympians; they are different names given indifferent circumstances to this one being who dies and is born againeach year, dies old and polluted with past deaths and sins, and isreborn young and purified. I have tried to trace this line of traditionin an article for the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ for June 1951, andto show, incidentally, how many of the elements in the Christiantradition it has provided, especially those elements which are utterlyalien from Hebrew monotheism and must, indeed, have shocked everyorthodox Jew. 

The best starting point is the conception of the series of Old Kings, each, when the due time comes, dethroned and replaced by his son, theYoung King, with the help of the Queen Mother; for Gaia or Earth, theeternal Wife and Mother of each in turn, is always ready to renewherself. The new vegetation God each year is born from the union of theSky-God and the Earth-Mother; or, as in myth and legend the figuresbecome personified, he is the Son of a God and a mortal princess. 

We all know the sequence of Kings in Hesiod: First Uranus (Sky), King ofthe World, and his wife Gaia (Earth); Uranus reigns till he is dethronedby his son Cronos with the help of Gaia; then Cronos and Rhea (Earth)reign till Cronos is dethroned by his son Zeus, with the help of Rhea;then Zeus reigns till . . . But here the series stops, since, accordingto the orthodox Olympian system, Zeus is the eternal King. But there wasanother system, underlying the Olympian, and it is to that other systemthat the Year-Kings belong. The Olympians are definite persons. They areimmortal; they do not die and revive; they are not beings who comeand go, in succession to one another. In the other series are theAttis-Adonis-Osiris type of gods, and especially Dionysus, whose namehas been shown by Kretschmer to be simply the Thracian _Deos_ or _Diosnysos_, "Zeus-Young" or "Zeus-the-son. " And in the Orphic tradition itis laid down that Zeus yields up his power to Dionysus and bids all thegods of the Cosmos obey him. The mother of Dionysus was Semelê, a namewhich, like Gaia and Rhea, means "Earth. " The series is not onlycontinuous but infinite; for on one side Uranus (Sky) was himself theson of Gaia the eternal, and on the other, every year a Zeus wassucceeded by a "Young Zeus. "

The Young King, bearer of spring and the new summer, is the Saviour ofthe Earth, made cold and lifeless by winter and doomed to barrenness byall the pollutions of the past; the Saviour also of mankind from allkinds of evils, and bringer of a new _Aion_, or Age, to the world. Innumerable different figures in Greek mythology are personifications ofhim, from Dionysus and Heracles to the Dioscuri and many heroes of myth. He bears certain distinguishing marks. He is always the son of a God anda mortal princess. The mother is always persecuted, a _mater dolorosa_, and rescued by her son. The Son is always a Saviour; very often achampion who saves his people from enemies or monsters; but sometimes aHealer of the Sick, like Asclepius; sometimes, like Dionysus, a priestor hierophant with a _thiasos_, or band of worshippers; sometimes aKing's Son who is sacrificed to save his people, and mysticallyidentified with some sacrificial animal, a lamb, a young bull, a horseor a fawn, whose blood has supernatural power. Sometimes again he is adivine or miraculous Babe, for whose birth the whole world has beenwaiting, who will bring his own Age or Kingdom and "make all thingsnew. " His life is almost always threatened by a cruel king, like Herod, but he always escapes. The popularity of the Divine Babe is probably dueto the very widespread worship of the Egyptian Child-God, Harpocrates. Egyptian also is the Virgin-Mother, impregnated by the holy _Pneuma_ or_Spiritus_ of the god, or sometimes by the laying on of his hand. 

Besides the ordinary death and rebirth of the vegetation year god, thegeneral conclusion to which these considerations point has manyparallels elsewhere. Our own religious ideas are subject to the sametendencies as those of other civilizations. Men and women, whenconverted to a new religion or instructed in some new and unaccustomedknowledge, are extremely unwilling, and sometimes absolutely unable, togive up their old magical or religious practices and habits of thought. When African negroes are converted to Christianity and forbidden topractise their tribal magic, they are apt to steal away into the depthsof the forest and do secretly what they have always considered necessaryto ensure a good harvest. Not to do so would be too great a risk. WhenGoths were "converted by battalions" the change must have been more innames than in substance. When Greeks of the Mediterranean were forbiddento say prayers to a figure of Helios, the Sun, it was not difficult tocall him the prophet Elias and go on with the same prayers and hopes. Not difficult to continue your prayers to the age-old Mother Goddess ofall Mediterranean peoples, while calling her Mary, the Mother of Christ. Eusebius studied the subject, somewhat superficially, in his_Praeparatio Evangelica_, in which he argued that much old pagan beliefwas to be explained as an imperfect preparation for the full light ofthe Gospel. And it is certainly striking how the Anatolian peoples, among whom the seed of the early Church was chiefly sown, could never, in spite of Jewish monotheism, give up the beloved Mother Goddess forwhom mankind craves, or the divine "Faithful Son" who will by his ownsacrifice save his people. Where scientific knowledge fails man cannotbut be guided by his felt needs and longings and aspirations. 

The elements in Christianity which derive from what Jews called "_theGôyim_" or "nations" beyond the pale, seem to be far deeper and morenumerous than those which come unchanged from Judaism. Even the Sabbathhad to be changed, and the birthday of Jesus conformed to that of theSun. Judaism contributed a strong, though not quite successful, resistance to polytheism, and a purification of sexual morality. Itprovided perhaps a general antiseptic, which was often needed by thepassionate gropings of Hellenistic religion, in the stage which I callthe Failure of Nerve. 

 G. M. 

_September 1951. _

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

In revising the _Four Stages of Greek Religion_ I have found myselfobliged to change its name. I felt there was a gap in the story. Thehigh-water mark of Greek religious thought seems to me to have come justbetween the Olympian Religion and the Failure of Nerve; and thedecline--if that is the right word--which is observable in the laterages of antiquity is a decline not from Olympianism but from the greatspiritual and intellectual effort of the fourth century B. C. , whichculminated in the _Metaphysics_ and the _De Anima_ and the foundation ofthe Stoa and the Garden. Consequently I have added a new chapter at thispoint and raised the number of Stages to five. 

My friend Mr. E. E. Genner has kindly enabled me to correct two or threeerrors in the first edition, and I owe special thanks to my old pupil, Professor E. R. Dodds, for several interesting observations andcriticisms on points connected with Plotinus and Sallustius. Otherwise Ihave altered little. I am only sorry to have left the book so long outof print. 

 G. M. 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This small book has taken a long time in growing. Though the first twoessays were only put in writing this year for a course of lectures whichI had the honour of delivering at Columbia University in 1912, thethird, which was also used at Columbia, had in its main featuresappeared in the _Hibbert Journal_ in 1910, the fourth in part in the_English Review_ in 1908; the translation of Sallustius was made in 1907for use with a small class at Oxford. Much of the material is much olderin conception, and all has been reconsidered. I must thank the editorsof both the above-named periodicals for their kind permission toreprint. 

I think it was the writings of my friend Mr. Andrew Lang that firstawoke me, in my undergraduate days, to the importance of anthropologyand primitive religion to a Greek scholar. Certainly I began then tofeel that the great works of the ancient Greek imagination arepenetrated habitually by religious conceptions and postulates whichliterary scholars like myself had not observed or understood. In themeantime the situation has changed. Greek religion is being studiedright and left, and has revealed itself as a surprisingly rich andattractive, though somewhat controversial, subject. It used to be adeserted territory; now it is at least a battle-ground. If ever thepresent differences resolved themselves into a simple fight withshillelaghs between the scholars and the anthropologists, I shouldwithout doubt wield my reluctant weapon on the side of the scholars. Scholarship is the rarer, harder, less popular and perhaps the morepermanently valuable work, and it certainly stands more in need ofdefence at the moment. But in the meantime I can hardly understand howthe purest of 'pure scholars' can fail to feel his knowledge enriched bythe savants who have compelled us to dig below the surface of ourclassical tradition and to realize the imaginative and historicalproblems which so often lie concealed beneath the smooth security of averbal 'construe'. My own essays do not for a moment claim to speak withauthority on a subject which is still changing and showing new facetsyear by year. They only claim to represent the way of regarding certainlarge issues of Greek Religion which has gradually taken shape, and hasproved practically helpful and consistent with facts, in the mind of avery constant, though unsystematic, reader of many various periods ofGreek literature. 

In the first essay my debt to Miss Harrison is great and obvious. Mystatement of one or two points is probably different from hers, but inthe main I follow her lead. And in either case I cannot adequatelydescribe the advantage I have derived from many years of frequentdiscussion and comparison of results with a Hellenist whose learning andoriginality of mind are only equalled by her vivid generosity towardsher fellow-workers. 

The second may also be said to have grown out of Miss Harrison'swritings. She has by now made the title of 'Olympian' almost a term ofreproach, and thrown down so many a scornful challenge to the canonicalgods of Greece, that I have ventured on this attempt to explain theirhistorical origin and plead for their religious value. When the essaywas already written I read Mr. Chadwick's impressive book on _The HeroicAge_ (Cambridge, 1912), and was delighted to find in an author whosestandpoint and equipment are so different from mine so much thatconfirmed or clarified my own view. 

The title of the third essay I owe to a conversation with Professor J. B. Bury. We were discussing the change that took place in Greek thoughtbetween, say, Plato and the Neo-Platonists, or even between Aristotleand Posidonius, and which is seen at its highest power in the Gnostics. I had been calling it a rise of asceticism, or mysticism, or religiouspassion, or the like, when my friend corrected me. 'It is not a rise; itis a fall or failure of something, a sort of failure of nerve. '--We aretreading here upon somewhat firmer ground than in the first two essays. The field for mere conjecture is less: we are supported morecontinuously by explicit documents. Yet the subject is a very difficultone owing to the scattered and chaotic nature of the sources, and evenwhere we get away from fragments and reconstructions and reach definitetreatises with or without authors' names, I cannot pretend to feelanything like the same clearness about the true meaning of a passage inPhilo or the Corpus Hermeticum that one normally feels in a writer ofthe classical period. Consequently in this essay I think I have huggedmy modern authorities rather close, and seldom expressed an opinion forwhich I could not find some fairly authoritative backing, my debt beingparticularly great to Reitzenstein, Bousset, and the brilliant_Hellenistisch-römische Kultur_ of P. Wendland. I must also thank myold pupil, Mr. Edwyn Bevan, who was kind enough to read this book inproof, for some valuable criticisms. The subject is one of suchextraordinary interest that I offer no apology for calling furtherattention to it. 

A word or two about the last brief revival of the ancient religion under'Julian the Apostate' forms the natural close to this series of studies. But here our material, both historical and literary, is so abundant thatI have followed a different method. After a short historicalintroduction I have translated in full a very curious and little-knownancient text, which may be said to constitute something like anauthoritative Pagan creed. Some readers may regret that I do not givethe Greek as well as the English. I am reluctant, however, to publish atext which I have not examined in the MSS. , and I feel also that, whilean edition of Sallustius is rather urgently needed, it ought to be anedition with a full commentary. [xvi:1]

I was first led to these studies by the wish to fill up certain puzzlingblanks of ignorance in my own mind, and doubtless the little book bearsmarks of this origin. It aims largely at the filling of interstices. Itavoids the great illuminated places, and gives its mind to the stretchesof intervening twilight. It deals little with the harvest of flowers orfruit, but watches the inconspicuous seasons when the soil is beginningto stir, the seeds are falling or ripening. 

 G. M. 

FOOTNOTES:

[xvi:1] Professor Nock's edition (Cambridge 1926) has admirably filledthis gap. 

CONTENTS

 PAGE I. SATURNIA REGNA 1

 II. THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 39

 III. THE GREAT SCHOOLS 79

 IV. THE FAILURE OF NERVE 123

 V. THE LAST PROTEST 173

 APPENDIX: TRANSLATION OF THE TREATISE OF 200 SALLUSTIUS, περὶ Θεῶν καὶ Κόσμου

 INDEX 227

 Ο πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ὲκ γῆς, χοῖκός· ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος ὁ Κύριος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. 

 "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. "

I

SATURNIA REGNA

Many persons who are quite prepared to admit the importance to the worldof Greek poetry, Greek art, and Greek philosophy, may still feel itrather a paradox to be told that Greek religion specially repays ourstudy at the present day. Greek religion, associated with a romantic, trivial, and not very edifying mythology, has generally seemed one ofthe weakest spots in the armour of those giants of the old world. Yet Iwill venture to make for Greek religion almost as great a claim as forthe thought and the literature, not only because the whole mass of it isshot through by those strange lights of feeling and imagination, and thedetails of it constantly wrought into beauty by that instinctive senseof artistic form, which we specially associate with Classical Greece, but also for two definite historical reasons. In the first place, thestudent of that dark and fascinating department of the human mind whichwe may call Religious Origins, will find in Greece an extraordinary massof material belonging to a very early date. For detail and variety theprimitive Greek evidence has no equal. And, secondly, in this departmentas in others, ancient Greece has the triumphant if tragic distinction ofbeginning at the very bottom and struggling, however precariously, tothe very summits. There is hardly any horror of primitive superstitionof which we cannot find some distant traces in our Greek record. Thereis hardly any height of spiritual thought attained in the world that hasnot its archetype or its echo in the stretch of Greek literature thatlies between Thales and Plotinus, embracing much of the'Wisdom-Teachers' and of St. Paul. 

The progress of Greek religion falls naturally into three stages, all ofthem historically important. First there is the primitive _Euetheia_ orAge of Ignorance, before Zeus came to trouble men's minds, a stage towhich our anthropologists and explorers have found parallels in everypart of the world. Dr. Preuss applies to it the charming word'Urdummheit', or 'Primal Stupidity'. In some ways characteristicallyGreek, in others it is so typical of similar stages of thought elsewherethat one is tempted to regard it as the normal beginning of allreligion, or almost as the normal raw material out of which religion ismade. There is certainly some repulsiveness, but I confess that to methere is also an element of fascination in the study of these 'BeastlyDevices of the Heathen', at any rate as they appear in early Greece, where each single 'beastly device' as it passes is somehow touched withbeauty and transformed by some spirit of upward striving. 

Secondly there is the Olympian or classical stage, a stage in which, forgood or ill, blunderingly or successfully, this primitive vagueness wasreduced to a kind of order. This is the stage of the great Olympiangods, who dominated art and poetry, ruled the imagination of Rome, andextended a kind of romantic dominion even over the Middle Ages. It isthe stage that we learn, or mis-learn, from the statues and thehandbooks of mythology. Critics have said that this Olympian stage hasvalue only as art and not as religion. That is just one of the pointsinto which we shall inquire. 

Thirdly, there is the Hellenistic period, reaching roughly from Plato toSt. Paul and the earlier Gnostics. The first edition of this booktreated the whole period as one, but I have now divided it by writing anew chapter on the Movements of the Fourth Century B. C. , and makingthat my third stage. This was the time when the Greek mind, still in itsfull creative vigour, made its first response to the twofold failure ofthe world in which it had put its faith, the open bankruptcy of theOlympian religion and the collapse of the city-state. Both had failed, and each tried vainly to supply the place of the other. Greece respondedby the creation of two great permanent types of philosophy which haveinfluenced human ethics ever since, the Cynic and Stoic schools on theone hand, and the Epicurean on the other. These schools belong properly, I think, to the history of religion. The successors of Aristotleproduced rather a school of progressive science, those of Plato a schoolof refined scepticism. The religious side of Plato's thought was notrevealed in its full power till the time of Plotinus in the thirdcentury A. D. ; that of Aristotle, one might say without undue paradox, not till its exposition by Aquinas in the thirteenth. 

The old Third Stage, therefore, becomes now a Fourth, comprising thelater and more popular movements of the Hellenistic Age, a period basedon the consciousness of manifold failure, and consequently touched bothwith morbidity and with that spiritual exaltation which is so often thecompanion of morbidity. It not only had behind it the failure of theOlympian theology and of the free city-state, now crushed bysemi-barbarous military monarchies; it lived through the gradualrealization of two other failures--the failure of human government, evenwhen backed by the power of Rome or the wealth of Egypt, to achieve agood life for man; and lastly the failure of the great propaganda ofHellenism, in which the long-drawn effort of Greece to educate a corruptand barbaric world seemed only to lead to the corruption orbarbarization of the very ideals which it sought to spread. This senseof failure, this progressive loss of hope in the world, in sobercalculation, and in organized human effort, threw the later Greek backupon his own soul, upon the pursuit of personal holiness, upon emotions, mysteries and revelations, upon the comparative neglect of thistransitory and imperfect world for the sake of some dream-world far off, which shall subsist without sin or corruption, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. These four are the really significant andformative periods of Greek religious thought; but we may well cast oureyes also on a fifth stage, not historically influential perhaps, but atleast romantic and interesting and worthy of considerable respect, whenthe old religion in the time of Julian roused itself for a lastspiritual protest against the all-conquering 'atheism' of theChristians. I omit Plotinus, as in earlier chapters I have omitted Platoand Aristotle, and for the same reason. As a rule in the writings ofJulian's circle and still more in the remains of popular belief, thetendencies of our fourth stage are accentuated by an increased demandfor definite dogma and a still deeper consciousness of worldly defeat. 

I shall not start with any definition of religion. Religion, likepoetry and most other living things, cannot be defined. But one mayperhaps give some description of it, or at least some characteristicmarks. In the first place, religion essentially deals with the unchartedregion of human experience. A large part of human life has beenthoroughly surveyed and explored; we understand the causes at work; andwe are not bewildered by the problems. That is the domain of positiveknowledge. But all round us on every side there is an uncharted region, just fragments of the fringe of it explored, and those imperfectly; itis with this that religion deals. And secondly we may note that religiondeals with its own province not tentatively, by the normal methods ofpatient intellectual research, but directly, and by methods of emotionor sub-conscious apprehension. Agriculture, for instance, used to beentirely a question of religion; now it is almost entirely a question ofscience. In antiquity, if a field was barren, the owner of it wouldprobably assume that the barrenness was due to 'pollution', or offencesomewhere. He would run through all his own possible offences, or at anyrate those of his neighbours and ancestors, and when he eventuallydecided the cause of the trouble, the steps that he would take would allbe of a kind calculated not to affect the chemical constitution of thesoil, but to satisfy his own emotions of guilt and terror, or theimaginary emotions of the imaginary being he had offended. A modern manin the same predicament would probably not think of religion at all, atany rate in the earlier stages; he would say it was a case for deeperploughing or for basic slag. Later on, if disaster followed disastertill he began to feel himself a marked man, even the average modernwould, I think, begin instinctively to reflect upon his sins. A thirdcharacteristic flows from the first. The uncharted region surrounds uson every side and is apparently infinite; consequently, when once thethings of the uncharted region are admitted as factors in our ordinaryconduct of life they are apt to be infinite factors, overruling andswamping all others. The thing that religion forbids is a thing never tobe done; not all the inducements that this life can offer weigh at allin the balance. Indeed there is no balance. The man who makes terms withhis conscience is essentially non-religious; the religious man knowsthat it will profit him nothing if he gain all this finite world andlose his stake in the infinite and eternal. [6:1]

Am I going to draw no distinction then between religion and meresuperstition? Not at present. Later on we may perhaps see some way toit. Superstition is the name given to a low or bad form of religion, tothe kind of religion we disapprove. The line of division, if we madeone, would be only an arbitrary bar thrust across a highly complex andcontinuous process. 

Does this amount to an implication that all the religions that haveexisted in the world are false? Not so. It is obvious indeed that most, if analysed into intellectual beliefs, are false; and I suppose that athoroughly orthodox member of any one of the million religious bodiesthat exist in the world must be clear in his mind that the other millionminus one are wrong, if not wickedly wrong. That, I think, we must beclear about. Yet the fact remains that man must have some relationtowards the uncharted, the mysterious, tracts of life which surround himon every side. And for my own part I am content to say that his methodmust be to a large extent very much what St. Paul calls πίστις orfaith: that is, some attitude not of the conscious intellect but of thewhole being, using all its powers of sensitiveness, all its feeblest andmost inarticulate feelers and tentacles, in the effort somehow to touchby these that which cannot be grasped by the definite senses or analysedby the conscious reason. What we gain thus is an insecure but a preciouspossession. We gain no dogma, at least no safe dogma, but we gain muchmore. We gain something hard to define, which lies at the heart not onlyof religion, but of art and poetry and all the higher strivings of humanemotion. I believe that at times we actually gain practical guidance insome questions where experience and argument fail. [8:1] That is a greatwork left for religion, but we must always remember two things about it:first, that the liability to error is enormous, indeed almost infinite;and second, that the results of confident error are very terrible. Probably throughout history the worst things ever done in the world on alarge scale by decent people have been done in the name of religion, andI do not think that has entirely ceased to be true at the present day. All the Middle Ages held the strange and, to our judgement, theobviously insane belief that the normal result of religious error waseternal punishment. And yet by the crimes to which that false belief ledthem they almost proved the truth of something very like it. The recordof early Christian and medieval persecutions which were the directresult of that one confident religious error comes curiously near toone's conception of the wickedness of the damned. 

 * * * * *

To turn to our immediate subject, I wish to put forward here what isstill a rather new and unauthorized view of the development of Greekreligion; readers will forgive me if, in treating so vast a subject, Idraw my outline very broadly, leaving out many qualifications, andquoting only a fragment of the evidence. 

The things that have misled us moderns in our efforts towardsunderstanding the primitive stage in Greek religion have been first thewidespread and almost ineradicable error of treating Homer as primitive, and more generally our unconscious insistence on starting with thenotion of 'Gods'. Mr. Hartland, in his address as president of one ofthe sections of the International Congress of Religions at Oxford, [9:1]dwelt on the significant fact about savage religions that wherever theword 'God' is used our trustiest witnesses tend to contradict oneanother. Among the best observers of the Arunta tribes, for instance, some hold that they have no conception of God, others that they areconstantly thinking about God. The truth is that this idea of a god faraway in the sky--I do not say merely a First Cause who is 'without bodyparts or passions', but almost any being that we should naturally call a'god'--is an idea not easy for primitive man to grasp. It is a subtleand rarefied idea, saturated with ages of philosophy and speculation. And we must always remember that one of the chief religions of theworld, Buddhism, has risen to great moral and intellectual heightswithout using the conception of God at all; in his stead it has Dharma, the Eternal Law. [10:1]

Apart from some few philosophers, both Christian and Moslem, the gods ofthe ordinary man have as a rule been as a matter of courseanthropomorphic. Men did not take the trouble to try to conceive themotherwise. In many cases they have had the actual bodily shape of man;in almost all they have possessed--of course in their highestdevelopment--his mind and reason and his mental attributes. It causesmost of us even now something of a shock to be told by a medieval Arabphilosopher that to call God benevolent or righteous or to predicate ofhim any other human quality is just as Pagan and degraded as to say thathe has a beard. [10:2] Now the Greek gods seem at first sight quiteparticularly solid and anthropomorphic. The statues and vases speakclearly, and they are mostly borne out by the literature. Of course wemust discount the kind of evidence that misled Winckelmann, the mereRoman and Alexandrian art and mythology; but even if we go back to thefifth century B. C. We shall find the ruling conceptions far noblerindeed, but still anthropomorphic. We find firmly established theOlympian patriarchal family, Zeus the Father of gods and men, his wifeHera, his son Apollo, his daughter Athena, his brothers Poseidon andHades, and the rest. We probably think of each figure more or less aslike a statue, a habit of mind obviously wrong and indeed absurd, as ifone thought of 'Labour' and 'Grief' as statues because Rodin or St. Gaudens has so represented them. And yet it was a habit into which thelate Greeks themselves sometimes fell;[11:1] their arts of sculpture andpainting as applied to religion had been so dangerously successful: theysharpened and made vivid an anthropomorphism which in its origin hadbeen mostly the result of normal human laziness. The process of makingwinds and rivers into anthropomorphic gods is, for the most part, notthe result of using the imagination with special vigour. It is theresult of not doing so. The wind is obviously alive; any fool can seethat. Being alive, it blows; how? why, naturally; just as you and Iblow. It knocks things down, it shouts and dances, it whispers andtalks. And, unless we are going to make a great effort of theimagination and try to realize, like a scientific man, just what reallyhappens, we naturally assume that it does these things in the normalway, in the only way we know. Even when you worship a beast or a stone, you practically anthropomorphize it. It happens indeed to have aperfectly clear shape, so you accept that. But it talks, acts, andfights just like a man--as you can see from the _Australian Folk Tales_published by Mrs. Langloh Parker--because you do not take the trouble tothink out any other way of behaving. This kind of anthropomorphism--oras Mr. Gladstone used to call it, 'anthropophuism'--'humanity of_nature_'--is primitive and inevitable: the sharp-cut statue type of godis different, and is due in Greece directly to the work of the artists. 

We must get back behind these gods of the artist's workshop and theromance-maker's imagination, and see if the religious thinkers of thegreat period use, or imply, the same highly human conceptions. We shallfind Parmenides telling us that God coincides with the universe, whichis a sphere and immovable;[12:1] Heraclitus, that God is 'day night, summer winter, war peace, satiety hunger'. Xenophanes, that God isall-seeing, all-hearing, and all mind;[12:2] and as for his supposedhuman shape, why, if bulls and lions were to speak about God they woulddoubtless tell us that he was a bull or a lion. [12:3] We must notice theinstinctive language of the poets, using the word θεός in many subtlesenses for which our word 'God' is too stiff, too personal, and tooanthropomorphic. Τό εὐτυχεῖν, 'the fact of success', is 'a god and morethan a god'; τὸ γιγνώσκειν φίλους, 'the thrill of recognizing a friend'after long absence, is a 'god'; wine is a 'god' whose body is poured outin libation to gods; and in the unwritten law of the human conscience 'agreat god liveth and groweth not old'. [12:4] You will say that is merepoetry or philosophy: it represents a particular theory or a particularmetaphor. I think not. Language of this sort is used widely and withoutany explanation or apology. It was evidently understood and felt to benatural by the audience. If it is metaphorical, all metaphors have grownfrom the soil of current thought and normal experience. And withoutgoing into the point at length I think we may safely conclude that thesoil from which such language as this grew was not any system ofclear-cut personal anthropomorphic theology. No doubt any of thesepoets, if he had to make a picture of one of these utterly formlessGods, would have given him a human form. That was the recognized symbol, as a veiled woman is St. Gaudens's symbol for 'Grief'. 

 * * * * *

But we have other evidence too which shows abundantly that theseOlympian gods are not primary, but are imposed upon a backgroundstrangely unlike themselves. For a long time their luminous figuresdazzled our eyes; we were not able to see the half-lit regions behindthem, the dark primeval tangle of desires and fears and dreams fromwhich they drew their vitality. The surest test to apply in thisquestion is the evidence of actual cult. Miss Harrison has here shownus the right method, and following her we will begin with the threegreat festivals of Athens, the Diasia, the Thesmophoria, and theAnthesteria. [14:1]

The Diasia was said to be the chief festival of Zeus, the central figureof the Olympians, though our authorities generally add an epithet tohim, and call him Zeus Meilichios, Zeus of Placation. A god with an'epithet' is always suspicious, like a human being with an 'alias'. MissHarrison's examination (_Prolegomena_, pp. 28 ff. ) shows that in therites Zeus has no place at all. Meilichios from the beginning has afairly secure one. On some of the reliefs Meilichios appears not as agod, but as an enormous bearded snake, a well-known representation ofunderworld powers or dead ancestors. Sometimes the great snake is alone;sometimes he rises gigantic above the small human worshippersapproaching him. And then, in certain reliefs, his old barbaric presencevanishes, and we have instead a benevolent and human father of gods andmen, trying, as Miss Harrison somewhere expresses it, to look as if hehad been there all the time. 

There was a sacrifice at the Diasia, but it was not a sacrifice given toZeus. To Zeus and all the heavenly gods men gave sacrifice in the formof a feast, in which the god had his portion and the worshippers theirs. The two parties cemented their friendship and feasted happily together. But the sacrifice at the Diasia was a holocaust:[14:2] every shred ofthe victim was burnt to ashes, that no man might partake of it. We knowquite well the meaning of that form of sacrifice: it is a sacrifice toplacate or appease the powers below, the Chthonioi, the dead and thelords of death. It was performed, as our authorities tell us, μετὰστυγνότητος, with shuddering or repulsion. [15:1]

The Diasia was a ritual of placation, that is, of casting away variouselements of pollution or danger and appeasing the unknown wraths of thesurrounding darkness. The nearest approach to a god contained in thisfestival is Meilichios, and Meilichios, as we shall see later, belongsto a particular class of shadowy beings who are built up out of ritualservices. His name means '_He of appeasement_', and he is nothing else. He is merely the personified shadow or dream generated by the emotion ofthe ritual--very much, to take a familiar instance, as Father Christmasis a 'projection' of our Christmas customs. 

 * * * * *

The Thesmophoria formed the great festival of Demeter and her daughterKorê, though here again Demeter appears with a clinging epithet, Thesmophoros. We know pretty clearly the whole course of the ritual:there is the carrying by women of certain magic charms, fir-cones andsnakes and unnameable objects made of paste, to ensure fertility; thereis a sacrifice of pigs, who were thrown into a deep cleft of the earth, and their remains afterwards collected and scattered as a charm over thefields. There is more magic ritual, more carrying of sacred objects, afast followed by a rejoicing, a disappearance of life below the earth, and a rising again of life above it; but it is hard to find definitetraces of any personal goddess. The Olympian Demeter and Persephonedwindle away as we look closer, and we are left with the shadowThesmophoros, '_She who carries Thesmoi_', [16:1] not a substantivepersonal goddess, but merely a personification of the ritual itself: animaginary Charm-bearer generated by so much charm-bearing, just asMeilichios in the Diasia was generated from the ritual of appeasement. 

Now the Diasia were dominated by a sacred snake. Is there any similardivine animal in the Thesmophoria? Alas, yes. Both here, and still moremarkedly in the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, weregularly find the most lovely of all goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, habitually--I will not say represented by, but dangerously associatedwith, a sacred Sow. A Pig is the one animal in Greek religion thatactually had sacrifice made to it. [16:2]

 * * * * *

The third feast, the Anthesteria, belongs in classical times to theOlympian Dionysus, and is said to be the oldest of his feasts. On thesurface there is a touch of the wine-god, and he is given due officialprominence; but as soon as we penetrate anywhere near the heart of thefestival, Dionysus and his brother gods are quite forgotten, and allthat remains is a great ritual for appeasing the dead. All the days ofthe Feast were _nefasti_, of ill omen; the first day especially was ἐςτὸ πᾶν ἀποφράς. On it the Wine Jars which were also Seed and FuneralJars were opened and the spirits of the Dead let loose in theworld. [17:1] Nameless and innumerable, the ghosts are summoned out oftheir tombs, and are duly feasted, each man summoning his own ghosts tohis own house, and carefully abstaining from any act that would affecthis neighbours. And then, when they are properly appeased and madegentle, they are swept back again out of this world to the place wherethey properly belong, and the streets and houses cleaned from thepresence of death. There is one central stage indeed in which Dionysusdoes seem to appear. And he appears in a very significant way, toconduct a Sacred Marriage. For, why do you suppose the dead are summonedat all? What use to the tribe is the presence of all these deadancestors? They have come, I suspect, to be born again, to begin a newlife at the great Spring festival. For the new births of the tribe, thenew crops, the new kids, the new human beings, are of course really onlythe old ones returned to earth. [17:2] The important thing is to get themproperly placated and purified, free from the contagion of ancient sinor underworld anger. For nothing is so dangerous as the presence of whatI may call raw ghosts. The Anthesteria contained, like other feasts ofthe kind, a ἱερὸς γάμος, or Holy Marriage, between the wife of theBasileus or Sacred King, and the imaginary god. [18:1] Whatever realitythere ever was in the ceremony has apparently by classical times fadedaway. But the place where the god received his bride is curious. It wascalled the Boukolion, or Bull's Shed. It was not originally the home ofan anthropomorphic god, but of a divine animal. 

 * * * * *

Thus in each of these great festivals we find that the Olympian godsvanish away, and we are left with three things only: first, with anatmosphere of religious dread; second, with a whole sequence of magicalceremonies which, in two at least of the three cases, [18:2] produce akind of strange personal emanation of themselves, the Appeasementsproducing Meilichios, the Charm-bearings Thesmophoros; and thirdly, witha divine or sacred animal. In the Diasia we find the old superhumansnake, who reappears so ubiquitously throughout Greece, the regularsymbol of the underworld powers, especially the hero or dead ancestor. Why the snake was so chosen we can only surmise. He obviously livedunderground: his home was among the Chthonioi, the Earth-People. Also, says the Scholiast to Aristophanes (_Plut. _ 533), he was a type of newbirth because he throws off his old skin and renews himself. And if thatin itself is not enough to show his supernatural power, what normalearthly being could send his enemies to death by one little pin-prick, as some snakes can?

In the Thesmophoria we found sacred swine, and the reason given by theancients is no doubt the right one. The sow is sacred because of itsfertility, and possibly as practical people we should add, because ofits cheapness. Swine are always prominent in Greek agricultural rites. And the bull? Well, we modern town-dwellers have almost forgotten what areal bull is like. For so many centuries we have tamed him and pennedhim in, and utterly deposed him from his place as lord of the forest. The bull was the chief of magic or sacred animals in Greece, chiefbecause of his enormous strength, his size, his rage, in fine, asanthropologists call it, his _mana_; that primitive word which comprisesforce, vitality, prestige, holiness, and power of magic, and which maybelong equally to a lion, a chief, a medicine-man, or a battle-axe. 

Now in the art and the handbooks these sacred animals have all beenadopted into the Olympian system. They appear regularly as the'attributes' of particular gods. Zeus is merely accompanied by a snake, an eagle, a bull, or at worst assumes for his private purposes the formsof those animals. The cow and the cuckoo are sacred to Hera; the owl andthe snake to Athena; the dolphin, the crow, the lizard, the bull, toApollo. Dionysus, always like a wilder and less middle-aged Zeus, appears freely as a snake, bull, he-goat, and lion. Allowing for someisolated exceptions, the safest rule in all these cases is that theattribute is original and the god is added. [20:1] It comes out veryclearly in the case of the snake and the bull. The tremendous _mana_ ofthe wild bull indeed occupies almost half the stage of pre-Olympianritual. The religion unearthed by Dr. Evans in Crete is permeated by thebull of Minos. The heads and horns are in almost every sacred room andon every altar. The great religious scene depicted on the sarcophagus ofHagia Triada[20:2] centres in the holy blood that flows from the neck ofa captive and dying bull. Down into classical times bull's blood was asacred thing which it was dangerous to touch and death to taste: todrink a cup of it was the most heroic form of suicide. [20:3] Thesacrificial bull at Delphi was called _Hosiôtêr_: he was not merely_hosios_, holy; he was _Hosiôtêr_, the Sanctifier, He who maketh Holy. It was by contact with him that holiness was spread to others. On a coinand a vase, cited by Miss Harrison, [21:1] we have a bull entering a holycave and a bull standing in a shrine. We have holy pillars whoseholiness consists in the fact that they have been touched with the bloodof a bull. We have a long record of a bull-ritual at Magnesia, [21:2] inwhich Zeus, though he makes a kind of external claim to be lord of thefeast, dare not claim that the bull is sacrificed to him. Zeus has a ramto himself and stands apart, showing but a weak and shadowy figurebeside the original Holy One. We have immense masses of evidence aboutthe religion of Mithras, at one time the most serious rival ofChristianity, which sought its hope and its salvation in the blood of adivine bull. 

Now what is the origin of this conception of the sacred animal? It wasfirst discovered and explained with almost prophetic insight by Dr. Robertson Smith. [21:3] The origin is what he calls a sacramental feast:you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the divine animal inorder--here I diverge from Robertson Smith's language--to get into youhis _mana_, his vital power. The classical instance is the sacramentaleating of a camel by an Arab tribe, recorded in the works of St. Nilus. [21:4] The camel was devoured on a particular day at the rising ofthe morning star. He was cut to pieces alive, and every fragment of himhad to be consumed before the sun rose. If the life had once gone outof the flesh and blood the sacrifice would have been spoilt; it was thespirit, the vitality, of the camel that his tribesmen wanted. The onlyserious error that later students have found in Robertson Smith'sstatement is that he spoke too definitely of the sacrifice as affordingcommunion with the tribal god. There was no god there, only the rawmaterial out of which gods are made. You devoured the holy animal to getits _mana_, its swiftness, its strength, its great endurance, just asthe savage now will eat his enemy's brain or heart or hands to get someparticular quality residing there. The imagination of the pre-Hellenictribes was evidently dominated above all things by the bull, thoughthere were other sacramental feasts too, combined with sundry horriblerendings and drinkings of raw blood. It is strange to think that evensmall things like kids and fawns and hares should have struck primitiveman as having some uncanny vitality which he longed for, or at leastsome uncanny power over the weather or the crops. Yet to him it no doubtappeared obvious. Frogs, for instance, could always bring rain bycroaking for it, and who can limit the powers and the knowledge ofbirds?[22:1]

Here comes a difficulty. If the Olympian god was not there to startwith, how did he originate? We can understand--at least after a courseof anthropology--this desire of primitive man to acquire for himself thesuperhuman forces of the bull; but how does he make the transition fromthe real animal to the imaginary human god? First let us remember theinnate tendency of primitive man everywhere, and not especially inGreece, to imagine a personal cause, like himself in all points nototherwise specified, for every striking phenomenon. If the wind blows itis because some being more or less human, though of course superhuman, is blowing with his cheeks. If a tree is struck by lightning it isbecause some one has thrown his battle-axe at it. In some Australiantribes there is no belief in natural death. If a man dies it is because'bad man kill that fellow'. St. Paul, we may remember, passionatelysummoned the heathen to refrain from worshipping τὴν κτίσιν, thecreation, and go back to τὸν κτίσαντα, the creator, human andmasculine. It was as a rule a road that they were only too ready totravel. [23:1]

But this tendency was helped by a second factor. Research has shown usthe existence in early Mediterranean religion of a peculiar transitionalstep, a man wearing the head or skin of a holy beast. The Egyptian godsare depicted as men with beasts' heads: that is, the best authoritiestell us, their shapes are derived from the kings and priests who ongreat occasions of sacrifice covered their heads with abeast-mask. [23:2] Minos, with his projection the Minotaur, was abull-god and wore a bull-mask. From early Island gems, from a fresco atMycenae, from Assyrian reliefs, Mr. A. B. Cook has collected manyexamples of this mixed figure--a man wearing the _protomê_, or mask andmane, of a beast. Sometimes we can actually see him offering libations. Sometimes the worshipper has become so closely identified with hisdivine beast that he is represented not as a mere man wearing the_protomê_ of a lion or bull, but actually as a lion or bull wearing the_protomê_ of another. [24:1] Hera, βοῶπις, with a cow's head; Athena, γλαυκῶπις, with an owl's head, or bearing on her breast the head of theGorgon; Heracles clad in a lion's skin and covering his brow δεινῷχάσματι θηρός, 'with the awful spread jaws of the wild beast', belong tothe same class. So does the Dadouchos at Eleusis and other initiatorswho let candidates for purification set one foot--one only and that theleft--on the skin of a sacrificial ram, and called the skin Διὸς κῶας, the fleece not of a ram, but of Zeus. [24:2]

The _mana_ of the slain beast is in the hide and head and blood and fur, and the man who wants to be in thorough contact with the divinity getsinside the skin and wraps himself deep in it. He begins by being a manwearing a lion's skin: he ends, as we have seen, by feeling himself tobe a lion wearing a lion's skin. And who is this man? He may onparticular occasions be only a candidate for purification or initiation. But _par excellence_ he who has the right is the priest, themedicine-man, the divine king. If an old suggestion of my own is right, he is the original θεός or θεσός, the incarnate medicine or spell ormagic power. [24:3] He at first, I suspect, is the only θεός or 'God'that his society knows. We commonly speak of ancient kings being'deified'; we regard the process as due to an outburst of superstitionor insane flattery. And so no doubt it sometimes was, especially inlater times--when man and god were felt as two utterly distinct things. But 'deification' is an unintelligent and misleading word. What we call'deification' is only the survival of this undifferentiated human θεός, with his _mana_, his κράτος and βία, his control of the weather, therain and the thunder, the spring crops and the autumn floods; hisknowledge of what was lawful and what was not, and his innate power tocurse or to 'make dead'. Recent researches have shown us in abundancethe early Greek medicine-chiefs making thunder and lightning andrain. [25:1] We have long known the king as possessor of Dike and Themis, of justice and tribal custom; we have known his effect on the fertilityof the fields and the tribes, and the terrible results of a king's sinor a king's sickness. [25:2]

What is the subsequent history of this medicine-chief or θεός? He isdifferentiated, as it were: the visible part of him becomes merelyhuman; the supposed supernatural part grows into what we should call aGod. The process is simple. Any particular medicine-man is bound tohave his failures. As Dr. Frazer gently reminds us, every singlepretension which he puts forth on every day of his life is a lie, andliable sooner or later to be found out. Doubtless men are tender totheir own delusions. They do not at once condemn the medicine-chief as afraudulent institution, but they tend gradually to say that he is notthe real all-powerful θεός. He is only his representative. The realθεός, tremendous, infallible, is somewhere far away, hidden in cloudsperhaps, on the summit of some inaccessible mountain. If the mountain isonce climbed the god will move to the upper sky. The medicine-chiefmeanwhile stays on earth, still influential. He has some connexionwith the great god more intimate than that of other men; at worst hepossesses the god's sacred instruments, his ἱερά or ὄργια; he knows therules for approaching him and making prayers to him. 

There is therefore a path open from the divine beast to theanthropomorphic god. From beings like Thesmophoros and Meilichios theroad is of course much easier. They are already more than halfanthropomorphic; they only lack the concreteness, the lucid shape andthe detailed personal history of the Olympians. In this connexion wemust not forget the power of hallucination, still fairly strong, as thehistory of religious revivals in America will bear witness, [26:1] butfar stronger, of course, among the impressionable hordes of early men. 'The god', says M. Doutté in his profound study of Algerian magic, 'c'est le désir collectif personnifié', the collective desire projected, as it were, or personified. [27:1] Think of the gods who have appearedin great crises of battle, created sometimes by the desperate desire ofmen who have for years prayed to them, and who are now at the lastextremity for lack of their aid, sometimes by the confused and excitedremembrances of the survivors after the victory. The gods who led theRoman charge at Lake Regillus, [27:2] the gigantic figures that were seenfighting before the Greeks at Marathon, [27:3] even the celestial signsthat promised Constantine victory for the cross:[27:4]--these are theeffects of great emotion: we can all understand them. But even in dailylife primitive men seem to have dealt more freely than we generally dowith apparitions and voices and daemons of every kind. One of the mostremarkable and noteworthy sources for this kind of hallucinatory god inearly societies is a social custom that we have almost forgotten, thereligious Dance. When the initiated young men of Crete or elsewheredanced at night over the mountains in the Oreibasia or Mountain Walkthey not only did things that seemed beyond their ordinary workadaystrength; they also felt themselves led on and on by some power whichguided and sustained them. This daemon has no necessary name: a man maybe named after him 'Oreibasius', 'Belonging to the Mountain Dancer', just as others may be named 'Apollonius' or 'Dionysius'. The god is onlythe spirit of the Mountain Dance, Oreibates, though of course he isabsorbed at different times in various Olympians. There is one godcalled Aphiktor, the Suppliant, He who prays for mercy. He is just theprojection, as M. Doutté would say, of the intense emotion of one ofthose strange processions well known in the ancient world, bands ofdespairing men or women who have thrown away all means of self-defenceand join together at some holy place in one passionate prayer for pity. The highest of all gods, Zeus, was the special patron of the suppliant;and it is strange and instructive to find that Zeus the all-powerfulis actually identified with this Aphiktor: Ζεὺς μὲν Ἀφίκτωρ ἐπίδοιπροφρόνως. [28:1] The assembled prayer, the united cry that rises fromthe oppressed of the world, is itself grown to be a god, and thegreatest god. A similar projection arose from the dance of the _Kouroi_, or initiate youths, in the dithyramb--the magic dance which was tocelebrate, or more properly, to hasten and strengthen, the coming on ofspring. That dance projected the Megistos Kouros, the greatest ofyouths, who is the incarnation of spring or the return of life, and liesat the back of so many of the most gracious shapes of the classicalpantheon. The Kouros appears as Dionysus, as Apollo, as Hermes, as Ares:in our clearest and most detailed piece of evidence he actually appearswith the characteristic history and attributes of Zeus. [28:2]

This spirit of the dance, who leads it or personifies its emotion, stands more clearly perhaps than any other daemon half-way betweenearth and heaven. A number of difficult passages in Euripides' _Bacchae_and other Dionysiac literature find their explanations when we realizehow the god is in part merely identified with the inspired chief dancer, in part he is the intangible projected incarnation of the emotion of thedance. 

 * * * * *

'The collective desire personified': on what does the collective desire, or collective dread, of the primitive community chiefly concentrate? Ontwo things, the food-supply and the tribe-supply, the desire not to dieof famine and not to be harried or conquered by the neighbouring tribe. The fertility of the earth and the fertility of the tribe, these two arefelt in early religion as one. [29:1] The earth is a mother: the humanmother is an ἄρουρα, or ploughed field. This earth-mother is thecharacteristic and central feature of the early Aegean religions. Theintroduction of agriculture made her a mother of fruits and corn, and itis in that form that we best know her. But in earlier days she had beena mother of the spontaneous growth of the soil, of wild beasts and treesand all the life of the mountain. [29:2] In early Crete she stands withlions erect on either side of her or with snakes held in her hands andcoiled about her body. And as the earth is mother when the harvestcomes, so in spring she is maiden or Korê, but a maiden fated each yearto be wedded and made fruitful; and earlier still there has been theterrible time when fields are bare and lifeless. The Korê has beensnatched away underground, among the dead peoples, and men must waitexpectant till the first buds begin to show and they call her to riseagain with the flowers. Meantime earth as she brings forth vegetation inspring is Kourotrophos, rearer of Kouroi, or the young men of the tribe. The nymphs and rivers are all Kourotrophoi. The Moon is Kourotrophos. She quickens the young of the tribe in their mother's womb; at oneterrible hour especially she is 'a lion to women' who have offendedagainst her holiness. She also marks the seasons of sowing andploughing, and the due time for the ripening of crops. When men learn tocalculate in longer units, the Sun appears: they turn to the Sun fortheir calendar, and at all times of course the Sun has been a power inagriculture. He is not called Kourotrophos, but the Young Sun returningafter winter is himself a Kouros, [30:1] and all the Kouroi have sometouch of the Sun in them. The Cretan Spring-song of the Kouretes praysfor νέοι πολῖται, young citizens, quite simply among the other gifts ofthe spring. [30:2]

This is best shown by the rites of tribal initiation, which seemnormally to have formed part of the spring Drômena or sacredperformances. The Kouroi, as we have said, are the initiated young men. They pass through their initiation; they become no longer παῖδες, boys, but ἄνδρες, men. The actual name Kouros is possibly connected withκείρειν, to shave, [31:1] and may mean that after this ceremony theyfirst cut their long hair. Till then the κοῦρος is ἀκερσεκόμης--withhair unshorn. They have now open to them the two roads that belong toἄνδρες alone: they have the work of begetting children for the tribe, and the work of killing the tribe's enemies in battle. 

The classification of people according to their age is apt to be sharpand vivid in primitive communities. We, for example, think of an old manas a kind of man, and an old woman as a kind of woman; but in primitivepeoples as soon as a man and woman cease to be able to perform his andher due tribal functions they cease to be men and women, ἄνδρες andγυναῖκες: the ex-man becomes a γέρων; the ex-woman a γραῦς. [31:2] Wedistinguish between 'boy' and 'man', between 'girl' and 'woman'; butapart from the various words for baby, Attic Greek would have four sharpdivisions, παῖς, ἔφηβος, ἀνήρ, γέρων. [31:3] In Sparta the divisions arestill sharper and more numerous, centring in the great initiationceremonies of the Iranes, or full-grown youths, to the goddess calledOrthia or Bortheia. [32:1] These initiation ceremonies are calledTeletai, 'completions': they mark the great 'rite of transition' fromthe immature, charming, but half useless thing which we call boy orgirl, to the τέλειος ἀνήρ, the full member of the tribe as fighter orcounsellor, or to the τελεία γυνή, the full wife and mother. This wholesubject of Greek initiation ceremonies calls pressingly for moreinvestigation. It is only in the last few years that we have obtainedthe material for understanding them, and the whole mass of the evidenceneeds re-treatment. For one instance, it is clear that a great number ofrites which were formerly explained as remnants of human sacrifice aresimply ceremonies of initiation. [32:2]

At the great spring Drômenon the tribe and the growing earth wererenovated together: the earth arises afresh from her dead seeds, thetribe from its dead ancestors; and the whole process, charged as it iswith the emotion of pressing human desire, projects its anthropomorphicgod or daemon. A vegetation-spirit we call him, very inadequately; he isa divine Kouros, a Year-Daemon, a spirit that in the first stage isliving, then dies with each year, then thirdly rises again from thedead, raising the whole dead world with him--the Greeks called him inthis phase 'the Third One', or the 'Saviour'. The renovation ceremonieswere accompanied by a casting off of the old year, the old garments, andeverything that is polluted by the infection of death. And not only ofdeath; but clearly I think, in spite of the protests of some Hellenists, of guilt or sin also. For the life of the Year-Daemon, as it seems to bereflected in Tragedy, is generally a story of Pride and Punishment. EachYear arrives, waxes great, commits the sin of Hubris, and then is slain. The death is deserved; but the slaying is a sin: hence comes the nextYear as Avenger, or as the Wronged One re-risen. 'All things payretribution for their injustice one to another according to theordinance of time. '[33:1] It is this range of ideas, half suppressedduring the classical period, but evidently still current among the ruderand less Hellenized peoples, which supplied St. Paul with some of hismost famous and deep-reaching metaphors. 'Thou fool, that which thousowest is not quickened except it die. '[33:2] 'As He was raised from thedead we may walk with Him in newness of life. ' And this renovation mustbe preceded by a casting out and killing of the old polluted life--'theold man in us must first be crucified'. 

'The old man must be crucified. ' We observed that in all the threeFestivals there was a pervasive element of vague fear. Hitherto we havebeen dealing with early Greek religion chiefly from the point of view of_mana_, the positive power or force that man tries to acquire from histotem-animal or his god. But there is also a negative side to beconsidered: there is not only the _mana_, but the _tabu_, the Forbidden, the Thing Feared. We must cast away the old year; we must put our sinson to a φαρμακός or scapegoat and drive it out. When the ghosts havereturned and feasted with us at the Anthesteria we must, with tar andbranches of buckthorn, purge them out of every corner of the rooms tillthe air is pure from the infection of death. We must avoid speakingdangerous words; in great moments we must avoid speaking any words atall, lest there should be even in the most innocent of them some unknowndanger; for we are surrounded above and below by Kêres, or Spirits, winged influences, shapeless or of unknown shape, sometimes the spiritsof death, sometimes of disease, madness, calamity; thousands andthousands of them, as Sarpedon says, from whom man can never escape norhide;[34:1] 'all the air so crowded with them', says an unknown ancientpoet, 'that there is not one empty chink into which you could push thespike of a blade of corn. '[34:2]

The extraordinary security of our modern life in times of peace makes ithard for us to realize, except by a definite effort of the imagination, the constant precariousness, the frightful proximity of death, that wasusual in these weak ancient communities. They were in fear of wildbeasts; they were helpless against floods, helpless againstpestilences. Their food depended on the crops of one tiny plot ofground; and if the Saviour was not reborn with the spring, they slowlyand miserably died. And all the while they knew almost nothing of thereal causes that made crops succeed or fail. They only felt sure it wassomehow a matter of pollution, of unexpiated defilement. It is thisstate of things that explains the curious cruelty of early agriculturaldoings, the human sacrifices, the scapegoats, the tearing in pieces ofliving animals, and perhaps of living men, the steeping of the fields inblood. Like most cruelty it has its roots in terror, terror of thebreach of _Tabu_--the Forbidden Thing. I will not dwell on this side ofthe picture: it is well enough known. But we have to remember that, likeso many morbid growths of the human mind, it has its sublime side. Wemust not forget that the human victims were often volunteers. Therecords of Carthage and Jerusalem, the long list in Greek legend ofprinces and princesses who died for their country, tell the same story. In most human societies, savage as well as civilized, it is not hard tofind men who are ready to endure death for their fellow-citizens. Weneed not suppose that the martyrs were always the noblest of the humanrace. They were sometimes mad--hysterical or megalomaniac: sometimesreckless and desperate: sometimes, as in the curious case attested ofthe Roman armies on the Danube, they were men of strong desires and weakimagination ready to die at the end of a short period, if in themeantime they might glut all their senses with unlimitedindulgence. [35:1]

Still, when all is said, there is nothing that stirs men's imaginationlike the contemplation of martyrdom, and it is no wonder that the moreemotional cults of antiquity vibrate with the worship of this dyingSaviour, the Sôsipolis, the Sôtêr, who in so many forms dies with hisworld or for his world, and rises again as the world rises, triumphantthrough suffering over Death and the broken _Tabu_. 

_Tabu_ is at first sight a far more prominent element in the primitivereligions than _Mana_, just as misfortune and crime are more highlycoloured and striking than prosperity and decent behaviour. To an earlyGreek tribe the world of possible action was sharply divided betweenwhat was Themis and what was Not Themis, between lawful and _tabu_, holyand unholy, correct and forbidden. To do a thing that was not Themis wasa sure source of public disaster. Consequently it was of the firstnecessity in a life full of such perils to find out the exact rulesabout them. How is that to be managed? Themis is ancient law: it is τὰπάτρια, the way of our ancestors, the thing that has always been doneand is therefore divinely right. In ordinary life, of course, Themis isclear. Every one knows it. But from time to time new emergencies arise, the like of which we have never seen, and they frighten us. We must goto the Gerontes, the Old Men of the Tribe; they will perhaps rememberwhat our fathers did. What they tell us will be _Presbiston_, aword which means indifferently 'oldest' and 'best'--αἰεὶ δὲ νεώτεροιἀφραδέουσιν, 'Young men are always being foolish'. Of course, if thereis a Basileus, a holy King, he by his special power may perhaps knowbest of all, though he too must take care not to gainsay the Old Men. 

For the whole problem is to find out τὰ πάτρια, the ways that ourfathers followed. And suppose the Old Men themselves fail us, what mustwe needs do? Here we come to a famous and peculiar Greek custom, forwhich I have never seen quoted any exact parallel or any satisfactoryexplanation. If the Old Men fail us, we must go to those older still, goto our great ancestors, the ἥρωες, the Chthonian people, lying in theirsacred tombs, and ask them to help. The word χρᾶν means both 'to lendmoney' and 'to give an oracle', two ways of helping people in anemergency. Sometimes a tribe might happen to have a real ancestor buriedin the neighbourhood; if so, his tomb would be an oracle. More oftenperhaps, for the memories of savage tribes are very precarious, therewould be no well-recorded personal tomb. The oracle would be at someplace sacred to the Chthonian people in general, or to some particularpersonification of them, a Delphi or a cave of Trophônius, a place ofSnakes and Earth. You go to the Chthonian folk for guidance because theyare themselves the Oldest of the Old Ones, and they know the realcustom: they know what is Presbiston, what is Themis. And by an easyextension of this knowledge they are also supposed to know what is. Hewho knows the law fully to the uttermost also knows what will happen ifthe law is broken. It is, I think, important to realize that the normalreason for consulting an oracle was not to ask questions of fact. It wasthat some emergency had arisen in which men simply wanted to know howthey ought to behave. The advice they received in this way varied fromthe virtuous to the abominable, as the religion itself varied. A greatmass of oracles can be quoted enjoining the rules of customary morality, justice, honesty, piety, duty to a man's parents, to the old, and to theweak. But of necessity the oracles hated change and strangled theprogress of knowledge. Also, like most manifestations of early religion, they throve upon human terror: the more blind the terror the strongerbecame their hold. In such an atmosphere the lowest and most beastlikeelements of humanity tended to come to the front; and religion no doubtas a rule joined with them in drowning the voice of criticism and ofcivilization, that is, of reason and of mercy. When really frightenedthe oracle generally fell back on some remedy full of pain and blood. The medieval plan of burning heretics alive had not yet been invented. But the history of uncivilized man, if it were written, would provide avast list of victims, all of them innocent, who died or suffered toexpiate some portent or _monstrum_--some reported τέρας--with which theyhad nothing whatever to do, which was in no way altered by theirsuffering, which probably never really happened at all, and if it didwas of no consequence. The sins of the modern world in dealing withheretics and witches have perhaps been more gigantic than those ofprimitive men, but one can hardy rise from the record of these ancientobservances without being haunted by the judgement of the Roman poet:

 Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, and feeling with him that the lightening of this cloud, the taming ofthis blind dragon, must rank among the very greatest services thatHellenism wrought for mankind. 

FOOTNOTES:

[6:1] Professor Émile Durkheim in his famous analysis of the religiousemotions argues that when a man feels the belief and the command assomething coming from without, superior, authoritative, of infiniteimport, it is because religion is the work of the tribe and, as such, superior to the individual. The voice of God is the imagined voice ofthe whole tribe, heard or imagined by him who is going to break itslaws. I have some difficulty about the psychology implied in thisdoctrine: surely the apparent externality of the religious command seemsto belong to a fairly common type of experience, in which thepersonality is divided, so that first one part of it and then anotheremerges into consciousness. If you forget an engagement, sometimesyour peace is disturbed for quite a long time by a vague externalannoyance or condemnation, which at last grows to be a distinctjudgement--'Heavens! I ought to be at the Committee on So-and-so. ' Butapart from this criticism, there is obviously much historical truth inProfessor Durkheim's theory, and it is not so different as it seems atfirst sight from the ordinary beliefs of religious men. The tribe toprimitive man is not a mere group of human beings. It is his wholeworld. The savage who is breaking the laws of his tribe has all hisworld--totems, tabus, earth, sky and all--against him. He cannot be atpeace with God. 

The position of the hero or martyr who defies his tribe for the sake ofwhat he thinks the truth or the right can easily be thought out on theselines. He defies this false temporary Cosmos in loyalty to the true andpermanent Cosmos. 

See Durkheim, 'Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse', in_Travaux de l'Année Sociologique_, 1912; or G. Davy, 'La Sociologie deM. Durkheim', in _Rev. Philosophique_, xxxvi, pp. 42-71 and 160-85. 

[8:1] I suspect that most reforms pass through this stage. A man somehowfeels clear that some new course is, for him, right, though he cannotmarshal the arguments convincingly in favour of it, and may even admitthat the weight of obvious evidence is on the other side. We read ofjudges in the seventeenth century who believed that witches ought to beburned and that the persons before them were witches, and yet would notburn them--evidently under the influence of vague half-realizedfeelings. I know a vegetarian who thinks that, as far as he can see, carnivorous habits are not bad for human health and actually tend toincrease the happiness of the species of animals eaten--as the adoptionof Swift's _Modest Proposal_ would doubtless relieve the economictroubles of the human race, and yet feels clear that for him theordinary flesh meal (or 'feasting on corpses') would 'partake of thenature of sin'. The path of progress is paved with inconsistencies, though it would be an error to imagine that the people who habituallyreject any higher promptings that come to them are really any moreconsistent. 

[9:1] _Transactions of the Third International Congress of Religions_, Oxford, 1908, pp. 26-7. 

[10:1] _The Buddhist Dharma_, by Mrs. Rhys Davids. 

[10:2] See _Die Mutaziliten, oder die Freidenker im Islam_, von H. Steiner, 1865. This Arab was clearly under the influence of Plotinus orsome other Neo-Platonist. 

[11:1] Cf. E. Reisch, _Entstehung und Wandel griechischerGöttergestalten_. Vienna, 1909. 

[12:1] Parm. Fr. 8, 3-7 (Diels{2}). 

[12:2] Xen. Fr. 24 (Diels{2}). 

[12:3] Xen. Fr. 15. 

[12:4] Aesch. _Cho. _ 60; Eur. _Hel. _ 560; Bac. 284; Soph. _O. T. _ 871. Cf. Also ἡ φρόνησις ἁγαθὴ θεὸς μέγας. Soph. Fr. 836, 2 (Nauck). 

 ὁ πλοῦτος, ἀνθρωπίσκε, τοῖς σοφοῖς θεός. Eur. _Cycl. _ 316. 

 ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός. Eur. Fr. 1018. 

 φθόνος κάκιστος κάδικώτατος θεός. Hippothoön. Fr. 2. 

A certain moment of time: ἀρχὴ καὶ θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἱδρυμένη σῴζει πάντα. Pl. Leg. 775 E. 

 τὰ μῶρα γὰρ πάντ' ἐστὶν Ἀφροδίτη βροτοῖς. Eur. _Tro. _ 989. 

 ἧλθεν δὲ δαὶς θάλεια πρεσβίστη θεῶν. Soph. Fr. 548. 

[14:1] See J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena_, i, ii, iv; Mommsen, _Feste derStadt Athen_, 1898, pp. 308-22 (Thesmophoria), 384-404 (Anthesteria);421-6 (Diasia). See also Pauly Wissowa, s. V. 

[14:2] _Prolegomena_, p. 15 f. 

[15:1] Luc. _Icaro-Menippos_ 24 schol. Ad loc. 

[16:1] Frequently dual, τὼ Θεσμοφόρω, under the influence of the 'Motherand Maiden' idea; Dittenberger _Inscr. Sylloge_ 628, Ar. _Thesm. _ 84, 296 _et passim_. The plural αἱ Θεσμοφόροι used in late Greek is not, asone might imagine, a projection from the whole band of worshippers; itis merely due to the disappearance of the dual from Greek. I acceptprovisionally the derivation of these θεσμοί from θεσ- in θέσσασθαι, θέσφατος, θέσκελος, πολύθεστος, ἀπόθεστος, &c. : cf. A. W. Verrall in _J. H. S. _ xx, p. 114; and _Prolegomena_, pp. 48 ff. , 136 f. But, whateverthe derivation, the Thesmoi were the objects carried. 

[16:2] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 44 ff. ; A. B. Cook, _J. H. S. _ xiv, pp. 153-4; J. E. Harrison, _Themis_, p. 5. See also A. Lang, _HomericHymns_, 1899, p. 63. 

[17:1] _Feste der Stadt Athen_, p. 390 f. On Seed Jars, Wine Jars andFuneral Jars, see _Themis_, pp. 276-88, and Warde Fowler, 'MundusPatet, ' in _Journ. Roman Studies_, ii, pp. 25 ff. Cf. Below, p. 28 f. 

[17:2] Dieterich, _Muttererde_, 1905, p. 48 f. 

[18:1] Dr. Frazer, _The Magic Art_, ii. 137, thinks it not certain thatthe γάμος took place during the Anthesteria, at the same time as theoath of the γεραιραί. Without the γάμος, however, it is hard to see whatthe βασίλιννα and γεραιραί had to do in the festival; and this is theview of Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen_, pp. 391-3; Gruppe in IwanMüller, _Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte_, i. 33; Farnell, _Cults_, v. 217. 

[18:2] One might perhaps say, in all three. Ἀνθίστηρος τοῦ Πυθοχρηστοῦκοινόν is the name of a society of worshippers in the island of Thera, _I. G. I. _ iii. 329. This gives a god Anthister, who is clearlyidentified with Dionysus, and seems to be a projection of a feastAnthisteria = Anthesteria. The inscription is of the second century B. C. And it seems likely that Anthister-Anthisteria, with their clearderivation from ἀνθίζειν, are corruptions of the earlier and difficultforms Ἀνθέστηρ-Ἀνθεστήρια. It is noteworthy that Thera, an island lyingrather outside the main channels of civilization, kept up throughout itshistory a tendency to treat the 'epithet' as a full person. Hikesios andKoures come very early; also Polieus and Stoichaios without the nameZeus; Delphinios, Karneios, Aiglatas, and Aguieus without Apollo. 

See Hiller von Gaertringen in the _Festschrift für O. Benndorff_, p. 228. Also Nilsson, _Griechische Feste_, 1906, p. 267, n. 5. 

[20:1] Miss Harrison, 'Bird and Pillar Worship in relation to OuranianDivinities', _Transactions of the Third International Congress for theHistory of Religion_, Oxford, 1908, vol. Ii, p. 154; Farnell, _Greeceand Babylon_, 1911, pp. 66 ff. 

[20:2] First published by R. Paribeni, 'Il Sarcofago dipinto di HagiaTriada', in _Monumenti antichi della R. Accademia dei Lincei_, xix, 1908, p. 6, T. I-iii. See also _Themis_, pp. 158 ff. 

[20:3] Ar. _Equites_, 82-4--or possibly of apotheosis. See _Themis_, p. 154, n. 2. 

[21:1] _Themis_, p. 145, fig. 25; and p. 152, fig. 28 b. 

[21:2] O. Kern, _Inschriften v. Magnesia_, No. 98, discussed by O. Kern, _Arch. Anz. _ 1894, p. 78, and Nilsson, _Griechische Feste_, p. 23. 

[21:3] _Religion of the Semites_, 1901, p. 338; Reuterskiold, in _Archivf. Relig. _ xv. 1-23. 

[21:4] _Nili Opera_, _Narrat. _ iii. 28. 

[22:1] See Aristophanes' _Birds_, e. G. 685-736: cf. The practice ofaugury from birds, and the art-types of Winged Kêres, Victories andAngels. 

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

[23:2] Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, 1906, ii. 284; ibid. , 130;Moret, _Caractère religieux de la Monarchie Égyptienne_; Dieterich, _Mithrasliturgie_, 1903. 

[24:1] A. B. Cook in _J. H. S. _ 1894, 'Animal Worship in the MycenaeanAge'. See also Hogarth on the 'Zakro Sealings', _J. H. S. _ 1902; theseseals show a riot of fancy in the way of mixed monsters, starting in allprobability from the simpler form. See the quotation from RobertsonSmith in Hogarth, p. 91. 

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

[24:3] _Anthropology and the Classics_, 1908, pp. 77, 78. 

[25:1] A. B. Cook, _Class. Rev. _ xvii, pp. 275 ff. ; A. J. Reinach, _Rev. De l'Hist. Des Religions_, lx, p. 178; S. Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes, &c. _, ii. 160-6. 

[25:2] One may suggest in passing that this explains the enormousfamilies attributed to many sacred kings of Greek legend: why Priam orDanaus have their fifty children, and Heracles, most prolific of all, his several hundred. The particular numbers chosen, however, areprobably due to other causes, e. G. The fifty moon-months of thePenteteris. 

[26:1] See _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, by F. M. Davenport. New York, 1906. 

[27:1] E. Doutté, _Magie et religion dans l'Afrique du Nord_, 1909, p. 601. 

[27:2] Cicero, _de Nat. Deorum_, ii. 2; iii. 5, 6; Florus, ii. 12. 

[27:3] Plut. _Theseus_, 35; Paus. I. 32. 5. Herodotus only mentions abearded and gigantic figure who struck Epizelos blind (vi. 117). 

[27:4] Eusebius, _Vit. Constant. _, l. I, cc. 28, 29, 30; _Nazarius interPanegyr. Vet. _ x. 14. 15. 

[28:1] Aesch. _Suppl. _ 1, cf. 478 Ζεὺς ἱκτήρ. _Rise of the GreekEpic_{3}, p. 275 n. Adjectival phrases like Ζεὺς Ἱκεσιος, Ἱκετήςιος, Ἱκταῖος are common and call for no remark. 

[28:2] Hymn of the Kouretes, _Themis_, passim. 

[29:1] See in general I. King, _The Development of Religion_, 1910; E. J. Payne, _History of the New World_, 1892, p. 414. Also Dieterich, _Muttererde_, esp. Pp. 37-58. 

[29:2] See Dieterich, _Muttererde_, J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena_, chap. Vi, 'The Making of a Goddess'; _Themis_, chap. Vi, 'The SpringDrômenon'. As to the prehistoric art-type of this goddess technicallycalled 'steatopygous', I cannot refrain from suggesting that it may bederived from a mountain Δ turned into a human figure, as the palladionor figure-8 type came from two round shields. See p. 52. 

[30:1] _Hymn Orph. _ 8, 10 ὡροτρόφε κοῦρε. 

[30:2] For the order in which men generally proceed in worship, turningtheir attention to (1) the momentary incidents of weather, rain, sunshine, thunder, &c. ; (2) the Moon; (3) the Sun and stars, see Payne, _History of the New World called America_, vol. I, p. 474, cited by MissHarrison, _Themis_, p. 390. 

[31:1] On the subject of Initiations see Webster, _Primitive SecretSocieties_, New York, 1908; Schurtz, _Altersklassen und Männerbunde_, Berlin, 1902; Van Gennep, _Rites de Passage_, Paris, 1909; Nilsson, _Grundlage des Spartanischen Lebens_ in Klio xii (1912), pp. 308-40;Themis, p. 337, n. 1. Since the above, Rivers, _Social Organization_, 1924. 

[31:2] Cf. Dr. Rivers on _mate_, 'Primitive Conception of Death', _Hibbert Journal_, January 1912, p. 393. 

[31:3] Cf. Cardinal Virtues, Pindar, _Nem. _ iii. 72:

 ἐν παισὶ νέοισι παῖς, ἐν ἀνδράσιν ἀνήρ, τρίτον ἐν παλαιτέροισι μέρος, ἕκαστον οἶον ἔχομεν βρότεον ἔθνος. ἐλᾶ δὲ καὶ τέσσαρας ἀρετὰς ὁ θνατὸς αἰών, also Pindar, _Pyth. _ iv. 281. 

[32:1] See Woodward in _B. S. A. _ xiv, 83. Nikagoras won four(successive?) victories as μικκιχιζόμενος, πρόπαις, παῖς, and μελλείρην, i. E. From his tenth to fifteenth year. He would then at 14 or 15 becomean _iran_. Plut. _Lyc. _ 17 gives the age of an _iran_ as 20. This agreeswith the age of an ἔφηβος at Athens as '15-20', '14-21', 'about 16'; seeauthorities in Stephanus s. V. ἔφηβος. Such variations in the date of'puberty ceremonies' are common. 

[32:2] See _Rise of the Greek Epic_, Appendix on Hym. Dem. ; and W. R. Halliday, _C. R. _ xxv, 8. Nilsson's valuable article has appeared sincethe above was written (see note 1, p. 31). 

[33:1] Anaximander apud Simplic. Phys. 24, 13; Diels, _Fragmente derVorsokratiker_, i. 13. See especially F. M. Cornford, _From Religion toPhilosophy_ (Cambridge, 1912), i; also my article on English and GreekTragedy in _Essays of the Oxford English School_, 1912. This explanationof the τρίτος σωτήρ is my conjecture. 

[33:2] 1 Cor. Xv. 36; Rom. Vi. Generally, 3-11. 

[34:1] _Il. _ M. 326 f. μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν, βροτὸν οὐδ' ὑπαλύξαι. 

[34:2] Frg. Ap. Plut. _Consol. Ad Apoll. _ xxvi . . . ὅτι "πλείη μὲν γαῖακακῶν πλείη δὲ θάλασσα" καὶ "τοιάδε θνητοῖσι κακὰ κακῶν ἀμφί τε κῆρεςεἰλεῦνται, κενεὴ δ' εἴσδυσις οὐδ' ἀθέρι" (MS. αἰθέρι). 

[35:1] Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, 267; F. Cumont, 'Les Actes de S. Dasius', in _Analecta Bollandiana_, xvi. 5-16:cf. Especially what St. Augustine says about the disreputable hordes ofwould-be martyrs called _Circumcelliones_. See Index to Augustine, vol. Xi in Migne: some passages collected in Seeck, _Gesch. D. Untergangs derantiken Welt_, vol. Iii, Anhang, pp. 503 ff. 

II

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

I. _Origin of the Olympians_

The historian of early Greece must find himself often on the watch for aparticular cardinal moment, generally impossible to date in time andsometimes hard even to define in terms of development, when the clearoutline that we call Classical Greece begins to take shape out of themist. It is the moment when, as Herodotus puts it, 'the Hellenic racewas marked off from the barbarian, as more intelligent and moreemancipated from silly nonsense'. [39:1] In the eighth century B. C. , forinstance, so far as our remains indicate, there cannot have been much toshow that the inhabitants of Attica and Boeotia and the Peloponnese weremarkedly superior to those of, say, Lycia or Phrygia, or even Epirus. Bythe middle of the fifth century the difference is enormous. On the oneside is Hellas, on the other the motley tribes of 'barbaroi'. 

When the change does come and is consciously felt we may notice asignificant fact about it. It does not announce itself as what it was, anew thing in the world. It professes to be a revival, or rather anemphatic realization, of something very old. The new spirit of classicalGreece, with all its humanity, its intellectual life, its genius forpoetry and art, describes itself merely as being 'Hellenic'--like theHellenes. And the Hellenes were simply, as far as we can make out, muchthe same as the Achaioi, one of the many tribes of predatory Northmenwho had swept down on the Aegean kingdoms in the dawn of Greekhistory. [40:1]

This claim of a new thing to be old is, in varying degrees, a commoncharacteristic of great movements. The Reformation professed to be areturn to the Bible, the Evangelical movement in England a return to theGospels, the High Church movement a return to the early Church. A largeelement even in the French Revolution, the greatest of all breaches withthe past, had for its ideal a return to Roman republican virtue or tothe simplicity of the natural man. [40:2] I noticed quite lately a speechof an American Progressive leader claiming that his principles weresimply those of Abraham Lincoln. The tendency is due in part to thealmost insuperable difficulty of really inventing a new word to denote anew thing. It is so much easier to take an existing word, especially afamous word with fine associations, and twist it into a new sense. Inpart, no doubt, it comes from mankind's natural love for these oldassociations, and the fact that nearly all people who are worth muchhave in them some instinctive spirit of reverence. Even when strikingout a new path they like to feel that they are following at least thespirit of one greater than themselves. 

The Hellenism of the sixth and fifth centuries was to a great extentwhat the Hellenism of later ages was almost entirely, an ideal and astandard of culture. The classical Greeks were not, strictly speaking, pure Hellenes by blood. Herodotus, and Thucydides[41:1] are quite clearabout that. The original Hellenes were a particular conquering tribe ofgreat prestige, which attracted the surrounding tribes to follow it, imitate it, and call themselves by its name. The Spartans were, toHerodotus, Hellenic; the Athenians on the other hand were not. They werePelasgian, but by a certain time 'changed into Hellenes and learnt thelanguage'. In historical times we cannot really find any tribe of pureHellenes in existence, though the name clings faintly to a particulardistrict, not otherwise important, in South Thessaly. Had there been anyundoubted Hellenes with incontrovertible pedigrees still going, verylikely the ideal would have taken quite a different name. But where noone's ancestry would bear much inspection, the only way to show you werea true Hellene was to behave as such: that is, to approximate to someconstantly rising ideal of what the true Hellene should be. In allprobability if a Greek of the fifth century, like Aeschylus or evenPindar, had met a group of the real Hellenes or Achaioi of theMigrations, he would have set them down as so many obvious and flamingbarbarians. 

We do not know whether the old Hellenes had any general word to denotethe surrounding peoples ('Pelasgians and divers other barbaroustribes'[42:1]) whom they conquered or accepted as allies. [42:2] In anycase by the time of the Persian Wars (say 500 B. C. ) all these tribestogether considered themselves Hellenized, bore the name of 'Hellenes', and formed a kind of unity against hordes of 'barbaroi' surrounding themon every side and threatening them especially from the east. 

Let us consider for a moment the dates. In political history thisself-realization of the Greek tribes as Hellenes against barbariansseems to have been first felt in the Ionian settlements on the coast ofAsia Minor, where the 'sons of Javan' (Yawan = Ἰάων) clashed asinvaders against the native Hittite and Semite. It was emphasized by asimilar clash in the further colonies in Pontus and in the West. If wewish for a central moment as representing this self-realization ofGreece, I should be inclined to find it in the reign of Pisistratus(560-527 B. C. ) when that monarch made, as it were, the first sketch ofan Athenian empire based on alliances and took over to Athens theleadership of the Ionian race. 

In literature the decisive moment is clear. It came when, in Mr. Mackail's phrase, 'Homer came to Hellas'. [42:3] The date is apparentlythe same, and the influences at work are the same. It seems to havebeen under Pisistratus that the Homeric Poems, in some form or other, came from Ionia to be recited in a fixed order at the PanathenaicFestival, and to find a canonical form and a central home in Athens tillthe end of the classical period. Athens is the centre from which Homericinfluence radiates over the mainland of Greece. Its effect uponliterature was of course enormous. It can be traced in various ways. Bythe content of the literature, which now begins to be filled with theheroic saga. By a change of style which emerges in, say, Pindar andAeschylus when compared with what we know of Corinna or Thespis. Moreobjectively and definitely it can be traced in a remarkable change ofdialect. The old Attic poets, like Solon, were comparatively littleaffected by the epic influence; the later elegists, like Ion, Euenus, and Plato, were steeped in it. [43:1]

In religion the cardinal moment is the same. It consists in the comingof Homer's 'Olympian Gods', and that is to be the subject of the presentessay. I am not, of course, going to describe the cults and charactersof the various Olympians. For that inquiry the reader will naturally goto the five learned volumes of my colleague, Dr. Farnell. I wish merelyto face certain difficult and, I think, hitherto unsolved problemsaffecting the meaning and origin and history of the Olympians as awhole. 

Herodotus in a famous passage tells us that Homer and Hesiod 'made thegenerations of the Gods for the Greeks and gave them their names anddistinguished their offices and crafts and portrayed their shapes' (2. 53). The date of this wholesale proceeding was, he thinks, perhaps asmuch as four hundred years before his own day (_c. _ 430 B. C. ) but notmore. Before that time the Pelasgians--i. E. The primitive inhabitantsof Greece as opposed to the Hellenes--were worshipping gods inindefinite numbers, with no particular names; many of them appear asfigures carved emblematically with sex-emblems to represent the powersof fertility and generation, like the Athenian 'Herms'. The wholeaccount bristles with points for discussion, but in general it suitsvery well with the picture drawn in the first of these essays, with itsEarth Maidens and Mothers and its projected Kouroi. The background isthe pre-Hellenic 'Urdummheit'; the new shape impressed upon it is thegreat anthropomorphic Olympian family, as defined in the Homeric eposand, more timidly, in Hesiod. But of Hesiod we must speak later. 

 * * * * *

Now who are these Olympian Gods and where do they come from? Homer didnot 'make' them out of nothing. But the understanding of them is besetwith problems. 

In the first place why are they called 'Olympian'? Are they the Gods ofMount Olympus, the old sacred mountain of Homer's Achaioi, or do theybelong to the great sanctuary of Olympia in which Zeus, the lord of theOlympians, had his greatest festival? The two are at opposite ends ofGreece, Olympus in North Thessaly in the north-east, Olympia in Elis inthe south-west. From which do the Olympians come? On the one hand it isclear in Homer that they dwell on Mount Olympus; they have 'Olympianhouses' beyond human sight, on the top of the sacred mountain, which inthe _Odyssey_ is identified with heaven. On the other hand, whenPisistratus introduced the worship of Olympian Zeus on a great scaleinto Athens and built the Olympieum, he seems to have brought himstraight from Olympia in Elis. For he introduced the special Eleancomplex of gods, Zeus, Rhea, Kronos, and Gê Olympia. [45:1]

Fortunately this puzzle can be solved. The Olympians belong to bothplaces. It is merely a case of tribal migration. History, confirmed bythe study of the Greek dialects, seems to show that these northernAchaioi came down across central Greece and the Gulf of Corinth andsettled in Elis. [45:2] They brought with them their Zeus, who wasalready called 'Olympian', and established him as superior to theexisting god, Kronos. The Games became Olympian and the sanctuary bywhich they were performed 'Olympia'. [45:3]

As soon as this point is clear, we understand also why there is morethan one Mount Olympus. We can all think of two, one in Thessaly and oneacross the Aegean in Mysia. But there are many more; some twenty-odd, ifI mistake not, in the whole Greek region. It is a pre-Greek word appliedto mountains; and it seems clear that the 'Olympian' gods, wherevertheir worshippers moved, tended to dwell in the highest mountain in theneighbourhood, and the mountain thereby became Olympus. 

The name, then, explains itself. The Olympians are the mountain gods ofthe old invading Northmen, the chieftains and princes, each with his_comitatus_ or loose following of retainers and minor chieftains, whobroke in upon the ordered splendours of the Aegean palaces and, stillmore important, on the ordered simplicity of tribal life in thepre-Hellenic villages of the mainland. Now, it is a canon of religiousstudy that all gods reflect the social state, past or present, of theirworshippers. From this point of view what appearance do the Olympians ofHomer make? What are they there for? What do they do, and what are theirrelations one to another?

The gods of most nations claim to have created the world. The Olympiansmake no such claim. The most they ever did was to conquer it. Zeus andhis _comitatus_ conquered Cronos and his; conquered and expelledthem--sent them migrating beyond the horizon, Heaven knows where. Zeustook the chief dominion and remained a permanent overlord, but heapportioned large kingdoms to his brothers Hades and Poseidon, andconfirmed various of his children and followers in lesser fiefs. Apollowent off on his own adventure and conquered Delphi. Athena conquered theGiants. She gained Athens by a conquest over Poseidon, a point of whichwe will speak later. 

And when they have conquered their kingdoms, what do they do? Do theyattend to the government? Do they promote agriculture? Do they practisetrades and industries? Not a bit of it. Why should they do any honestwork? They find it easier to live on the revenues and blast withthunderbolts the people who do not pay. They are conquering chieftains, royal buccaneers. They fight, and feast, and play, and make music; theydrink deep, and roar with laughter at the lame smith who waits on them. They are never afraid, except of their own king. They never tell lies, except in love and war. 

A few deductions may be from this statement, but they do not affect itsmain significance. One god, you may say, Hephaistos, is definitely acraftsman. Yes: a smith, a maker of weapons. The one craftsman that agang of warriors needed to have by them; and they preferred him lame, sothat he should not run away. Again, Apollo herded for hire the cattle ofAdmetus; Apollo and Poseidon built the walls of Troy for Laomedon. Certainly in such stories we have an intrusion of other elements; but inany case the work done is not habitual work, it is a special punishment. Again, it is not denied that the Olympians have some effect onagriculture and on justice: they destroy the harvests of those whooffend them, they punish oath-breakers and the like. Even in the HeroicAge itself--if we may adopt Mr. Chadwick's convenient title for the Ageof the Migrations--chieftains and gods probably retained some vestigesof the functions they had exercised in more normal and settled times;and besides we must always realize that, in these inquiries, we nevermeet a simple and uniform figure. We must further remember that thesegods are not real people with a real character. They never existed. Theyare only concepts, exceedingly confused cloudy and changing concepts, inthe minds of thousands of diverse worshippers and non-worshippers. Theychange every time they are thought of, as a word changes every time itis pronounced. Even in the height of the Achaean wars the concept of anyone god would be mixed up with traditions and associations drawn fromthe surrounding populations and their gods; and by the time they comedown to us in Homer and our other early literature, they have passedthrough the minds of many different ages and places, especially Ioniaand Athens. 

The Olympians as described in our text of Homer, or as described in theAthenian recitations of the sixth century, are _mutatis mutandis_related to the Olympians of the Heroic Age much as the Hellenes of thesixth century are to the Hellenes of the Heroic Age. I say '_mutatismutandis_', because the historical development of a group of imaginaryconcepts shrined in tradition and romance can never be quite the same asthat of the people who conceive them. The realm of fiction is apt bothto leap in front and to lag in the rear of the march of real life. Romance will hug picturesque darknesses as well as invent perfections. But the gods of Homer, as we have them, certainly seem to show tracesof the process through which they have passed: of an origin among theold conquering Achaioi, a development in the Ionian epic schools, and afinal home in Athens. [49:1]

For example, what gods are chiefly prominent in Homer? In the _Iliad_certainly three, Zeus, Apollo, and Athena, and much the same would holdfor the _Odyssey_. Next to them in importance will be Poseidon, Hera, and Hermes. 

Zeus stands somewhat apart. He is one of the very few gods withrecognizable and undoubted Indo-germanic names, Djëus, the well-attestedsky- and rain-god of the Aryan race. He is Achaian; he is 'Hellanios', the god worshipped by all Hellenes. He is also, curiously enough, Pelasgian, and Mr. A. B. Cook[49:2] can explain to us the seemingcontradiction. But the Northern elements in the conception of Zeus haveon the whole triumphed over any Pelasgian or Aegean sky-god with whichthey may have mingled, and Zeus, in spite of his dark hair, may bemainly treated as the patriarchal god of the invading Northmen, passingfrom the Upper Danube down by his three great sanctuaries, Dodona, Olympus, and Olympia. He had an extraordinary power of ousting orabsorbing the various objects of aboriginal worship which he found inhis path. The story of Meilichios above (p. 14) is a common one. Ofcourse, we must not suppose that the Zeus of the actual Achaioi was afigure quite like the Zeus of Pheidias or of Homer. There has been agood deal of expurgation in the Homeric Zeus, [50:1] as Mr. Cook clearlyshows. The Counsellor and Cloud-compeller of classical Athens was thewizard and rainmaker of earlier times; and the All-Father surprises usin Thera and Crete by appearing both as a babe and as a Kouros in springdances and initiation rituals. [50:2] It is a long way from theseconceptions to the Zeus of Aeschylus, a figure as sublime as the Jehovahof Job; but the lineage seems clear. 

Zeus is the Achaean Sky-god. His son Phoebus Apollo is of more complexmake. On one side he is clearly a Northman. He has connexions with theHyperboreans. [50:3] He has a 'sacred road' leading far into the North, along which offerings are sent back from shrine to shrine beyond thebounds of Greek knowledge. Such 'sacred roads' are normally the roads bywhich the God himself has travelled; the offerings are sent back fromthe new sanctuary to the old. On the other side Apollo reaches back toan Aegean matriarchal Kouros. His home is Delos, where he has a mother, Leto, but no very visible father. He leads the ships of his islanders, sometimes in the form of a dolphin. He is no 'Hellene'. In the fightingat Troy he is against the Achaioi: he destroys the Greek host, hechampions Hector, he even slays Achilles. In the Homeric hymn to Apollowe read that when the great archer draws near to Olympus all the godstremble and start from their seats; Leto alone, and of course Zeus, holdtheir ground. [51:1] What this god's original name was at Delos we cannotbe sure: he has very many names and 'epithets'. But he early becameidentified with a similar god at Delphi and adopted his name, 'Apollôn', or, in the Delphic and Dorian form, 'Apellôn'--presumably the Kourosprojected from the Dorian gatherings called '_apellae_'. [51:2] AsPhoibos he is a sun-god, and from classical times onward we often findhim definitely identified with the Sun, a distinction which came easilyto a Kouros. 

In any case, and this is the important point, he is at Delos the chiefgod of the Ionians. The Ionians are defined by Herodotus as those tribesand cities who were sprung from Athens and kept the Apaturia. Theyrecognized Delos as their holy place and worshipped Apollo Patrôos astheir ancestor. [51:3] The Ionian Homer has naturally brought us theIonian god; and, significantly enough, though the tradition makes him anenemy of the Greeks, and the poets have to accept the tradition, thereis no tendency to crab or belittle him. He is the most splendid andawful of Homer's Olympians. 

The case of Pallas Athena is even simpler, though it leads to asomewhat surprising result. What Apollo is to Ionia that, and more, Athena is to Athens. There are doubtless foreign elements in Athena, some Cretan and Ionian, some Northern. [52:1] But her whole appearance inhistory and literature tells the same story as her name. Athens is hercity and she is the goddess of Athens, the Athena or Athenaia Korê. InAthens she can be simply 'Parthenos', the Maiden; elsewhere she is the'Attic' or 'Athenian Maiden'. As Glaucopis she is identified orassociated with the Owl that was the sacred bird of Athens. As Pallasshe seems to be a Thunder-maiden, a sort of Keraunia or bride ofKeraunos. A Palladion consists of two thunder-shields, set one above theother like a figure 8, and we can trace in art-types the development ofthis 8 into a human figure. It seems clear that the old Achaioi cannothave called their warrior-maiden, daughter of Zeus, by the name Athenaor Athenaia. The Athenian goddess must have come in from Athenianinfluence, and it is strange to find how deep into the heart of thepoems that influence must have reached. If we try to conjecture whoseplace it is that Athena has taken, it is worth remarking that herregular epithet, 'daughter of Zeus', belongs in Sanskrit to theDawn-goddess, Eôs. [52:2] The transition might be helped by some touchesof the Dawn-goddess that seem to linger about Athena in myth. The risingSun stayed his horses while Athena was born from the head of Zeus. Alsoshe was born amid a snowstorm of gold. And Eôs, on the other hand, is, like Athena, sometimes the daughter of the Giant Pallas. [53:1]

Our three chief Olympians, then, explain themselves very easily. A bodyof poetry and tradition, in its origin dating from the Achaioi of theMigrations, growing for centuries in the hands of Ionian bards, andreaching its culminating form at Athens, has prominent in it the AchaianZeus, the Ionian Apollo, the Athenian Korê--the same Korê who descendedin person to restore the exiled Pisistratus to his throne. [53:2]

We need only throw a glance in passing at a few of the other Olympians. Why, for instance, should Poseidon be so prominent? In origin he is apuzzling figure. Besides the Achaean Earth-shaking brother of Zeus inThessaly there seems to be some Pelasgian or Aegean god present in him. He is closely connected with Libya; he brings the horse fromthere. [54:1] At times he exists in order to be defeated; defeated inAthens by Athena, in Naxos by Dionysus, in Aegina by Zeus, in Argos byHera, in Acrocorinth by Helios though he continues to hold the Isthmus. In Trozen he shares a temple on more or less equal terms withAthena. [54:2] Even in Troy he is defeated and cast out from the wallshis own hands had built. [54:3] These problems we need not for thepresent face. By the time that concerns us most the Earth-Shaker is asea-god, specially important to the sea-peoples of Athens and Ionia. Heis the father of Neleus, the ancestor of the Ionian kings. His temple atCape Mykale is the scene of the Panionia, and second only to Delos as areligious centre of the Ionian tribes. He has intimate relations withAttica too. Besides the ancient contest with Athena for the possessionof the land, he appears as the father of Theseus, the chief Athenianhero. He is merged in other Attic heroes, like Aigeus and Erechtheus. Heis the special patron of the Athenian knights. Thus his prominence inHomer is very natural. 

What of Hermes? His history deserves a long monograph to itself; it isso exceptionally instructive. Originally, outside Homer, Hermes wassimply an old upright stone, a pillar furnished with the regularPelasgian sex-symbol of procreation. Set up over a tomb he is the powerthat generates new lives, or, in the ancient conception, brings thesouls back to be born again. He is the Guide of the Dead, thePsychopompos, the divine Herald between the two worlds. If you have amessage for the dead, you speak it to the Herm at the grave. This notionof Hermes as herald may have been helped by his use as aboundary-stone--the Latin _Terminus_. Your boundary-stone is yourrepresentative, the deliverer of your message, to the hostile neighbouror alien. If you wish to parley with him, you advance up to yourboundary-stone. If you go, as a Herald, peacefully, into his territory, you place yourself under the protection of the same sacred stone, thelast sign that remains of your own safe country. If you are killed orwronged, it is he, the immovable Watcher, who will avenge you. 

Now this phallic stone post was quite unsuitable to Homer. It was notdecent; it was not quite human; and every personage in Homer has to beboth. In the _Iliad_ Hermes is simply removed, and a beautiful creationor tradition, Iris, the rainbow-goddess, takes his place as themessenger from heaven to earth. In the _Odyssey_ he is admitted, but sochanged and castigated that no one would recognize the old Herm in thebeautiful and gracious youth who performs the gods' messages. I can onlydetect in his language one possible trace of his old Pelasgiancharacter. [56:1]

Pausanias knew who worked the transformation. In speaking of Hermesamong the other 'Workers', who were 'pillars in square form', he says, 'As to Hermes, the poems of Homer have given currency to the report thathe is a servant of Zeus and leads down the spirits of the departed toHades'. [56:2] In the magic papyri Hermes returns to something of his oldfunctions; he is scarcely to be distinguished from the Agathos Daimon. But thanks to Homer he is purified of his old phallicism. 

Hera, too, the wife of Zeus, seems to have a curious past behind her. She has certainly ousted the original wife, Dione, whose worshipcontinued unchallenged in far Dodona, from times before Zeus descendedupon Greek lands. When he invaded Thessaly he seems to have left Dionebehind and wedded the Queen of the conquered territory. Hera's permanentepithet is 'Argeia', 'Argive'. She is the Argive Korê or Year-Maiden, asAthena is the Attic, Cypris the Cyprian. But Argos in Homer denotes twodifferent places, a watered plain in the Peloponnese and a watered plainin Thessaly. Hera was certainly the chief goddess of Peloponnesian Argosin historic times, and had brought her consort Herakles[56:3] along withher, but at one time she seems to have belonged to the Thessalian Argos. 

She helped Thessalian Jason to launch the ship _Argo_, and theylaunched it from Thessalian Pagasae. In the Argonautica she is abeautiful figure, gracious and strong, the lovely patroness of the younghero. No element of strife is haunting her. But in the _Iliad_ for somereason she is unpopular. She is a shrew, a scold, and a jealous wife. Why? Miss Harrison suggests that the quarrel with Zeus dates from thetime of the invasion, when he was the conquering alien and she thenative queen of the land. [57:1] It may be, too, that the Ionian poetswho respected their own Apollo and Athena and Poseidon, regarded Hera asrepresenting some race or tribe that they disliked. A goddess of DorianArgos might be as disagreeable as a Dorian. It seems to be for somereason like this that Aphrodite, identified with Cyprus or some centreamong Oriental barbarians, is handled with so much disrespect; thatAres, the Thracian Kouros, a Sun-god and War-god, is treated as a merebully and coward and general pest. [57:2]

There is not much faith in these gods, as they appear to us in theHomeric Poems, and not much respect, except perhaps for Apollo andAthena and Poseidon. The buccaneer kings of the Heroic Age, cut loosefrom all local and tribal pieties, intent only on personal gain andglory, were not the people to build up a powerful religious faith. Theyleft that, as they left agriculture and handiwork, to the namelesscommon folk. [57:3] And it was not likely that the bards of cultivatedand scientific Ionia should waste much religious emotion on a systemwhich was clearly meant more for romance than for the guiding of life. 

Yet the power of romance is great. In the memory of Greece the kings andgods of the Heroic Age were transfigured. What had been really an age ofbuccaneering violence became in memory an age of chivalry and splendidadventure. The traits that were at all tolerable were idealized; thosethat were intolerable were either expurgated, or, if that wasimpossible, were mysticized and explained away. And the savage oldOlympians became to Athens and the mainland of Greece from the sixthcentury onward emblems of high humanity and religious reform. 

II. _The Religious Value of the Olympians_

Now to some people this statement may seem a wilful paradox, yet Ibelieve it to be true. The Olympian religion, radiating from Homer atthe Panathenaea, produced what I will venture to call exactly areligious reformation. Let us consider how, with all its flaws andfalsehoods, it was fitted to attempt such a work. 

In the first place the Poems represent an Achaian tradition, thetradition of a Northern conquering race, organized on a patriarchalmonogamous system vehemently distinct from the matrilinear customs ofthe Aegean or Hittite races, with their polygamy and polyandry, theiragricultural rites, their sex-emblems and fertility goddesses. Contrastfor a moment the sort of sexless Valkyrie who appears in the _Iliad_under the name of Athena with the Korê of Ephesus, strangely calledArtemis, a shapeless fertility figure, covered with innumerablebreasts. That suggests the contrast that I mean. 

Secondly, the poems are by tradition aristocratic; they are theliterature of chieftains, alien to low popular superstition. True, thepoems as we have them are not Court poems. That error ought not to be sooften repeated. As we have them they are poems recited at a Panegyris, or public festival. But they go back in ultimate origin to somethinglike lays sung in a royal hall. And the contrast between the Homericgods and the gods found outside Homer is well compared by Mr. Chadwick[59:1] to the difference between the gods of the Edda and thehistorical traces of religion outside the Edda. The gods who feast withOdin in Asgard, forming an organized community or _comitatus_, seem tobe the gods of the kings, distinct from the gods of the peasants, cleaner and more warlike and lordlier, though in actual religiousquality much less vital. 

Thirdly, the poems in their main stages are Ionian, and Ionia was formany reasons calculated to lead the forward movement against the'Urdummheit'. For one thing, Ionia reinforced the old Heroic tradition, in having much the same inward freedom. The Ionians are the descendantsof those who fled from the invaders across the sea, leaving their homes, tribes, and tribal traditions. Wilamowitz has well remarked how theimagination of the Greek mainland is dominated by the giganticsepulchres of unknown kings, which the fugitives to Asia had left behindthem and half forgotten. [59:2]

Again, when the Ionians settled on the Asiatic coasts they were nodoubt to some extent influenced, but they were far more repelled by thebarbaric tribes of the interior. They became conscious, as we have said, of something that was Hellenic, as distinct from something else that wasbarbaric, and the Hellenic part of them vehemently rejected what struckthem as superstitious, cruel, or unclean. And lastly, we must rememberthat Ionia was, before the rise of Athens, not only the most imaginativeand intellectual part of Greece, but by far the most advanced inknowledge and culture. The Homeric religion is a step in theself-realization of Greece, and such self-realization naturally took itsrise in Ionia. 

Granted, then, that Homer was calculated to produce a kind of religiousreformation in Greece, what kind of reformation was it? We are againreminded of St. Paul. It was a move away from the 'beggarly elements'towards some imagined person behind them. The world was conceived asneither quite without external governance, nor as merely subject to theincursions of _mana_ snakes and bulls and thunder-stones and monsters, but as governed by an organized body of personal and reasoning rulers, wise and bountiful fathers, like man in mind and shape, only unspeakablyhigher. 

For a type of this Olympian spirit we may take a phenomenon that hasperhaps sometimes wearied us: the reiterated insistence in the reliefsof the best period on the strife of men against centaurs or of godsagainst giants. Our modern sympathies are apt to side with the giantsand centaurs. An age of order likes romantic violence, as landsmen safein their houses like storms at sea. But to the Greek, this battle wasfull of symbolical meaning. It is the strife, the ultimate victory, ofhuman intelligence, reason, and gentleness, against what seems at firstthe overwhelming power of passion and unguided strength. It is Hellasagainst the brute world. [61:1]

The victory of Hellenism over barbarism, of man over beast: that was theaim, but was it ever accomplished? The Olympian gods as we see them inart appear so calm, so perfect, so far removed from the atmosphere ofacknowledged imperfection and spiritual striving, that what I am nowabout to say may again seem a deliberate paradox. It is neverthelesstrue that the Olympian Religion is only to the full intelligible andadmirable if we realize it as a superb and baffled endeavour, not a_telos_ or completion but a movement and effort of life. 

We may analyse the movement into three main elements: a moralexpurgation of the old rites, an attempt to bring order into the oldchaos, and lastly an adaptation to new social needs. We will take thethree in order. 

In the first place, it gradually swept out of religion, or at leastcovered with a decent veil, that great mass of rites which was concernedwith the Food-supply and the Tribe-supply and aimed at directstimulation of generative processes. [62:1] It left only a few reverentand mystic rituals, a few licensed outbursts of riotous indecency incomedy and the agricultural festivals. It swept away what seems to us athing less dangerous, a large part of the worship of the dead. Suchworship, our evidence shows us, gave a loose rein to superstition. Tothe Olympian movement it was vulgar, it was semi-barbarous, it was oftenbloody. We find that it has almost disappeared from Homeric Athens at atime when the monuments show it still flourishing in un-Homeric Sparta. The Olympian movement swept away also, at least for two splendidcenturies, the worship of the man-god, with its diseased atmosphere ofmegalomania and blood-lust. [62:2] These things return with the fall ofHellenism; but the great period, as it urges man to use all his powersof thought, of daring and endurance, of social organization, so it bidshim remember that he is a man like other men, subject to the same lawsand bound to reckon with the same death. 

So much for the moral expurgation: next for the bringing of intellectualorder. To parody the words of Anaxagoras, 'In the early religion allthings were together, till the Homeric system came and arranged them'. 

We constantly find in the Greek pantheon beings who can be described asπολλῶν ὀνομάτων μορφὴ μἴα, 'one form of many names'. Each tribe, eachlittle community, sometimes one may almost say each caste--the Childrenof the Bards, the Children of the Potters--had its own special gods. Nowas soon as there was any general 'Sunoikismos' or 'Settling-together', any effective surmounting of the narrowest local barriers, theseinnumerable gods tended to melt into one another. Under differenthistorical circumstances this process might have been carried resolutelythrough and produced an intelligible pantheon in which each god had hisproper function and there was no overlapping--one Korê, one Kouros, oneSun-God, and so on. But in Greece that was impossible. Imaginations hadbeen too vivid, and local types had too often become clearly personifiedand differentiated. The Maiden of Athens, Athena, did no doubt absorbsome other Korai, but she could not possibly combine with her of Cythêraor Cyprus, or Ephesus, nor with the Argive Korê or the Delian or theBrauronian. What happened was that the infinite cloud of Maidens wasgreatly reduced and fell into four or five main types. The Korai ofCyprus, Cythêra, Corinth, Eryx, and some other places were felt to beone, and became absorbed in the great figure of Aphrodite. Artemisabsorbed a quantity more, including those of Delos and Brauron, ofvarious parts of Arcadia and Sparta, and even, as we saw, the fertilityKorê of Ephesus. Doubtless she and the Delian were originally muchcloser together, but the Delian differentiated towards ideal virginity, the Ephesian towards ideal fruitfulness. The Kouroi, or Youths, in thesame way were absorbed into some half-dozen great mythological shapes, Apollo, Ares, Hermes, Dionysus, and the like. 

As so often in Greek development, we are brought up against the immenseformative power of fiction or romance. The simple Korê or Kouros was afigure of indistinct outline with no history or personality. Like theRoman functional gods, such beings were hardly persons; they meltedeasily one into another. But when the Greek imagination had once doneits work upon them, a figure like Athena or Aphrodite had become, forall practical purposes, a definite person, almost as definite asAchilles or Odysseus, as Macbeth or Falstaff. They crystallize hard. They will no longer melt or blend, at least not at an ordinarytemperature. In the fourth and third centuries we hear a great dealabout the gods all being one, 'Zeus the same as Hades, Hades as Helios, Helios the same as Dionysus', [64:1] but the amalgamation only takesplace in the white heat of ecstatic philosophy or the rites of religiousmysticism. 

The best document preserved to us of this attempt to bring order intoChaos is the poetry of Hesiod. There are three poems, all devoted tothis object, composed perhaps under the influence of Delphi andcertainly under that of Homer, and trying in a quasi-Homeric dialect andunder a quasi-Olympian system to bring together vast masses of ancienttheology and folk-lore and scattered tradition. The _Theogony_ attemptsto make a pedigree and hierarchy of the Gods; _The Catalogue of Women_and the _Eoiai_, preserved only in scanty fragments, attempt to fix incanonical form the cloudy mixture of dreams and boasts and legends andhypotheses by which most royal families in central Greece recorded theirdescent from a traditional ancestress and a conjectural God. The _Worksand Days_ form an attempt to collect and arrange the rules and tabusrelating to agriculture. The work of Hesiod as a whole is one of themost valiant failures in literature. The confusion and absurdity of itare only equalled by its strange helpless beauty and its extraordinaryhistorical interest. The Hesiodic system when compared with that ofHomer is much more explicit, much less expurgated, infinitely lessaccomplished and tactful. At the back of Homer lay the lordlywarrior-gods of the Heroic Age, at the back of Hesiod the crude andtangled superstitions of the peasantry of the mainland. Also theHesiodic poets worked in a comparatively backward and unenlightenedatmosphere, the Homeric were exposed to the full light of Athens. 

The third element in this Homeric reformation is an attempt to makereligion satisfy the needs of a new social order. The earliest Greekreligion was clearly based on the tribe, a band of people, all in somesense kindred and normally living together, people with the samecustoms, ancestors, initiations, flocks and herds and fields. Thistribal and agricultural religion can hardly have maintained itselfunchanged at the great Aegean centres, like Cnossus and Mycenae. [65:1]It certainly did not maintain itself among the marauding chiefs of theheroic age. It bowed its head beneath the sceptre of its own divinekings and the armed heel of its northern invaders, only to appear againalmost undamaged and unimproved when the kings were fallen and theinvaders sunk into the soil like storms of destructive rain. 

But it no longer suited its environment. In the age of the migrationsthe tribes had been broken, scattered, re-mixed. They had almost ceasedto exist as important social entities. The social unit which had takentheir place was the political community of men, of whatever tribe ortribes, who were held together in times of danger and constant war bymeans of a common circuit-wall, a Polis. [66:1] The idea of the triberemained. In the earliest classical period we find every Greek citystill nominally composed of tribes, but the tribes are fictitious. Theearly city-makers could still only conceive of society on a tribalbasis. Every local or accidental congregation of people who wish to acttogether have to invent an imaginary common ancestor. The clash betweenthe old tribal traditions that have lost their meaning, though not theirsanctity, and the new duties imposed by the actual needs of the Polis, leads to many strange and interesting compromises. The famousconstitution of Cleisthenes shows several. An old proverb expresses wellthe ordinary feeling on the subject:

 ὥς κε πόλις ῥέξειε, νόμος δ' ἀρχαῖος ἅριστος. 

 'Whatever the City may do; but the old custom is the best. '

Now in the contest between city and tribe, the Olympian gods had onegreat negative advantage. They were not tribal or local, and all othergods were. They were by this time international, with no strong rootsanywhere except where one of them could be identified with some nativegod; they were full of fame and beauty and prestige. They were ready tobe made 'Poliouchoi', 'City-holders', of any particular city, still moreready to be 'Hellânioi', patrons of all Hellas. 

 * * * * *

In the working out of these three aims the Olympian religion achievedmuch: in all three it failed. The moral expurgation failed owing to themere force of inertia possessed by old religious traditions and localcults. We must remember how weak any central government was in ancientcivilization. The power and influence of a highly civilized society wereapt to end a few miles outside its city wall. All through the backwardparts of Greece obscene and cruel rites lingered on, the darker andworse the further they were removed from the full light of Hellenism. 

But in this respect the Olympian Religion did not merely fail: it didworse. To make the elements of a nature-religion human is inevitably tomake them vicious. There is no great moral harm in worshipping athunder-storm, even though the lightning strikes the good and evil quiterecklessly. There is no need to pretend that the Lightning is exercisinga wise and righteous choice. But when once you worship an imaginaryquasi-human being who throws the lightning, you are in a dilemma. Eitheryou have to admit that you are worshipping and flattering a being withno moral sense, because he happens to be dangerous, or else you have toinvent reasons for his wrath against the people who happen to be struck. And they are pretty sure to be bad reasons. The god, if personal, becomes capricious and cruel. 

When the Ark of Israel was being brought back from the Philistines, thecattle slipped by the threshing floor of Nachon, and the holy object wasin danger of falling. A certain Uzzah, as we all know, sprang forward tosave it and was struck dead for his pains. Now, if he was struck dead bythe sheer holiness of the tabu object, the holiness stored inside itlike so much electricity, his death was a misfortune, an interestingaccident, and no more. [68:1] But when it is made into the deliberate actof an anthropomorphic god, who strikes a well-intentioned man dead inexplosive rage for a very pardonable mistake, a dangerous element hasbeen introduced into the ethics of that religion. A being who is themoral equal of man must not behave like a charge of dynamite. 

Again, to worship emblems of fertility and generation, as was done inagricultural rites all through the Aegean area, is in itself anintelligible and not necessarily a degrading practice. But when thoseemblems are somehow humanized, and the result is an anthropomorphic godof enormous procreative power and innumerable amours, a religion somodified has received a death-blow. The step that was meant to softenits grossness has resulted in its moral degradation. This result wasintensified by another well-meant effort at elevation. The leadingtribes of central Greece were, as we have mentioned, apt to count theirdescent from some heroine-ancestress. Her consort was sometimes unknownand, in a matrilinear society, unimportant. Sometimes he was a local godor river. When the Olympians came to introduce some order and unityamong these innumerable local gods, the original tribal ancestor tended, naturally enough, to be identified with Zeus, Apollo, or Poseidon. Theunfortunate Olympians, whose system really aimed at purer morals andcondemned polygamy and polyandry, are left with a crowd of consorts thatwould put Solomon to shame. 

Thus a failure in the moral expurgation was deepened by a failure in theattempt to bring intellectual order into the welter of primitive gods. The only satisfactory end of that effort would have been monotheism. IfZeus had only gone further and become completely, once and for all, thefather of all life, the scandalous stories would have lost their pointand meaning. It is curious how near to monotheism, and to monotheism ofa very profound and impersonal type, the real religion of Greece came inthe sixth and fifth centuries. Many of the philosophers, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and others, asserted it clearly or assumed it withouthesitation. Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, in their deeper moments pointthe same road. Indeed a metaphysician might hold that their theology isfar deeper than that to which we are accustomed, since they seem not tomake any particular difference between οἱ θεοί and ὁ θεός or τὸ θεῖον. They do not instinctively suppose that the human distinctions between'he' and 'it', or between 'one' and 'many', apply to the divine. Certainly Greek monotheism, had it really carried the day, would havebeen a far more philosophic thing than the tribal and personalmonotheism of the Hebrews. But unfortunately too many hard-cakedsuperstitions, too many tender and sensitive associations, were linkedwith particular figures in the pantheon or particular rites which hadbrought the worshippers religious peace. If there had been some Hebrewprophets about, and a tyrant or two, progressive and bloody-minded, toagree with them, polytheism might perhaps actually have been stamped outin Greece at one time. But Greek thought, always sincere and daring, wasseldom brutal, seldom ruthless or cruel. The thinkers of the greatperiod felt their own way gently to the Holy of Holies, and did not tryto compel others to take the same way. Greek theology, whether popularor philosophical, seldom denied any god, seldom forbade any worship. What it tried to do was to identify every new god with some aspect ofone of the old ones, and the result was naturally confusion. Apart fromthe Epicurean school, which though powerful was always unpopular, thereligious thought of later antiquity for the most part took refuge in asort of apotheosis of good taste, in which the great care was not tohurt other people's feelings, or else it collapsed into helplessmysticism. 

The attempt to make Olympianism a religion of the Polis failed also. The Olympians did not belong to any particular city: they were toouniversal; and no particular city had a very positive faith in them. Theactual Polis was real and tangible, the Homeric gods a little alien andliterary. The City herself was a most real power; and the true gods ofthe City, who had grown out of the soil and the wall, were simply theCity herself in her eternal and personal aspect, as mother and guide andlawgiver, the worshipped and beloved being whom each citizen must defendeven to the death. As the Kouros of his day emerged from the socialgroup of Kouroi, or the Aphiktor from the band of suppliants, in likefashion ἡ Πολιάς or ὁ Πολιεύς emerged as a personification or projectionof the city. ἡ Πολιάς in Athens was of course Athena; ὁ Πολιεύς might aswell be called Zeus as anything else. In reality such beings fall intothe same class as the hero Argos or 'Korinthos son of Zeus'. The Cityworship was narrow; yet to broaden it was, except in some rare minds, tosap its life. The ordinary man finds it impossible to love his next-doorneighbours except by siding with them against the next-door-but-one. 

It proved difficult even in a city like Athens to have gods that wouldappeal to the loyalty of all Attica. On the Acropolis at Athens thereseem originally to have been Athena and some Kouros corresponding withher, some Waterer of the earth, like Erechtheus. Then as Attica wasunited and brought under the lead of its central city, the gods of theoutlying districts began to claim places on the Acropolis. Pallas, thethunder-maid of Pallene in the south, came to form a joint personalitywith Athena. Oinoe, a town in the north-east, on the way from Delos toDelphi, had for its special god a 'Pythian Apollo'; when Oinoe becameAttic a place for the Pythian Apollo had to be found on the Acropolis. Dionysus came from Eleutherae, Demeter and Korê from Eleusis, Theseushimself perhaps from Marathon or even from Trozên. They were all givenofficial residences on Athena's rock, and Athens in return sent outAthena to new temples built for her in Prasiae and Sunion and variouscolonies. [72:1] This development came step by step and grew out of realworships. It was quite different from the wholesale adoption of a bodyof non-national, poetical gods: yet even this development was tooartificial, too much stamped with the marks of expediency and courtesyand compromise. It could not live. The personalities of such gods vanishaway; their prayers become prayers to 'all gods and goddesses of theCity'--θεοῖς καὶ θεῇσι πᾶσι καὶ πάσῃςι; those who remain, chiefly Athena andTheseus, only mean Athens. 

What then, amid all this failure, did the Olympian religion reallyachieve? First, it debarbarized the worship of the leading states ofGreece--not of all Greece, since antiquity had no means of spreadingknowledge comparable to ours. It reduced the horrors of the'Urdummheit', for the most part, to a romantic memory, and made religionno longer a mortal danger to humanity. Unlike many religious systems, itgenerally permitted progress; it encouraged not only the obedientvirtues but the daring virtues as well. It had in it the spirit thatsaves from disaster, that knows itself fallible and thinks twice beforeit hates and curses and persecutes. It wrapped religion in Sophrosynê. 

Again, it worked for concord and fellow-feeling throughout the Greekcommunities. It is, after all, a good deal to say, that in Greek historywe find almost no warring of sects, no mutual tortures or evenblasphemies. With many ragged edges, with many weaknesses, it built upsomething like a united Hellenic religion to stand against the 'beastlydevices of the heathen'. And after all, if we are inclined on the purelyreligious side to judge the Olympian system harshly, we must not forgetits sheer beauty. Truth, no doubt, is greater than beauty. But in manymatters beauty can be attained and truth cannot. All we know is thatwhen the best minds seek for truth the result is apt to be beautiful. Itwas a great thing that men should envisage the world as governed, not byGiants and Gorgons and dealers in eternal torture, but by some human andmore than human Understanding (Ξύνεσις), [73:1] by beings of quietsplendour like many a classical Zeus and Hermes and Demeter. IfOlympianism was not a religious faith, it was at least a vital force inthe shaping of cities and societies which remain after two thousandyears a type to the world of beauty and freedom and high endeavour. Eventhe stirring of its ashes, when they seemed long cold, had power toproduce something of the same result; for the classicism of the ItalianRenaissance is a child, however fallen, of the Olympian spirit. 

Of course, I recognize that beauty is not the same as faith. There is, in one sense, far more faith in some hideous miracle-working icon whichsends out starving peasants to massacre Jews than in the Athena ofPhidias. Yet, once we have rid our minds of trivial mythology, there isreligion in Athena also. Athena is an ideal, an ideal and a mystery; theideal of wisdom, of incessant labour, of almost terrifying purity, seenthrough the light of some mystic and spiritual devotion like, buttranscending, the love of man for woman. Or, if the way of Athena is toohard for us common men, it is not hard to find a true religious ideal insuch a figure as Persephone. In Persephone there is more of pathos andof mystery. She has more recently entered the calm ranks of Olympus; theold liturgy of the dying and re-risen Year-bride still clings to her. IfReligion is that which brings us into relation with the greatworld-forces, there is the very heart of life in this home-coming Brideof the underworld, life with its broken hopes, its disaster, itsnew-found spiritual joy: life seen as Mother and Daughter, not a thingcontinuous and unchanging but shot through with parting and death, lifeas a great love or desire ever torn asunder and ever renewed. 

'But stay, ' a reader may object: 'is not this the Persephone, theAthena, of modern sentiment? Are these figures really the goddesses ofthe _Iliad_ and of Sophocles?' The truth is, I think, that they areneither the one nor the other. They are the goddesses of ancientreflection and allegory; the goddesses, that is, of the best and mostcharacteristic worship that these idealized creations awakened. What wehave treated hitherto as the mortal weakness of the Olympians, the factthat they have no roots in any particular soil, little hold on anydefinite primeval cult, has turned out to be their peculiar strength. Wemust not think of allegory as a late post-classical phenomenon inGreece. It begins at least as early as Pythagoras and Heraclitus, perhaps as early as Hesiod; for Hesiod seems sometimes to be turningallegory back into myth. The Olympians, cut loose from the soil, enthroned only in men's free imagination, have two special regions whichthey have made their own: mythology and allegory. The mythology dropsfor the most part very early out of practical religion. Even in Homer wefind it expurgated; in Pindar, Aeschylus, and Xenophanes it isexpurgated, denied and allegorized. The myths survive chiefly asmaterial for literature, the shapes of the gods themselves chiefly asmaterial for art. They are both of them objects not of belief but ofimagination. Yet when the religious imagination of Greece deepens ittwines itself still around these gracious and ever-moving shapes; theZeus of Aeschylus moves on into the Zeus of Plato or of Cleanthes or ofMarcus Aurelius. Hermes, Athena, Apollo, all have their long spiritualhistory. They are but little impeded by the echoes of the old frivolousmythology; still less by any local roots or sectional prejudices orcompulsory details of ritual. As the more highly educated mind of Greeceemerged from a particular, local, tribal, conception of religion, theold denationalized Olympians were ready to receive her. 

The real religion of the fifth century was, as we have said, a devotionto the City itself. It is expressed often in Aeschylus and Sophocles, again and again with more discord and more criticism in Euripides andPlato; for the indignant blasphemies of the Gorgias and the Troades bearthe same message as the ideal patriotism of the Republic. It isexpressed best perhaps, and that without mention of the name of a singlegod, in the great Funeral Speech of Pericles. It is higher than mostmodern patriotism because it is set upon higher ideals. It is morefervid because the men practising it lived habitually nearer to thedanger-point, and, when they spoke of dying for the City, spoke of athing they had faced last week and might face again to-morrow. It wasmore religious because of the unconscious mysticism in which it isclothed even by such hard heads as Pericles and Thucydides, themysticism of men in the presence of some fact for which they have nowords great enough. Yet for all its intensity it was condemned by itsmere narrowness. By the fourth century the average Athenian must haverecognized what philosophers had recognized long before, that areligion, to be true, must be universal and not the privilege of aparticular people. As soon as the Stoics had proclaimed the world to be'one great City of gods and men', the only Gods with which Greece couldsatisfactorily people that City were the idealized band of the oldOlympians. 

They are artists' dreams, ideals, allegories; they are symbols ofsomething beyond themselves. They are Gods of half-rejected tradition, of unconscious make-believe, of aspiration. They are gods to whomdoubtful philosophers can pray, with all a philosopher's due caution, asto so many radiant and heart-searching hypotheses. They are not gods inwhom any one believes as a hard fact. Does this condemn them? Or is itjust the other way? Is it perhaps that one difference between Religionand Superstition lies exactly in this, that Superstition degrades itsworship by turning its beliefs into so many statements of brute fact, onwhich it must needs act without question, without striving, without anyrespect for others or any desire for higher or fuller truth? It is onlyan accident--though perhaps an invariable accident--that all thesupposed facts are false. In Religion, however precious you may considerthe truth you draw from it, you know that it is a truth seen dimly, andpossibly seen by others better than by you. You know that all yourcreeds and definitions are merely metaphors, attempts to use humanlanguage for a purpose for which it was never made. Your concepts are, by the nature of things, inadequate; the truth is not in you but beyondyou, a thing not conquered but still to be pursued. Something like this, I take it, was the character of the Olympian Religion in the higherminds of later Greece. Its gods could awaken man's worship andstrengthen his higher aspirations; but at heart they knew themselves tobe only metaphors. As the most beautiful image carved by man was not thegod, but only a symbol, to help towards conceiving the god;[77:1] sothe god himself, when conceived, was not the reality but only a symbolto help towards conceiving the reality. That was the work set beforethem. Meantime they issued no creeds that contradicted knowledge, nocommands that made man sin against his own inner light. 

FOOTNOTES:

[39:1] Hdt. I. 60 ἐπεί γε ἀπεκρίθη ἐκ παλαιτέρου τοῦ βαρβάρου ἔθνεος τὸἙλληνικὸν ἐὸν καὶ δεξιώτερον καὶ εὐηθίης ἠλιθίου ἀπηλλαγμένον μᾶλλον. Asto the date here suggested for the definite dawn of Hellenism Mr. EdwynBevan writes to me: 'I have often wondered what the reason is that aboutthat time a new age began all over the world that we know. In NearerAsia the old Semitic monarchies gave place to the Zoroastrian Aryans; inIndia it was the time of Buddha, in China of Confucius. ' Εὐηθίη ἠλίθιοςis almost '_Urdummheit_'. 

[40:1] See in general Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, vol. I; Leaf, _Companion to Homer_, Introduction: _R. G. E. _, chap. Ii; Chadwick, _TheHeroic Age_ (last four chapters); and J. L. Myres, _Dawn of History_, chaps. Viii and ix. 

[40:2] Since writing the above I find in Vandal, _L'Avènement deBonaparte_, p. 20, in Nelson's edition, a phrase about the Revolutionarysoldiers: 'Ils se modelaient sur ces Romains . . . Sur ces Spartiates . . . Et ils créaient un type de haute vertu guerrière, quand ilscroyaient seulement le reproduire. '

[41:1] Hdt. I. 56 f. ; Th. I. 3 (Hellen son of Deucalion, in both). 

[42:1] Hdt. I. 58. In viii. 44 the account is more detailed. 

[42:2] The Homeric evidence is, as usual, inconclusive. The wordβάρβαροι is absent from both poems, an absence which must be intentionalon the part of the later reciters, but may well come from the originalsources. The compound βαρβαρόφωνοι occurs in B 867, but who knows thedate of that particular line in that particular wording?

[42:3] Paper read to the Classical Association at Birmingham in 1908. 

[43:1] For Korinna see Wilamowitz in _Berliner Klassikertexte_, V. Xiv, especially p. 55. The Homeric epos drove out poetry like Corinna's. Shehad actually written: 'I sing the great deeds of heroes and heroines'(ἰώνει δ' εἱρώων ἀρετὰς χεὶρωιάδων ἀίδω, fr. 10, Bergk), so that presumably herstyle was sufficiently 'heroic' for an un-Homeric generation. For thechange of dialect in elegy, &c. , see Thumb, _Handbuch d. Gr. Dialekte_, pp. 327-30, 368 ff. , and the literature there cited. Fick and Hoffmannoverstated the change, but Hoffmann's new statement in _Die griechischeSprache_, 1911, sections on _Die Elegie_, seems just. The question ofTyrtaeus is complicated by other problems. 

[45:1] The facts are well known: see Paus. I. 18. 7. The inference waspointed out to me by Miss Harrison. 

[45:2] I do not here raise the question how far the Achaioi have specialaffinities with the north-west group of tribes or dialects. See Thumb, _Handbuch d. Gr. Dialekte_ (1909), p. 166 f. The Achaioi must havepassed through South Thessaly in any case. 

[45:3] That Kronos was in possession of the Kronion and Olympiagenerally before Zeus came was recognized in antiquity; Paus. V. 7. 4and 10. Also Mayer in Roscher's Lexicon, ii, p. 1508, 50 ff. ; _Rise ofGreek Epic_{3}, pp. 40-8; J. A. K. Thomson, Studies in the Odyssey(1914), chap. Vii, viii; Chadwick, _Heroic Age_ (1911), pp. 282, 289. 

[49:1] I do not touch here on the subject of the gradual expurgation ofthe Poems to suit the feelings of a more civilized audience; see _Riseof the Greek Epic_, {3} pp. 120-4. Many scholars believe that the Poemsdid not exist as a written book till the public copy was made byPisistratus; see Cauer, _Grundfragen der Homerkritik_{2}, (1909), pp. 113-45; _R. G. E. _, {3} pp. 304-16; Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. I, p. Xvi. Thisview is tempting, though the evidence seems to be insufficient tojustify a pronouncement either way. If it is true, then various passageswhich show a verbal use of earlier documents (like the Bellerophonpassage, _R. G. E. _, {3} pp. 175 ff. ) cannot have been put in before theAthenian period. 

[49:2] In his _Zeus, the Indo-European Sky-God_ (1914, 1924). See _R. G. E. _, {3} pp. 40 ff. 

[50:1] A somewhat similar change occurred in Othin, though he alwaysretains more of the crooked wizard. 

[50:2] _Themis_, chap. I. On the Zeus of Aeschylus cf. _R. G. E. _, {3}pp. 277 ff. ; Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, ii. 6-8. 

[50:3] Farnell, _Cults_, iv. 100-4. See, however, Gruppe, p. 107 f. 

[51:1] _Hymn. Ap. _ init. Cf. Wilamowitz's Oxford Lecture on 'Apollo'(Oxford, 1907). 

[51:2] _Themis_, p. 439 f. Cf. ὁ Ἀγοραῖος. Other explanations of thename in Gruppe, p. 1224 f. , notes. 

[51:3] Hdt. I. 147; Plato, _Euthyd. _ 302 c: _Socrates_. 'No Ionianrecognizes a Zeus Patrôos; Apollo is our Patrôos, because he was fatherof Ion. '

[52:1] See Gruppe, p. 1206, on the development of his 'Philistinethunderstorm-goddess'. 

[52:2] Hoffmann, _Gesch. D. Griechischen Sprache_, Leipzig, 1911, p. 16. Cf. Pind. _Ol. _ vii. 35; Ov. _Metam. _ ix. 421; xv. 191, 700, &c. 

[53:1] As to the name, Ἁθηναία is of course simply 'Athenian'; theshorter and apparently original form Ἀθάνα, Ἀθήνη is not so clear, butit seems most likely to mean 'Attic'. Cf. Meister, _Gr. Dial. _ ii. 290. He classes under the head of Oertliche Bestimmungen: ἁ θεὸς ἁ Παφία(Collitz and Bechtel, _Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften_, 2, 3, 14{a}, {b}, 15, 16). 'In Paphos selbst hiess die Göttin nur ἁ θεόςoder ἁ ϝάνασσα;--ἁ θιὸς ἁ Γολγία (61)--ἁ θιὸς ἁ Ἀθάνα ἁ πὲρ Ἠδάλιον (60, 27, 28), 'die Göttin, die Athenische, die über Edalion (waltet)';'Ἀθ-άνα ist, wie J. Baunack (_Studia Nicolaitana_, s. 27) gezeigt hat, das Adjectiv zu (*Ἀσσ-ίς 'Seeland'): Ἀττ-ίς; Ἀτθ-ίς; *Ἀθ-ίς; also Ἀθ-άνα= Ἀττ-ική, Ἀθ-ῆναι ursprünglich Ἀθ-ῆναι κῶμαι. ' Other derivations inGruppe, p. 1194. Or again αἱ Ἀθῆναι may be simply 'the place where theAthenas are', like οἱ ἰχθύες, the fish-market; 'the Athenas' would bestatues, like οἱ Ἑρμαῖ--the famous 'Attic Maidens' on the Acropolis. This explanation would lead to some interesting results. 

We need not here consider how, partly by identification with otherKorae, like Pallas, Onka, &c. , partly by a genuine spread of the cult, Athena became prominent in other cities. As to Homer, Athena is far moredeeply imbedded in the _Odyssey_ than in the _Iliad_. I am inclined toagree with those who believe that our _Odyssey_ was very largelycomposed in Athens, so that in most of the poem Athena is original. (Cf. O. Seeck, _Die Quellen der Odyssee_ (1887), pp. 366-420; Mülder, _DieIlias and ihre Quellen_ (1910), pp. 350-5. ) In some parts of the _Iliad_the name Athena may well have been substituted for some Northern goddesswhose name is now lost. 

[53:2] It is worth noting also that this Homeric triad seems also to berecognized as the chief Athenian triad. Plato, _Euthyd. _ 302 c, quotedabove, continues: _Socrates. _ 'We have Zeus with the names Herkeios andPhratrios, but not Patrôos, and Athena Phratria. ' _Dionysodorus. _ 'Wellthat is enough. You have, apparently, Apollo and Zeus and Athena?'_Socrates. _ 'Certainly. '--Apollo is put first because he has beenaccepted as Patrôos. But see _R. G. E. _, {3} p. 49, n. 

[54:1] Ridgeway, _Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_, 1905, pp. 287-93; and _Early Age of Greece_, 1901, p. 223. 

[54:2] Cf. Plut. _Q. Conv. _ ix. 6; Paus. Ii. 1. 6; 4. 6; 15. 5; 30. 6. 

[54:3] So in the non-Homeric tradition, Eur. _Troades_ init. In the_Iliad_ he is made an enemy of Troy, like Athena, who is none the lessthe Guardian of the city. 

[56:1] _Od. _ θ 339 ff. 

[56:2] See Paus. Viii. 32. 4. _Themis_, pp. 295, 296. 

[56:3] For the connexion of Ἥρα ἤρως Ἡρακλῆς (Ἡρύκαλος in Sophron, fr. 142 K) see especially A. B. Cook, _Class. Review_, 1906, pp. 365 and416. The name Ἥρα seems probably to be an 'ablaut' form of ὥρα: cf. Phrases like Ἥρα τελεία. Other literature in Gruppe, pp. 452, 1122. 

[57:1] _Prolegomena_, p. 315, referring to H. D. Müller, _Mythologie d. Gr. Stämme_, pp. 249-55. Another view is suggested by Mülder, _Die Iliasund ihre Quellen_, p. 136. The jealous Hera comes from theHeracles-saga, in which the wife hated the bastard. 

[57:2] P. Gardner, in _Numismatic Chronicle_, N. S. Xx, 'Ares as aSun-God'. 

[57:3] Chadwick, _Heroic Age_, especially pp. 414, 459-63. 

[59:1] Chap. Xviii. 

[59:2] Introduction to his edition of the _Choëphoroe_, p. 9. 

[61:1] The spirit appears very simply in Eur. _Iph. Taur. _ 386 ff. , where Iphigenia rejects the gods who demand human sacrifice:

 These tales be false, false as those feastings wild Of Tantalus, and gods that tare a child. This land of murderers to its gods hath given Its own lust. Evil dwelleth not in heaven. 

Yet just before she has accepted the loves of Zeus and Leto withoutobjection. 'Leto, whom Zeus loved, could never have given birth to sucha monster!' Cf. Plutarch, _Vit. Pelop. _ xxi, where Pelopidas, inrejecting the idea of a human sacrifice, says: 'No high and more thanhuman beings could be pleased with so barbarous and unlawful asacrifice. It was not the fabled Titans and Giants who ruled the world, but one who was a Father of all gods and men. ' Of course, criticism andexpurgation of the legends is too common to need illustration. Seeespecially Kaibel, _Daktyloi Idaioi_, 1902, p. 512. 

[62:1] Aristophanes did much to reduce this element in comedy; see_Clouds_, 537 ff. : also _Albany Review_, 1907, p. 201. 

[62:2] _R. G. E. _, {3} p. 139 f. 

[64:1] Justin, _Cohort. _ c. 15. But such pantheistic language is commonin Orphic and other mystic literature. See the fragments of the OrphicΔιαθῆκαι (pp. 144 ff. In Abel's _Hymni_). 

[65:1] I have not attempted to consider the Cretan cults. They liehistorically outside the range of these essays, and I am not competentto deal with evidence that is purely archaeological. But in general Iimagine the Cretan religion to be a development from the religiondescribed in my first essay, affected both by the change in socialstructure from village to sea-empire and by foreign, especiallyEgyptian, influences. No doubt the Achaean gods were influenced on theirside by Cretan conceptions, though perhaps not so much as Ionia was. Cf. The Cretan influences in Ionian vase-painting, and e. G. A. B. Cook on'Cretan Axe-cult outside Crete', _Transactions of the ThirdInternational Congress for the History of Religion_, ii. 184. See alsoSir A. Evans's striking address on 'The Minoan and Mycenaean Element inHellenic Life', _J. H. S. _ xxxii. 277-97. 

[66:1] See _R. G. E. _, {3} p. 58 f. 

[68:1] 2 Sam. Vi. 6. See S. Reinach, _Orpheus_, p. 5 (EnglishTranslation, p. 4). 

[72:1] Cf. Sam Wide in Gercke and Norden's _Handbuch_, ii. 217-19. 

[73:1] The Ξύνεσις in which the Chorus finds it hard to believe, _Hippolytus_, 1105. Cf. _Iph. Aul. _ 394, 1189; _Herc. _ 655; also theideas in _Suppl. _ 203, Eur. Fr. 52, 9, where Ξύνεσις is implanted in manby a special grace of God. The gods are ξυνετοί, but of course Euripidesgoes too far in actually praying to Ξύνεσις, Ar. _Frogs_, 893. 

[77:1] Cf. The beautiful defence of idols by Maximus of Tyre, Or. Viii(in Wilamowitz's _Lesebuch_, ii. 338 ff. ). I quote the last paragraph:

'God Himself, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than theSun or the Sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow ofbeing, is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not tobe seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend His essence, usethe help of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory andsilver, of plants and rivers, mountain-peaks and torrents, yearning forthe knowledge of Him, and in our weakness naming all that is beautifulin this world after His nature--just as happens to earthly lovers. Tothem the most beautiful sight will be the actual lineaments of thebeloved, but for remembrance' sake they will be happy in the sight of alyre, a little spear, a chair, perhaps, or a running-ground, or anythingin the world that wakens the memory of the beloved. Why should I furtherexamine and pass judgement about Images? Let men know what is divine (τὸθεῖον γένος), let them know: that is all. If a Greek is stirred to theremembrance of God by the art of Pheidias, an Egyptian by paying worshipto animals, another man by a river, another by fire--I have no anger fortheir divergences; only let them know, let them love, let themremember. '

III

THE GREAT SCHOOLS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY, B. C. 

There is a passage in Xenophon describing how, one summer night, in 405B. C. , people in Athens heard a cry of wailing, an _oimôgê_, making itsway up between the long walls from the Piraeus, and coming nearer andnearer as they listened. It was the news of the final disaster ofKynoskephalai, brought at midnight to the Piraeus by the galley Paralos. 'And that night no one slept. They wept for the dead, but far morebitterly for themselves, when they reflected what things they had doneto the people of Mêlos, when taken by siege, to the people of Histiaea, and Skîonê and Torônê and Aegîna, and many more of the Hellenes. '[79:1]

The echo of that lamentation seems to ring behind most of the literatureof the fourth century, and not the Athenian literature alone. Defeat canon occasion leave men their self-respect or even their pride; as it didafter Chaeronea in 338 and after the Chremonidean War in 262, not tospeak of Thermopylae. But the defeat of 404 not only left Athens at themercy of her enemies. It stripped her of those things of which she hadbeen inwardly most proud; her 'wisdom', her high civilization, herleadership of all that was most Hellenic in Hellas. The 'Beloved City'of Pericles had become a tyrant, her nature poisoned by war, hergovernment a by-word in Greece for brutality. And Greece as a wholefelt the tragedy of it. It is curious how this defeat of Athens bySparta seems to have been felt abroad as a defeat for Greece itself andfor the hopes of the Greek city state. The fall of Athens mattered morethan the victory of Lysander. Neither Sparta nor any other city everattempted to take her place. And no writer after the year 400 speaks ofany other city as Pericles used to speak of fifth-century Athens, noteven Polybius 250 years later, when he stands amazed before the solidityand the 'fortune' of Rome. 

The city state, the Polis, had concentrated upon itself almost all theloyalty and the aspirations of the Greek mind. It gave security to life. It gave meaning to religion. And in the fall of Athens it had failed. Inthe third century, when things begin to recover, we find on the one handthe great military monarchies of Alexander's successors, and onthe other, a number of federations of tribes, which were generallystrongest in the backward regions where the city state had been leastdeveloped. Τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Αἰτωλῶν or τῶν Ἀχαιῶν had become more importantthan Athens or Corinth, and Sparta was only strong by means of aLeague. [80:1] By that time the Polis was recognized as a comparativelyweak social organism, capable of very high culture but not quite able, as the Covenant of the League of Nations expresses it, 'to hold its ownunder the strenuous conditions of modern life'. Besides, it was not nowruled by the best citizens. The best had turned away from politics. 

This great discouragement did not take place at a blow. Among thepractical statesmen probably most did not form any theory about thecause of the failure but went on, as practical statesmen must, doing asbest they could from difficulty to difficulty. But many saw that thefatal danger to Greece was disunion, as many see it in Europe now. WhenMacedon proved indisputably stronger than Athens Isocrates urged Philipto accept the leadership of Greece against the barbarian and againstbarbarism. He might thus both unite the Greek cities and also evangelizethe world. Lysias, the democratic and anti-Spartan orator, had beengroping for a similar solution as early as 384 B. C. , and was preparedto make an even sharper sacrifice for it. He appealed at Olympia for acrusade of all the free Greek cities against Dionysius of Syracuse, andbegged Sparta herself to lead it. The Spartans are 'of right the leadersof Hellas by their natural nobleness and their skill in war. They alonelive still in a city unsacked, unwalled, unconquered, uncorrupted byfaction, and have followed always the same modes of life. They have beenthe saviours of Hellas in the past, and one may hope that their freedomwill be everlasting. '[81:1] A great and generous change in one who had'learned by suffering' in the Peloponnesian War. Others no doubt merelygave their submission to the stronger powers that were now rising. Therewere openings for counsellors, for mercenary soldiers, for court savantsand philosophers and poets, and, of course, for agents in every freecity who were prepared for one motive or another not to kick against thepricks. And there were always also those who had neither learned norforgotten, the unrepentant idealists; too passionate or too heroic or, as some will say, too blind, to abandon their life-long devotion to'Athens' or to 'Freedom' because the world considered such ideals out ofdate. They could look the ruined Athenians in the face, after the lostbattle, and say with Demosthenes, ''Οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπως ἡμάρτετε. It cannot be that you did wrong, it cannot be!'[82:1]

But in practical politics the currents of thought are inevitablylimited. It is in philosophy and speculation that we find the richestand most varied reaction to the Great Failure. It takes different shapesin those writers, like Plato and Xenophon, who were educated in thefifth century and had once believed in the Great City, and those whosewhole thinking life belonged to the time of disillusion. 

Plato was disgusted with democracy and with Athens, but he retained hisfaith in the city, if only the city could be set on the right road. There can be little doubt that he attributes to the bad government ofthe Demos many evils which were really due to extraneous causes or tothe mere fallibility of human nature. Still his analysis of democracy isone of the most brilliant things in the history of political theory. Itis so acute, so humorous, so affectionate; and at many different ages ofthe world has seemed like a portrait of the actual contemporary society. Like a modern popular newspaper, Plato's democracy makes it its businessto satisfy existing desires and give people a 'good time'. It does notdistinguish between higher and lower. Any one man is as good as another, and so is any impulse or any idea. Consequently the commoner have thepull. Even the great democratic statesmen of the past, he now sees, have been ministers to mob desires; they have 'filled the city withharbours and docks and walls and revenues and such-like trash, withoutSophrosynê and righteousness'. The sage or saint has no place inpractical politics. He would be like a man in a den of wild beasts. Lethim and his like seek shelter as best they can, standing up behind somewall while the storm of dust and sleet rages past. The world does notwant truth, which is all that he could give it. It goes by appearancesand judges its great men with their clothes on and their rich relationsround them. After death, the judges will judge them naked, and alone;and then we shall see![83:1]

Yet, in spite of all this, the child of the fifth century cannot keephis mind from politics. The speculations which would be scouted by themass in the marketplace can still be discussed with intimate friends anddisciples, or written in books for the wise to read. Plato's two longestworks are attempts to construct an ideal society; first, what may becalled a City of Righteousness, in the _Republic_; and afterwards inhis old age, in the _Laws_, something more like a City of Refuge, uncontaminated by the world; a little city on a hill-top away in Crete, remote from commerce and riches and the 'bitter and corrupting sea'which carries them; a city where life shall move in music and disciplineand reverence for the things that are greater than man, and the songsmen sing shall be not common songs but the preambles of the city's laws, showing their purpose and their principle; where no wall will be neededto keep out the possible enemy, because the courage and temperance ofthe citizens will be wall enough, and if war comes the women equallywith the men 'will fight for their young, as birds do'. 

This hope is very like despair; but, such as it is, Plato's thought isalways directed towards the city. No other form of social life evertempts him away, and he anticipates no insuperable difficulty in keepingthe city in the right path if once he can get it started right. Thefirst step, the necessary revolution, is what makes the difficulty. Andhe sees only one way. In real life he had supported the conspiracy ofthe extreme oligarchs in 404 which led to the rule of the 'ThirtyTyrants'; but the experience sickened him of such methods. There was nohope unless, by some lucky combination, a philosopher should become aking or some young king turn philosopher. 'Give me a city governed by atyrant, ' he says in the _Laws_, [84:1] 'and let the tyrant be young, witha good memory, quick at learning, of high courage, and a generousnature. . . . And besides, let him have a wise counsellor!' Ironicalfortune granted him an opportunity to try the experiment himself at thecourt of Syracuse, first with the elder and then, twenty years later, with the younger Dionysius (387 and 367 B. C. ). It is a story ofdisappointment, of course; bitter, humiliating and ludicrousdisappointment, but with a touch of that sublimity which seems so oftento hang about the errors of the wise. One can study them in Seneca atthe court of Nero, or in Turgot with Louis; not so well perhaps inVoltaire with Frederick. Plato failed in his enterprise, but he didkeep faith with the 'Righteous City'. 

Another of the Socratic circle turned in a different direction. Xenophon, an exile from his country, a brilliant soldier and adventureras well as a man of letters, is perhaps the first Greek on record whoopenly lost interest in the city. He thought less about cities andconstitutions than about great men and nations, or generals and armies. To him it was idle to spin cobweb formations of ideal laws andcommunities. Society is right enough if you have a really fine man tolead it. It may be that his ideal was formed in childhood by stories ofPericles and the great age when Athens was 'in name a democracy but intruth an empire of one leading man'. He gave form to his dream in the_Education of Cyrus_, an imaginary account of the training which formedCyrus the Great into an ideal king and soldier. The _Cyropaedeia_ issaid to have been intended as a counterblast to Plato's _Republic_, andit may have provoked Plato's casual remark in the _Laws_ that 'Cyrusnever so much as touched education'. No doubt the book suffered inpersuasiveness from being so obviously fictitious. [85:1] For example, the Cyrus of Xenophon dies peacefully in his bed after much affectionateand edifying advice to his family, whereas all Athens knew fromHerodotus how the real Cyrus had been killed in a war against theMassagetae, and his head, to slake its thirst for that liquid, plungedinto a wineskin full of human blood. Perhaps also the monarchical ruleof Cyrus was too absolute for Greek taste. At any rate, later onXenophon adopted a more real hero, whom he had personally known andadmired. 

Agesilaus, king of Sparta, had been taken as a type of 'virtue' even bythe bitter historian Theopompus. Agesilaus was not only a great general. He knew how to 'honour the gods, do his duty in the field, and topractise obedience'. He was true to friend and foe. On one memorableoccasion he kept his word even to an enemy who had broken his. Heenjoined kindness to enemy captives. When he found small children leftbehind by the barbarians in some town that he occupied--because eithertheir parents or the slave-merchants had no room for them--he alwaystook care of them or gave them to guardians of their own race: 'he neverlet the dogs and wolves get them'. On the other hand, when he sold hisbarbarian prisoners he sent them to market naked, regardless of theirmodesty, because it cheered his own soldiers to see how white and fatthey were. He wept when he won a victory over Greeks; 'for he loved allGreeks and only hated barbarians'. When he returned home after hissuccessful campaigns, he obeyed the orders of the ephors withoutquestion; his house and furniture were as simple as those of a commonman, and his daughter the princess, when she went to and fro to Amyclae, went simply in the public omnibus. He reared chargers and hunting dogs;the rearing of chariot horses he thought effeminate. But he advised hissister Cynisca about hers, and she won the chariot race at Olympia. 'Have a king like that', says Xenophon, 'and all will be well. He willgovern right; he will beat your enemies; and he will set an example ofgood life. If you want Virtue in the state look for it in a good man, not in a speculative tangle of laws. The Spartan constitution, as itstands, is good enough for any one. '

But it was another of the great Socratics who uttered first thecharacteristic message of the fourth century, and met the blows ofFortune with a direct challenge. Antisthenes was a man twenty yearsolder than Plato. He had fought at Tanagra in 426 B. C. He had beenfriends with Gorgias and Prodicus, the great Sophists of the Pericleanage. He seems to have been, at any rate till younger and more brilliantmen cut him out, the recognized philosophic heir of Socrates. [87:1] Andlate in life, after the fall of Athens and the condemnation and death ofhis master, the man underwent a curious change of heart. He is tauntedmore than once with the lateness of his discovery of truth, [87:2] andwith his childish subservience to the old _jeux d'esprit_ of theSceptics which professed to prove the impossibility of knowledge. [87:3]It seems that he had lost faith in speculation and dialectic and theelaborate superstructures which Plato and others had built upon them;and he felt, like many moralists after him, a sort of hostility to allknowledge that was not immediately convertible into conduct. 

But this scepticism was only part of a general disbelief in the world. Greek philosophy had from the first been concerned with a fundamentalquestion which we moderns seldom put clearly to ourselves. It asked'What is the Good?' meaning thereby 'What is the element of value inlife?' or 'What should be our chief aim in living?' A medieval Christianwould have answered without hesitation 'To go to Heaven and not bedamned', and would have been prepared with the necessary prescriptionsfor attaining that end. But the modern world is not intensely enoughconvinced of the reality of Sin and Judgement, Hell and Heaven, toaccept this answer as an authoritative guide in life, and has notclearly thought out any other. The ancient Greek spent a great part ofhis philosophical activity in trying, without propounding supernaturalrewards and punishments, or at least without laying stress on them, tothink out what the Good of man really was. 

The answers given by mankind to this question seem to fall under twomain heads. Before a battle if both parties were asked what aim theywere pursuing, both would say without hesitation 'Victory'. After thebattle, the conqueror would probably say that his purpose was in someway to consolidate or extend his victory; but the beaten party, as soonas he had time to think, would perhaps explain that, after all, victorywas not everything. It was better to have fought for the right, to havedone your best and to have failed, than to revel in the prosperity ofthe unjust. And, since it is difficult to maintain, in the midst of thetriumph of the enemy and your own obvious misery and humiliation, thatall is well and you yourself thoroughly contented, this second answereasily develops a third: 'Wait a little, till God's judgement assertsitself; and see who has the best of it then!' There will be a richreward hereafter for the suffering virtuous. 

The typical Athenian of the Periclean age would have been in the firststate of mind. His 'good' would be in the nature of success: to spreadJustice and Freedom, to make Athens happy and strong and her laws wiseand equal for rich and poor. Antisthenes had fallen violently into thesecond. He was defeated together with all that he most cared for, and hecomforted himself with the thought that nothing matters except to havedone your best. As he phrased it _Aretê is the good_, Aretê meaning'virtue' or 'goodness', the quality of a good citizen, a good father, agood dog, a good sword. 

The things of the world are vanity, and philosophy as vain as the rest. Nothing but goodness is good; and the first step towards attaining it isto repent. 

There was in Athens a gymnasium built for those who were base-born andcould not attend the gymnasia of true citizens. It was called Kynosargesand was dedicated to the great bastard, Heracles. Antisthenes, though hehad moved hitherto in the somewhat patrician circle of the Socratics, remembered how that his mother was a Thracian slave, and set up hisschool in Kynosarges among the disinherited of the earth. He madefriends with the 'bad, ' who needed befriending. He dressed like thepoorest workman. He would accept no disciples except those who couldbear hardship, and was apt to drive new-comers away with his stick. Yethe also preached in the streets, both in Athens and Corinth. He preachedrhetorically, with parables and vivid emotional phrases, compelling theattention of the crowd. His eloquence was held to be bad style, and itstarted the form of literature known to the Cynics as χρεία, 'a help', or διατριβή, 'a study', and by the Christians as ὁμιλία, a 'homily' orsermon. 

This passionate and ascetic old man would have attracted the interest ofthe world even more, had it not been for one of his disciples. This wasa young man from Sinope, on the Euxine, whom he did not take to at firstsight; the son of a disreputable money-changer who had been sent toprison for defacing the coinage. Antisthenes ordered the lad away, buthe paid no attention; he beat him with his stick, but he never moved. Hewanted 'wisdom', and saw that Antisthenes had it to give. His aim inlife was to do as his father had done, to 'deface the coinage', but on amuch larger scale. He would deface all the coinage current in the world. Every conventional stamp was false. The men stamped as generals andkings; the things stamped as honour and wisdom and happiness and riches;all were base metal with lying superscriptions. All must have the stampdefaced. [90:1]

This young man was Diogenes, afterwards the most famous of all theCynics. He started by rejecting all stamps and superscriptions andholding that nothing but _Aretê_, 'worth' or 'goodness', was good. Herejected tradition. He rejected the current religion and the rules andcustoms of temple worship. True religion was a thing of the spirit, andneeded no forms. He despised divination. He rejected civil life andmarriage. He mocked at the general interest in the public games and therespect paid to birth, wealth, or reputation. Let man put aside thesedelusions and know himself. And for his defences let him arm himself'against Fortune with courage, against Convention with Nature, againstpassion with Reason'. For Reason is 'the god within us'. 

The salvation for man was to return to Nature, and Diogenes interpretedthis return in the simplest and crudest way. He should live like thebeasts, like primeval men, like barbarians. Were not the beasts blessed, ῥεῖα ζώοντες like the Gods in Homer? And so, though in less perfection, were primitive men, not vexing their hearts with imaginary sins andconventions. Travellers told of savages who married their sisters, orate human flesh, or left their dead unburied. Why should they not, ifthey wished to? No wonder Zeus punished Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, whohad brought all this progress upon us and left man civilized and moreunhappy than any beast! He deserved his crag and his vulture!

Diogenes took his mission with great earnestness. He was leader in a'great battle against Pleasures and Desires'. He was 'the servant, themessage-bearer, sent by Zeus', 'the Setter-Free of mankind' and the'Healer of passions'. 

The life that he personally meant to live, and which he recommended tothe wise, was what he called τὸν κυνικὸν βίον, 'a dog's life', and hehimself wished to be a 'cynic' or 'canine'. A dog was brave andfaithful; it had no bodily shame, no false theories, and few wants. Adog needed no clothes, no house, no city, no possessions, no titles;what he did need was 'virtue', Aretê, to catch his prey, to fight wildbeasts, and to defend his master; and that he could provide for himself. Diogenes found, of course, that he needed a little more than an ordinarydog; a blanket, a wallet or bowl to hold his food, and a staff a 'tobeat off dogs and bad men'. It was the regular uniform of a beggar. Heasked for no house. There was a huge earthen pitcher--not a tub--outsidethe Temple of the Great Mother; the sort of vessel that was used forburial in primitive Greece and which still had about it the associationsof a coffin. Diogenes slept there when he wanted shelter, and it becamethe nearest approach to a home that he had. Like a dog he performed anybodily act without shame, when and where he chose. He obeyed no humanlaws because he recognized no city. He was _Cosmopolîtes_, Citizen ofthe Universe; all men, and all beasts too, were his brothers. He livedpreaching in the streets and begging his bread; except that he did not'beg', he 'commanded'. Other folk obeyed his commands because they werestill slaves, while he 'had never been a slave again since Antisthenesset him free'. He had no fear, because there was nothing to take fromhim. Only slaves are afraid. 

Greece rang with stories of his mordant wit, and every bitter sayingbecame fathered on Diogenes. Every one knew how Alexander the Great hadcome to see the famous beggar and, standing before him where he sat inthe open air, had asked if there was any boon he could confer on him. 'Yes, move from between me and the sun. ' They knew the king's saying, 'If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes', and the polite answer 'IfI were not Diogenes I would be Alexander'. The Master of the World andthe Rejector of the World met on an equality. People told too how theCynic walked about with a lamp in the daytime searching, so he said, 'for a man'. They knew his scorn of the Mysteries with their doctrine ofexclusive salvation; was a thief to be in bliss because he wasinitiated, while Agesilaus and Epaminondas were in outer darkness? A fewof the stories are more whimsical. A workman carrying a poleaccidentally hit Diogenes and cried 'Look out!' 'Why, ' said he, 'are yougoing to hit me again?'

He had rejected patriotism as he rejected culture. Yet he suffered as hesaw Greece under the Macedonians and Greek liberties disappearing. Whenhis death was approaching some disciple asked his wishes about hisburial; 'Let the dogs and wolves have me, ' he said; 'I should like to beof some use to my brothers when I die. ' When this request was refusedhis thoughts turned again to the Macedonian Wars; 'Bury me facedownwards; everything is soon going to be turned the other way up. '

He remains the permanent and unsurpassed type of one way of grapplingwith the horror of life. Fear nothing, desire nothing, possess nothing:and then Life with all its ingenuity of malice cannot disappoint you. Ifman cannot enter into life nor yet depart from it save through agony andfilth, let him learn to endure the one and be indifferent to the other. The watchdog of Zeus on earth has to fulfil his special duty, to warnmankind of the truth and to set slaves free. Nothing else matters. 

The criticism of this solution is not that it is selfish. It is not. TheCynic lives for the salvation of his fellow creatures. And it is worthremembering that before the Roman gladiatorial games were eventuallystopped by the self-immolation of the monk Telemachus, two Cynicphilosophers had thrown themselves into the arena in the same spirit. Its weakness lies in a false psychology, common to all the world at thattime, which imagined that salvation or freedom consists in livingutterly without desire or fear, that such a life is biologicallypossible, and that Diogenes lived it. To a subtler critic it is obviousthat Diogenes was a man of very strong and successful ambitions, thoughhis ambitions were different from those of most men. He solved theproblem of his own life by following with all the force and courage ofhis genius a line of conduct which made him, next to Alexander, the mostfamous man in Greece. To be really without fear or desire would meandeath, and to die is not to solve the riddle of living. 

The difference between the Cynic view of life and that of Plato's_Republic_ is interesting. Plato also rejected the most fundamentalconventions of existing society, the accepted methods of government, thelaws of property and of marriage, the traditional religion and even thepoetry which was a second religion to the Greeks. But he rejected theexisting culture only because he wanted it to be better. He condemnedthe concrete existing city in order to build a more perfect city, toproceed in infinite searching and longing towards the Idea of Good, theSun of the spiritual universe. Diogenes rejected the civilization whichhe saw, and admitted the reality of no other. His crude realisticattitude of mind had no use for Plato's 'Ideas'. 'I can see a table, ' hesaid; 'I cannot see Tabularity' (τραπεζότης). 'I know Athens and Corinthand other cities, and can see that they are all bad. As for the IdealSociety, show it me and I will say what I think. '

In spite of its false psychology the Cynic conception of life had agreat effect in Greece. It came almost as a revelation to both men andwomen[95:1] and profoundly influenced all the Schools. Here indeed, itseemed, was a way to baffle Fortune and to make one's own soul unafraid. What men wanted was τὸ θαρρεῖν 'to be of good cheer'; as we say now, toregain their _morale_ after bewildering defeats. The Cynic answer, afterwards corrected and humanized by the Stoics, was to look at life asa long and arduous campaign. The loyal soldier does not trouble abouthis comfort or his rewards or his pleasures. He obeys his commander'sorders without fear or failing, whether they lead to easy victories ormerely to wounds, captivity or death. Only Goodness is good, and for thesoldier Goodness (ἀρετή) is the doing of Duty. That is his true prize, which no external power can take away from him. 

But after all, what is Duty? Diogenes preached 'virtue' and assumed thathis way of life was 'virtue'. But was it really so? And, if so, on whatevidence? To live like a beast, to be indifferent to art, beauty, letters, science, philosophy, to the amenities of civic life, to allthat raised Hellenic Man above the beast or the savage? How could thisbe the true end of man? The Stoic School, whose founder, Zeno, was adisciple of old Antisthenes, gradually built up a theory of moral lifewhich has on the whole weathered the storms of time with great success. It largely dominated later antiquity by its imaginative and emotionalpower. It gave form to the aspirations of early Christianity. It lastsnow as the nearest approach to an acceptable system of conduct for thosewho do not accept revelation, but still keep some faith in the Purposeof Things. 

The problem is to combine the absolute value of that Goodness which, aswe say, 'saves the soul' with the relative values of the various goodthings that soothe or beautify life. For, if there is any value atall--I will not say in health and happiness, but in art, poetry, knowledge, refinement, public esteem, or human affection, and if theirclaims do clash, as in common opinion they sometimes do, with thedemands of absolute sanctity, how is the balance to be struck? Are we tobe content with the principle of accepting a little moral wrong for thesake of much material or artistic or intellectual advantage? That is therule which the practical world follows, though without talking aboutit; but the Stoics would have none of any such compromise. 

Zeno first, like Antisthenes, denied any value whatever to these earthlythings that are not virtue--to health or sickness, riches or poverty, beauty or ugliness, pain or pleasure; who would ever mention them whenthe soul stood naked before God? All that would then matter, andconsequently all that can ever matter, is the goodness of the man'sself, that is, of his free and living will. The Stoics improved on themilitary metaphor; for to the soldier, after all, it does matter whetherin his part of the field he wins or loses. Life is not like a battle butlike a play, in which God has handed each man his part unread, and thegood man proceeds to act it to the best of his power, not knowing whatmay happen in the last scene. He may become a crowned king, he may be aslave dying in torment. What matters it? The good actor can play eitherpart. All that matters is that he shall act his best, accept the orderof the Cosmos and obey the Purpose of the great Dramaturge. 

The answer seems absolute and unyielding, with no concession to theweakness of the flesh. Yet, in truth, it contains in itself the germ ofa sublime practical compromise which makes Stoicism human. It acceptsthe Cosmos and it obeys the Purpose; therefore there is a Cosmos, andthere is a purpose in the world. Stoicism, like much of ancient thoughtat this period, was permeated by the new discoveries of astronomy andtheir formation into a coherent scientific system, which remainedunshaken till the days of Copernicus. The stars, which had always movedmen's wonder and even worship, were now seen and proved to be nowandering fires but parts of an immense and apparently eternal order. One star might differ from another star in glory, but they were allalike in their obedience to law. They had their fixed courses, divinethough they were, which had been laid down for them by a Being greaterthan they. The Order, or Cosmos, was a proven fact; therefore, thePurpose was a proven fact; and, though in its completeness inscrutable, it could at least in part be divined from the fact that all these variedand eternal splendours had for their centre our Earth and its ephemeralmaster. The Purpose, though it is not our Purpose, is especiallyconcerned with us and circles round us. It is the purpose of a God wholoves Man. 

Let us forget that this system of astronomy has been overthrown, andthat we now know that Man is not the centre of the universe. Let usforget that the majestic order which reigns, or seems to reign, amongthe stars, is matched by a brutal conflict and a chaos of jarringpurposes in the realms of those sciences which deal with life. [98:1] Ifwe can recover the imaginative outlook of the generations whichstretched from, say, Meton in the fifth century before Christ toCopernicus in the sixteenth after, we shall be able to understand thespiritual exaltation with which men like Zeno or Poseidonius regardedthe world. 

We are part of an Order, a Cosmos, which we see to be infinitely aboveour comprehension but which we know to be an expression of love for Man;what can we do but accept it, not with resignation but with enthusiasm, and offer to it with pride any sacrifice which it may demand of us. Itis a glory to suffer for such an end. 

And there is more. For the Stars show only what may be called astationary purpose, an Order which is and remains for ever. But in therest of the world, we can see a moving Purpose. It is Phusis, the wordwhich the Romans unfortunately translated 'Natura', but which means'Growing' or 'the way things grow'--almost what we call Evolution. Butto the Stoic it is a living and conscious evolution, a forethoughtor Πρόνοια in the mind of God, what the Romans called _providentia_, guiding all things that grow in a direction which accords with thedivine will. And the direction, the Stoic pointed out, was not towardsmere happiness but towards _Aretê_, or the perfection of each thing oreach species after its kind. _Phusis_ shapes the acorn to grow into theperfect oak, the blind puppy into the good hound; it makes the deer growin swiftness to perform the function of a deer, and man grow in powerand wisdom to perform the function of a man. If a man is an artist it ishis function to produce beauty; if he a governor, it is his function toproduce a flourishing and virtuous city. True, the things that heproduces are but shadows and in themselves utterly valueless; it mattersnot one straw whether the deer goes at ten miles an hour or twenty, whether the population of a city die this year of famine and sickness ortwenty years hence of old age. But it belongs to the good governor toavert famine and to produce healthy conditions, as it belongs to thedeer to run its best. So it is the part of a friend, if need arise, togive his comfort or his life for a friend; of a mother to love anddefend her children; though it is true that in the light of eternitythese 'creaturely' affections shrivel into their native worthlessness. If the will of God is done, and done willingly, all is well. You may, ifit brings you great suffering, feel the pain. You may even, throughhuman weakness, weep or groan; that can be forgiven. Ἔσωθεν μέντοι μὴστενάξης, 'But in the centre of your being groan not!' Accept the Cosmos. Will joyously that which God wills and make the eternal Purpose yourown. 

I will say no more of this great body of teaching, as I have dealt withit in a separate publication. [100:1] But I would point out two specialadvantages of a psychological kind which distinguish Stoicism from manysystems of philosophy. First, though it never consciously faced thepsychological problem of instinct, it did see clearly that man does notnecessarily pursue what pleases him most, or what is most profitable tohim, or even his 'good'. It saw that man can determine his end, and maywell choose pain in preference to pleasure. This saved the school from agreat deal of that false schematization which besets most forms ofrationalistic psychology. Secondly, it did build up a system of thoughton which, both in good days and evil, a life can be lived which is notonly saintly, but practically wise and human and beneficent. It did forpractical purposes solve the problem of living, without despair andwithout grave, or at least without gross, illusion. 

The other great school of the fourth century, a school which, in thematter of ethics, may be called the only true rival of Stoicism, wasalso rooted in defeat. But it met defeat in a different spirit. [101:1]Epicurus, son of Neocles, of the old Athenian clan of the Philaïdae, wasborn on a colony in Samos in 341 B. C. His father was evidently poor;else he would hardly have left Athens to live on a colonial farm, norhave had to eke out his farming by teaching an elementary school. We donot know how much the small boy learned from his father. But for olderstudents there was a famous school on the neighbouring island of Teos, where a certain Nausiphanes taught the Ionian tradition of Mathematicsand Physics as well as rhetoric and literary subjects. Epicurus went tothis school when he was fourteen, and seems, among other things, to haveimbibed the Atomic Theory of Democritus without realizing that it wasanything peculiar. He felt afterwards as if his school-days had beenmerely a waste of time. At the age of eighteen he went to Athens, thecentre of the philosophic world, but he only went, as Athenian citizenswere in duty bound, to perform his year of military service as_ephêbus_. Study was to come later. The next year, however, 322, Perdiccas of Thrace made an attack on Samos and drove out the Atheniancolonists. Neocles had by then lived on his bit of land for thirtyyears, and was old to begin life again. The ruined family took refuge inColophon, and there Epicurus joined them. They were now too poor for theboy to go abroad to study philosophy. He could only make the best of ahard time and puzzle alone over the problems of life. 

Recent years have taught us that there are few forms of misery harderthan that endured by a family of refugees, and it is not likely to havebeen easier in ancient conditions. Epicurus built up his philosophy, itwould seem, while helping his parents and brothers through this badtime. The problem was how to make the life of their little colonytolerable, and he somehow solved it. It was not the kind of problemwhich Stoicism and the great religions specially set themselves; it wasat once too unpretending and too practical. One can easily imagine thecondition for which he had to prescribe. For one thing, the unfortunaterefugees all about him would torment themselves with unnecessaryterrors. The Thracians were pursuing them. The Gods hated them; theymust obviously have committed some offence or impiety. (It is alwayseasy for disheartened men to discover in themselves some sin thatdeserves punishment. ) It would surely be better to die at once; exceptthat, with that sin upon them, they would only suffer more dreadfullybeyond the grave! In their distress they jarred, doubtless, on oneanother's nerves; and mutual bitterness doubled their miseries. 

Epicurus is said to have had poor health, and the situation was onewhere even the best health would be sorely tried. But he had superhumancourage, and--what does not always go with such courage--a veryaffectionate and gentle nature. In later life all his three brotherswere his devoted disciples--a testimonial accorded to few prophets orfounders of religions. And he is the first man in the record of Europeanhistory whose mother was an important element in his life. Some of hisletters to her have been preserved, and show a touch of intimateaffection which of course must have existed between human beings fromthe remotest times, but of which we possess no earlier record. Andfragments of his letters to his friends strike the same note. [103:1]

His first discovery was that men torture themselves with unnecessaryfears. He must teach them courage, θαρρεῖν ἀρὸ τῶν θεῶν, θαρρεῖν ἀρὸἀνθρώπων, to fear no evil from either man or God. God is a blessedbeing; and no blessed being either suffers evil or inflicts evil onothers. And as for men, most of the evils you fear from them can beavoided by Justice; and if they do come, they can be borne. Death islike sleep, an unconscious state, nowise to be feared. Pain when itcomes can be endured; it is the anticipation that makes men miserableand saps their courage. The refugees were forgotten by the world, andhad no hope of any great change in their condition. Well, he argued, somuch the better! Let them till the earth and love one another, and theywould find that they had already in them that Natural Happiness which isman's possession until he throws it away. And of all things thatcontribute to happiness the greatest is Affection, φιλία. 

Like the Cynics and Stoics, he rejected the world and all itsconventions and prizes, its desires and passions and futility. But wherethe Stoic and Cynic proclaimed that in spite of all the pain andsuffering of a wicked world, man can by the force of his own will bevirtuous, Epicurus brought the more surprising good news that man canafter all be happy. 

But to make this good news credible he had to construct a system ofthought. He had to answer the temple authorities and their adherentsamong the vulgar, who threatened his followers with the torments ofHades for their impiety. He had to answer the Stoics and Cynics, preaching that all is worthless except Aretê; and the Sceptics, whodwelt on the fallibility of the senses, and the logical impossibility ofknowledge. 

He met the last of these by the traditional Ionian doctrine ofsense-impressions, ingeniously developed. We can, he argued, know theouter world, because our sense impressions are literally 'impressions'or stamps made by external objects upon our organs. To see, forinstance, is to be struck by an infinitely tenuous stream of images, flowing from the object and directly impinging upon the retina. Suchstreams are flowing from all objects in every direction--an idea whichseemed incredible until the modern discoveries about light, sound, andradiation. Thus there is direct contact with reality, and consequentlyknowledge. Besides direct vision, however, we have 'anticipations', orπρολήψεις, sometimes called 'common conceptions', e. G. The generalconception which we have of a horse when we are not seeing one. Theseare merely the result of repeated acts of vision. A curious result ofthis doctrine was that all our 'anticipations' or 'common ideas' aretrue; mistakes occur through some interpretation of our own which we addto the simple sensation. 

We can know the world. How then are we to understand it? Here againEpicurus found refuge in the old Ionian theory of Atoms and the Void, which is supposed to have originated with Democritus and Leucippus, acentury before. But Epicurus seems to have worked out the Atomic Theorymore in detail, as we have it expounded in Lucretius' magnificent poem. In particular it was possibly he who first combined the Atomic Theorywith hylozoism; i. E. He conceived of the Atoms as possessing somerudimentary power of movement and therefore able to swerve slightly intheir regular downward course. That explains how they have becomeinfinitely tangled and mingled, how plants and animals are alive, andhow men have Free Will. It also enables Epicurus to build up a worldwithout the assistance of a god. He set man free, as Lucretius says, from the 'burden of Religion', though his doctrine of the 'blessedBeing' which neither has pain nor gives pain, enables him to elude thedangerous accusation of atheism. He can leave people believing in alltheir traditional gods, including even, if so they wish, 'the beardedZeus and the helmed Athena' which they see in dreams and in their'common ideas', while at the same time having no fear of them. 

There remains the foolish fancy of the Cynics and Stoics that 'Aretê'is the only good. Of course, he answers, Aretê is good; but that isbecause it produces happy life, or blessedness or pleasure or whateveryou call it. He used normally the word ἡδονή 'sweetness', and countedthe Good as that which makes life sweet. He seems never to have enteredinto small disputes as to the difference between 'sweetness', or'pleasure', and 'happiness' and 'well-being' (ἡδονή, εὐδαιμονία, εὐεστώ, κτλ. ), though sometimes, instead of 'sweetness' he spoke of'blessedness' (μακαριότης). Ultimately the dispute between him and theStoics seems to resolve itself into a question whether the Good lies inπάσχειν or ποιεῖν, in Experience or in Action; and average human beingsseem generally to think that the Good for a conscious being must besomething of which he is conscious. 

Thus the great system is built, simple, intelligible, dogmatic, and--assuch systems go--remarkably water-tight. It enables man to be unafraid, and it helps him to be happy. The strange thing is that, although onmore than one point it seems to anticipate most surprisingly thediscoveries of modern science, it was accepted in a spirit morereligious than scientific. As we can see from Lucretius it was takenalmost as a revelation, from one who had saved mankind; whose intellecthad pierced beyond the 'flaming walls of Heaven' and brought back to manthe gospel of an intelligible universe. [106:1]

In 310 B. C. , when Epicurus was thirty-two, things had so far improvedthat he left Colophon and set up a school of philosophy in Mytilene, butsoon moved to Lampsacus, on the Sea of Marmora, where he had friends. Disciples gathered about him. Among them were some of the leading men ofthe city, like Leonteus and Idomeneus. The doctrine thrilled them andseemed to bring freedom with it. They felt that such a teacher must beset up in Athens, the home of the great philosophers. They bought bysubscription a house and garden in Athens for 80 minae (about£320)[107:1] and presented it to the Master. He crossed to Athens in 306and, though he four times revisited Lampsacus and has left lettersaddressed _To Friends in Lampsacus_, he lived in the famous Garden forthe rest of his life. 

Friends from Lampsacus and elsewhere came and lived with him or nearhim. The Garden was not only a philosophical school; it was also a sortof retreat or religious community. There lived there not onlyphilosophers like Mêtrodôrus, Colôtes, Hermarchus, and others; therewere slaves, like Mys, and free women, like Themista, the wife ofLeonteus, to both of whom the Master, as the extant fragments testify, wrote letters of intimate friendship. And not only free women, but womenwith names that show that they were slaves, Leontion, Nikidion, Mammarion. They were _hetairae_; perhaps victims of war, like many ofthe unfortunate heroines in the New Comedy; free women from conqueredcities, who had been sold in the slave market or reduced to misery asrefugees, and to whom now the Garden afforded a true and spiritualrefuge. For, almost as much as Diogenes, Epicurus had obliterated thestamp on the conventional currency. The values of the world no longerheld good after you had passed the wicket gate of the Garden, and spokenwith the Deliverer. 

The Epicureans lived simply. They took neither flesh nor wine, and thereis a letter extant, asking some one to send them a present of 'pottedcheese'[108:1] as a special luxury. Their enemies, who were numerous andlively, make the obvious accusations about the hetairae, and cite analleged letter of the Master to Leontion. 'Lord Paean, my dear littleLeontion, your note fills me with such a bubble of excitement!'[108:2]The problem of this letter well illustrates the difficulty of formingclear judgements about the details of ancient life. Probably the letteris a forgery: we are definitely informed that there was a collection ofsuch forgeries, made in order to damage Epicurus. But, if genuine, wouldit have seemed to a fair-minded contemporary a permissible or animpermissible letter for a philosopher to write? By modern standards itwould be about the border-line. And again, suppose it is a definitelove-letter, what means have we of deciding whether Epicurus--or forthat matter Zeno or Plato or any unconventional philosopher of thisperiod--would have thought it blameworthy, or would merely have calledour attention to the legal difficulties of contracting marriage with onewho had been a Hetaira, and asked us how we expect men and women tolive. Curiously enough, we happen to have the recorded sayings ofEpicurus himself: 'The wise man will not fall in love', and 'Physicalunion of the sexes never did good; it is much if it does not do harm. '

This philosophy is often unjustly criticized. It is called selfish; butthat it is certainly not. It is always aiming at the deliverance ofmankind[109:1] and it bases its happiness on φιλία, Friendship orAffection, just as the early Christians based it on ἀγάπη, a word nowhit stronger than φιλία, though it is conventionally translated'Love'. By this conception it becomes at once more human than the Stoa, to which, as to a Christian monk, human affection was merely a weaknessof the flesh which might often conflict with the soul's duty towardsGod. Epicurus passionately protested against this unnatural 'apathy'. Itwas also human in that it recognized degrees of good or bad, of virtueor error. To the Stoic that which was not right was wrong. A calculatorwho says that seven sevens make forty-eight is just as wrong as one whosays they make a thousand, and a sailor one inch below the surface ofthe water drowns just as surely as one who is a furlong deep. Just so inhuman life, wrong is wrong, falsehood is falsehood, and to talk ofdegrees is childish. Epicureanism had an easy and natural answer tothese arguments, since pleasure and pain obviously admit ofdegrees. [110:1]

The school is blamed also for pursuing pleasure, on the ground that thedirect pursuit of pleasure is self-defeating. But Epicurus never makesthat mistake. He says that pleasure, or 'sweetness of life', is thegood; but he never counsels the direct pursuit of it. Quite the reverse. He says that if you conquer your desires and fears, and live simply andlove those about you, the natural sweetness of life will reveal itself. 

A truer criticism is one which appears dimly in Plutarch andCicero. [110:2] There is a strange shadow of sadness hanging over thiswise and kindly faith, which proceeds from the essential distrust oflife that lies at its heart. The best that Epicurus has really to say ofthe world is that if you are very wise and do not attract itsnotice--Λάθε βιώσας--it will not hurt you. It is a philosophy not ofconquest but of escape. This was a weakness from which few of thefourth-century thinkers completely escaped. To aim at what we shouldcall positive happiness was, to the Epicureans, only to courtdisappointment; better make it your aim to live without strongpassion or desire, without high hopes or ambitions. Their professedideals--παντὸς τοῦ ἀλγοῦντος ὑπεξαίρεσις, ἀταραξία, εὕροια, 'the removal of allactive suffering', 'undisturbedness', 'a smooth flow'--seem to result inrather a low tension, in a life that is only half alive. We know that, as a matter of fact, this was not so. The Epicureans felt their doctrineto bring not mere comfort but inspiration and blessedness. The youngColotes, on first hearing the master speak, fell on his knees with tearsand hailed him as a god. [111:1] We may compare the rapturous phrases ofLucretius. What can be the explanation of this?

Perhaps it is that a deep distrust of the world produces its own inwardreaction, as starving men dream of rich banquets, and persecuted sectshave apocalyptic visions of paradise. The hopes and desires that arestarved of their natural sustenance project themselves on to some planeof the imagination. The martyr, even the most heretical martyr, sees thevision of his crown in the skies, the lover sees in obvious defects onlyrare and esoteric beauties. Epicurus avoided sedulously thetranscendental optimism of the Stoics. He avoided mysticism, avoidedallegory, avoided faith; he tried to set the feet of his philosophy onsolid ground. He can make a strong case for the probable happiness of aman of kindly affections and few desires, who asks little from theoutside world. But after all it is only probable; misfortunes andmiseries may come to any man. 'Most of the evils you fear are false, ' heanswers, still reasonably. 'Death does not hurt. Poverty need nevermake a man less happy. ' And actual pain? 'Yes, pain may come. But youcan endure it. Intense pains are brief; long-drawn pains are notexcruciating; or seldom so. ' Is that common-sense comfort not enough?The doctrine becomes more intense both in its promises and its demands. If intense suffering comes, he enjoins, turn away your mind and conquerthe pain by the 'sweetness' of memory. There are in every wise man'slife moments of intense beauty and delight; if he has strength of mindhe will call them back to him at will and live in the blessedness of thepast, not in the mere dull agony of the moment. Nay, can he not actuallyenjoy the intellectual interest of this or that pang? Has he not thatwithin him which can make the quality of its own life? On hearing of thedeath of a friend he will call back the sweetness of that friend'sconverse; in the burning Bull of Phalaris he will think his thoughts andbe glad. Illusion, the old Siren with whom man cannot live in peace, noryet without her, has crept back unseen to the centre of the citadel. Itwas Epicurus, and not a Stoic or Cynic, who asserts that a Wise Man willbe happy on the rack. [112:1]

Strangely obliging, ironic Fortune gave to him also a chance of testingof his own doctrine. There is extant a letter written on his death-bed. 'I write to you on this blissful day which is the last of my life. Theobstruction of my bladder and internal pains have reached the extremepoint, but there is marshalled against them the delight of my mind inthinking over our talks together. Take care of the children ofMetrodorus in a way worthy of your life-long devotion to me and tophilosophy. '[113:1] At least his courage, and his kindness, did notfail. 

Epicureanism had certainly its sublime side; and from this verysublimity perhaps arose the greatest flaw in the system, regarded as arational philosophy. It was accepted too much as a Revelation, toolittle as a mere step in the search for truth. It was based no doubt oncareful and even profound scientific studies, and was expounded by themaster in a vast array of volumes. But the result so attained wasconsidered sufficient. Further research was not encouraged. Heterodoxywas condemned as something almost approaching 'parricide'. [113:2] Thepursuit of 'needless knowledge' was deliberately frowned upon. [113:3]When other philosophers were working out calculations about the size ofthe Sun and the commensurability of the sun-cycle and the moon-cycle, Epicurus contemptuously remarked that the Sun was probably about as bigas it looked, or perhaps smaller: since fires at a distance generallylook bigger than they are. The various theories of learned men were allpossible but none certain. And as for the cycles, how did any one knowthat there was not a new sun shot off and extinguished every day?[113:4]It is not surprising to find that none of the great discoveries of theHellenistic Age were due to the Epicurean school. Lucretius, writing 250years later, appears to vary hardly in any detail from the doctrines ofthe Master, and Diogenes of Oenoanda, 500 years later, actually repeatshis letters and sayings word for word. 

It is sad, this. It is un-Hellenic; it is a clear symptom of decadencefrom the free intellectual movement and the high hopes which had madethe fifth century glorious. Only in one great school does the trueHellenic _Sôphrosynê_ continue flourishing, a school whose modesty ofpretension and quietness of language form a curious contrast with therapt ecstasies of Stoic and Cynic and even, as we have seen, ofEpicurean, just as its immense richness of scientific achievementcontrasts with their comparative sterility. The Porch and the Gardenoffered new religions to raise from the dust men and women whose spiritswere broken; Aristotle in his Open Walk, or _Peripatos_, broughtphilosophy and science and literature to guide the feet and interest theminds of those who still saw life steadily and tried their best to seeit whole. 

Aristotle was not lacking in religious insight and imagination, as hecertainly was not without profound influence on the future history ofreligion. His complete rejection of mythology and of anthropomorphism;his resolute attempt to combine religion and science, not by sacrificingone to the other but by building the highest spiritual aspirations onascertained truth and the probable conclusions to which it pointed; hissplendid imaginative conception of the Divine Being or First Cause asunmoved itself while moving all the universe 'as the beloved moves thelover'; all these are high services to religious speculation, andjustify the position he held, even when known only through a distortingArabic translation, in medieval Christianity. If he had not written hisother books he might well be famous now as a great religious teacher. But his theology is dwarfed by the magnificence and mass of his otherwork. And as a philosopher and man of science he does not belong to ourpresent subject. 

He is only mentioned here as a standard of that characteristic qualityin Hellenism from which the rest of this book records a downfall. Onevariant of a well-known story tells how a certain philosopher, afterfrequenting the Peripatetic School, went to hear Chrysippus, the Stoic, and was transfixed. 'It was like turning from men to Gods. ' It wasreally turning from Greeks to Semites, from philosophy to religion, froma school of very sober professions and high performance to one whoseprofessions dazzled the reason. 'Come unto me, ' cried the Stoic, 'all yewho are in storm or delusion; I will show you the truth and the worldwill never grieve you more. '

Aristotle made no such profession. He merely thought and worked andtaught better than other men. Aristotle is always surprising us notmerely by the immense volume of clear thinking and co-ordinatedknowledge of which he was master, but by the steady _Sôphrosynê_ of histemper. Son of the court physician of Philip, tutor for some years toAlexander the Great, he never throughout his extant writings utters onesyllable of flattery to his royal and world-conquering employers; noryet one syllable which suggests a grievance. He saw, at close quartersand from the winning side, the conquest of the Greek city states by theMacedonian _ethnos_ or nation; but he judges dispassionately that thecity is the higher social form. 

It seems characteristic that in his will, which is extant, afterproviding a dowry for his widow, Herpyllis, to facilitate her getting asecond husband, and thanking her for her goodness to him, he directsthat his bones are to be laid in the same grave with those of his firstwife, Pythias, whom he had rescued from robbers more than twenty yearsbefore. [116:1]

Other philosophers disliked him because he wore no long beard, dressedneatly and had good normal manners, and they despised his philosophy forvery similar reasons. It was a school which took the existing world andtried to understand it instead of inventing some intense ecstaticdoctrine which should transform it or reduce it to nothingness. 

It possessed no Open Sesame to unlock the prison of mankind; yet it isnot haunted by that _Oimôgê_ of Kynoskephalai. While armies sweep Greecethis way and that, while the old gods are vanquished and the cities losetheir freedom and their meaning, the Peripatetics instead ofpassionately saving souls diligently pursued knowledge, and ingeneration after generation produced scientific results which put alltheir rivals into the shade. [116:2] In mathematics, astronomy, physics, botany, zoology, and biology, as well as the human sciences ofliterature and history, the Hellenistic Age was one of the most creativeknown to our record. And it is not only that among the savantsresponsible for these advances the proportion of Peripatetics isoverwhelming; one may also notice that in this school alone it isassumed as natural that further research will take place and willprobably correct as well as increase our knowledge, and that, when suchcorrections or differences of opinion do take place, there is no cryraised of Heresy. 

It is the old difference between Philosophy and Religion, between thesearch of the intellect for truth and the cry of the heart forsalvation. As the interest in truth for its own sake gradually abated inthe ancient world, the works of Aristotle might still find commentators, but his example was forgotten and his influence confined to a smallcircle. The Porch and the Garden, for the most part, divided betweenthem the allegiance of thoughtful men. Both systems had begun in days ofdiscomfiture, and aimed originally more at providing a refuge for thesoul than at ordering the course of society. But after the turmoil ofthe fourth century had subsided, when governments began again toapproach more nearly to peace and consequently to justice, and publiclife once more to be attractive to decent men, both philosophies showedthemselves adaptable to the needs of prosperity as well as adversity. Many kings and great Roman governors professed Stoicism. It held beforethem the ideal of universal Brotherhood, and of duty to the 'GreatSociety of Gods and Men'; it enabled them to work, indifferent to merepain and pleasure, as servants of the divine purpose and 'fellow-workerswith God' in building up a human Cosmos within the eternal Cosmos. Itis perhaps at first sight strange that many kings and governors alsofollowed Epicurus. Yet after all the work of a public man is nothindered by a slight irony as to the value of worldly greatness and aconviction that a dinner of bread and water with love to season it 'isbetter than all the crowns of the Greeks'. To hate cruelty andsuperstition, to avoid passion and luxury, to regard human 'pleasure' or'sweetness of life' as the goal to be aimed at, and 'friendship' or'kindliness' as the principal element in that pleasure, are by no meansdoctrines incompatible with wise and effective administration. Bothsystems were good and both in a way complementary one to another. Theystill divide between them the practical philosophy of western mankind. At times to most of us it seems as though nothing in life had valueexcept to do right and to fear not; at others that the only true aim isto make mankind happy. At times man's best hope seems to lie in thatpart of him which is prepared to defy or condemn the world of fact if itdiverges from the ideal; in that intensity of reverence which willaccept many impossibilities rather than ever reject a holy thing; aboveall in that uncompromising moral sensitiveness to which not merely thecorruptions of society but the fundamental and necessary facts of animalexistence seem both nauseous and wicked, links and chains in a systemwhich can never be the true home of the human spirit. At other times menfeel the need to adapt their beliefs and actions to the world as it is;to brush themselves free from cobwebs; to face plain facts with commonsense and as much kindliness as life permits, meeting the ordinary needsof a perishable and imperfect species without illusion and withoutmake-believe. At one time we are Stoics, at another Epicureans. 

But amid their differences there is one faith which was held by bothschools in common. It is the great characteristic faith of the ancientworld, revealing itself in many divergent guises and seldom fullyintelligible to modern men; faith in the absolute supremacy of theinward life over things external. These men really believed that wisdomis more precious than jewels, that poverty and ill health are things ofno import, that the good man is happy whatever befall him, and all therest. And in generation after generation many of the ablest men, andwomen also, acted upon the belief. They lived by free choice lives whosesimplicity and privation would horrify a modern labourer, and the worldabout them seems to have respected rather than despised their poverty. To the Middle Age, with its monks and mendicants expectant of reward inheaven, such an attitude, except for its disinterestedness, would beeasily understood. To some eastern nations, with their cults ofasceticism and contemplation, the same doctrines have appealed almostlike a physical passion or a dangerous drug running riot in their veins. But modern western man cannot believe them, nor believe seriously thatothers believe them. On us the power of the material world has, throughour very mastery of it and the dependence which results from thatmastery, both inwardly and outwardly increased its hold. _Capta ferumvictorem cepit. _ We have taken possession of it, and now we cannot movewithout it. 

The material element in modern life is far greater than in ancient; butit does not follow that the spiritual element is correspondingly less. No doubt it is true that a naval officer in a conning-tower in a modernbattle does not need less courage and character than a naked savage whomeets his enemy with a stick and a spear. Yet probably in the first casethe battle is mainly decided by the weight and accuracy of the guns, inthe second by the qualities of the fighter. Consequently the modernworld thinks more incessantly and anxiously about the guns, that is, about money and mechanism; the ancient devotes its thought more to humancharacter and duty. And it is curious to observe how, in general, eachtries to remedy what is wrong with the world by the method that ishabitually in its thoughts. Speaking broadly, apart from certainreligious movements, the enlightened modern reformer, if confronted withsome ordinary complex of misery and wickedness, instinctively proposesto cure it by higher wages, better food, more comfort and leisure; tomake people comfortable and trust to their becoming good. The typicalancient reformer would appeal to us to care for none of those things(since riches notoriously do not make men virtuous), but with all ourpowers to pursue wisdom or righteousness and the life of the spirit; tobe good men, as we can be if we will, and to know that all else willfollow. 

This is one of the regions in which the ancients might have learned muchfrom us, and in which we still have much to learn from them, if once wecan shake off our temporal obsessions and listen. 

NOTE

As an example it is worth noticing, even in a bare catalogue, the workdone by one of Aristotle's own pupils, a Peripatetic of the secondrank, Dicaearchus of Messene. His _floruit_ is given as 310 B. C. Dorianby birth, when Theophrastus was made head of the school he retired tothe Peloponnese, and shows a certain prejudice against Athens. 

One of the discoveries of the time was biography. And, by a brilliantstroke of imagination Dicaearchus termed one of his books Βίος Ἑλλαδος, _The Life of Hellas_. He saw civilization as the biography of the world. First, the Age of Cronos, when man as a simple savage made no effortafter higher things; next, the ancient river-civilizations of theorient; third, the Hellenic system. Among his scanty fragments we findnotes on such ideas as πάτρα, φρατρία, φυλή, as Greek institutions. The_Life of Hellas_ was much used by late writers. It formed the model foranother Βίος Ἑλλαδος by a certain Jason, and for Varro's _Vita PopuliRomani_. 

Then, like his great master, Dicaearchus made studies of theConstitutions of various states (e. G. Pellene, Athens, and Corinth);his treatise on the Constitution of Sparta was read aloud annually inthat city by order of the Ephors. It was evidently appreciative. 

A more speculative work was his _Tripoliticus_, arguing that the bestconstitution ought to be compounded of the three species, monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic, as in Sparta. Only then would it be sureto last. Polybius accepted the principle of the Mixed Constitution, butfound his ideal in the constitution of Rome, which later history was toprove so violently unstable. Cicero, _De Republica_, takes the same line(Polyb. Vi. 2-10; Cic. _De Rep. _ i. 45; ii. 65). Dicaearchus treated ofsimilar political subjects in his public addresses at Olympia and at thePanathenaea. 

We hear more about his work on the history of literature, though hisgeneration was almost the first to realize that such a subject had anyexistence. He wrote _Lives of Philosophers_--a subject hitherto notconsidered worth recording--giving the biographical facts followed byphilosophic and aesthetic criticism. We hear, for example, of his lifeof Plato; of Pythagoras (in which he laid emphasis on the philosopher'spractical work), of Xenophanes, and of the Seven Wise Men. 

He also wrote _Lives of Poets_. We hear of books on Alcaeus and onHomer, in which latter he is said to have made the startling remark thatthe poems 'should be pronounced in the Aeolic dialect'. Whatever thisremark exactly meant, and we cannot tell without the context, it seemsan extraordinary anticipation of modern philological discoveries. Hewrote on the _Hypotheses_--i. E. The subject matter--_of Sophocles andEuripides_; also on _Musical Contests_, περὶ Μουσικῶν ἀγώνων, carryingfurther Aristotle's own collection of the _Didascaliae_, or officialnotices of the production of Tragedies in Athens. The book dealt bothwith dates and with customs; it told how Skolia were sung, with alaurel or myrtle twig in the hand, how Sophocles introduced a thirdactor, and the like. 

In philosophy proper he wrote On the Soul, περὶ ψυχῆς. His first book, the _Corinthiacus_, proved that the Soul was a 'harmony' or 'rightblending' of the four elements, and was identical with the force of theliving body. The second, the _Lesbiacus_, drew the conclusion that, if acompound, it was destructible. (Hence a great controversy with hismaster. )

He wrote περὶ φθορᾶς ἀνθρώπων, on the _Perishing of Mankind_; i. E. Onthe way in which large masses of men have perished off the earth, through famine, pestilence, wild beasts, war, and the like. He decidesthat man's most destructive enemy is Man. (The subject may have beensuggested to him by a fine imaginative passage in Aristotle's_Meteorology_ (i. 14, 7) dealing with the vast changes that have takenplace on the earth's surface and the unrecorded perishings of races andcommunities. )

He wrote a treatise against _Divination_, and a (satirical?) _Descent tothe Cave of Trophonius_. He seems, however, to have allowed someimportance to dreams and to the phenomena of 'possession'. 

And, with all this, we have not touched on his greatest work, which wasin the sphere of geography. He wrote a Περίοδος γῆς, a _Journey Roundthe Earth_, accompanied with a map. He used for this map the greatlyincreased stores of knowledge gained by the Macedonian expeditions overall Asia as far as the Ganges. He also seems to have devised the methodof denoting the position of a place by means of two co-ordinates, themethod soon after developed by Eratosthenes into Latitude and Longitude. He attempted calculations of the measurements of large geographicdistances, for which of course both his data and his instruments wereinadequate. Nevertheless his measurements remained a well-knownstandard; we find them quoted and criticized by Strabo and Polybius. And, lastly, he published _Measurements of the Heights of Mountains inthe Peloponnese_; but the title seems to have been unduly modest, for wefind in the fragments statements about mountains far outside that area;about Pelion and Olympus in Thessaly and of Atabyrion in Rhodes. He hada subvention, Pliny tells us (N. H. Ii. 162, 'regum cura permensusmontes'), from the king of Macedon, probably either Cassander or, as onewould like to believe, the philosophic Antigonus Gonatas. And hecalculated the heights, so we are told, by trigonometry, using theδίοπτρα, an instrument of hollow reeds without lenses which served forhis primitive theodolite. It is an extraordinary record, and illustratesthe true Peripatetic spirit. 

FOOTNOTES:

[79:1] _Hellen. _ ii. 2, 3. 

[80:1] Cf. Tarn, _Antigonus Gonatas_, p. 52, and authorities therequoted. 

[81:1] Lysias, xxxiii. 

[82:1] Dem. _Crown_, 208. 

[83:1] 'Such-like trash', _Gorgias_, 519 A; dust-storm, _Rep. _ vi. 496;clothes, _Gorg. _ 523 E; 'democratic man', _Rep. _ viii. 556 ff. 

[84:1] _Laws_, 709 E, cf. Letter VII. 

[85:1] Aulus Gellius, xiv. 3; Plato, _Laws_, p. 695; Xen. _Cyrop. _ viii. 7, compared with _Hdt. _ i. 214. 

[87:1] This is the impression left by Xenophon, especially in theSymposium. Cf. Dümmler, _Antisthenica_ (1882); _Akademika_ (1889). Cf. The _Life of Antisthenes_ in Diog. Laert. 

[87:2] Γέρων ὀψιμαθήϛ, Plato, _Soph. _ 251 B, Isocr. _Helena_, i. 2. 

[87:3] e. G. No combination of subject and predicate can be true becauseone is different from the other. 'Man' is 'man' and 'good' is 'good';but 'man' is not 'good'. Nor can 'a horse' possibly be 'running'; theyare totally different conceptions. See Plutarch, _adv. Co. _ 22, 1 (p. 1119); Plato, _Soph. _ 251 B; Arist. _Metaph. _ 1024{b} 33; Top. 104{b}20; Plato, _Euthyd. _ 285 E. For similar reasons no statement can evercontradict another; the statements are either the same or not the same;and if not the same they do not touch. Every object has one λόγος orthing to be said about it; if you say a different λόγος you are speakingof something else. See especially _Scholia Arist. _, p. 732{a} 30 ff. Onthe passage in the _Metaphysics_, 1024{b} 33. 

[90:1] Τὸ νόμισμα παραχαράττειν: see _Life_ in Diog. Laert. , fragmentsin Mullach, vol. Ii, and the article in Pauly-Wissowa. 

[95:1] There were women among the Cynics. 'The doctrine also capturedMetrocles' sister, Hipparchia. She loved Crates, his words, and his wayof life, and paid no attention to any of her suitors, however rich orhighborn or handsome. Crates was everything to her. She threatened herparents that she would commit suicide unless she were given to him. Theyasked Crates to try to change the girl's mind, and he did all he couldto no effect, till at last he put all his possessions on the floor andstood up in front of her. 'Here is your bridegroom; there is hisfortune; now think!' The girl made her choice, put on the beggar's garb, and went her ways with Crates. She lived with him openly and went likehim to beg food at dinners. ' Diog. Laert. Vi. 96 ff. 

[98:1] e. G. The struggle for existence among animals and plants; theἀλληλοφαγία, or 'mutual devouring', of animals; and such points as thevarious advances in evolution which seem self-destructive. Thus, Man haslearnt to stand on two feet and use his hands; a great advantage but onewhich has led to numerous diseases. Again, physiologists say that theincreasing size of the human head, especially when combined with thediminishing size of the pelvis, tends to make normal birth impossible. 

[100:1] _The Stoic Philosophy_ (1915). See also Arnold's _RomanStoicism_ (1911); Bevan's _Stoics and Sceptics_ (1913); and especially_Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_ by von Arnim (1903-5). 

[101:1] The chief authorities on Epicurus are Usener's _Epicurea_, containing the _Life_ from Diog. Laert. , fragments and introduction: thepapyrus fragments of Philodemus in _Volumina Herculanensia_; Diogenes ofOenoanda (text by William, Teubner, 1907); the commentaries on Lucretius(Munro, Giussani, &c. ). 

[103:1] Epicurus is the one philosopher who protests with realindignation against that inhuman superiority to natural sorrows which isso much prized by most of the ancient schools. To him such 'apathy'argues either a hard heart or a morbid vanity (Fr. 120). His letters arefull of affectionate expressions which rather shock the stern reserve ofantique philosophy. He waits for one friend's 'heavenly presence' (Fr. 165). He 'melts with a peculiar joy mingled with tears in rememberingthe last words' of one who is dead (Fr. 186; cf. 213). He isenthusiastic about an act of kindness performed by another, who walkedsome five miles to help a barbarian prisoner (Fr. 194). 

[106:1] Lucretius, i. 62-79, actually speaks of the greatatheist in language taken from the Saviour Religions (see below, p. 162):

 When Man's life upon earth in base dismay, Crushed by the burthen of Religion, lay, Whose face, from all the regions of the sky, Hung, glaring hate upon mortality, First one Greek man against her dared to raise His eyes, against her strive through all his days; Him noise of Gods nor lightnings nor the roar Of raging heaven subdued, but pricked the more His spirit's valiance, till he longed the Gate To burst of this low prison of man's fate. And thus the living ardour of his mind Conquered, and clove its way; he passed behind The world's last flaming wall, and through the whole Of space uncharted ranged his mind and soul. Whence, conquering, he returned to make Man see At last what can, what cannot, come to be; By what law to each Thing its power hath been Assigned, and what deep boundary set between; Till underfoot is tamed Religion trod, And, by His victory, Man ascends to God. 

[107:1] That is, 8, 000 drachmae. Rents had risen violently in 314 and sopresumably had land prices. Else one would say the Garden was about thevalue of a good farm. See Tarn in _The Hellenistic Age_ (1923), p. 116. 

[108:1] τυρὸν κυθρίδιον, Fr. 182. 

[108:2] Fr. 143. Παιὰν ἄναξ, φίλον Λεοντάριον, οἴου κροτοθορύβου ἡμᾶςἀνέπλησας, ἀναγνόντας σου τό ἐπιστόλιον. Fr. 121 (from an enemy) impliesthat the Hetairae were expected to reform when they entered the Garden. Cf. Fr. 62 συνουσίη ὤνησε μὲν οὐδέποτε, ἀγαπητὸν δὲ εἰ μὴ ἔβλαψε: cf. Fr. 574. 

[109:1] See p. 169 below on Diogenes of Oenoanda. 

[110:1] Pleasures and pains may be greater or less, but the complete'removal of pain and fear' is a perfect end, not to be surpassed. Fr. 408-48, Ep. Iii. 129-31. 

[110:2] e. G. Plut. _Ne suaviter quidem vivi_, esp. Chap. 17 (p. 1098D). 

[111:1] Cf. Fr. 141 when Epicurus writes to Colotes: 'Think of me asimmortal, and go your ways as immortal too. '

[112:1] Fr. 601; cf. 598 ff. 

[113:1] Fr. 138; cf. 177. 

[113:2] 'οἱ τούτοις ἀντιγράφοντες οὐ πάνυ τι μακρὰν τῆς τῶν πατραλοιῶνκαταδίκης ἀφεστήκασιν', Fr. 49. Usener, from Philodemus, _De Rhet. _ Thismay be only a playful reference to Plato's phrase about being aπατραλοίας of his father, Parmenides, _Soph. _, p. 241 D. 

[113:3] Epicurus congratulated himself (erroneously) that he came toPhilosophy καθαρὸς πάσης παιδείας, 'undefiled by education'. Cf. Fr. 163to Pythocles, παιδείαν δὲ πᾶσαν, μακάριε, φεῦγε τὸ ἀκάτιον ἀράμενος, 'From education in every shape, my son, spread sail and fly!'

[113:4] Fr. 343-6. 

[116:1] Pythias was the niece, or ward, of Aristotle's friend, Hermias, an extraordinary man who rose from slavery to be first a free man and aphilosopher, and later Prince or 'Dynast' of Assos and Atarneus. In theend he was treacherously entrapped by the Persian General, Mentor, andcrucified by the king. Aristotle's 'Ode to Virtue' is addressed to him. To his second wife, Herpyllis, Aristotle was only united by a civilmarriage like the Roman _usus_. 

[116:2] See note on Dicaearchus at end of chapter. 

IV

THE FAILURE OF NERVE

Any one who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, saySophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be consciousof a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relationof the writer to the world about him. The new quality is notspecifically Christian: it is just as marked in the Gnostics andMithras-worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian andPlotinus as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a riseof asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss ofself-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal humaneffort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation;an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul toGod. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so muchto live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy theesteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering, andmartyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, hisimmeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of certain spiritualemotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve. 

Now this antithesis is often exaggerated by the admirers of one side orthe other. A hundred people write as if Sophocles had no mysticism andpractically speaking no conscience. Half a dozen retort as if St. Paulhad no public spirit and no common sense. I have protested often againstthis exaggeration; but, stated reasonably, as a change of proportion andnot a creation of new hearts, the antithesis is certainly based on fact. The historical reasons for it are suggested above, in the first of theseessays. 

My description of this complicated change is, of course, inadequate, butnot, I hope, one-sided. I do not depreciate the religions that followedon this movement by describing the movement itself as a 'failure ofnerve'. Mankind has not yet decided which of two opposite methods leadsto the fuller and deeper knowledge of the world: the patient andsympathetic study of the good citizen who lives in it, or the ecstaticvision of the saint who rejects it. But probably most Christians areinclined to believe that without some failure and sense of failure, without a contrite heart and conviction of sin, man can hardly attainthe religious life. I can imagine an historian of this temper believingthat the period we are about to discuss was a necessary softening ofhuman pride, a _Praeparatio Evangelica_. [124:1]

I am concerned in this paper with the lower country lying between twogreat ranges. The one range is Greek Philosophy, culminating in Plato, Aristotle, the Porch, and the Garden; the other is Christianity, culminating in St. Paul and his successors. The one is the work ofHellas, using some few foreign elements; the second is the work ofHellenistic culture on a Hebrew stock. The books of Christianity areGreek, the philosophical background is Hellenistic, the result of theinterplay, in the free atmosphere of Greek philosophy, of religiousideas derived from Egypt, Anatolia, Syria, and Babylon. The preaching iscarried on in Greek among the Greek-speaking workmen of the greatmanufacturing and commercial cities. The first preachers are Jews: thecentral scene is set in Jerusalem. I wish in this essay to indicate howa period of religious history, which seems broken, is really continuous, and to trace the lie of the main valleys which lead from the one rangeto the other, through a large and imperfectly explored territory. 

The territory in question is the so-called Hellenistic Age, the periodduring which the Schools of Greece were 'hellenizing' the world. It is atime of great enlightenment, of vigorous propaganda, of high importanceto history. It is a time full of great names: in one school ofphilosophy alone we have Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Panaetius, Posidonius. Yet, curiously enough, it is represented in our tradition bysomething very like a mere void. There are practically no complete bookspreserved, only fragments and indirect quotations. Consequently in thesearch for information about this age we must throw our nets wide. Beside books and inscriptions of the Hellenistic period proper I havedrawn on Cicero, Pliny, Seneca, and the like for evidence about theirteachers and masters. I have used many Christian and Gnostic documentsand works like the Corpus of Hermetic writings and the Mithras Liturgy. Among modern writers I must acknowledge a special debt to the researchesof Dieterich, Cumont, Bousset, Wendland, and Reitzenstein. 

 * * * * *

The Hellenistic Age seems at first sight to have entered on aninheritance such as our speculative Anarchists sometimes long for, a_tabula rasa_, on which a new and highly gifted generation of thinkersmight write clean and certain the book of their discoveries aboutlife--what Herodotus would call their '_Historiê_'. For, as we have seenin the last essay, it is clear that by the time of Plato the traditionalreligion of the Greek states was, if taken at its face value, a bankruptconcern. There was hardly one aspect in which it could bear criticism;and in the kind of test that chiefly matters, the satisfaction of men'sethical requirements and aspirations, it was if anything weaker thanelsewhere. Now a religious belief that is scientifically preposterousmay still have a long and comfortable life before it. Any worshipper cansuspend the scientific part of his mind while worshipping. But areligious belief that is morally contemptible is in serious danger, because when the religious emotions surge up the moral emotions are notfar away. And the clash cannot be hidden. 

This collapse of the traditional religion of Greece might not havemattered so much if the form of Greek social life had remained. If agood Greek had his Polis, he had an adequate substitute in most respectsfor any mythological gods. But the Polis too, as we have seen in thelast essay, fell with the rise of Macedon. It fell, perhaps, not fromany special spiritual fault of its own; it had few faults except itsfatal narrowness; but simply because there now existed another socialwhole, which, whether higher or lower in civilization, was at any rateutterly superior in brute force and in money. Devotion to the Polis lostits reality when the Polis, with all that it represented of rights andlaws and ideals of Life, lay at the mercy of a military despot, whomight, of course, be a hero, but might equally well be a vulgar sot or acorrupt adventurer. 

What the succeeding ages built upon the ruins of the Polis is not ourimmediate concern. In the realm of thought, on the whole, the Polistriumphed. Aristotle based his social theory on the Polis, not thenation. Dicaearchus, Didymus, and Posidonius followed him, and we stilluse his language. Rome herself was a Polis, as well as an Empire. AndProfessor Haverfield has pointed out that a City has more chance oftaking in the whole world to its freedoms and privileges than a Nationhas of making men of alien birth its compatriots. A Jew of Tarsus couldeasily be granted the civic rights of Rome: he could never have beenmade an Italian or a Frenchman. The Stoic ideal of the World as 'onegreat City of Gods and Men' has not been surpassed by any ideal based onthe Nation. 

What we have to consider is the general trend of religious thought from, say, the Peripatetics to the Gnostics. It is a fairly clear history. Asoil once teeming with wild weeds was to all appearance swept bare andmade ready for new sowing: skilled gardeners chose carefully the best ofherbs and plants and tended the garden sedulously. But the bounds of thegarden kept spreading all the while into strange untended ground, andeven within the original walls the weeding had been hasty andincomplete. At the end of a few generations all was a wilderness ofweeds again, weeds rank and luxuriant and sometimes extremely beautiful, with a half-strangled garden flower or two gleaming here and there inthe tangle of them. Does that comparison seem disrespectful to religion?Is philosophy all flowers and traditional belief all weeds? Well, thinkwhat a weed is. It is only a name for all the natural wild vegetationwhich the earth sends up of herself, which lives and will live withoutthe conscious labour of man. The flowers are what we keep alive withdifficulty; the weeds are what conquer us. 

It has been well observed by Zeller that the great weakness of allancient thought, not excepting Socratic thought, was that instead ofappealing to objective experiment it appealed to some subjective senseof fitness. There were exceptions, of course: Democritus, Eratosthenes, Hippocrates, and to a great extent Aristotle. But in general there was astrong tendency to follow Plato in supposing that people could reallysolve questions by an appeal to their inner consciousness. One result ofthis, no doubt, was a tendency to lay too much stress on mere agreement. It is obvious, when one thinks about it, that quite often a large numberof people who know nothing about a subject will all agree and all bewrong. Yet we find the most radical of ancient philosophersunconsciously dominated by the argument _ex consensu gentium_. It ishard to find two more uncompromising thinkers than Zeno and Epicurus. Yet both of them, when they are almost free from the popularsuperstitions, when they have constructed complete systems which, if notabsolutely logic-proof, are calculated at least to keep out the weatherfor a century or so, open curious side-doors at the last moment and letin all the gods of mythology. [129:1] True, they are admitted assuspicious characters, and under promise of good behaviour. Epicurusexplains that they do not and cannot do anything whatever to anybody;Zeno explains that they are not anthropomorphic, and are only symbols oremanations or subordinates of the all-ruling Unity; both parties get ridof the myths. But the two great reformers have admitted a dangerousprinciple. The general consensus of humanity, they say, shows that thereare gods, and gods which in mind, if not also in visual appearance, resemble man. Epicurus succeeded in barring the door, and admittednothing more. But the Stoics presently found themselves admitting orinsisting that the same consensus proved the existence of daemons, ofwitchcraft, of divination, and when they combined with the Platonicschool, of more dangerous elements still. 

I take the Stoics and Epicureans as the two most radical schools. On thewhole both of them fought steadily and strongly against the growth ofsuperstition, or, if you like to put it in other language, against thedumb demands of man's infra-rational nature. The glory of the Stoics isto have built up a religion of extraordinary nobleness; the glory of theEpicureans is to have upheld an ideal of sanity and humanity starkupright amid a reeling world, and, like the old Spartans, never to haveyielded one inch of ground to the common foe. 

The great thing to remember is that the mind of man cannot beenlightened permanently by merely teaching him to reject some particularset of superstitions. There is an infinite supply of other superstitionsalways at hand; and the mind that desires such things--that is, the mindthat has not trained itself to the hard discipline of reasonableness andhonesty, will, as soon as its devils are cast out, proceed to fillitself with their relations. 

 * * * * *

Let us first consider the result of the mere denial of the Olympianreligion. The essential postulate of that religion was that the world isgoverned by a number of definite personal gods, possessed of a humansense of justice and fairness and capable of being influenced by normalhuman motives. In general, they helped the good and punished the bad, though doubtless they tended too much to regard as good those who paidthem proper attention and as bad those who did not. 

Speaking broadly, what was left when this conception proved inadequate?If it was not these personal gods who made things happen, what was it?If the Tower of Siloam was not deliberately thrown down by the gods soas to kill and hurt a carefully collected number of wicked people, whileletting the good escape, what was the explanation of its falling? Theanswer is obvious, but it can be put in two ways. You can either say:'It was just chance that the Tower fell at that particular moment whenSo-and-so was under it. ' Or you can say, with rather more reflection butnot any more common sense: 'It fell because of a definite chain ofcauses, a certain degree of progressive decay in the building, a certaindefinite pressure, &c. It was bound to fall. '

There is no real difference in these statements, at least in the meaningof those who ordinarily utter them. Both are compatible with areasonable and scientific view of the world. But in the Hellenistic Age, when Greek thought was spreading rapidly and superficially over vastsemi-barbarous populations whose minds were not ripe for it, both viewsturned back instinctively into a theology as personal as that of theOlympians. It was not, of course, Zeus or Apollo who willed this; everyone knew so much: it happened by Chance. That is, Chance or Fortunewilled it. And Τύχη became a goddess like the rest. The greatcatastrophes, the great transformations of the mediterranean worldwhich marked the Hellenistic period, had a strong influence here. IfAlexander and his generals had practised some severely orthodoxMacedonian religion, it would have been easy to see that the Gods ofMacedon were the real rulers of the world. But they most markedly didnot. They accepted hospitably all the religions that crossed their path. Some power or other was disturbing the world, that was clear. It was notexactly the work of man, because sometimes the good were exalted, sometimes the bad; there was no consistent purpose in the story. It wasjust Fortune. Happy is the man who knows how to placate Fortune and makeher smile upon him!

It is worth remembering that the best seed-ground for superstition is asociety in which the fortunes of men seem to bear practically norelation to their merits and efforts. A stable and well-governed societydoes tend, speaking roughly, to ensure that the Virtuous and IndustriousApprentice shall succeed in life, while the Wicked and Idle Apprenticefails. And in such a society people tend to lay stress on the reasonableor visible chains of causation. But in a country suffering fromearthquakes or pestilences, in a court governed by the whim of a despot, in a district which is habitually the seat of a war between alienarmies, the ordinary virtues of diligence, honesty, and kindliness seemto be of little avail. The only way to escape destruction is to win thefavour of the prevailing powers, take the side of the strongest invader, flatter the despot, placate the Fate or Fortune or angry god that issending the earthquake or the pestilence. The Hellenistic period prettycertainly falls in some degree under all of these categories. And oneresult is the sudden and enormous spread of the worship of Fortune. Ofcourse, there was always a protest. There is the famous

 _Nullum numen habes si sit prudentia: nos te, Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam_, taken by Juvenal from the Greek. There are many unguarded phrases and atleast three corrections in Polybius. [133:1] Most interesting of allperhaps, there is the first oration of Plutarch on the Fortune ofAlexander. [133:2] A sentence in Pliny's _Natural History_, ii. 22, seemsto go back to Hellenistic sources:

 'Throughout the whole world, at every place and hour, by every voice Fortune alone is invoked and her name spoken: she is the one defendant, the one culprit, the one thought in men's minds, the one object of praise, the one cause. She is worshipped with insults, counted as fickle and often as blind, wandering, inconsistent, elusive, changeful, and friend of the unworthy. . . . We are so much at the mercy of chance that Chance is our god. '

The word used is first _Fortuna_ and then _Sors_. This shows how littlereal difference there is between the two apparently contradictoryconceptions. --'Chance would have it so. ' 'It was fated to be. ' The stingof both phrases--their pleasant bitterness when played with, theirquality of poison when believed--lies in their denial of the value ofhuman endeavour. 

Yet on the whole, as one might expect, the believers in Destiny are amore respectable congregation than the worshippers of Chance. Itrequires a certain amount of thoughtfulness to rise to the conceptionthat nothing really happens without a cause. It is the beginning, perhaps, of science. Ionic philosophers of the fifth century had laidstress on the Ἀνάγκη φύσιος, [134:1] what we should call the Chain ofcauses in Nature. After the rise of Stoicism Fate becomes something lessphysical, more related to conscious purpose. It is not _Anankê_ but_Heimarmenê_. Heimarmenê, in the striking simile of Zeno, [134:2] is likea fine thread running through the whole of existence--the world, we mustremember, was to the Stoics a live thing--like that invisible thread oflife which, in heredity, passes on from generation to generation ofliving species and keeps the type alive; it runs causing, causing forever, both the infinitesimal and the infinite. It is the Λόγος τοῦΚόσμου, [135:1] the Νοῦς Διός, the Reason of the World or the mind ofZeus, rather difficult to distinguish from the Pronoia or Providencewhich is the work of God and indeed the very essence of God. Thus it isnot really an external and alien force. For the human soul itself is afragment or effluence of the divine, and this Law of God is also the lawof man's own Phusis. As long as you act in accordance with your trueself you are complying with that divine Εἱμαρμένη or Πρόνοια, whoseservice is perfect freedom. Only when you are false to your own natureand become a rebel against the kingdom of God which is within you, areyou dragged perforce behind the chariot-wheels. The doctrine is impliedin Cleanthes' celebrated Hymn to Destiny and is explained clearly byPlotinus. [135:2]

That is a noble conception. But the vulgar of course can turn Kismetinto a stupid idol, as easily as they can Fortune. And Epicurus may havehad some excuse for exclaiming that he would sooner be a slave to theold gods of the vulgar, than to the Destiny of the philosophers. [135:3]

So much for the result in superstitious minds of the denial, or ratherthe removal, of the Olympian Gods. It landed men in the worship ofFortune or of Fate. 

Next, let us consider what happened when, instead of merely rejectingthe Gods _en masse_, people tried carefully to collect what remained ofreligion after the Olympian system fell. 

Aristotle himself gives us a fairly clear answer. He held that theorigins of man's idea (ἔννοια) of the Divine were twofold, [136:1] thephenomena of the sky and the phenomena of the human soul. It is verymuch what Kant found two thousand years later. The spectacle of the vastand ordered movements of the heavenly bodies are compared by him in afamous fragment with the marching forth of Homer's armies before Troy. Behind such various order and strength there must surely be a consciousmind capable

 Κοσμῆσαι ἵρρους τε καὶ ἀνέρας ἀσπιδιώτας, To order steeds of war and mailèd men. 

It is only a step from this to regarding the sun, moon, and stars asthemselves divine, and it is a step which both Plato and Aristotle, following Pythagoras and followed by the Stoics, take with confidence. Chrysippus gives practically the same list of gods: 'the Sun, Moon, andStars; and Law: and men who have become Gods. '[136:2] Both the wanderingstars and the fixed stars are 'animate beings, divine and eternal', self-acting subordinate gods. As to the divinity of the soul or the mindof man, the earlier generations are shy about it. But in the laterStoics it is itself a portion of the divine life. It shows thisordinarily by its power of reason, and more conspicuously by becomingἔνθεος, or 'filled with God', in its exalted moments of prevision, ecstasy, and prophetic dreams. If reason itself is divine, there issomething else in the soul which is even higher than reason or at leastmore surprisingly divine. 

Let us follow the history of both these remaining substitutes for theOlympian gods. 

First for the Heavenly bodies. If they are to be made divine, we canhardly stop there. The Earth is also a divine being. Old tradition hasalways said so, and Plato has repeated it. And if Earth is divine, sosurely are the other elements, the _Stoicheia_, Water, Air, and aboveall, Fire. For the Gods themselves are said by Plato to be made of fire, and the Stars visibly are so. Though perhaps the heavenly Fire is reallynot our Fire at all, but a πέμπτον σῶμα, a 'Fifth Body', seeing that itseems not to burn nor the Stars to be consumed. 

This is persuasive enough and philosophic; but whither has it led us?Back to the Olympians, or rather behind the Olympians; as St. Paul putsit (Gal. Iv. 9), to 'the beggarly elements'. The old Korê, or EarthMaiden and Mother, seems to have held her own unshaken by the changes oftime all over the Aegean area. She is there in prehistoric Crete withher two lions; with the same lions orientalized in Olympia and Ephesus;in Sparta with her great marsh birds; in Boeotia with her horse. Sheruns riot in a number of the Gnostic systems both pre-Christian andpost-Christian. She forms a divine triad with the Father and the Son:that is ancient and natural. But she also becomes the Divine Wisdom, Sophia, the Divine Truth, Aletheia, the Holy Breath or Spirit, thePneuma. Since the word for 'spirit' is neuter in Greek and masculine inLatin, this last is rather a surprise. It is explained when we rememberthat in Hebrew the word for Spirit, 'Ruah', is mostly feminine. In themeantime let us notice one curious development in the life of thisgoddess. In the old religion of Greece and Western Asia, she begins as aMaiden, then in fullness of time becomes a mother. There is evidencealso for a third stage, the widowhood of withering autumn. [138:1] To theclassical Greek this motherhood was quite as it should be, a duefulfilment of normal functions. But to the Gnostic and his kind itconnoted a 'fall', a passage from the glory of Virginity to a state ofSin. [138:2] The Korê becomes a fallen Virgin, sometimes a temptress oreven a female devil; sometimes she has to be saved by her Son theRedeemer. [138:3] As far as I have observed, she loses most of herearthly agricultural quality, though as Selene or even Helen she keepsup her affinity with the Moon. 

Almost all the writers of the Hellenistic Age agree in regarding theSun, Moon, and Stars as gods. The rationalists Hecataeus and Euhemerus, before going on to their deified men, always start with the heavenlybodies. When Plutarch explains in his beautiful and kindly way that allreligions are really attempts towards the same goal, he clinches hisargument by observing that we all see the same Sun and Moon though wecall them by different names in all languages. [139:1] But the beliefdoes not seem to have had much religious intensity in it, until it wasreinforced by two alien influences. 

First, we have the ancient worship of the Sun, implicit, if notexplicit, in a great part of the oldest Greek rituals, and thenidealized by Plato in the _Republic_, where the Sun is the author of alllight and life in the material world, as the Idea of Good is in theideal world. This worship came gradually into contact with thetraditional and definite Sun-worship of Persia. The final combinationtook place curiously late. It was the Roman conquests of Cilicia, Cappadocia, Commagene, and Armenia that gave the decisive moment. [139:2]To men who had wearied of the myths of the poets, who could draw no moreinspiration from their Apollo and Hyperion, but still had the habits andthe craving left by their old Gods, a fresh breath of reality came withthe entrance of Ἥλιος ἀνίκητος Μίθρας, 'Mithras, the Unconquered Sun'. But long before the triumph of Mithraism as the military religion of theRoman frontier, Greek literature is permeated with a kind of intenselanguage about the Sun, which seems derived from Plato. [139:3] In latertimes, in the fourth century A. D. For instance, it has absorbed somemore full-blooded and less critical element as well. 

Secondly, all the seven planets. These had a curious history. Theplanets were of course divine and living bodies, so much Plato gave us. Then come arguments and questions scattered through the Stoic andeclectic literature. Is it the planet itself that is divine, or is theplanet under the guidance of a divine spirit? The latter seems to winthe day. Anthropomorphism has stolen back upon us: we can use the oldlanguage and speak simply of the planet Mercury as Ἑρμοῦ ἀστήρ. It isthe star of Hermes, and Hermes is the spirit who guides it. [140:1] EvenPlato in his old age had much to say about the souls of the sevenplanets. Further, each planet has its sphere. The Earth is in thecentre, then comes the sphere of the Moon, then that of the Sun, and soon through a range of seven spheres. If all things are full of gods, asthe wise ancients have said, what about those parts of the sphere inwhich the shining planet for the moment is not? Are they without god?Obviously not. The whole sphere is filled with innumerable spiritseverywhere. It is all Hermes, all Aphrodite. (We are more familiar withthe Latin names, Mercury and Venus. ) But one part only is visible. Thevoice of one school, as usual, is raised in opposition. One veteran hadseen clearly from the beginning whither all this sort of thing was sureto lead. 'Epicurus approves none of these things. '[140:2] It was nogood his having destroyed the old traditional superstition, if peopleby deifying the stars were to fill the sky with seven times seven asmany objects of worship as had been there before. He allows no_Schwärmerei_ about the stars. They are _not_ divine animate beings, orguided by Gods. Why cannot the astrologers leave God in peace? Whentheir orbits are irregular it is _not_ because they are looking forfood. They are just conglomerations of ordinary atoms of air or fire--itdoes not matter which. They are not even very large--only about as largeas they look, or perhaps smaller, since most fires tend to look biggerat a distance. They are not at all certainly everlasting. It is quitelikely that the sun comes to an end every day, and a new one rises inthe morning. All kinds of explanations are possible, and none certain. Μόνον ὁ μῦθος ἀπέστω. In any case, as you value your life and yourreason, do not begin making myths about them!

On other lines came what might have been the effective protest of realScience, when Aristarchus of Samos (250 B. C. ) argued that the earth wasnot really the centre of the universe, but revolved round the Sun. Buthis hypothesis did not account for the phenomena as completely as thecurrent theory with its 'Epicycles'; his fellow astronomers were againsthim; Cleanthes the Stoic denounced him for 'disturbing the Hearth of theUniverse', and his heresy made little headway. [141:1]

The planets in their seven spheres surrounding the earth continued to beobjects of adoration. They had their special gods or guiding spiritsassigned them. Their ordered movements through space, it was held, produce a vast and eternal harmony. It is beautiful beyond all earthlymusic, this Music of the Spheres, beyond all human dreams of what musicmight be. The only pity is that--except for a few individuals intrances--nobody has ever heard it. Circumstances seem always to beunfavourable. It may be that we are too far off, though, considering thevastness of the orchestra, this seems improbable. More likely we aremerely deaf to it because it never stops and we have been in the middleof it since we first drew breath. [142:1]

The planets also become Elements in the Kosmos, _Stoicheia_. It issignificant that in Hellenistic theology the word Stoicheion, Element, gets to mean a Daemon--as Megathos, Greatness, means an Angel. [142:2]But behold a mystery! The word _Stoicheia_, 'elementa', had long beenused for the Greek A B C, and in particular for the seven vowels α ε η ιο υ ω. That is no chance, no mere coincidence. The vowels are the mysticsigns of the Planets; they have control over the planets. Hence strangeprayers and magic formulae innumerable. 

Even the way of reckoning time changed under the influence of thePlanets. Instead of the old division of the month into three periods ofnine days, we find gradually establishing itself the week of seven dayswith each day named after its planet, Sun, Moon, Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, Kronos. The history of the Planet week is given by DioCassius, xxxvii. 18, in his account of the Jewish campaign of Pompeius. But it was not the Jewish week. The Jews scorned such idolatrous andpolytheistic proceedings. It was the old week of Babylon, the originalhome of astronomy and planet-worship. [143:1]

For here again a great foreign religion came like water in the desert tominds reluctantly and superficially enlightened, but secretly longingfor the old terrors and raptures from which they had been set free. Evenin the old days Aeschylus had called the planets 'bright potentates, shining in the fire of heaven', and Euripides had spoken of the 'shafthurled from a star'. [143:2] But we are told that the first teaching ofastrology in Hellenic lands was in the time of Alexander, when Bêrôssosthe Chaldaean set up a school in Cos and, according to Seneca, _Beluminterpretatus est_. This must mean that he translated into Greek the'_Eye of Bel_', a treatise in seventy tablets found in the library ofAssur-bani-pal (686-626 B. C. ) but composed for Sargon I in the thirdmillennium B. C. Even the philosopher Theophrastus is reported byProclus[143:3] as saying that 'the most extraordinary thing of his agewas the lore of the Chaldaeans, who foretold not only events of publicinterest but even the lives and deaths of individuals'. One wondersslightly whether Theophrastus spoke with as much implicit faith asProclus suggests. But the chief account is given by Diodorus, ii. 30(perhaps from Hecataeus). 

 'Other nations despise the philosophy of Greece. It is so recent and so constantly changing. They have traditions which come from vast antiquity and never change. Notably the Chaldaeans have collected observations of the Stars through long ages, and teach how every event in the heavens has its meaning, as part of the eternal scheme of divine forethought. Especially the seven Wanderers, or Planets, are called by them Hermêneis, Interpreters: and among them the Interpreter in chief is Saturn. Their work is to interpret beforehand τὴν τῶν θεῶν ἔννοιαν, the thought that is in the mind of the Gods. By their risings and settings, and by the colours they assume, the Chaldaeans predict great winds and storms and waves of excessive heat, comets, and earthquakes, and in general all changes fraught with weal or woe not only to nations and regions of the world, but to kings and to ordinary men and women. Beneath the Seven are thirty Gods of Counsel, half below and half above the Earth; every ten days a Messenger or Angel star passes from above below and another from below above. Above these gods are twelve Masters, who are the twelve signs of the Zodiac; and the planets pass through all the Houses of these twelve in turn. The Chaldaeans have made prophecies for various kings, such as Alexander who conquered Darius, and Antigonus and Seleucus Nikator, and have always been right. And private persons who have consulted them consider their wisdom as marvellous and above human power. '

Astrology fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new disease falls uponsome remote island people. The tomb of Ozymandias, as described byDiodorus (i. 49, 5), was covered with astrological symbols, and that ofAntiochus I, which has been discovered in Commagene, is of the samecharacter. It was natural for monarchs to believe that the stars watchedover them. But every one was ready to receive the germ. The Epicureans, of course, held out, and so did Panaetius, the coolest head among theStoics. But the Stoics as a whole gave way. They formed with good reasonthe leading school of philosophy, and it would have been a service tomankind if they had resisted. But they were already committed to abelief in the deity of the stars and to the doctrine of Heimarmenê, orDestiny. They believed in the pervading Pronoia, [145:1] or Forethought, of the divine mind, and in the Συμπάθεια τῶν ὅλων--the Sympathy of allCreation, [145:2] whereby whatever happens to any one part, howeverremote or insignificant, affects all the rest. It seemed only a naturaland beautiful illustration of this Sympathy that the movements of theStars should be bound up with the sufferings of man. They also appealedto the general belief in prophecy and divination. [145:3] If a prophetcan foretell that such and such an event will happen, then it isobviously fated to happen. Foreknowledge implies Predestination. Thisbelief in prophecy was, in reality, a sort of appeal to fact and tocommon sense. People could produce then, as they can now, a large numberof striking cases of second sight, presentiment, clairvoyance, actualprophecy and the like;[145:4] and it was more difficult then to testthem. 

The argument involved Stoicism with some questionable allies. Epicureans and sceptics of the Academy might well mock at the sight of agreat man like Chrysippus or Posidonius resting an important part of hisreligion on the undetected frauds of a shady Levantine 'medium'. Stillthe Stoics could not but welcome the arrival of a system of prophecy andpredestination which, however the incredulous might rail at it, possessed at least great antiquity and great stores of learning, whichwas respectable, recondite, and in a way sublime. 

In all the religious systems of later antiquity, if I mistake not, theSeven Planets play some lordly or terrifying part. The great MithrasLiturgy, unearthed by Dieterich from a magical papyrus in Paris, [146:1]repeatedly confronts the worshipper with the seven vowels as names of'the Seven Deathless Kosmokratores', or Lords of the Universe, andseems, under their influence, to go off into its 'Seven Maidens withheads of serpents, in white raiment', and its divers other Sevens. Thevarious Hermetic and Mithraic communities, the Naassenes described byHippolytus, [146:2] and other Gnostic bodies, authors like Macrobius andeven Cicero in his _Somnium Scipionis_, are full of the influence of theseven planets and of the longing to escape beyond them. For by somesimple psychological law the stars which have inexorably pronounced ourfate, and decreed, or at least registered the decree, that in spite ofall striving we must needs tread their prescribed path; still moreperhaps, the Stars who know in the midst of our laughter how thatlaughter will end, become inevitably powers of evil rather than good, beings malignant as well as pitiless, making life a vain thing. AndSaturn, the chief of them, becomes the most malignant. To some of theGnostics he becomes Jaldabaoth, the Lion-headed God, the evilJehovah. [147:1] The religion of later antiquity is overpoweringlyabsorbed in plans of escape from the prison of the seven planets. 

In author after author, in one community after another, the subjectrecurs. And on the whole there is the same answer. Here on the earth weare the sport of Fate; nay, on the earth itself we are worse off still. We are beneath the Moon, and beneath the Moon there is not only Fate butsomething more unworthy and equally malignant, Chance--to say nothing ofdamp and the ills of earth and bad daemons. Above the Moon there is nochance, only Necessity: there is the will of the other sixKosmokratores, Rulers of the Universe. But above them all there is anEighth region--they call it simply the Ogdoas--the home of the ultimateGod, [147:2] whatever He is named, whose being was before the Kosmos. Inthis Sphere is true Being and Freedom. And more than freedom, there isthe ultimate Union with God. For that spark of divine life which isman's soul is not merely, as some have said, an ἀπόρροια τῶν ἄστρων, aneffluence of the stars: it comes direct from the first and ultimateGod, the Alpha and Omega, who is beyond the Planets. Though theKosmokratores cast us to and fro like their slaves or dead chattels, insoul at least we are of equal birth with them. The Mithraic votary, whentheir wrathful and tremendous faces break in upon his vision, answersthem unterrified: ἐγώ εἰμι σύμπλανος ὑμῖν ἀστήρ, 'I am your fellowwanderer, your fellow Star. ' The Orphic carried to the grave on hisgolden scroll the same boast: first, 'I am the child of Earth and of thestarry Heaven'; then later, 'I too am become God'. [148:1] The Gnosticwritings consist largely of charms to be uttered by the Soul to each ofthe Planets in turn, as it pursues its perilous path past all of them toits ultimate home. 

That journey awaits us after death; but in the meantime? In the meantimethere are initiations, sacraments, mystic ways of communion with God. Tosee God face to face is, to the ordinary unprepared man, sheer death. But to see Him after due purification, to be led to Him along the trueWay by an initiating Priest, is the ultimate blessing of human life. Itis to die and be born again. There were regular official initiations. Wehave one in the Mithras-Liturgy, more than one in the Corpus Hermeticum. Apuleius[148:2] tells us at some length, though in guarded language, howhe was initiated to Isis and became 'her image'. After much fasting, clad in holy garments and led by the High Priest, he crossed thethreshold of Death and passed through all the Elements. The Sun shoneupon him at midnight, and he saw the Gods of Heaven and of Hades. In themorning he was clad in the Robe of Heaven, set up on a pedestal infront of the Goddess and worshipped by the congregation as a God. He hadbeen made one with Osiris or Horus or whatever name it pleased thatSun-God to be called. Apuleius does not reveal it. 

There were also, of course, the irregular personal initiations andvisions of god vouchsafed to persons of special prophetic powers. St. Paul, we may remember, knew personally a man who had actually beensnatched up into the Third Heaven, and another who was similarly raptinto Paradise, where he heard unspeakable words;[149:1] whether in thebody or not, the apostle leaves undecided. He himself on the road toDamascus had seen the Christ in glory, not after the flesh. Thephilosopher Plotinus, so his disciple tells us, was united with God intrance four times in five years. [149:2]

We seem to have travelled far from the simplicity of early Greekreligion. Yet, apart always from Plotinus, who is singularly aloof, mostof the movement has been a reaction under Oriental and barbarousinfluences towards the most primitive pre-Hellenic cults. The union ofman with God came regularly through _Ekstasis_--the soul must get clearof its body--and _Enthousiasmos_--the God must enter and dwell insidethe worshipper. But the means to this union, while sometimes allegorizedand spiritualized to the last degree, are sometimes of the mostprimitive sort. The vagaries of religious emotion are apt to reach verylow as well as very high in the scale of human nature. Certainly theprimitive Thracian savages, who drank themselves mad with the hot bloodof their God-beast, would have been quite at home in some of theserituals, though in others they would have been put off with somesubstitute for the actual blood. The primitive priestesses who waited ina bridal chamber for the Divine Bridegroom, even the Cretan Kourêteswith their Zeus Kourês[150:1] and those strange hierophants of the'Men's House' whose initiations are written on the rocks of Thera, wouldhave found rites very like their own reblossoming on earth after thefall of Hellenism. 'Prepare thyself as a bride to receive herbridegroom, ' says Markos the Gnostic, [150:2] 'that thou mayst be what Iam and I what thou art. ' 'I in thee, and thou in me!' is the ecstaticcry of one of the Hermes liturgies. Before that the prayer has been'Enter into me as a babe into the womb of a woman'. [150:3]

In almost all the liturgies that I have read need is felt for amediator between the seeker after God and his goal. Mithras himself sawa Mesîtês, a Mediator, between Ormuzd and Ahriman, but the ordinarymediator is more like an interpreter or an adept with inner knowledgewhich he reveals to the outsider. The circumstances out of which thesesystems grew have left their mark on the new gods themselves. As usual, the social structure of the worshippers is reflected in their objects ofworship. When the Chaldaeans came to Cos, when the Thracians in thePiraeus set up their national worship of Bendis, when the Egyptians inthe same port founded their society for the Egyptian ritual of Isis, when the Jews at Assuan in the fifth century B. C. Established their owntemple, in each case there would come proselytes to whom the truth mustbe explained and interpreted, sometimes perhaps softened. And in eachcase there is behind the particular priest or initiator there presentsome greater authority in the land he comes from. Behind any explanationthat can be made in the Piraeus, there is a deeper and higherexplanation known only to the great master in Jerusalem, in Egypt, inBabylon, or perhaps in some unexplored and ever-receding region of theeast. This series of revelations, one behind the other, is acharacteristic of all these mixed Graeco-Oriental religions. 

Most of the Hermetic treatises are put in the form of initiations orlessons revealed by a 'father' to a 'son', by Ptah to Hermes, by Hermesto Thoth or Asclepios, and by one of them to us. It was an ancientformula, a natural vehicle for traditional wisdom in Egypt, where theyoung priest became regularly the 'son' of the old priest. It is a formthat we find in Greece itself as early as Euripides, whose Melanippesays of her cosmological doctrines, 'It is not my word but my Mother's word'. [152:1]

It was doubtless the language of the old Medicine-Man to his disciple. In one fine liturgy Thoth wrestles with Hermes in agony of spirit, tillHermes is forced to reveal to him the path to union with God which hehimself has trodden before. At the end of the Mithras liturgy thedevotee who has passed through the mystic ordeals and seen his god faceto face, is told: 'After this you can show the way to others. '

But this leads us to the second great division of our subject. We turnfrom the phenomena of the sky to those of the soul. 

 * * * * *

If what I have written elsewhere is right, one of the greatest works ofthe Hellenic spirit, and especially of fifth-century Athens, was toinsist on what seems to us such a commonplace truism, the differencebetween Man and God. Sophrosynê in religion was the message of theclassical age. But the ages before and after had no belief in such alesson. The old Medicine-Man was perhaps himself the first _Theos_. Atany rate the primeval kings and queens were treated as divine. [152:2]Just for a few great generations, it would seem, humanity rose to asufficient height of self-criticism and self-restraint to reject thesedreams of self-abasement or megalomania. But the effort was too greatfor the average world; and in a later age nearly all the kings andrulers--all people in fact who can command an adequate number offlatterers--become divine beings again. Let us consider how it cameabout. 

First there was the explicit recognition by the soberest philosophers ofthe divine element in man's soul. [153:1] Aristotle himself built analtar to Plato. He did nothing superstitious; he did not call Plato agod, but we can see from his beautiful elegy to Eudemus, that henaturally and easily used language of worship which would seem a littlestrange to us. It is the same emotion--a noble and just emotion on thewhole--which led the philosophic schools to treat their founders as'heroes', and which has peopled most of Europe and Asia with thememories and the worship of saints. But we should remember that only arare mind will make its divine man of such material as Plato. The commonway to dazzle men's eyes is a more brutal and obvious one. 

To people who were at all accustomed to the conception of a God-Man itwas difficult not to feel that the conception was realized in Alexander. His tremendous power, his brilliant personality, his achievementsbeggaring the fables of the poets, put people in the right mind forworship. Then came the fact that the kings whom he conquered were, as amatter of fact, mostly regarded by their subjects as divinebeings. [154:1] It was easy, it was almost inevitable, for those whoworshipped the 'God'[154:2] Darius to feel that it was no man but agreater god who had overthrown Darius. The incense which had been burnedbefore those conquered gods was naturally offered to their conqueror. Hedid not refuse it. It was not good policy to do so, andself-depreciation is not apt to be one of the weaknesses of the bornruler. [154:3] But besides all this, if you are to judge a God by hisfruits, what God could produce better credentials? Men had often seenZeus defied with impunity; they had seen faithful servants of Apollocome to bad ends. But those who defied Alexander, however great theymight be, always rued their defiance, and those who were faithful to himalways received their reward. With his successors the worship becamemore official. Seleucus, Ptolemaeus, Antigonus, Demetrius, all indifferent degrees and different styles are deified by the acclamationsof adoring subjects. Ptolemy Philadelphus seems to have been the firstto claim definite divine honours during his own life. On the death ofhis wife in 271 he proclaimed her deity and his own as well in theworship of the Theoi Adelphoi, the 'Gods Brethren'. Of course there wasflattery in all this, ordinary self-interested lying flattery, and itsinevitable accompaniment, megalomania. Any reading of the personalhistory of the Ptolemies, the Seleucidae or the Caesars shows it. Butthat is not the whole explanation. 

One of the characteristics of the period of the Diadochi is theaccumulation of capital and military force in the hands of individuals. The Ptolemies and Seleucidae had at any moment at their disposal powersvery much greater than any Pericles or Nicias or Lysander. [155:1] Thefolk of the small cities of the Aegean hinterlands must have felttowards these great strangers almost as poor Indian peasants in time offlood and famine feel towards an English official. There were men now onearth who could do the things that had hitherto been beyond the power ofman. Were several cities thrown down by earthquake; here was one who byhis nod could build them again. Famines had always occurred and beenmostly incurable. Here was one who could without effort allay a famine. Provinces were harried and wasted by habitual wars: the eventualconqueror had destroyed whole provinces in making the wars; now, as hehad destroyed, he could also save. 'What do you mean by a god, ' thesimple man might say, 'if these men are not gods? The only difference isthat these gods are visible, and the old gods no man has seen. '

The titles assumed by all the divine kings tell the story clearly. Antiochus Epiphanês--'the god made manifest'; Ptolemaios Euergetês, Ptolemaios Sôtêr. Occasionally we have a Keraunos or a Nikator, a'Thunderbolt' or a 'God of Mana', but mostly it is Sôtêr, Euergetês andEpiphanês, the Saviour, the Benefactor, the God made manifest, inconstant alternation. In the honorific inscriptions and in the writingsof the learned, philanthropy (φιλανθρωπία) is by far the most prominentcharacteristic of the God upon earth. Was it that people really feltthat to save or benefit mankind was a more godlike thing than to blastand destroy them? Philosophers have generally said that, and the vulgarpretended to believe them. It was at least politic, when ministering tothe half-insane pride of one of these princes, to remind him of hismercy rather than of his wrath. 

Wendland in his brilliant book, _Hellenistisch-römische Kultur_, callsattention to an inscription of the year 196 B. C. In honour of the youngPtolemaios Epiphanês, who was made manifest at the age of twelveyears. [156:1] It is a typical document of Graeco-Egyptian king-worship:

 'In the reign of the young king by inheritance from his Father, Lord of the Diadems, great in glory, pacificator of Egypt and pious towards the gods, superior over his adversaries, Restorer of the life of man, Lord of the Periods of Thirty Years, like Hephaistos the Great, King like the Sun, the Great King of the Upper and Lower Lands; offspring of the Gods of the Love of the Father, whom Hephaistos has approved, to whom the Sun has given Victory; living image of Zeus; Son of the Sun, Ptolemaios the ever-living, beloved by Phtha; in the ninth year of Aëtos son of Aëtos, Priest of Alexander and the Gods Saviours and the Gods Brethren and the Gods Benefactors and the Gods of the Love of the Father and the God Manifest for whom thanks be given:'

The Priests who came to his coronation ceremony at Memphis proclaim:

 'Seeing that King Ptolemaios ever-living, beloved of Phtha, God Manifest for whom Thanks be given, born of King Ptolemaios and Queen Arsinoe, the Gods of the Love of the Father, has done many benefactions to the Temples and those in them and all those beneath his rule, being from the beginning God born of God and Goddess, like Horus son of Isis and Osiris, who came to the help of his father Osiris (and?) in his benevolent disposition towards the Gods has consecrated to the temples revenues of silver and of corn, and has undergone many expenses in order to lead Egypt into the sunlight and give peace to the Temples, and has with all his powers shown love of mankind. '

When the people of Lycopolis revolted, we hear:

 'in a short time he took the city by storm and slew all the Impious who dwelt in it, even as Hermes and Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, conquered those who of old revolted in the same regions . . . In return for which the Gods have granted him Health Victory Power and all other good things, the Kingdom remaining to him and his sons for time everlasting. '[157:1]

The conclusion which the Priests draw from these facts is that theyoung king's titles and honours are insufficient and should beincreased. It is a typical and terribly un-Hellenic document of theHellenistic God-man in his appearance as King. 

Now the early successors of Alexander mostly professed themselvesmembers of the Stoic school, and in the mouth of a Stoic this doctrineof the potential divinity of man was an inspiring one. To them virtuewas the really divine thing in man; and the most divine kind of virtuewas that of helping humanity. To love and help humanity is, according toStoic doctrine, the work and the very essence of God. If you take awayPronoia from God, says Chrysippus, [158:1] it is like taking away lightand heat from fire. This doctrine is magnificently expressed by Pliny ina phrase that is probably translated from Posidonius: 'God is thehelping of man by man; and that is the way to eternal glory. '[158:2]

The conception took root in the minds of many Romans. A great Romangovernor often had the chance of thus helping humanity on a vast scale, and liked to think that such a life opened the way to heaven. 'Oneshould conceive', says Cicero (_Tusc. _ i. 32), 'the gods as like menwho feel themselves born for the work of helping, defending, and savinghumanity. Hercules has passed into the number of the gods. He wouldnever have so passed if he had not built up that road for himself whilehe was among mankind. '

I have been using some rather late authors, though the ideas seemlargely to come from Posidonius. [159:1] But before Posidonius the sortof fact on which we have been dwelling had had its influence onreligious speculation. When Alexander made his conquering journey toIndia and afterwards was created a god, it was impossible not to reflectthat almost exactly the same story was related in myth about Dionysus. Dionysus had started from India and travelled in the other direction:that was the only difference. A flood of light seemed to be thrown onall the traditional mythology, which, of course, had always been apuzzle to thoughtful men. It was impossible to believe it as it stood, and yet hard--in an age which had not the conception of any science ofmythology--to think it was all a mass of falsehood, and the great Homerand Hesiod no better than liars. But the generation which witnessed theofficial deification of the various Seleucidae and Ptolemies seemedsuddenly to see light. The traditional gods, from Heracles and Dionysusup to Zeus and Cronos and even Ouranos, were simply old-world rulers andbenefactors of mankind, who had, by their own insistence or thegratitude of their subjects, been transferred to the ranks of heaven. For that is the exact meaning of making them divine: they are classedamong the true immortals, the Sun and Moon and Stars and Corn and Wine, and the everlasting elements. 

The philosophic romance of Euhemerus, published early in the thirdcentury B. C. , had instantaneous success and enormous influence. [160:1]It was one of the first Greek books translated into Latin, and becamelong afterwards a favourite weapon of the Christian fathers in theirpolemics against polytheism. 'Euhemerism' was, on the face of it, a verybrilliant theory; and it had, as we have noticed, a special appeal forthe Romans. 

Yet, if such a conception might please the leisure of a statesman, itcould hardly satisfy the serious thought of a philosopher or a religiousman. If man's soul really holds a fragment of God and is itself a divinebeing, its godhead cannot depend on the possession of great riches andarmies and organized subordinates. If 'the helping of man by man isGod', the help in question cannot be material help. The religion whichends in deifying only kings and millionaires may be vulgarly popular butis self-condemned. 

As a matter of fact the whole tendency of Greek philosophy after Plato, with some illustrious exceptions, especially among the RomanizingStoics, was away from the outer world towards the world of the soul. Wefind in the religious writings of this period that the real Saviour ofmen is not he who protects them against earthquake and famine, but hewho in some sense saves their souls. He reveals to them the _GnôsisTheou_, the Knowledge of God. The 'knowledge' in question is not a mereintellectual knowledge. It is a complete union, a merging of beings. And, as we have always to keep reminding our cold modern intelligence, he who has 'known' God is himself thereby deified. He is the Image ofGod, the Son of God, in a sense he _is_ God. [161:1] The stratum of ideasdescribed in the first of the studies will explain the ease with whichtransition took place. The worshipper of Bacchos became Bacchos simplyenough, because in reality the God Bacchos was originally only theprojection of the human Bacchoi. And in the Hellenistic age the notionof these secondary mediating gods was made easier by the analogy of thehuman interpreters. Of course, we have abundant instances of actualpreachers and miracle-workers who on their own authority posed, and wereaccepted, as gods. The adventure of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra[161:2]shows how easily such things could happen. But as a rule, I suspect, themost zealous priest or preacher preferred to have his God in thebackground. He preaches, he heals the sick and casts out devils, not inhis own name but in the name of One who sent him. This actual presentpriest who initiates you or me is himself already an Image of God; butabove him there are greater and wiser priests, above them others, andabove all there is the one eternal Divine Mediator, who being inperfection both man and God can alone fully reveal God to man, and leadman's soul up the heavenly path, beyond Change and Fate and the Housesof the Seven Rulers, to its ultimate peace. I have seen somewhere aGnostic or early Christian emblem which indicates this doctrine. SomeShepherd or Saviour stands, his feet on the earth, his head toweringabove the planets, lifting his follower in his outstretched arms. 

The Gnostics are still commonly thought of as a body of Christianheretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over theHellenistic world before Christianity as well as after. They must havebeen established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the daysof Paul or Apollos. Their Saviour, like the Jewish Messiah, wasestablished in men's minds before the Saviour of the Christians. 'If welook close', says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with greatclearness, that the figure of the Redeemer as such did not wait forChristianity to force its way into the religion of Gnôsis, but wasalready present there under various forms. '[162:1] He occurs notably intwo pre-Christian documents, discovered by the keen analysis andprofound learning of Dr. Reitzenstein: the Poimandres revelation printedin the _Corpus Hermeticum_, and the sermon of the Naassenes inHippolytus, _Refutatio Omnium Haeresium_, which is combined withAttis-worship. [162:2] The violent anti-Jewish bias of most of thesects--they speak of 'the accursed God of the Jews' and identify himwith Saturn and the Devil--points on the whole to pre-Christianconditions: and a completely non-Christian standpoint is still visiblein the Mandaean and Manichean systems. 

Their Redeemer is descended by a fairly clear genealogy from the 'TritosSôtêr' of early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attisand Adonis from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewishconception of the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which the name of Jesus or 'Christos', 'the Anointed', tends graduallyto supersede. Above all he is, in some sense, Man, or 'the Second Man'or 'the Son of Man'. The origin of this phrase needs a word ofexplanation. Since the ultimate unseen God, spirit though He is, mademan in His image, since holy men (and divine kings) are images of God, it follows that He is Himself Man. He is the real, the ultimate, theperfect and eternal Man, of whom all bodily men are feeble copies. He isalso the Father; the Saviour is his Son, 'the Image of the Father', 'theSecond Man', 'the Son of Man'. The method in which he performs hismystery of Redemption varies. It is haunted by the memory of the oldSuffering and Dying God, of whom we spoke in the first of these studies. It is vividly affected by the ideal 'Righteous Man' of Plato, who 'shallbe scourged, tortured, bound, his eyes burnt out, and at last, aftersuffering every evil, shall be impaled or crucified'. [163:1] But in themain he descends, of his free will or by the eternal purpose of theFather, from Heaven through the spheres of all the Archontes orKosmokratores, the planets, to save mankind, or sometimes to save thefallen Virgin, the Soul, Wisdom, or 'the Pearl'. [164:1] The Archonteslet him pass because he is disguised; they do not know him (cf. 1 Cor. Ii. 7 ff. ). When his work is done he ascends to Heaven to sit by theside of the Father in glory; he conquers the Archontes, leads themcaptive in his triumph, strips them of their armour (Col. Ii. 15; cf. The previous verse), sometimes even crucifies them for ever in theirplaces in the sky. [164:2] The epistles to the Colossians and theEphesians are much influenced by these doctrines. Paul himselfconstantly uses the language of them, but in the main we find himdiscouraging the excesses of superstition, reforming, ignoring, rejecting. His Jewish blood was perhaps enough to keep him to strictmonotheism. Though he admits Angels and Archontes, Principalities andPowers, he scorns the Elements and he seems deliberately to reverse thedoctrine of the first and second Man. [164:3] He says nothing about theTrinity of Divine Beings that was usual in Gnosticism, nothing about theDivine Mother. His mind, for all its vehement mysticism, has somethingof that clean antiseptic quality that makes such early Christian worksas the Octavius of Minucius Felix and the Epistle to Diognetus soinfinitely refreshing. He is certainly one of the great figures in Greekliterature, but his system lies outside the subject of this essay. Weare concerned only with those last manifestations of Hellenisticreligion which probably formed the background of his philosophy. It is astrange experience, and it shows what queer stuff we humans are made of, to study these obscure congregations, drawn from the proletariate of theLevant, superstitious, charlatan-ridden, and helplessly ignorant, whostill believed in Gods begetting children of mortal mothers, who tookthe 'Word', the 'Spirit', and the 'Divine Wisdom', to be persons calledby those names, and turned the Immortality of the Soul into 'thestanding up of the corpses';[165:1] and to reflect that it was these whoheld the main road of advance towards the greatest religion of thewestern world. 

 * * * * *

I have tried to sketch in outline the main forms of belief to whichHellenistic philosophy moved or drifted. Let me dwell for a few pagesmore upon the characteristic method by which it reached them. It may besummed up in one word, Allegory. All Hellenistic philosophy from thefirst Stoics onward is permeated by allegory. It is applied to Homer, tothe religious traditions, to the ancient rituals, to the whole world. ToSallustius after the end of our period the whole material world is onlya great myth, a thing whose value lies not in itself but in thespiritual meaning which it hides and reveals. To Cleanthes at thebeginning of it the Universe was a mystic pageant, in which the immortalstars were the dancers and the Sun the priestly torch-bearer. [165:2]Chrysippus reduced the Homeric gods to physical or ethical principles;and Crates, the great critic, applied allegory in detail to hisinterpretation of the all-wise poet. [166:1] We possess two small butcomplete treatises which illustrate well the results of this tendency, Cornutus ρεπὶ θεῶν and the _Homeric Allegories_ of Heraclitus, abrilliant little work of the first century B. C. I will not dwell upondetails: they are abundantly accessible and individually oftenridiculous. A by-product of the same activity is the mystic treatment oflanguage: a certain Titan in Hesiod is named Koios. Why? Because theTitans are the elements and one of them is naturally the element ofΚοιότης, the Ionic Greek for 'Quality'. The Egyptian Isis is derivedfrom the root of the Greek εἰδέναι, Knowledge, and the Egyptian Osirisfrom the Greek ὅσιος and ἱρός ('holy' and 'sacred', or perhaps moreexactly 'lawful' and '_tabu_'). Is this totally absurd? I think not. Ifall human language is, as most of these thinkers believed, a divineinstitution, a cap filled to the brim with divine meaning, so that byreflecting deeply upon a word a pious philosopher can reach the secretthat it holds, then there is no difficulty whatever in supposing thatthe special secret held by an Egyptian word may be found in Greek, orthe secret of a Greek word in Babylonian. Language is One. The Gods whomade all these languages equally could use them all, and wind them allintricately in and out, for the building up of their divine enigma. 

We must make a certain effort of imagination to understand this methodof allegory. It is not the frigid thing that it seems to us. In thefirst place, we should remember that, as applied to the ancientliterature and religious ritual, allegory was at least a _veracausa_--it was a phenomenon which actually existed. Heraclitus ofEphesus is an obvious instance. He deliberately expressed himself inlanguage which should not be understood of the vulgar, and which bore ahidden meaning to his disciples. Pythagoras did the same. The prophetsand religious writers must have done so to an even greaterextent. [167:1] And we know enough of the history of ritual to be surethat a great deal of it is definitely allegorical. The Hellenistic Agedid not wantonly invent the theory of allegory. 

And secondly, we must remember what states of mind tend especially toproduce this kind of belief. They are not contemptible states of mind. It needs only a strong idealism with which the facts of experienceclash, and allegory follows almost of necessity. The facts cannot beaccepted as they are. They must needs be explained as meaning somethingdifferent. 

Take an earnest Stoic or Platonist, a man of fervid mind, who ispossessed by the ideals of his philosophy and at the same time feels hisheart thrilled by the beauty of the old poetry. What is he to do? On oneside he can find Zoilus, or Plato himself, or the Cynic preachers, condemning Homer and the poets without remorse, as teachers offoolishness. He can treat poetry as the English puritans treated thestage. But is that a satisfactory solution? Remember that thesegenerations were trained habitually to give great weight to the voice oftheir inner consciousness, and the inner consciousness of a sensitiveman cries out that any such solution is false: that Homer is not a liar, but noble and great, as our fathers have always taught us. On the otherside comes Heraclitus the allegorist. 'If Homer used no allegories hecommitted all impieties. ' On this theory the words can be allowed topossess all their old beauty and magic, but an inner meaning is addedquite different from that which they bear on the surface. It may, verylikely, be a duller and less poetic meaning; but I am not sure that theverses will not gain by the mere process of brooding study fully as muchas they lose by the ultimate badness of the interpretation. Anyhow, thatwas the road followed. The men of whom I speak were not likely to giveup any experience that seemed to make the world more godlike or to feedtheir spiritual and emotional cravings. They left that to the barefootedcynics. They craved poetry and they craved philosophy; if the two spokelike enemies, their words must needs be explained away by one who lovedboth. 

The same process was applied to the world itself. Something like it ishabitually applied by the religious idealists of all ages. A fundamentaldoctrine of Stoicism and most of the idealist creeds was the perfectionand utter blessedness of the world, and the absolute fulfilment of thepurpose of God. Now obviously this belief was not based on experience. The poor world, to do it justice amid all its misdoings, has never lentitself to any such barefaced deception as that. No doubt it shriekedagainst the doctrine then, as loud as it has always shrieked, so thateven a Posidonian or a Pythagorean, his ears straining for the music ofthe spheres, was sometimes forced to listen. And what was his answer?It is repeated in all the literature of these sects. 'Our humanexperience is so small: the things of the earth may be bad and more thanbad, but, ah! if you only went beyond the Moon! That is where the trueKosmos begins. ' And, of course, if we did ever go there, we all knowthey would say it began beyond the Sun. Idealism of a certain type willhave its way; if hard life produces an ounce or a pound or a milliontons of fact in the scale against it, it merely dreams of infinitemillions in its own scale, and the enemy is outweighed and smothered. Ido not wish to mock at these Posidonian Stoics and Hermetics andGnostics and Neo-Pythagoreans. They loved goodness, and their faith isstrong and even terrible. One feels rather inclined to bow down beforetheir altars and cry: _Magna est Delusio et praevalebit. _

Yet on the whole one rises from these books with the impression that allthis allegory and mysticism is bad for men. It may make the emotionssensitive, it certainly weakens the understanding. And, of course, inthis paper I have left out of account many of the grosser forms ofsuperstition. In any consideration of the balance, they should not beforgotten. 

If a reader of Proclus and the _Corpus Hermeticum_ wants relief, he willfind it, perhaps, best in the writings of a gentle old Epicurean wholived at Oenoanda in Cappadocia about A. D. 200. His name wasDiogenes. [169:1] His works are preserved, in a fragmentary state, not onpapyrus or parchment, but on the wall of a large portico where heengraved them for passers-by to read. He lived in a world ofsuperstition and foolish terror, and he wrote up the great doctrines ofEpicurus for the saving of mankind. 

 'Being brought by age to the sunset of my life, and expecting at any moment to take my departure from the world with a glad song for the fullness of my happiness, I have resolved, lest I be taken too soon, to give help to those of good temperament. If one person or two or three or four, or any small number you choose, were in distress, and I were summoned out to help one after another, I would do all in my power to give the best counsel to each. But now, as I have said, the most of men lie sick, as it were of a pestilence, in their false beliefs about the world, and the tale of them increases; for by imitation they take the disease from one another, like sheep. And further it is only just to bring help to those who shall come after us--for they too are ours, though they be yet unborn; and love for man commands us also to help strangers who may pass by. Since therefore the good message of the Book has this wall and to set forth in public the medicine of the healing of mankind. '

The people of his time and neighbourhood seem to have fancied that theold man must have some bad motive. They understood mysteries andredemptions and revelations. They understood magic and curses. But theywere puzzled, apparently, by this simple message, which only told themto use their reason, their courage, and their sympathy, and not to beafraid of death or of angry gods. The doctrine was condensed into foursentences of a concentrated eloquence that make a translatordespair:[170:1] 'Nothing to fear in God: Nothing to feel in Death: Goodcan be attained: Evil can be endured. '

Of course, the doctrines of this good old man do not represent the wholetruth. To be guided by one's aversions is always a sign of weakness ordefeat; and it is as much a failure of nerve to reject blindly for fearof being a fool, as to believe blindly for fear of missing someemotional stimulus. 

There is no royal road in these matters. I confess it seems strange tome as I write here, to reflect that at this moment many of my friendsand most of my fellow creatures are, as far as one can judge, quiteconfident that they possess supernatural knowledge. As a rule, eachindividual belongs to some body which has received in writing theresults of a divine revelation. I cannot share in any such feeling. TheUncharted surrounds us on every side and we must needs have somerelation towards it, a relation which will depend on the generaldiscipline of a man's mind and the bias of his whole character. As faras knowledge and conscious reason will go, we should follow resolutelytheir austere guidance. When they cease, as cease they must, we must useas best we can those fainter powers of apprehension and surmise andsensitiveness by which, after all, most high truth has been reached aswell as most high art and poetry: careful always really to seek fortruth and not for our own emotional satisfaction, careful not to neglectthe real needs of men and women through basing our life on dreams; andremembering above all to walk gently in a world where the lights are dimand the very stars wander. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

It is not my purpose to make anything like a systematic bibliography, but a few recommendations may be useful to some students who approachthis subject, as I have done, from the side of classical Greek. 

For Greek Philosophy I have used besides Plato and Aristotle, DiogenesLaertius and Philodemus, Diels, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_; Diels, _Doxographi Graeci_; von Arnim, _Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_; Usener, _Epicurea_; also the old _Fragmenta Philosophorum_ of Mullach. 

For later Paganism and Gnosticism, Reitzenstein, _Poimandres_;Reitzenstein, _Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen_; Dieterich, _Eine Mithrasliturgic_ (also _Abraxas_, _Nekyia_, _Muttererde_, &c. ); P. Wendland, _Hellenistisch-Römische Kultur_; Cumont, _Textes et Monumentsrelatifs aux Mystères de Mithra_ (also _The Mysteries of Mithra_, Chicago, 1903), and _Les Religions Orientales dans l'Empire Romain_;Seeck, _Untergang der antiken Welt_, vol. Iii; Philo, _de VitaContemplativa_, Conybeare; Gruppe, _Griechische Religion andMythologie_, pp. 1458-1676; Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, 1907, with good bibliography in the introduction; articles by E. Bevan in the_Quarterly Review_, No. 424 (June 1910), and the _Hibbert Journal_, xi. 1 (October 1912). _Dokumente der Gnosis_, by W. Schultz (Jena, 1910), gives a highly subjective translation and reconstruction of most of theGnostic documents: the _Corpus Hermeticum_ is translated into English byG. R. S. Meade, _Thrice Greatest Hermes_, 1906. The first volume of Dr. Scott's monumental edition of the _Hermetica_ (Clarendon Press, 1924)has appeared just too late to be used in the present volume. 

For Jewish thought before the Christian era Dr. Charles's _Testaments ofthe Twelve Patriarchs_; also the same writer's _Book of Enoch_, and the_Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments_ by Carl Clemen, Giessen, 1909. 

Of Christian writers apart from the New Testament those that come mostinto account are Hippolytis ([cross symbol] A. D. 250), _RefutatioOmnium Haeresium_, Epiphanius (367-403), _Panarion_, and Irenaeus([cross symbol] A. D. 202), _Contra Haereses_, i, ii. For a simpleintroduction to the problems presented by the New Testament literature Iwould venture to recommend Prof. Bacon's _New Testament_, in the HomeUniversity Library, and Dr. Estlin Carpenter's _First Three Gospels_. Insuch a vast literature I dare not make any further recommendations, butfor a general introduction to the History of Religions with a good andbrief bibliography I would refer the reader to Salomon Reinach's_Orpheus_ (Paris, 1909; English translation the same year), a book ofwide learning and vigorous thought. 

FOOTNOTES:

[124:1] Mr. Marett has pointed out that this conception has its rootsdeep in primitive human nature: _The Birth of Humility_, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run awayfrom the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and toprostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plainthat to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken togetherthere corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude ofmind. Psychologists class the feelings bound up with flight, cowering, and prostration under the common head of "asthenic emotion". In plainEnglish they are all forms of heart-sinking, of feeling unstrung. Thisgeneral type of innate disposition would seem to be the psychologicalbasis of Humility. Taken in its social setting, the emotion will, ofcourse, show endless shades of complexity; for it will be excited, andagain will find practical expression, in all sorts of ways. Under thesevarying conditions, however, it is reasonable to suppose that what Mr. McDougall would call the "central part" of the experience remains verymuch the same. In face of the sacred the normal man is visited by aheart-sinking, a wave of asthenic emotion. ' Mr. Marett continues: 'Ifthat were all, however, Religion would be a matter of pure fear. But itis not all. There is yet the positive side of the sacred to be takeninto account. ' It is worth remarking also that Schleiermacher(1767-1834) placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolutedependence without attempting to define the object towards which it wasdirected. 

[129:1] Usener, _Epicurea_ (1887), pp. 232 ff. ; Diels, _DoxographiGraeci_ (1879), p. 306; Arnim, _Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta_ (1903-5), Chrysippus 1014, 1019. 

[133:1] Juv. X. 365 f. ; Polyb. Ii. 38, 5; x. 5, 8; xviii. 11, 5. 

[133:2] Cf. Also his _Consolatio ad Apollonium_. The earliest text isperhaps the interesting fragment of Demetrius of Phalerum (fr. 19, in_F. H. G. _ ii. 368), written about 317 B. C. It is quoted withadmiration by Polybius xxix. 21, with reference to the defeat of Perseusof Macedon by the Romans:

'One must often remember the saying of Demetrius of Phalerum . . . Inhis Treatise on Fortune. . . . "If you were to take not an indefinitetime, nor many generations, but just the fifty years before this, youcould see in them the violence of Fortune. Fifty years ago do yousuppose that either the Macedonians or the King of Macedon, or thePersians or the King of Persia, if some God had foretold them what wasto come, would ever have believed that by the present time the Persians, who were then masters of almost all the inhabited world, would haveceased to be even a geographical name, while the Macedonians, who werethen not even a name, would be rulers of all? Yet this Fortune, whobears no relation to our method of life, but transforms everything inthe way we do not expect and displays her power by surprises, is at thepresent moment showing all the world that, when she puts the Macedoniansinto the rich inheritance of the Persian, she has only lent them thesegood things until she changes her mind about them. " Which has nowhappened in the case of Perseus. The words of Demetrius were a prophecyuttered, as it were, by inspired lips. '

[134:1] Eur. , _Tro. _ 886. Literally it means 'The Compulsion in the wayThings grow'. 

[134:2] Zeno, fr. 87, Arnim. 

[135:1] Chrysippus, fr. 913, Arnim. 

[135:2] Cleanthes, 527, Arnim. Ἂγου δέ μ', ὦ Ζεῦ, καὶ σύ γ' ἡ Πεπρωμένη, κτλ. Plotinus, _Enn. _ III. I. 10. 

[135:3] Epicurus, Third Letter. Usener, p. 65, 12 = Diog. La. X. 134. 

[136:1] Aristotle, fr. 12 ff. 

[136:2] e. G. Chrysippus, fr. 1076, Arnim. 

[138:1] _Themis_, p. 180, n. 1. 

[138:2] Not to Plotinus: _Enn. _ II. Ix against the Valentinians. Cf. Porphyry, Ἀφορμαί, 28. 

[138:3] Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, 1907, pp. 13, 21, 26, 81, &c. ; pp. 332 ff. She becomes Helen in the beautiful myth of the SimonianGnostics--a Helen who has forgotten her name and race, and is a slave ina brothel in Tyre. Simon discovers her, gradually brings back her memoryand redeems her. Irenaeus, i. 23, 2. 

[139:1] _De Iside et Osiride_, 67. (He distinguishes them from the realGod, however, just as Sallustius would. )

[139:2] Mithras was worshipped by the Cilician Pirates conquered byPompey. Plut. , _Vit. Pomp. _ 24. 

[139:3] ἔκγονος τοῦ πρώτου θεοῦ. Plato (Diels, 305); Stoics, ib. 547, l. 8. 

[140:1] Aristotle (Diels, 450). ὅσας δὲ εἶναι τὰς σφαίρας, τοσούτουςὑπάρχειν καὶ τοὺς κινοῦντας θεούς. Chrysippus (Diels 466); Posidonius, ib. (cf. Plato, _Laws_. 898 ff. ). See Epicurus's Second Letter, especially Usener, pp. 36-47 = Diog. La. X. 86-104. On the food requiredby the heavenly bodies cf. Chrysippus, fr. 658-61, Arnim. 

[140:2] ὁ δὲ Ἐπίκουρος οὐδὲν τούτων ἐγκρίνει. Diels, 307{a} 15. Cf. 432{a} 10. 

[141:1] Heath, _Aristarchos of Samos_, pp. 301-10. 

[142:1] Pythagoras in Diels, p. 555, 20; the best criticism is inAristotle, _De Caelo_, chap. 9 (p. 290 b), the fullest account inMacrobius, _Comm. In Somn. Scipionis_, ii. 

[142:2] See Diels, _Elementium_, 1899, p. 17. These magic letters arestill used in the Roman ritual for the consecration of churches. 

[143:1] A seven-day week was known to Pseudo-Hippocrates περὶ σαρκῶν _adfin. _, but the date of that treatise is very uncertain. 

[143:2] Aesch. , _Ag. _ 6; Eur. , _Hip. _ 530. Also _Ag. _ 365, where ἀστρῶνβέλος goes together and μήτε πρὸ καιροῦ μήθ' ὕπερ. 

[143:3] Proclus, _In Timaeum_, 289 F; Seneca, _Nat. Quaest. _ iii. 29, 1. 

[145:1] Chrysippus, 1187-95. Esse divinationem si di sint etprovidentia. 

[145:2] Cicero, _De Nat. De. _ iii. 11, 28; especially _De Divinatione_, ii. 14, 34; 60, 124; 69, 142. 'Qua ex coniunctione naturae et quasiconcentu atque consensu, quam συμπάθειαν Graeci appellant, convenirepotest aut fissum iecoris cum lucello meo aut meus quaesticulus cumcaelo, terra rerumque natura?' asks the sceptic in the second of thesepassages. 

[145:3] Chrysippus, 939-44. Vaticinatio probat fati necessitatem. 

[145:4] Chrysippus, 1214, 1200-6. 

[146:1] _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, 1903. The MS. Is 574 Supplément grec dela Bibl. Nationale. The formulae of various religions were used asinstruments of magic, as our own witches used the Lord's Prayerbackwards. 

[146:2] _Refutatio Omnium Haeresium_, v. 7. They worshipped the Serpent, Nāhāsh (נָחָשׁ). 

[147:1] Bousset, p. 351. The hostility of Zoroastrianism to the oldBabylonian planet gods was doubtless at work also. Ib. Pp. 37-46. 

[147:2] Or, in some Gnostic systems, of the Mother. 

[148:1] Harrison, _Prolegomena_, Appendix on the Orphic tablets. 

[148:2] Ap. _Metamorphoses_, xi. 

[149:1] 2 Cor. Xii. 2 and 3 (he may be referring in veiled language tohimself); Gal. I. 12 ff. ; Acts ix. 1-22. On the difference of tone andfidelity between the Epistles and the Acts see the interesting remarksof Prof. P. Gardner, _The Religious Experience of St. Paul_, pp. 5 ff. 

[149:2] Porphyry, _Vita Plotini_, 23. 'We have explained that he wasgood and gentle, mild and merciful; we who lived with him could feel it. We have said that he was vigilant and pure of soul, and always strivingtowards the Divine, which with all his soul he loved. . . . And thus ithappened to this extraordinary man, constantly lifting himself uptowards the first and transcendent God by thought and the ways explainedby Plato in the _Symposium_, that there actually came a vision of thatGod who is without shape or form, established above the understandingand all the intelligible world. To whom I, Porphyry, being now in mysixty-eighth year, profess that I once drew near and was made one withhim. At any rate he appeared to Plotinus "a goal close at hand. " For hiswhole end and goal was to be made One and draw near to the supreme God. And he attained that goal four times, I think, while I was living withhim--not potentially but in actuality, though an actuality whichsurpasses speech. '

[150:1] _C. I. G. _, vol. Xii, fasc. 3; and Bethe in _Rhein. Mus. _, N. F. , xlii, 438-75. 

[150:2] Irenaeus, i. 13, 3. 

[150:3] Bousset, chap. Vii; Reitzenstein, _Mysterienreligionen_, p. 20ff. , with excursus; _Poimandres_, 226 ff. ; Dieterich, _Mithrasliturgie_, pp. 121 ff. 

[152:1] Eur. Fr. 484. 

[152:2] _R. G. E. _{3}, pp. 135-40. I do not touch on the political sideof this apotheosis of Hellenistic kings; it is well brought out inFerguson's _Hellenistic Athens_, e. G. P. 108 f. , also p. 11 f. Andnote. Antigonus Gonatas refused to be worshipped (Tarn, p. 250 f. ). ForSallustius's opinion, see below, p. 223, chap. Xviii _ad fin. _

[153:1] Cf. ψυχὴ οἰκητήριον δαίμονος, Democr. 171, Diels, and Alcmaeonis said by Cicero to have attributed divinity to the Stars and the Soul. Melissus and Zeno θείας οἴεται τὰς ψυχάς. The phrase τινὲς τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸτῶν ἄστρων ῥέουσαν, Diels 651, must refer to some Gnostic sect. 

[154:1] See for instance Frazer, _Golden Bough_{3}, part I, i. 417-19. 

[154:2] Aesch. _Pers. _ 157, 644 (θεός), 642 (δαίμων). Mr. Bevan howeversuspects that Aeschylus misunderstood his Persian sources: see hisarticle on 'Deification' in Hastings's _Dictionary of Religion_. 

[154:3] Cf. Aristotle on the Μεγαλόψυχος, _Eth. Nic. _ 1123 b. 15. εἰ δὲδὴ μεγάλων ἑαμτὸν ἀξιοῖ ἄξιος ὤν, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν μεγίστων, περὶ ἓνμάλιστα ἂν εἲη. . . . μέγιστον δὲ τοῦτ' ἂν θείημεν ὃ τοῖς θεοῖςἀπονέμομεν. But these kings clearly transgressed the mean. For thesatirical comments of various public men in Athens see Ed. Meyer, _Kleine Schriften_, 301 ff. , 330. 

[155:1] Lysander too had altars raised to him by some Asiatic cities. 

[156:1] Dittenberger, _Inscr. Orientis Graeci_, 90; Wendland, _Hellenistisch-römische Kultur_, 1907, p. 74 f. And notes. 

[157:1] Several of the phrases are interesting. The last gift of theheavenly gods to this Theos is the old gift of Mana. In Hesiod it wasΚάρτος τε Βίη τε, the two ministers who are never away from the KingZeus. In Aeschylus it was Kratos and Bia who subdue Prometheus. InTyrtaeus it was Νίκη καὶ Κάρτος. In other inscriptions of the Ptolemaicage it is Σωτηρία καὶ Νίκη or Σωτηρία καὶ Νίκη αἰώνιος. In the currentChristian liturgies it is 'the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory'. _R. G. E. _{3}, p. 135, n. The new conception, as always, is rooted in theold. 'The Gods Saviours, Brethren', &c. , are of course Ptolemy Soter, Ptolemy Philadelphus, &c. , and their Queens. The phrases εἰκὼν ζῶσα τοῦΔιός, υἱὸς τοῦ Ἡλίου, ἠγαπημένος ὑπὸ τοῦ Φθᾶ, are characteristic of thereligious language of this period. Cf. Also Col. I. 14, εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦτοῦ ἀοράτου; 2 Cor. Iv. 4; Ephes. I. 5, 6. 

[158:1] Fr. 1118. Arnim. Cf. Antipater, fr. 33, 34, τὸ εὐποιητικόν ispart of the definition of Deity. 

[158:2] Plin. , _Nat. Hist. _ ii. 7, 18. Deus est mortali iuvare mortalemet haec ad aeternam gloriam via. Cf. Also the striking passages fromCicero and others in Wendland, p. 85, n. 2. 

[159:1] The Stoic philosopher, teaching at Rhodes, _c. _ 100 B. C. A manof immense knowledge and strong religious emotions, he moved the Stoa inthe direction of Oriental mysticism. See Schwartz's sketch in_Characterköpfe_{a}, pp. 89-98. Also Norden's _Commentary on Aeneid_ vi. 

[160:1] Jacoby in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopädie_, vi. 954. It wascalled Ἱερὰ Ἀναγραφή. 

[161:1] Cf. Plotin. _Enn. _ I, ii. 6 ἀλλ' ἡ σπουδὴ οὐκ ἔξω ἁμαρτίαςεἶναι, ἀλλὰ θεὸν εἶναι. 

[161:2] Acts xiv. 12. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes, becausehe was ὁ ἡγούμενος τοῦ λόγου. --Paul also writes to the Galatians (iv. 14): 'Ye received me _as a messenger of God, as Jesus Christ_. '

[162:1] Bousset, p. 238. 

[162:2] Hippolytus, 134, 90 ff. , text in Reitzenstein's _Poimandres_, pp. 83-98. 

[163:1] _Republic_, 362 A. Ἀνασχινδυλεύω is said to = ἀνασκολοπίζω, which is used both for 'impale' and 'crucify'. The two were alternativeforms of the most slavish and cruel capital punishment, impalement beingmainly Persian, crucifixion Roman. 

[164:1] See _The Hymn of the Soul_, attributed to the GnosticBardesanes, edited by A. A. Bevan, Cambridge, 1897. 

[164:2] Bousset cites Acta Archelai 8, and Epiphanius, _Haeres_. 66, 32. 

[164:3] Gal. Iv. 9; 1 Cor. Xv. 21 f. , 47; Rom. V. 12-18. 

[165:1] ἡ ἀνάστασις τῶν νεκρῶν. Cf. Acts xvii. 32. 

[165:2] Cleanthes, 538, Arnim; Diels, p. 592, 30. Cf. Philolaus, Diels, p. 336 f. 

[166:1] See especially the interpretation of Nestor's Cup, Athenaeus, pp. 489 c. Ff. 

[167:1] I may refer to the learned and interesting remarks on theEsoteric Style in Prof. Margoliouth's edition of Aristotle's _Poetics_. It is not, of course, the same as Allegory. 

[169:1] Published in the Teubner series by William, 1907. 

[170:1]

 Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός. Ἀναίσθητον ὁ θάνατος. Τὸ ἀγαθὸν εὔκτητον. Τὸ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον. 

I regret to say that I cannot track this Epicurean 'tetractys' to itssource. 

V

THE LAST PROTEST

In the last essay we have followed Greek popular religion to the verythreshold of Christianity, till we found not only a soil ready for theseed of Christian metaphysic, but a large number of the plants alreadyin full and exuberant growth. A complete history of Greek religionought, without doubt, to include at least the rise of Christianity andthe growth of the Orthodox Church, but, of course, the present series ofstudies does not aim at completeness. We will take the Christiantheology for granted as we took the classical Greek philosophy, and willfinish with a brief glance at the Pagan reaction of the fourth century, when the old religion, already full of allegory, mysticism, asceticism, and Oriental influences, raised itself for a last indignant standagainst the all-prevailing deniers of the gods. 

This period, however, admits a rather simpler treatment than the others. It so happens that for the last period of paganism we actually possessan authoritative statement of doctrine, something between a creed and acatechism. It seems to me a document so singularly important and, as faras I can make out, so little known, that I shall venture to print itentire. 

A creed or catechism is, of course, not at all the same thing as thereal religion of those who subscribe to it. The rules of metre are notthe same thing as poetry; the rules of cricket, if the analogy may beexcused, are not the same thing as good play. Nay, more. A man states inhis creed only the articles which he thinks it right to assertpositively against those who think otherwise. His deepest and mostpractical beliefs are those on which he acts without question, whichhave never occurred to him as being open to doubt. If you take on theone hand a number of persons who have accepted the same creed but livedin markedly different ages and societies, with markedly differentstandards of thought and conduct, and on the other an equal number whoprofess different creeds but live in the same general environment, Ithink there will probably be more real identity of religion in thelatter group. Take three orthodox Christians, enlightened according tothe standards of their time, in the fourth, the sixteenth, and thetwentieth centuries respectively, I think you will find more profounddifferences of religion between them than between a Methodist, aCatholic, a Freethinker, and even perhaps a well-educated Buddhist orBrahmin at the present day, provided you take the most generallyenlightened representatives of each class. Still, when a student istrying to understand the inner religion of the ancients, he realizes howimmensely valuable a creed or even a regular liturgy would be. 

Literature enables us sometimes to approach pretty close, in variousways, to the minds of certain of the great men of antiquity, andunderstand how they thought and felt about a good many subjects. Attimes one of these subjects is the accepted religion of their society;we can see how they criticized it or rejected it. But it is very hard toknow from their reaction against it what that accepted religion reallywas. Who, for instance, knows Herodotus's religion? He talks in hispenetrating and garrulous way, 'sometimes for children and sometimes forphilosophers, ' as Gibbon puts it, about everything in the world; but atthe end of his book you find that he has not opened his heart on thissubject. No doubt his profession as a reciter and story-teller preventedhim. We can see that Thucydides was sceptical; but can we fully see whathis scepticism was directed against, or where, for instance, Nikiaswould have disagreed with him, and where he and Nikias both agreedagainst us?

We have, of course, the systems of the great philosophers--especially ofPlato and Aristotle. Better than either, perhaps, we can make out thereligion of M. Aurelius. Amid all the harshness and plainness of hisliterary style, Marcus possessed a gift which has been granted to few, the power of writing down what was in his heart just as it was, notobscured by any consciousness of the presence of witnesses or anystriving after effect. He does not seem to have tried deliberately toreveal himself, yet he has revealed himself in that short personalnote-book almost as much as the great inspired egotists, Rousseau andSt. Augustine. True, there are some passages in the book which areunintelligible to us; that is natural in a work which was not meant tobe read by the public; broken flames of the white passion that consumedhim bursting through the armour of his habitual accuracy andself-restraint. 

People fail to understand Marcus, not because of his lack ofself-expression, but because it is hard for most men to breathe at thatintense height of spiritual life, or, at least, to breathe soberly. Theycan do it if they are allowed to abandon themselves to floods ofemotion, and to lose self-judgement and self-control. I am often rathersurprised at good critics speaking of Marcus as 'cold'. There is as muchintensity of feeling in Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν as in most of the nobler modernbooks of religion, only there is a sterner power controlling it. Thefeeling never amounts to complete self-abandonment. 'The Guiding Power'never trembles upon its throne, and the emotion is severely purged ofearthly dross. That being so, we children of earth respond to it lessreadily. 

Still, whether or no we can share Marcus's religion, we can at any rateunderstand most of it. But even then we reach only the personal religionof a very extraordinary man; we are not much nearer to the religion ofthe average educated person--the background against which Marcus, likePlato, ought to stand out. I believe that our conceptions of it arereally very vague and various. Our great-grandfathers who read 'Tully's_Offices_ and _Ends_' were better informed than we. But there are manylarge and apparently simple questions about which, even after readingCicero's philosophical translations, scholars probably feel quiteuncertain. Were the morals of Epictetus or the morals of Part V of theAnthology most near to those of real life among respectable persons? Arethere not subjects on which Plato himself sometimes makes our fleshcreep? What are we to feel about slavery, about the exposing ofchildren? True, slavery was not peculiar to antiquity; it flourished ina civilized and peculiarly humane people of English blood till ageneration ago. And the history of infanticide among the finest modernnations is such as to make one reluctant to throw stones, and evendoubtful in which direction to throw them. Still, these great facts andothers like them have to be understood, and are rather hard tounderstand, in their bearing on the religious life of the ancients. 

Points of minor morals again are apt to surprise a reader of ancientliterature. We must remember, of course, that they always do surpriseone, in every age of history, as soon as its manners are studied indetail. One need not go beyond Salimbene's Chronicle, one need hardly gobeyond Macaulay's History, or any of the famous French memoirs, torealize that. Was it really an ordinary thing in the first century, asPhilo seems to say, for gentlemen at dinner-parties to black oneanother's eyes or bite one another's ears off?[177:1] Or were suchpractices confined to some Smart Set? Or was Philo, for his ownpurposes, using some particular scandalous occurrence as if it wastypical?

St. Augustine mentions among the virtues of his mother her unusualmeekness and tact. Although her husband had a fiery temper, she neverhad bruises on her face, which made her a _rara avis_ among the matronsof her circle. [177:2] Her circle, presumably, included Christians aswell as Pagans and Manicheans. And Philo's circle can scarcely beconsidered Pagan. Indeed, as for the difference of religion, we shouldbear in mind that, just at the time we are about to consider, the middleof the fourth century, the conduct of the Christians, either to the restof the world or to one another, was very far from evangelical. Ammianussays that no savage beasts could equal its cruelty; Ammianus was apagan; but St. Gregory himself says it was like Hell. [178:1]

I have expressed elsewhere my own general answer to this puzzle. [178:2]Not only in early Greek times, but throughout the whole of antiquity thepossibility of all sorts of absurd and atrocious things lay much nearer, the protective forces of society were much weaker, the strain onpersonal character, the need for real 'wisdom and virtue', was muchgreater than it is at the present day. That is one of the causes thatmake antiquity so interesting. Of course, different periods of antiquityvaried greatly, both in the conventional standard demanded and in thespiritual force which answered or surpassed the demand. But, in general, the strong governments and orderly societies of modern Europe have madeit infinitely easier for men of no particular virtue to live a decentlife, infinitely easier also for men of no particular reasoning power orscientific knowledge to have a more or less scientific or sane view ofthe world. 

That, however, does not carry us far towards solving the main problem:it brings us no nearer to knowledge of anything that we may calltypically a religious creed or an authorized code of morals, in any agefrom Hesiod to M. Aurelius. 

The book which I have ventured to call a Creed or Catechism is the workof Sallustius _About the Gods and the World_, a book, I should say, about the length of the Scottish Shorter Catechism. It is printed in thethird volume of Mullach's _Fragmenta Philosophorum_; apart from that, the only edition generally accessible--and that is rare--is a duodecimopublished by Allatius in 1539. Orelli's brochure of 1821 seems to beunprocurable. 

The author was in all probability that Sallustius who is known to us asa close friend of Julian before his accession, and a backer or inspirerof the emperor's efforts to restore the old religion. He was concernedin an educational edition of Sophocles--the seven selected plays nowextant with a commentary. He was given the rank of prefect in 362, thatof consul in 363. One must remember, of course, that in that rigorousand ascetic court high rank connoted no pomp or luxury. Julian haddismissed the thousand hairdressers, the innumerable cooks and eunuchsof his Christian predecessor. It probably brought with it only anincreased obligation to live on pulse and to do without such pamperingsof the body as fine clothes or warmth or washing. 

Julian's fourth oration, a prose hymn _To King Sun_, πρὸς Ἥλιον βασιλέα, is dedicated to Sallustius; his eighth is a 'Consolation to Himself uponthe Departure of Sallustius'. (He had been with Julian in the wars inGaul, and was recalled by the jealousy of the emperor Constantius. ) Itis a touching and even a noble treatise. The nervous self-distrust whichwas habitual in Julian makes him write always with a certainaffectation, but no one could mistake the real feeling of loss andloneliness that runs through the consolation. He has lost his 'comradein the ranks', and now is 'Odysseus left alone'. So he writes, quotingthe _Iliad_; Sallustius has been carried by God outside the spears andarrows: 'which malignant men were always aiming at you, or rather at me, trying to wound me through you, and believing that the only way to beatme down was by depriving me of the fellowship of my true friend andfellow-soldier, the comrade who never flinched from sharing my dangers. '

One note recurs four times; he has lost the one man to whom he couldtalk as a brother; the man of 'guileless and clean free-speech', [180:1]who was honest and unafraid and able to contradict the emperor freelybecause of their mutual trust. If one thinks of it, Julian, for all hisgentleness, must have been an alarming emperor to converse with. Hisstandard of conduct was not only uncomfortably high, it was also alittle unaccountable. The most correct and blameless court officialsmust often have suspected that their master looked upon them as simplywallowing in sin. And that feeling does not promote ease ortruthfulness. Julian compares his friendship with Sallustius to that ofScipio and Laelius. People said of Scipio that he only carried out whatLaelius told him. 'Is that true of me?' Julian asks himself. 'Have Ionly done what Sallustius told me?' His answer is sincere and beautiful:κοινὰ τὰ φίλων. It little matters who suggested, and who agreed to thesuggestion; his thoughts, and any credit that came from the thoughts, are his friend's as much as his own. We happen to hear from theChristian Theodoret (_Hist. _ iii. 11) that on one occasion when Julianwas nearly goaded into persecution of the Christians, it was Sallustiuswho recalled him to their fixed policy of toleration. 

Sallustius then may be taken to represent in the most authoritative waythe Pagan reaction of Julian's time, in its final struggle againstChristianity. 

He was, roughly speaking, a Neo-Platonist. But it is not as a professedphilosopher that he writes. It is only that Neo-Platonism had permeatedthe whole atmosphere of the age. [181:1] The strife of the philosophicalsects had almost ceased. Just as Julian's mysticism made all gods andalmost all forms of worship into one, so his enthusiasm for Hellenismrevered, nay, idolized, almost all the great philosophers of the past. They were all trying to say the same ineffable thing; all liftingmankind towards the knowledge of God. I say 'almost' in both cases; forthe Christians are outside the pale in one domain and the Epicureans anda few Cynics in the other. Both had committed the cardinal sin; they haddenied the gods. They are sometimes lumped together as _Atheoi_. _L'athéisme, voilà l'ennemi. _

This may surprise us at first sight, but the explanation is easy. ToJulian the one great truth that matters is the presence and glory ofthe gods. No doubt, they are all ultimately one: they are δυνάμεις, 'forces, ' not persons, but for reasons above our comprehension they aremanifest only under conditions of form, time, and personality, and haveso been revealed and worshipped and partly known by the great minds ofthe past. In Julian's mind the religious emotion itself becomes thething to live for. Every object that has been touched by that emotion isthereby glorified and made sacred. Every shrine where men haveworshipped in truth of heart is thereby a house of God. The worship maybe mixed up with all sorts of folly, all sorts of unedifying practice. Such things must be purged away, or, still better, must be properlyunderstood. For to the pure all things are pure: and the myths thatshock the vulgar are noble allegories to the wise and reverent. Purgereligion from dross, if you like; but remember that you do so at yourperil. One false step, one self-confident rejection of a thing which ismerely too high for you to grasp, and you are darkening the Sun, castingGod out of the world. And that was just what the Christians deliberatelydid. In many of the early Christian writings denial is a much greaterelement than assertion. The beautiful _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix(about A. D. 130-60) is an example. Such denial was, of course, to ourjudgement, eminently needed, and rendered a great service to the world. But to Julian it seemed impiety. In other Christian writings themisrepresentation of pagan rites and beliefs is decidedly foul-mouthedand malicious. Quite apart from his personal wrongs and his contempt forthe character of Constantius, Julian could have no sympathy for men whooverturned altars and heaped blasphemy on old deserted shrines, defilersof every sacred object that was not protected by popularity. The mostthat such people could expect from him was that they should not beproscribed by law. 

But meantime what were the multitudes of the god-fearing to believe? Thearm of the state was not very strong or effective. Labour as he might tosupply good teaching to all provincial towns, Julian could not hope toeducate the poor and ignorant to understand Plato and M. Aurelius. Forthem, he seems to say, all that is necessary is that they should bepious and god-fearing in their own way. But for more or less educatedpeople, not blankly ignorant, and yet not professed students ofphilosophy, there might be some simple and authoritative treatiseissued--a sort of reasoned creed, to lay down in a convincing manner theoutlines of the old Hellenic religion, before the Christians andAtheists should have swept all fear of the gods from off the earth. 

The treatise is this work of Sallustius. 

 * * * * *

The Christian fathers from Minucius Felix onward have shown us what wasthe most vulnerable point of Paganism: the traditional mythology. Sallustius deals with it at once. The _Akroâtês_, or pupil, he says inSection 1, needs some preliminary training. He should have been wellbrought up, should not be incurably stupid, and should not have beenfamiliarized with foolish fables. Evidently the mythology was not to betaught to children. He enunciates certain postulates of religiousthought, viz. That God is always good and not subject to passion or tochange, and then proceeds straight to the traditional myths. In thefirst place, he insists that they are what he calls 'divine'. That is, they are inspired or have some touch of divine truth in them. This isproved by the fact that they have been uttered, and sometimes invented, by the most inspired poets and philosophers and by the gods themselvesin oracles--a very characteristic argument. 

The myths are all expressions of God and of the goodness of God; butthey follow the usual method of divine revelation, to wit, mystery andallegory. The myths state clearly the one tremendous fact that the Gods_are_; that is what Julian cared about and the Christians denied: _what_they are the myths reveal only to those who have understanding. 'Theworld itself is a great myth, in which bodies and inanimate things arevisible, souls and minds invisible. '

'But, admitting all this, how comes it that the myths are so oftenabsurd and even immoral?' For the usual purpose of mystery and allegory;in order to make people think. The soul that wishes to know God mustmake its own effort; it cannot expect simply to lie still and be told. The myths by their obvious falsity and absurdity on the surfacestimulate the mind capable of religion to probe deeper. 

He proceeds to give instances, and chooses at once myths that had beenfor generations the mock of the sceptic, and in his own day furnishedabundant ammunition for the artillery of Christian polemic. He takesfirst Hesiod's story of Kronos swallowing his children; then theJudgement of Paris; then comes a long and earnest explanation of themyth of Attis and the Mother of the Gods. It is on the face of it astory highly discreditable both to the heart and the head of thoseaugust beings, and though the rites themselves do not seem to have beenin any way improper, the Christians naturally attacked the Pagans andJulian personally for countenancing the worship. Sallustius'sexplanation is taken directly from Julian's fifth oration in praise ofthe Great Mother, and reduces the myth and the ritual to an expressionof the adventures of the Soul seeking God. 

So much for the whole traditional mythology. It has been explainedcompletely away and made subservient to philosophy and edification, while it can still be used as a great well-spring of religious emotion. For the explanations given by Sallustius and Julian are neverrationalistic. They never stimulate a spirit of scepticism, always aspirit of mysticism and reverence. And, lest by chance even thisreverent theorizing should have been somehow lacking in insight or truepiety, Sallustius ends with the prayer: 'When I say these thingsconcerning the myths, may the gods themselves and the spirits of thosewho wrote the myths be gracious to me. '

He now leaves mythology and turns to the First Cause. It must be one, and it must be present in all things. Thus, it cannot be Life, for, ifit were, all things would be alive. By a Platonic argument in which hewill still find some philosophers to follow him, he proves thateverything which exists, exists because of some goodness in it; and thusarrives at the conclusion that the First Cause is τὸ ἀγαθόν, the Good. 

The gods are emanations or forces issuing from the Good; the makers ofthis world are secondary gods; above them are the makers of the makers, above all the One. 

Next comes a proof that the world is eternal--a very important point ofdoctrine; next that the soul is immortal; next a definition of theworkings of Divine Providence, Fate, and Fortune--a fairly skilful pieceof dialectic dealing with a hopeless difficulty. Next come Virtue andVice, and, in a dead and perfunctory echo of Plato's _Republic_, anenumeration of the good and bad forms of human society. The questionswhich vibrated with life in free Athens had become meaningless to adespot-governed world. Then follows more adventurous matter. 

First a chapter headed: 'Whence Evil things come, and that there is no_Phusis Kakou_--Evil is not a real thing. ' 'It is perhaps best', hesays, 'to observe at once that, since the gods are good and makeeverything, there is no positive evil; there is only absence of good;just as there is no positive darkness, only absence of light. '

What we call 'evils' arise only in the activities of men, and even hereno one ever does evil for the sake of evil. 'One who indulges in somepleasant vice thinks the vice bad but his pleasure good; a murdererthinks the murder bad, but the money he will get by it, good; one whoinjures an enemy thinks the injury bad, but the being quits with hisenemy, good'; and so on. The evil acts are all done for the sake of somegood, but human souls, being very far removed from the original flawlessdivine nature, make mistakes or sins. One of the great objects of theworld, he goes on to explain, of gods, men, and spirits, of religiousinstitutions and human laws alike, is to keep the souls from theseerrors and to purge them again when they have fallen. 

Next comes a speculative difficulty. Sallustius has called the world'eternal in the fullest sense'--that is, it always has been and alwayswill be. And yet it is 'made' by the gods. How are these statementscompatible? If it was made, there must have been a time before it wasmade. The answer is ingenious. It is not made by handicraft as a tableis; it is not begotten as a son by a father. It is the result of aquality of God just as light is the result of a quality of the sun. Thesun causes light, but the light is there as soon as the sun is there. The world is simply the other side, as it were, of the goodness of God, and has existed as long as that goodness has existed. 

Next come some simpler questions about man's relation to the gods. Inwhat sense do we say that the gods are angry with the wicked or areappeased by repentance? Sallustius is quite firm. The gods cannot everbe glad--for that which is glad is also sorry; cannot be angry--foranger is a passion; and obviously they cannot be appeased by gifts orprayers. Even men, if they are honest, require higher motives than that. God is unchangeable, always good, always doing good. If we are good, weare nearer to the gods, and we feel it; if we are evil, we are separatedfurther from them. It is not they that are angry, it is our sins thathide them from us and prevent the goodness of God from shining into us. If we repent, again, we do not make any change in God; we only, by theconversion of our soul towards the divine, heal our own badness andenjoy again the goodness of the gods. To say that the gods turn awayfrom the wicked, would be like saying that the sun turns away from ablind man. 

Why then do we make offerings and sacrifices to the gods, when the godsneed nothing and can have nothing added to them? We do so in order tohave more communion with the gods. The whole temple service, in fact, isan elaborate allegory, a representation of the divine government of theworld. 

The custom of sacrificing animals had died out some time before this. The Jews of the Dispersion had given it up long since because the Lawforbade any such sacrifice outside the Temple. [188:1] When Jerusalem wasdestroyed Jewish sacrifice ceased altogether. The Christians seem fromthe beginning to have generally followed the Jewish practice. Butsacrifice was in itself not likely to continue in a society of largetowns. It meant turning your temples into very ill-conductedslaughter-houses, and was also associated with a great deal of muddledand indiscriminate charity. [188:2] One might have hoped that men sohigh-minded and spiritual as Julian and Sallustius would have consideredthis practice unnecessary or even have reformed it away. But no. It waspart of the genuine Hellenic tradition; and no jot or tittle of thattradition should, if they could help it, be allowed to die. Sacrifice isdesirable, argues Sallustius, because it is a gift of life. God hasgiven us life, as He has given us all else. We must therefore pay to Himsome emblematic tithe of life. Again, prayers in themselves are merelywords; but with sacrifice they are words plus life, Living Words. Lastly, we are Life of a sort, and God is Life of an infinitely highersort. To approach Him we need always a medium or a mediator; the mediumbetween life and life must needs be life. We find that life in thesacrificed animal. [189:1]

The argument shows what ingenuity these religious men had at theircommand, and what trouble they would take to avoid having to face a factand reform a bad system. 

There follows a long and rather difficult argument to show that theworld is, in itself, eternal. The former discussion on this point hadonly shown that the gods would not destroy it. This shows that its ownnature is indestructible. The arguments are very inconclusive, thoughclever, and one wonders why the author is at so much pains. Indeed, heis so earnest that at the end of the chapter he finds it necessary toapologize to the Kosmos in case his language should have beenindiscreet. The reason, I think, is that the Christians were still, asin apostolic times, pinning their faith to the approaching end of theworld by fire. [190:1] They announced the end of the world as near, andthey rejoiced in the prospect of its destruction. History has shown morethan once what terrible results can be produced by such beliefs as thesein the minds of excitable and suffering populations, especially those ofeastern blood. It was widely believed that Christian fanatics had fromtime to time actually tried to light fires which should consume theaccursed world and thus hasten the coming of the kingdom which shouldbring such incalculable rewards to their own organization and plunge therest of mankind in everlasting torment. To any respectable Pagan suchaction was an insane crime made worse by a diabolical motive. Thedestruction of the world, therefore, seems to have become a subject ofprofound irritation, if not actually of terror. At any rate the doctrinelay at the very heart of the _perniciosa superstitio_, and Sallustiususes his best dialectic against it. 

The title of Chapter XVIII has a somewhat pathetic ring: 'Why are_Atheïai_'--Atheisms or rejections of God--'permitted, and that God isnot injured thereby?' Θεὸς οὐ βλάπτεται. 'If over certain parts of theworld there have occurred (and will occur more hereafter) rejections ofthe gods, a wise man need not be disturbed at that. ' We have alwaysknown that the human soul was prone to error. God's providence is there;but we cannot expect all men at all times and places to enjoy itequally. In the human body it is only the eye that sees the light, therest of the body is ignorant of the light. So are many parts of theearth ignorant of God. 

Very likely, also, this rejection of God is a punishment. Persons who ina previous life have known the gods but disregarded them, are perhapsnow born, as it were, blind, unable to see God; persons who havecommitted the blasphemy of worshipping their own kings as gods mayperhaps now be cast out from the knowledge of God. 

Philosophy had always rejected the Man-God, especially in the form ofKing-worship; but opposition to Christianity no doubt intensifies theprotest. 

The last chapter is very short. 'Souls that have lived in virtue, beingotherwise blessed and especially separated from their irrational partand purged of all body, are joined with the gods and sway the wholeworld together with them. ' So far triumphant faith: then theafter-thought of the brave man who means to live his best life even iffaith fail him. 'But even if none of these rewards came to them, stillVirtue itself and the Joy and Glory of Virtue, and the Life that issubject to no grief and no master, would be enough to make blessed thosewho have set themselves to live in Virtue and have succeeded. '

 * * * * *

There the book ends. It ends upon that well-worn paradox which, from thesecond book of the _Republic_ onwards, seems to have brought so muchcomfort to the nobler spirits of the ancient world. Strange how wemoderns cannot rise to it! We seem simply to lack the intensity of moralenthusiasm. When we speak of martyrs being happy on the rack; in thefirst place we rarely believe it, and in the second we are usuallysupposing that the rack will soon be over and that harps and goldencrowns will presently follow. The ancient moralist believed that thegood man was happy then and there, because the joy, being in his soul, was not affected by the torture of his body. [192:1]

Not being able fully to feel this conviction, we naturally incline tothink it affected or unreal. But, taking the conditions of the ancientworld into account, we must admit that the men who uttered this beliefat least understood better than most of us what suffering was. Many ofthem were slaves, many had been captives of war. They knew what theywere talking about. I think, on a careful study of M. Aurelius, Epictetus, and some of these Neo-Platonic philosophers, that we shall beforced to realize that these men could rise to much the same heights ofreligious heroism as the Catholic saints of the Middle Age, and thatthey often did so--if I may use such a phrase--on a purer and thinnerdiet of sensuous emotion, with less wallowing in the dust and lessdelirium. 

Be that as it may, we have now seen in outline the kind of religionwhich ancient Paganism had become at the time of its final reactionagainst Christianity. It is a more or less intelligible whole, andsucceeds better than most religions in combining two great appeals. Itappeals to the philosopher and the thoughtful man as a fairly completeand rational system of thought, which speculative and enlightened mindsin any age might believe without disgrace. I do not mean that it isprobably true; to me all these overpowering optimisms which, by means ofa few untested _a priori_ postulates, affect triumphantly to disprovethe most obvious facts of life, seem very soon to become meaningless. Iconceive it to be no comfort at all, to a man suffering agonies offrostbite, to be told by science that cold is merely negative and doesnot exist. So far as the statement is true it is irrelevant; so far asit pretends to be relevant it is false. I only mean that a system likethat of Sallustius is, judged by any standard, high, civilized, andenlightened. 

At the same time this religion appeals to the ignorant and thehumble-minded. It takes from the pious villager no single object ofworship that has turned his thoughts heavenwards. It may explain andpurge; it never condemns or ridicules. In its own eyes that was itsgreat glory, in the eyes of history perhaps its most fatal weakness. Christianity, apart from its positive doctrines, had inherited fromJudaism the noble courage of its disbeliefs. 

To compare this Paganism in detail with its great rival would be, evenif I possessed the necessary learning, a laborious and unsatisfactorytask. But if a student with very imperfect knowledge may venture apersonal opinion on this obscure subject, it seems to me that we oftenlook at such problems from a wrong angle. Harnack somewhere, indiscussing the comparative success or failure of various early Christiansects, makes the illuminating remark that the main determining cause ineach case was not their comparative reasonableness of doctrine or skillin controversy--for they practically never converted one another--butsimply the comparative increase or decrease of the birth-rate in therespective populations. On somewhat similar lines it always appears tome that, historically speaking, the character of Christianity in theseearly centuries is to be sought not so much in the doctrines which itprofessed, nearly all of which had their roots and their close parallelsin older Hellenistic or Hebrew thought, but in the organization on whichit rested. For my own part, when I try to understand Christianity as amass of doctrines, Gnostic, Trinitarian, Monophysite, Arian and therest, I get no further. When I try to realize it as a sort ofsemi-secret society for mutual help with a mystical religious basis, resting first on the proletariates of Antioch and the great commercialand manufacturing towns of the Levant, then spreading by instinctivesympathy to similar classes in Rome and the West, and rising ininfluence, like certain other mystical cults, by the special appeal itmade to women, the various historical puzzles begin to fall into place. Among other things this explains the strange subterranean power by whichthe emperor Diocletian was baffled, and to which the pretenderConstantine had to capitulate; it explains its humanity, its intensefeeling of brotherhood within its own bounds, its incessant care for thepoor, and also its comparative indifference to the virtues which arespecially incumbent on a governing class, such as statesmanship, moderation, truthfulness, active courage, learning, culture, and publicspirit. Of course, such indifference was only comparative. After thetime of Constantine the governing classes come into the fold, bringingwith them their normal qualities, and thereafter it is Paganism, notChristianity, that must uphold the flag of a desperate fidelity in theface of a hostile world--a task to which, naturally enough, Paganism wasnot equal. But I never wished to pit the two systems against oneanother. The battle is over, and it is poor work to jeer at the woundedand the dead. If we read the literature of the time, especially somerecords of the martyrs under Diocletian, we shall at first perhapsimagine that, apart from some startling exceptions, the conquered partywere all vicious and hateful, the conquerors, all wise and saintly. Then, looking a little deeper, we shall see that this great controversydoes not stand altogether by itself. As in other wars, each side had itswise men and its foolish, its good men and its evil. Like otherconquerors these conquerors were often treacherous and brutal; likeother vanquished these vanquished have been tried at the bar of historywithout benefit of counsel, have been condemned in their absence anddied with their lips sealed. The polemic literature of Christianity isloud and triumphant, the books of the Pagans have been destroyed. 

Only an ignorant man will pronounce a violent or bitter judgement here. The minds that are now tender, timid, and reverent in their orthodoxywould probably in the third or fourth century have sided with the oldgods; those of more daring and puritan temper with the Christians. Thehistorian will only try to have sympathy and understanding for both. They are all dead now, Diocletian and Ignatius, Cyril and Hypatia, Julian and Basil, Athanasius and Arîus: every party has yielded up itspersecutors and its martyrs, its hates and slanders and aspirations andheroisms, to the arms of that great Silence whose secrets they allclaimed so loudly to have read. Even the dogmas for which they foughtmight seem to be dead too. For if Julian and Sallustius, Gregory andJohn Chrysostom, were to rise again and see the world as it now is, theywould probably feel their personal differences melt away in comparisonwith the vast difference between their world and this. They fought tothe death about this credo and that, but the same spirit was in all ofthem. In the words of one who speaks with greater knowledge than mine, 'the most inward man in these four contemporaries is the same. It is theSpirit of the Fourth Century. '[196:1]

 * * * * *

'Dieselbe Seelenstimmung, derselbe Spiritualismus'; also the samepassionate asceticism. All through antiquity the fight against luxurywas a fiercer and stronger fight than comes into our modern experience. There was not more objective luxury in any period of ancient historythan there is now; there was never anything like so much. But there doesseem to have been more subjective abandonment to physical pleasure andconcomitantly a stronger protest against it. From some time before theChristian era it seems as if the subconscious instinct of humanity wasslowly rousing itself for a great revolt against the long intolerabletyranny of the senses over the soul, and by the fourth century therevolt threatened to become all-absorbing. The Emperor Julian wasprobably as proud of his fireless cell and the crowding lice in hisbeard and cassock as an average Egyptian monk. The ascetic movementgrew, as we all know, to be measureless and insane. It seemed to bealmost another form of lust, and to have the same affinities withcruelty. But it has probably rendered priceless help to us who comeafterwards. The insane ages have often done service for the sane, theharsh and suffering ages for the gentle and well-to-do. 

_Sophrosynê_, however we try to translate it, temperance, gentleness, the spirit that in any trouble thinks and is patient, that saves and notdestroys, is the right spirit. And it is to be feared that none of thesefourth-century leaders, neither the fierce bishops with their homilieson Charity, nor Julian and Sallustius with their worship of Hellenism, came very near to that classic ideal. To bring back that note ofSophrosynê I will venture, before proceeding to the fourth-century Pagancreed, to give some sentences from an earlier Pagan prayer. It is citedby Stobaeus from a certain Eusebius, a late Ionic Platonist of whomalmost nothing is known, not even the date at which he lived. [197:1] Butthe voice sounds like that of a stronger and more sober age. 

 'May I be no man's enemy, ' it begins, 'and may I be the friend of that which is eternal and abides. May I never quarrel with those nearest to me; and if I do, may I be reconciled quickly. May I never devise evil against any man; if any devise evil against me, may I escape uninjured and without the need of hurting him. May I love, seek, and attain only that which is good. May I wish for all men's happiness and envy none. May I never rejoice in the ill-fortune of one who has wronged me. . . . When I have done or said what is wrong, may I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself until I make amends. . . . May I win no victory that harms either me or my opponent. . . . May I reconcile friends who are wroth with one another. May I, to the extent of my power, give all needful help to my friends and to all who are in want. May I never fail a friend in danger. When visiting those in grief may I be able by gentle and healing words to soften their pain. . . . May I respect myself. . . . May I always keep tame that which rages within me. . . . May I accustom myself to be gentle, and never be angry with people because of circumstances. May I never discuss who is wicked and what wicked things he has done, but know good men and follow in their footsteps. '

There is more of it. How unpretending it is and yet how searching! Andin the whole there is no petition for any material blessing, and--moststriking of all--it is addressed to no personal god. It is pure prayer. Of course, to some it will feel thin and cold. Most men demand of theirreligion more outward and personal help, more physical ecstasy, a moreheady atmosphere of illusion. No one man's attitude towards theUncharted can be quite the same as his neighbour's. In partinstinctively, in part superficially and self-consciously, eachgeneration of mankind reacts against the last. The grown man turns fromthe lights that were thrust upon his eyes in childhood. The son shrugshis shoulders at the watchwords that thrilled his father, and withvarying degrees of sensitiveness or dullness, of fuller or morefragmentary experience, writes out for himself the manuscript of hiscreed. Yet, even for the wildest or bravest rebel, that manuscript isonly a palimpsest. On the surface all is new writing, clean andself-assertive. Underneath, dim but indelible in the very fibres of theparchment, lie the characters of many ancient aspirations and rapturesand battles which his conscious mind has rejected or utterly forgotten. And forgotten things, if there be real life in them, will sometimesreturn out of the dust, vivid to help still in the forward groping ofhumanity. A religious system like that of Eusebius or Marcus, or evenSallustius, was not built up without much noble life and strenuousthought and a steady passion for the knowledge of God. Things of thatmake do not, as a rule, die for ever. 

FOOTNOTES:

[177:1] _De Vit. Contempl. _, p. 477 M. 

[177:2] _Conf. _ ix. 9. 

[178:1] Gibbon, chap. Xxi, notes 161, 162. 

[178:2] _Rise of the Greek Epic_, chap. I. 

[180:1] ἄδολος καὶ καθαρὰ παρρησία. 

[181:1] 'Many of his sections come straight from Plotinus: xiv and xvperhaps from Porphyry's _Letter to Marcella_, an invaluable document forthe religious side of Neo-Platonism. A few things (prayer to the soulsof the dead in iv, to the Cosmos in xvii, the doctrine of τύχη, in ix)are definitely un-Plotinian: probably concessions to popularreligion. '--_E. R. D. _

[188:1] S. Reinach, _Orpheus_, p. 273 (Engl. Trans. , p. 185). 

[188:2] See Ammianus, xxii. 12, on the bad effect of Julian'ssacrifices. Sacrifice was finally forbidden by the emperor Theodosius in391. It was condemned by Theophrastus, and is said by Porphyry (_DeAbstinentia_, ii. 11) simply λαβεῖν τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐξ ἀδικίας. 

[189:1] Sallustius's view of sacrifice is curiously like theilluminating theory of MM. Hubert and Mauss, in which they defineprimitive sacrifice as a medium, a bridge or lightning-conductor, between the profane and the sacred. 'Essai sur la Nature et la Fonctiondu Sacrifice' (_Année Sociologique_, ii. 1897-8), since republished inthe _Mélanges d'Histoire des Religions_, 1909. 

[190:1] Cf. Minucius Felix, _Octavius_, p. 96, Ouzel (chap. 11, Boenig). 'Quid quod toti orbi et ipsi mundo cum sideribus suis minanturincendium, ruinam moliuntur?' The doctrine in their mouths became a verydifferent thing from the Stoic theory of the periodic re-absorption ofthe universe in the Divine Element. Ibid. , pp. 322 ff. (34 Boenig). 

[192:1] Even Epicurus himself held κὰν στρεβλώθῃ ὁ σοφός, εἶναι αὐτὸνεὐδαίμονα. Diog. La. X. 118. See above, end of chap. Iii. 

[196:1] Geffcken in the _Neue Jahrbücher_, xxi. 162 f. 

[197:1] Mullach, _Fragmenta Philosophorum_, iii. 7, from Stob. _Flor. _i. 85. 

 SALLUSTIUS 'ON THE GODS AND THE WORLD'[200:1]

I. _What the Disciple should be; and concerning Common Conceptions. _

Those who wish to hear about the Gods should have been well guided fromchildhood, and not habituated to foolish beliefs. They should also be indisposition good and sensible, that they may properly attend to theteaching. 

They ought also to know the Common Conceptions. Common Conceptions arethose to which all men agree as soon as they are asked; for instance, that all God is good, free from passion, free from change. For whateversuffers change does so for the worse or the better: if for the worse, itis made bad; if for the better, it must have been bad at first. 

II. _That God is unchanging, unbegotten, eternal, incorporeal, and notin space. _

Let the disciple be thus. Let the teachings be of the following sort. The essences of the Gods never came into existence (for that whichalways is never comes into existence; and that exists for ever whichpossesses primary force and by nature suffers nothing): neither do theyconsist of bodies; for even in bodies the powers are incorporeal. Neither are they contained by space; for that is a property of bodies. Neither are they separate from the First Cause nor from one another, just as thoughts are not separate from mind nor acts of knowledge fromthe soul. 

III. _Concerning myths; that they are divine, and why. _

We may well inquire, then, why the ancients forsook these doctrines andmade use of myths. There is this first benefit from myths, that we haveto search and do not have our minds idle. 

_That_ the myths are divine can be seen from those who have used them. Myths have been used by inspired poets, by the best of philosophers, bythose who established the mysteries, and by the Gods themselves inoracles. But _why_ the myths are divine it is the duty of Philosophy toinquire. Since all existing things rejoice in that which is like themand reject that which is unlike, the stories about the Gods ought to belike the Gods, so that they may both be worthy of the divine essence andmake the Gods well disposed to those who speak of them: which could onlybe done by means of myths. 

Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and the goodness of theGods--subject always to the distinction of the speakable and theunspeakable, the revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear andthat which is hidden: since, just as the Gods have made the goods ofsense common to all, but those of intellect only to the wise, so themyths state the existence of Gods to all, but who and what they are onlyto those who can understand. 

They also represent the activities of the Gods. For one may call theWorld a Myth, in which bodies and things are visible, but souls andminds hidden. Besides, to wish to teach the whole truth about the Godsto all produces contempt in the foolish, because they cannot understand, and lack of zeal in the good; whereas to conceal the truth by mythsprevents the contempt of the foolish, and compels the good to practisephilosophy. 

But why have they put in the myths stories of adultery, robbery, father-binding, and all the other absurdity? Is not that perhaps a thingworthy of admiration, done so that by means of the visible absurdity theSoul may immediately feel that the words are veils and believe the truthto be a mystery?

IV. _That the species of Myth are five, with examples of each. _

Of myths some are theological, some physical, some psychic, and againsome material, and some mixed from these last two. The theological arethose myths which use no bodily form but contemplate the very essencesof the Gods: e. G. Kronos swallowing his children. Since God isintellectual, and all intellect returns into itself, this myth expressesin allegory the essence of God. 

Myths may be regarded physically when they express the activities of theGods in the world: e. G. People before now have regarded Kronos as Time, and calling the divisions of Time his sons say that the sons areswallowed by the father. 

The psychic way is to regard the activities of the Soul itself: theSoul's acts of thought, though they pass on to other objects, nevertheless remain inside their begetters. 

The material and last is that which the Egyptians have mostly used, owing to their ignorance, believing material objects actually to beGods, and so calling them: e. G. They call the Earth Isis, moistureOsiris, heat Typhon, or again, water Kronos, the fruits of the earthAdonis, and wine Dionysus. 

To say that these objects are sacred to the Gods, like various herbs andstones and animals, is possible to sensible men, but to say that theyare gods is the notion of madmen--except, perhaps, in the sense in whichboth the orb of the sun and the ray which comes from the orb arecolloquially called 'the Sun'. [203:1]

The mixed kind of myth may be seen in many instances: for example theysay that in a banquet of the Gods Discord threw down a golden apple; thegoddesses contended for it, and were sent by Zeus to Paris to be judged;Paris saw Aphrodite to be beautiful and gave her the apple. Here thebanquet signifies the hyper-cosmic powers of the Gods; that is why theyare all together. The golden apple is the world, which, being formed outof opposites, is naturally said to be 'thrown by Discord'. The differentGods bestow different gifts upon the world and are thus said to 'contendfor the apple'. And the soul which lives according to sense--for thatis what Paris is--not seeing the other powers in the world but onlybeauty, declares that the apple belongs to Aphrodite. 

Theological myths suit philosophers, physical and psychic suit poets, mixed suit religious initiations, since every initiation aims at unitingus with the World and the Gods. 

To take another myth, they say that the Mother of the Gods seeing Attislying by the river Gallus fell in love with him, took him, crowned himwith her cap of stars, and thereafter kept him with her. He fell in lovewith a nymph and left the Mother to live with her. For this the Motherof the Gods made Attis go mad and cut off his genital organs and leavethem with the Nymph, and then return and dwell with her. 

Now the Mother of the Gods is the principle that generates life; that iswhy she is called Mother. Attis is the creator of all things which areborn and die; that is why he is said to have been found by the riverGallus. For Gallus signifies the Galaxy, or Milky Way, the point atwhich body subject to passion begins. [204:1] Now as the primary godsmake perfect the secondary, the Mother loves Attis and gives himcelestial powers. That is what the cap means. Attis loves a nymph: thenymphs preside over generation, since all that is generated is fluid. But since the process of generation must be stopped somewhere, and notallowed to generate something worse than the worst, the Creator whomakes these things casts away his generative powers into the creationand is joined to the gods again. Now these things never happened, butalways are. And Mind sees all things at once, but Reason (or Speech)expresses some first and others after. Thus, as the myth is in accordwith the Cosmos, we for that reason keep a festival imitating theCosmos, for how could we attain higher order?

And at first we ourselves, having fallen from heaven and living with theNymph, are in despondency, and abstain from corn and all rich andunclean food, for both are hostile to the soul. Then comes the cuttingof the tree and the fast, as though we also were cutting off the furtherprocess of generation. After that the feeding on milk, as though we werebeing born again; after which come rejoicings and garlands and, as itwere, a return up to the Gods. 

The season of the ritual is evidence to the truth of these explanations. The rites are performed about the Vernal Equinox, when the fruits of theearth are ceasing to be produced, and day is becoming longer than night, which applies well to Spirits rising higher. (At least, the otherequinox is in mythology the time of the Rape of Korê, which is thedescent of the souls. )

May these explanations of the myths find favour in the eyes of the Godsthemselves and the souls of those who wrote the myths. 

V. _On the First Cause. _

Next in order comes knowledge of the First Cause and the subsequentorders of the gods, then the nature of the world, the essence ofintellect and of soul, then Providence, Fate, and Fortune, then to seeVirtue and Vice and the various forms of social constitution good andbad that are formed from them, and from what possible source Evil cameinto the world. 

Each of these subjects needs many long discussions; but there is perhapsno harm in stating them briefly, so that a disciple may not becompletely ignorant about them. 

It is proper to the First Cause to be One--for unity precedesmultitude--and to surpass all things in power and goodness. Consequentlyall things must partake of it. For owing to its power nothing else canhinder it, and owing to its goodness it will not hold itself apart. 

If the First Cause were Soul, all things would possess Soul. If it wereMind, all things would possess Mind. If it were Being, all things wouldpartake of Being. And seeing this quality (i. E. Being) in all things, some men have thought that it was Being. Now if things simply _were_, without being good, this argument would be true, but if things that are_are_ because of their goodness, and partake in the good, the Firstthing must needs be both beyond-Being and good. It is strong evidence ofthis that noble souls despise Being for the sake of the good, when theyface death for their country or friends or for the sake ofvirtue. --After this inexpressible power come the orders of the Gods. 

VI. _On Gods Cosmic and Hypercosmic. _

Of the Gods some are of the world, Cosmic, and some above the world, Hypercosmic. By the Cosmic I mean those who make the Cosmos. Of theHypercosmic Gods some create Essence, some Mind, and some Soul. Thusthey have three orders; all of which may be found in treatises on thesubject. 

Of the Cosmic Gods some make the World _be_, others animate it, othersharmonize it, consisting as it does of different elements; the fourthclass keep it when harmonized. 

These are four actions, each of which has a beginning, middle, and end, consequently there must be twelve gods governing the world. 

Those who make the world are Zeus, Poseidon, and Hephaistos; those whoanimate it are Demeter, Hera, and Artemis; those who harmonize it areApollo, Aphrodite, and Hermes; those who watch over it are Hestia, Athena, and Ares. 

One can see secret suggestions of this in their images. Apollo tunes alyre; Athena is armed; Aphrodite is naked (because harmony createsbeauty, and beauty in things seen is not covered). 

While these twelve in the primary sense possess the world, we shouldconsider that the other gods are contained in these. Dionysus in Zeus, for instance, Asklepios in Apollo, the Charites in Aphrodite. 

We can also discern their various spheres: to Hestia belongs the Earth, to Poseidon water, to Hera air, to Hephaistos fire. And the six superiorspheres to the gods to whom they are usually attributed. For Apollo andArtemis are to be taken for the Sun and Moon, the sphere of Kronosshould be attributed to Demeter, the ether to Athena, while the heavenis common to all. Thus the orders, powers, and spheres of the TwelveGods have been explained and celebrated in hymns. 

VII. _On the Nature of the World and its Eternity. _

The Cosmos itself must of necessity be indestructible and uncreated. Indestructible because, suppose it destroyed: the only possibility is tomake one better than this or worse or the same or a chaos. If worse, thepower which out of the better makes the worse must be bad. If better, the maker who did not make the better at first must be imperfect inpower. If the same, there will be no use in making it; if a chaos . . . It is impious even to hear such a thing suggested. These reasons wouldsuffice to show that the World is also uncreated: for if not destroyed, neither is it created. Everything that is created is subject todestruction. And further, since the Cosmos exists by the goodness of Godit follows that God must always be good and the world exist. Just aslight coexists with the Sun and with fire, and shadow coexists with abody. 

Of the bodies in the Cosmos, some imitate Mind and move in orbits; someimitate Soul and move in a straight line, fire and air upward, earth andwater downward. Of those that move in orbits the fixed sphere goes fromthe east, the Seven from the west. (This is so for various causes, especially lest the creation should be imperfect owing to the rapidcircuit of the spheres. [208:1])

The movement being different, the nature of the bodies must also bedifferent; hence the celestial body does not burn or freeze what ittouches, or do anything else that pertains to the four elements. [209:1]

And since the Cosmos is a sphere--the zodiac proves that--and in everysphere 'down' means 'towards the centre', for the centre is farthestdistant from every point, and heavy things fall 'down' and fall to theearth . 

All these things are made by the Gods, ordered by Mind, moved by Soul. About the Gods we have spoken already. 

VIII. _On Mind and Soul, and that the latter is immortal. _

There is a certain force, [209:2] less primary than Being but moreprimary than the Soul, which draws its existence from Being andcompletes the Soul as the Sun completes the eyes. Of Souls some arerational and immortal, some irrational and mortal. The former arederived from the first Gods, the latter from the secondary. 

First, we must consider what soul is. It is, then, that by which theanimate differs from the inanimate. The difference lies in motion, sensation, imagination, intelligence. Soul, therefore, when irrational, is the life of sense and imagination; when rational, it is the lifewhich controls sense and imagination and uses reason. 

The irrational soul depends on the affections of the body; it feelsdesire and anger irrationally. The rational soul both, with the help ofreason, despises the body, and, fighting against the irrational soul, produces either virtue or vice, according as it is victorious ordefeated. 

It must be immortal, both because it knows the gods (and nothing mortalknows[210:1] what is immortal), it looks down upon human affairs asthough it stood outside them, and, like an unbodied thing, it isaffected in the opposite way to the body. For while the body is youngand fine, the soul blunders, but as the body grows old it attains itshighest power. Again, every good soul uses mind; but no body can producemind: for how should that which is without mind produce mind? Again, while Soul uses the body as an instrument, it is not in it; just as theengineer is not in his engines (although many engines move without beingtouched by any one). And if the Soul is often made to err by the body, that is not surprising. For the arts cannot perform their work whentheir instruments are spoilt. 

IX. _On Providence, Fate, and Fortune. _

This is enough to show the Providence of the Gods. For whence comes theordering of the world, if there is no ordering power? And whence comesthe fact that all things are for a purpose: e. G. Irrational soul thatthere may be sensation, and rational that the earth may be set in order?

But one can deduce the same result from the evidences of Providence innature: e. G. The eyes have been made transparent with a view to seeing;the nostrils are above the mouth to distinguish bad-smelling foods; thefront teeth are sharp to cut food, the back teeth broad to grind it. Andwe find every part of every object arranged on a similar principle. Itis impossible that there should be so much providence in the lastdetails, and none in the first principles. Then the arts of prophecy andof healing, which are part of the Cosmos, come of the good providence ofthe Gods. 

All this care for the world, we must believe, is taken by the Godswithout any act of will or labour. As bodies which possess some powerproduce their effects by merely existing: e. G. The sun gives light andheat by merely existing; so, and far more so, the Providence of the Godsacts without effort to itself and for the good of the objects of itsforethought. This solves the problems of the Epicureans, who argue thatwhat is Divine neither has trouble itself nor gives trouble to others. 

The incorporeal providence of the Gods, both for bodies and for souls, is of this sort; but that which is of bodies and in bodies is differentfrom this, and is called Fate, Heimarmenê, because the chain of causes(Heirmos) is more visible in the case of bodies; and it is for dealingwith this Fate that the science of 'Mathematic' has beendiscovered. [211:1]

Therefore, to believe that human things, especially their materialconstitution, are ordered not only by celestial beings but by theCelestial Bodies, is a reasonable and true belief. Reason shows thathealth and sickness, good fortune and bad fortune, arise according toour deserts from that source. But to attribute men's acts of injusticeand lust to Fate, is to make ourselves good and the Gods bad. Unless bychance a man meant by such a statement that in general all things arefor the good of the world and for those who are in a natural state, butthat bad education or weakness of nature changes the goods of Fate forthe worse. Just as it happens that the Sun, which is good for all, maybe injurious to persons with ophthalmia or fever. Else why do theMassagetae eat their fathers, the Hebrews practise circumcision, and thePersians preserve rules of rank?[212:1] Why do astrologers, whilecalling Saturn and Mars 'malignant', proceed to make them good, attributing to them philosophy and royalty, generalships and treasures?And if they are going to talk of triangles and squares, it is absurdthat gods should change their natures according to their position inspace, while human virtue remains the same everywhere. Also the factthat the stars predict high or low rank for the father of the personwhose horoscope is taken, teaches that they do not always make thingshappen but sometimes only indicate things. For how could things whichpreceded the birth depend upon the birth?

Further, as there is Providence and Fate concerned with nations andcities, and also concerned with each individual, so there is alsoFortune, which should next be treated. That power of the gods whichorders for the good things which are not uniform, and which happencontrary to expectation, is commonly called Fortune, and it is for thisreason that the goddess is especially worshipped in public by cities;for every city consists of elements which are not uniform. Fortune haspower beneath the moon, since above the moon no single thing can happenby fortune. 

If Fortune makes a wicked man prosperous and a good man poor, there isno need to wonder. For the wicked regard wealth as everything, the goodas nothing. And the good fortune of the bad cannot take away theirbadness, while virtue alone will be enough for the good. 

X. _Concerning Virtue and Vice. _

The doctrine of Virtue and Vice depends on that of the Soul. When theirrational soul enters into the body and immediately produces Fight andDesire, the rational soul, put in authority over all these, makes thesoul tripartite, composed of Reason, Fight, and Desire. Virtue in theregion of Reason is Wisdom, in the region of Fight is Courage, in theregion of Desire it is Temperance: the virtue of the whole Soul isRighteousness. It is for Reason to judge what is right, for Fight inobedience to Reason to despise things that appear terrible, for Desireto pursue not the apparently desirable, but, that which is with Reasondesirable. When these things are so, we have a righteous life; forrighteousness in matters of property is but a small part of virtue. Andthus we shall find all four virtues in properly trained men, but amongthe untrained one may be brave and unjust, another temperate and stupid, another prudent and unprincipled. Indeed these qualities should not becalled Virtues when they are devoid of Reason and imperfect and found inirrational beings. Vice should be regarded as consisting of the oppositeelements. In Reason it is Folly, in Fight, Cowardice, in Desire, Intemperance, in the whole soul, Unrighteousness. 

The virtues are produced by the right social organization and by goodrearing and education, the vices by the opposite. 

XI. _Concerning right and wrong Social Organization. _[214:1]

Constitutions also depend on the tripartite nature of the Soul. Therulers are analogous to Reason, the soldiers to Fight, the common folkto Desires. 

Where all things are done according to Reason and the best man in thenation rules, it is a Kingdom; where more than one rule according toReason and Fight, it is an Aristocracy; where the government isaccording to Desire and offices depend on money, that constitution iscalled a Timocracy. The contraries are: to Kingdom tyranny, for Kingdomdoes all things with the guidance of reason and tyranny nothing; toAristocracy oligarchy, when not the best people but a few of the worstare rulers; to Timocracy democracy, when not the rich but the commonfolk possess the whole power. 

XII. _The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil. _

The Gods being good and making all things, how do evils exist in theworld? Or perhaps it is better first to state the fact that, the Godsbeing good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it onlycomes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, butonly comes about by absence of light. 

If Evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any god, for all god is good. If any one speaks ofa 'bad mind' he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he willmake soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he saysthat Evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd thatseparately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil. 

Suppose it is said that there are evil spirits:--if they have theirpower from the gods, they cannot be evil; if from elsewhere, the gods donot make all things. If they do not make all things, then either theywish to and cannot, or they can and do not wish; neither of which isconsistent with the idea of God. We may see, therefore, from thesearguments, that there is no positive evil in the world. 

It is in the activities of men that the evils appear, and that not ofall men nor always. And as to these, if men sinned for the sake of evil, Nature itself would be evil. But if the adulterer thinks his adulterybad but his pleasure good, and the murderer thinks the murder bad butthe money he gets by it good, and the man who does evil to an enemythinks that to do evil is bad but to punish his enemy good, and if thesoul commits all its sins in that way, then the evils are done for thesake of goodness. (In the same way, because in a given place light doesnot exist, there comes darkness, which has no positive existence. ) Thesoul sins therefore because, while aiming at good, it makes mistakesabout the good, because it is not Primary Essence. And we see manythings done by the Gods to prevent it from making mistakes and to healit when it has made them. Arts and sciences, curses and prayers, sacrifices and initiations, laws and constitutions, judgements andpunishments, all came into existence for the sake of preventing soulsfrom sinning; and when they are gone forth from the body gods andspirits of purification cleanse them of their sins. 

XIII. _How things eternal are said to 'be made' (γίγνεσθαι). _

Concerning the Gods and the World and human things this account willsuffice for those who are not able to go through the whole course ofphilosophy but yet have not souls beyond help. 

It remains to explain how these objects were never made and are neverseparated one from another, since we ourselves have said above that thesecondary substances were 'made' by the first. 

Everything made is made either by art or by a physical process oraccording to some power. [216:1] Now in art or nature the maker mustneeds be prior to the made: but the maker, according to power, constitutes the made absolutely together with itself, since its power isinseparable from it; as the sun makes light, fire makes heat, snow makescold. 

Now if the Gods make the world by art, they do not make it _be_, theymake it _be such as it is_. For all art makes the form of the object. What therefore makes it to be?

If by a physical process, how in that case can the maker help givingpart of himself to the made? As the Gods are incorporeal, the Worldought to be incorporeal too. If it were argued that the Gods werebodies, then where would the power of incorporeal things come from? Andif we were to admit it, it would follow that when the world decays, itsmaker must be decaying too, if he is a maker by physical process. 

If the Gods make the world neither by art nor by physical process, itonly remains that they make it by power. Everything so made subsiststogether with that which possesses the power. Neither can things so madebe destroyed, except the power of the maker be taken away: so that thosewho believe in the destruction of the world, either deny the existenceof the gods, or, while admitting it, deny God's power. 

Therefore he who makes all things by his own power makes all thingssubsist together with himself. And since his power is the greatest powerhe must needs be the maker not only of men and animals, but of Gods, men, and spirits. [217:1] And the further removed the First God is fromour nature, the more powers there must be between us and him. For allthings that are very far apart have many intermediate points betweenthem. 

XIV. _In what sense, though the Gods never change, they are said to bemade angry and appeased. _

If any one thinks the doctrine of the unchangeableness of the Gods isreasonable and true, and then wonders how it is that they rejoice in thegood and reject the bad, are angry with sinners and become propitiouswhen appeased, the answer is as follows: God does not rejoice--for thatwhich rejoices also grieves; nor is he angered--for to be angered is apassion; nor is he appeased by gifts--if he were, he would be conqueredby pleasure. 

It is impious to suppose that the Divine is affected for good or ill byhuman things. The Gods are always good and always do good and neverharm, being always in the same state and like themselves. The truthsimply is that, when we are good, we are joined to the Gods by ourlikeness to them; when bad, we are separated from them by ourunlikeness. And when we live according to virtue we cling to the gods, and when we become evil we make the gods our enemies--not because theyare angered against us, but because our sins prevent the light of thegods from shining upon us, and put us in communion with spirits ofpunishment. And if by prayers and sacrifices we find forgiveness ofsins, we do not appease or change the gods, but by what we do and by ourturning towards the Divine we heal our own badness and so enjoy againthe goodness of the gods. To say that God turns away from the evil islike saying that the sun hides himself from the blind. 

XV. _Why we give worship to the Gods when they need nothing. _

This solves the question about sacrifices and other rites performed tothe Gods. The Divine itself is without needs, and the worship is paidfor our own benefit. The providence of the Gods reaches everywhere andneeds only some congruity[218:1] for its reception. All congruity comesabout by representation and likeness; for which reason the temples aremade in representation of heaven, the altar of earth, the images of life(that is why they are made like living things), the prayers of theelement of thought, the mystic letters[219:1] of the unspeakablecelestial forces, the herbs and stones of matter, and the sacrificialanimals of the irrational life in us. 

From all these things the Gods gain nothing; what gain could there be toGod? It is we who gain some communion with them. 

XVI. _Concerning sacrifices and other worships, that we benefit man bythem, but not the gods. _

I think it well to add some remarks about sacrifices. In the firstplace, since we have received everything from the gods, and it is rightto pay the giver some tithe of his gifts, we pay such a tithe ofpossessions in votive offerings, of bodies in gifts of adornment, and of life in sacrifices. Then secondly, prayers withoutsacrifices are only words, with sacrifices they are live words; the wordgives meaning to the life, while the life animates the word. Thirdly, the happiness of every object is its own perfection; and perfection foreach is communion with its own cause. For this reason we pray forcommunion with the Gods. Since, therefore, the first life is the life ofthe gods, but human life is also life of a kind, and human life wishesfor communion with divine life, a mean term is needed. For things veryfar apart cannot have communion without a mean term, and the mean termmust be like the things joined; therefore the mean term between lifeand life must be life. That is why men sacrifice animals; only the richdo so now, but in old days everybody did, and that not indiscriminately, but giving the suitable offerings to each god together with a great dealof other worship. Enough of this subject. 

XVII. _That the World is by nature Eternal. _

We have shown above that the gods will not destroy the world. It remainsto show that its nature is indestructible. 

Everything that is destroyed is either destroyed by itself or bysomething else. If the world is destroyed by itself, fire must needsburn itself and water dry itself. If by something else, it must beeither by a body or by something incorporeal. By something incorporealis impossible; for incorporeal things preserve bodies--nature, forinstance, and soul--and nothing is destroyed by a cause whose nature isto preserve it. If it is destroyed by some body, it must be either bythose which exist or by others. 

If by those which exist: then either those moving in a straight linemust be destroyed by those that revolve, or vice versa. But those thatrevolve have no destructive nature; else, why do we never see anythingdestroyed from that cause? Nor yet can those which are moving straighttouch the others; else, why have they never been able to do so yet?

But neither can those moving straight be destroyed by one another: forthe destruction of one is the creation of another; and that is not to bedestroyed but to change. 

But if the World is to be destroyed by other bodies than these it isimpossible to say where such bodies are or whence they are to arise. 

Again, everything destroyed is destroyed either in form or matter. (Formis the shape of a thing, matter the body. ) Now if the form is destroyedand the matter remains, we see other things come into being. If matteris destroyed, how is it that the supply has not failed in all theseyears?

If when matter is destroyed other matter takes its place, the new mattermust come either from something that is or from something that is not. If from that-which-is, as long as that-which-is always remains, matteralways remains. But if that-which-is is destroyed, such a theory meansthat not the World only but everything in the universe is destroyed. 

If again matter comes from that-which-is-not: in the first place, it isimpossible for anything to come from that which is not; but suppose itto happen, and that matter did arise from that which is not; then, aslong as there are things which are not, matter will exist. For I presumethere can never be an end of things which are not. 

If they say that matter formless: in the first place, whydoes this happen to the world as a whole when it does not happen to anypart? Secondly, by this hypothesis they do not destroy the being ofbodies, but only their beauty. 

Further, everything destroyed is either resolved into the elements fromwhich it came, or else vanishes into not-being. If things are resolvedinto the elements from which they came, then there will be others: elsehow did they come into being at all? If that-which-is is to depart intonot-being, what prevents that happening to God himself? (Which isabsurd. ) Or if God's power prevents that, it is not a mark of power tobe able to save nothing but oneself. And it is equally impossible forthat-which-is to come out of nothing and to depart into nothing. 

Again, if the World is destroyed, it must needs either be destroyedaccording to Nature or against Nature. Against Nature is impossible, forthat which is against nature is not stronger than Nature. [222:1] Ifaccording to Nature, there must be another Nature which changes theNature of the World: which does not appear. 

Again, anything that is naturally destructible we can ourselves destroy. But no one has ever destroyed or altered the round body of the World. And the elements, though they can be changed, cannot be destroyed. Again, everything destructible is changed by time and grows old. But theworld through all these years has remained utterly unchanged. 

Having said so much for the help of those who feel the need of verystrong demonstrations, I pray the World himself to be gracious to me. 

XVIII. _Why there are rejections of God, and that God is not injured. _

Nor need the fact that rejections of God have taken place in certainparts of the earth and will often take place hereafter, disturb the mindof the wise: both because these things do not affect the gods, just aswe saw that worship did not benefit them; and because the soul, being ofmiddle essence, cannot be always right; and because the whole worldcannot enjoy the providence of the gods equally, but some parts maypartake of it eternally, some at certain times, some in the primalmanner, some in the secondary. Just as the head enjoys all the senses, but the rest of the body only one. 

For this reason, it seems, those who ordained Festivals ordained alsoForbidden Days, in which some temples lay idle, some were shut, some hadtheir adornment removed, in expiation of the weakness of our nature. 

It is not unlikely, too, that the rejection of God is a kind ofpunishment: we may well believe that those who knew the gods andneglected them in one life may in another life be deprived of theknowledge of them altogether. Also those who have worshipped their ownkings as gods have deserved as their punishment to lose all knowledge ofGod. 

XIX. _Why sinners are not punished at once. _

There is no need to be surprised if neither these sins nor yet othersbring immediate punishment upon sinners. For it is not onlySpirits[223:1] who punish the soul, the Soul brings itself to judgement:and also it is not right for those who endure for ever to attaineverything in a short time: and also, there is need of human virtue. Ifpunishment followed instantly upon sin, men would act justly from fearand have no virtue. 

Souls are punished when they have gone forth from the body, somewandering among us, some going to hot or cold places of the earth, someharassed by Spirits. Under all circumstances they suffer with theirrational part of their nature, with which they also sinned. For itssake[224:1] there subsist that shadowy body which is seen about graves, especially the graves of evil livers. 

XX. _On Transmigration of Souls, and how Souls are said to migrate intobrute beasts. _

If the transmigration of a soul takes place into a rational being, itsimply becomes the soul of that body. But if the soul migrates into abrute beast, it follows the body outside, as a guardian spirit follows aman. For there could never be a rational soul in an irrational being. 

The transmigration of souls can be proved from the congenitalafflictions of persons. For why are some born blind, others paralytic, others with some sickness in the soul itself? Again, it is the naturalduty of Souls to do their work in the body; are we to suppose that whenonce they leave the body they spend all eternity in idleness?

Again, if the souls did not again enter into bodies, they must either beinfinite in number or God must constantly be making new ones. But thereis nothing infinite in the world; for in a finite whole there cannot bean infinite part. Neither can others be made; for everything in whichsomething new goes on being created, must be imperfect. And the World, being made by a perfect author, ought naturally to be perfect. 

XXI. _That the Good are happy, both living and dead. _

Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, [224:2] and whenseparated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean fromall matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governingof the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to theirlot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life thatis subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those whohave set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it. 

FOOTNOTES:

[200:1] I translate κόσμος generally as 'World', sometimes as 'Cosmos'. It always has the connotation of 'divine order'; ψυχή always 'Soul', tokeep it distinct from ζωή, 'physical life', though often 'Life' would bea more natural English equivalent; ἐμψυχοῦν 'to animate'; οὐσίαsometimes 'essence', sometimes 'being' (never 'substance' or 'nature');φύσις 'nature'; σῶμα sometimes 'body', sometimes 'matter'. 

[203:1] e. G. When we say 'The sun is coming in through the window', orin Greek ἐξαίφνης ἥκων ἐκ τοῦ ἡλίου, Plat. _Rep. _ 516 E. This appears tomean that you can loosely apply the term 'Osiris' both to (i) the realOsiris and (ii) the corn which comes from him, as you can apply the name'Sun' both to (i) the real orb and (ii) the ray that comes from the orb. However, Julian, _Or. _ v, on the Sun suggests a different view--thatboth the orb and the ray are mere effects and symbols of the truespiritual Sun, as corn is of Osiris. 

[204:1] ἄρχεσθαι Mr. L. W. Hunter, ἔρχεσθαι MS. Above the Milky Waythere is no such body, only σῶμα ἀπαθές. Cf. Macrob. In _Somn. Scip. _ i. 12. 

[208:1] i. E. If the Firmament or Fixed Sphere moved in the samedirection as the seven Planets, the speed would become too great. On thecircular movement cf. Plot. _Eun. _ ii. 2. 

[209:1] The fire of which the heavenly bodies are made is the πέμπτονσῶμα, matter, but different from earthly matter. See p. 137. 

[209:2] Proclus, _Elem. Theol. _ xx, calls it ἡ νοερὰ φύσις, _NaturaIntellectualis_. There are four degrees of existence: lowest of all, Bodies; above that, Soul; above all Souls, this 'Intellectual Nature';above that, The One. 

[210:1] i. E. In the full sense of Gnôsis. 

[211:1] i. E. Astrology, dealing with the 'Celestial Bodies'. 

[212:1] Cf. Hdt. I. 134. 

[214:1] [This section is a meagre reminiscence of Plato's discussion in_Repub. _ viii. The interest in politics and government had died out withthe loss of political freedom. ]

[216:1] κατὰ δύναμιν, secundum potentiam quandam; i. E. In accordancewith some indwelling 'virtue' or quality. 

[217:1] The repetition of ἀνθρώπους in this sentence seems to be amistake. 

[218:1] ἐπιτηδειότης. 

[219:1] On the mystic letters see above, p. 142. 

[222:1] The text here is imperfect: I have followed Mullach'scorrection. 

[223:1] δαίμονες. 

[224:1] i. E. That it may continue to exist and satisfy justice. 

[224:2] εὐδαιμονοῦσι. 

INDEX

 Achaioi, 45, 49

 Acropolis, 71, 72

 Aeschylus, [12:4], 43

 Affection, 104, 109

 Agesilaus, 86

 Agriculture, Religion in, 5 f. 

 Alexander the Great, 92, 93, 94, 115, 159

 Allegory, in Hellenistic philosophy, 165 ff. ; in Olympian religion, 74

 ἀλληλοφαγία, [98:1]

 Alpha and Omega, God as, 148

 Anaximander, [33:1]

 Angel = Megethos, 142; star, 144

 Animal sacrifice, 188 f. 

 Anthesteria, 16-18, 34

 _Anthister_, [18:2]

 Anthropomorphism, 10 ff. , 140

 Antigonus Gonatas, [152:1]

 Antiochus I, 144

 Anti-semitism, 162

 Antisthenes, 87, 89 f. , 96

 Apathy, [103:1], 109

 _Apellôn_ = Apollôn, 51

 _Aphiktor_, 28

 Aphrodite, 57

 Apollo, 50, 72

 Apotheosis of Hellenistic kings, [152:1]

 Apparitions, primitive belief in, 27

 Apuleius, 148

 Aquinas, 3

 Archontes, 164

 Ares, 57

 _Aretê_, 89, 96, 99, 104 f. 

 Aristarchus of Samos, 141

 Aristophanes, [20:3], [22:1], [62:1]

 Aristotle, 3, 114 f. , 117, 120, 127, 136, 153, [154:3]

 Ark of Israel, 68

 Arnim, von, [129:1], 172

 Arnold, Professor E. V. , [100:1]

 Asceticism in antiquity, 196

 Astrology, 143 f. , [211:1]

 Astronomy, 97

 Ἀθάνα (Ἀθήνη), [53:1]

 Atheism, 181 f. , 190

 Athena, [53:1], 71, 72, 74; = Athenaia Korê, 52; Pallas, 52

 Athens, effect of defeat of, 79 f. 

 Atomic Theory of Democritus, 101; of Ionia, 105

 Attis, 185

 'Attributes', animals as, 20

 Augustine, St. , 175, 177

 Aurelius, Marcus, religion of, 175 f. 

 Bacchos, 161

 Bacon, Professor, 172

 'Barbaroi' as opposed to Hellenes, 39; βαρβαρόφωνοι, [42:2]

 Bardesanes, [164:1]

 Barnabas, St. , 161

 Beast-mask, 23-5

 Bendis, 151

 Bethe, E. , [150:1]

 Bevan, E. , xvi, [39:1], [100:1], [154:2], 172

 Birth-rate, its effect on early Christian sects, 194

 Blessedness, Epicurus on, 106

 Body, Fifth, 137

 βοῶπις, 24

 Bousset, W. , xv, 126, [150:3], 162, 172

 Buddhism, 10

 Bull, blood of, 20; in pre-Hellenic ritual, 19-21

 Bury, Professor J. B. , xv

 Carpenter, Dr. E. , 172

 Cauer, P. , [49:1]

 Centaurs, 60

 Chadwick, H. M. , xv, 46 _n. _, [57:3], 59

 Chaldaeans, 144, 151

 Chance, 131, 147

 Charles, Dr. , 172

 χρᾶν, 37

 χρεία, 90

 Christianity, 88, 90, 96, 109, 115, 119, 123-5, 173, 181 f. , 192-5

 Christmas, Father, 15

 Christos, 163

 Chrysippus, 115, [145:1], [145:3], [145:4], 146, 166

 Chthonioi, as oracles, 37

 Cicero, [27:2]

 Circular movement, [208:1]

 _Circumcelliones_, 36 _n. _

 City of gods and men, world as, 76; of Refuge, in the _Laws_, 83; of Righteousness, in the _Republic_, 83: _see_ Polis

 Cleanthes, 135, 141, 165

 Clemen, Carl, 172

 Coinage, deface of, 90

 'Collective Desire', God defined as the, 26, 29

 Colotes, [111:1]

 _Comitatus_, 46

 Commagene, 144

 Conceptions, Common, 200

 Constantine, 194

 Constantius, 179

 Convention, 91

 Conybeare, F. C. , 172

 Cook, A. B. , [16:1], 23, [24:1], 49 f. , [56:3], 66 _n. _

 Copernicus, 97

 Corinna, 43

 Cornford, F. M. , [33:1]

 Cornutus, 166

 _Cosmopolîtes_, 92

 Cosmos, 97-100, 208

 Crates, [95:1], 166

 Creeds, 173 f. , 178, 183

 Crucifixion, [163:1]

 Cumont, F. , [35:1], 126, 172

 Cynics, 3, 90-2, 93-5, 104; women among, [95:1]

 _Cyropaedeia_, 85

 Cyrus, 85

 Daemon = Stoicheion, 142

 Dance, religious, 27 f. 

 Davenport, F. M. , [26:1]

 Davy, G. , 7 _n. _

 Dead, worship of, 62

 Deification, E. Bevan on, [154:2]

 Deliverer, the, 108

 Delos, 51

 _Delusio_, 169

 Demeter, 72

 Democritus, Atomic Theory of, 101

 Demos, 82

 Demosthenes, 82

 Destiny, Hymn to, 135: _see_ Fate

 _Dharma_, 10

 _Diadochi_, 155

 Diasia, 14-15

 διατριβή, 90

 Dicaearchus, 121 f. 

 _Didascaliae_, 121

 Diels, [33:1], [129:1], 172

 Dieterich, A. , [17:1], [23:1], [29:2], 126, 146, [150:3], 172

 Dio Cassius, 142

 Diocletian, 194 f. 

 Diodorus, 144 f. 

 Diogenes, 90-3, 95; his 'tub, ' 92

 Diogenes of Oenoanda, [101:1], 114, 169 f. 

 Dione, 56

 Dionysius, 17, 20, 72, 84, 159

 δίοπτρα, 122

 Disciples, qualifications and conduct of, 200

 Discouragement due to collapse of the Polis, 81

 Dittenberger. W. , [16:1], [156:1]

 Divine Mother, 164; 'Divine Wisdom', personified, 165

 Dodds, E. R. , [181:1]

 Doutté, E. , 26 f. 

 Dramaturge, 97

 _Drômenon_, spring, 32 f. 

 Dümmler, [87:1]

 Durkheim, Professor Émile, [6:1]

 Earth, divinity of, 137; Earth-mother, 29

 ἡδονή, 106

 Education, [113:3]

 _Ekstasis_, 150

 Elements, Apuleius on, 148; divinity of, 137; in the Kosmos, 142

 ἐμψυχοῦν, [200:1]

 _Enthousiasmos_, 150

 Eôs, 53

 Epictetus, morals of, 176

 Epicureans, 3, 110 f. , 113, 119, 130, 145 f. , 181

 Epicurus, 101-11, 113, 129 f. , 135, 140 f. , 170, [192:1]

 _Epiphanês_, 155

 Epiphanius, 172

 ἥρωες, 37

 Euergetês, 156

 _Euhemerus_, 160

 Euripides, [12:4], [54:3], _passim_, 143, 152

 Eusebius, [27:4], 197

 Evans, Sir A. , 20, 66 _n. _

 Evil, existence of, 215; origin of, 186, 214-16

 Expurgation of mythology, 75 f. ; Olympian, 61 f. , 67 f. 

 _Eye of Bel_, 143

 Failure, Great, 82

 Farnell, Dr. L. R. , [18:1], [20:1], 44

 Fate, 132, 134, 145, 146 f. , 211 f. 

 Federations, 80

 Ferguson, W. S. , [152:1]

 First Cause, 185, 205 f. 

 Fortune, 91, 131 f. , 212 f. 

 Fourth Century, Movements of, 3, 79-122

 Frazer, Sir J. G. , [16:1], [18:1], [35:1], [154:1]

 Gaertringen, Hiller von, [18:2]

 Galaxy, 204

 Games, Roman gladiatorial, 94

 Garden, 107 f. , 114

 Gardner. P. , [57:2], [149:1]

 Gennep, A. Van. , [31:1]

 γέρων, 31

 _Gerontes_, 36

 Ghosts, 221

 Giants, 60

 γίγνεσθαι, forms of, 216 f. 

 γλαυκῶπις, 24

 Gnostics, 3, 123, 128, 137 f. , 148, 162

 God, as the 'collective desire', 26, 29; conception of, in savage tribes, 9; does not rejoice, nor is angered, 218; essence of, 158; home of, 148; of the Jews, 163; rejections of, 222 f. ; unchangeable, 187; Union with, 147

 God-Man, as King, 152 f. 

 Gods, communion with, 188; Cosmic and Hypercosmic, 206 f. ; men as, 136; nature of, 200 f. ; Twelve, 207; unchangeable, 217; why worshipped, 218

 Good, the, 88 f. , 110, 185 f. , 206; happiness of, 224 f. ; Idea of, as Sun of the spiritual universe, 94

 γραῦς, 31

 Gruppe, Dr. , [18:1], [50:3], [52:1], [56:3], 172

 Hagia Triada, sarcophagus of, 20

 Halliday, W. R. , [32:2]

 Happiness, Natural, 104

 Harnack, A. , 193

 Harrison, Miss J. E. , xiv, 13-30, _passim_, [148:1]

 Hartland, E. S. , 9

 Haverfield, Professor F. J. , 127

 Heath, Sir T. , [141:1]

 Heaven, Third, 149

 Hebrews, 125

 Hecataeus, 143

 _Heimarmenê_, 134, 145, 211

 Helen, Korê as, 138

 Hellenes, conquered tribes took name of, 42; no tribe of, existing in ancient times, 41; same as Achaioi, 40

 Hellenism, as standard of culture, 41

 Hellenistic Age, 3 f. , 114, 117, 125, 131, 144, 161, 167; culture, 125; philosophy, 165; revival, 40 f. ; spirit, 152

 Hera, 56

 Heraclitus of Ephesus, 167

 Herakles, 56, 89

 Hermes, 55, 151

 Hermetica, 148, 151

 Hermetic communities, 146

 Hermias, [116:1]

 Herodotus, [27:3], 39, 41, [42:1], 44; religion of, 175

 Heroes, philosophers as, 153

 Heroic Age, 48 f. , 57

 Heroism, religious, of antiquity, 192

 Hesiod, 44, 64 f. 

 Hipparchia, [95:1]

 Hippolytus, 172

 Hoffmann, Dr. O. , [43:1], [52:1]

 Hogarth, D. G. , [24:1]

 Holocaust, 14

 Homer, 9, 44 f. , 48 f. , [54:3], _passim_, 64 f. 

 _Hosiôtêr_, bull as, 20 f. 

 Hubert and Mauss, MM. , [189:1]

 Idealists, 82

 Idols, defence of, [77:1]

 Illusion, 112, 119

 Impalement, [163:1]

 Infanticide, 177

 Initiations, Hellenistic, 148-52

 Instinct, 100

 Interpreters, Planets as, 144

 Ionia, 59 f. 

 Ionian tradition, 101, 104

 Ionians, 51

 Iphigenia, [61:1]

 _Iranes_, 32

 Irenaeus, 172

 Iris, 55

 Isis, 151, 166

 Isocrates, 81

 Jacoby, [160:1]

 Jaldabaoth = Saturn, 147

 Javan, sons of, 42

 Jews, 125, 151, 188; God of, 163

 Judaism, 193

 Julian, xvi, 4, 179 ff. , 184 f. , 197

 Justin, [64:1]

 Kaibel, [61:1]

 Kant, 136

 Keraunos, 155

 _Kêres_, 34

 Kern, O. , [21:2]

 King, I. , [29:1]

 Kings, as gods, 191; divine, titles of, 155 ff. ; predictions concerning, by Planets, 144; worship of, 156

 Koios, 166

 Korê, 63 f. ; as fallen Virgin, 138; Earth, 30; Earth Maiden and Mother, 137

 Kosmokratores, 146, 148, 164

 Kosmos, 147, [200:1]; Moon as origin of, 169; planets as Elements in, 142

 Kourê, Zeus, 150

 Kourêtes, 150; Spring-song of, 30

 Kouroi, 30; dance of, 28

 Kouros, 63 f. , 71; _Megistos_, 28; Sun as, 30; Year-Daemon, 32

 Kourotrophos, Earth, 30

 κράτος and βία, 25, [157:1]

 Kronos, 45

 κτίσαντα, 23

 κτίσιν, 23

 Kynosarges, 89

 Lampsacus, 107

 Lang, Andrew, xiii, [16:2], [23:2]

 Λάθε βιώσας, 110

 Leaf, W. , [40:1], [49:1]

 Leagues, 80

 Leontion, 108

 Life, inward, 119 f. 

 Λόγος, 135

 Lucian, _Icaro-Menippos_, [15:1]

 Lucretius, 38, 105, [106:1], 114

 Lysander, 155

 Lysias, 81

 McDougall, W. , 125 _n. _

 Macedon, 81, 127

 Macedonians, 93, 116, 122

 Mackail, Professor J. W. , 42

 Man, First, 164; Righteous, of Plato, 163; Second, 163 f. ; Son of Man, 163

 Man-God, worship of, 156 ff. 

 _Mana_, 19, 21, 24, 34, [157:1]

 Marett, R. R. , [124:1]

 Margoliouth, Professor, [167:1]

 Markos the Gnostic, 150

 Marriage, Sacred, 17 f. 

 Maximus of Tyre, [77:1]

 Mayer, M. , 46 _n. _

 Meade, G. R. S. , 172

 Mediator between God and worshipper, 189; Mithras as, 151; Saviour as, 162

 Medicine-king, as θεός, 25, 152; powers of, 25

 Megethos, 142

 Meilichios, in the Diasia, 14-15, 19

 Meister, R. , [53:1]

 Meyer, Ed. , [154:3]

 Mind, nature of, 209

 Mithraic communities, 146

 Mithraism, 148

 Mithras, 123, 139, 152; as Mediator, 151; Liturgy, 146, 148; religion of, 21

 Mommsen, August, [14:1], [17:1], [18:1]

 Monotheism, 69 f. 

 Moon, as Kourotrophos, 30; as origin of Kosmos, 169; divinity of, 136 ff. 

 Morals, minor, 177; of antiquity, 177 f. ; of Christians, 178

 Moret, [23:2]

 Mother, Divine, 164; Great, 185

 Mülder, D. , [53:1], [57:1]

 Mullach, 172

 Müller, H. D. , [57:1]

 Music of the Spheres, 142

 Myres, J. L. , 40

 Mysteries, 93

 Mystic letters, 219

 Mysticism, 169

 Mythology, Olympian, 75

 Myths, Sallustius' treatment of, 221 f. ; why divine, 201; five species, 202; explanation of examples, 203-5

 Naassenes, 146, 162

 Nature, the return to, as salvation for man, 91

 Nausiphanes, 101

 Neo-Platonism, 181

 Nerve, failure of, chap. Iv. 

 Nikator, 155

 Nilsson, M. P. , [18:2], [21:2], [31:1], [32:1]

 Nilus, St. , 21

 Norden, [159:1]

 _Octavius_, 164, 182, [190:1]

 Odin, 59

 Ogdoas, 147

 _Oimôgê_, 79, 116

 Olympian expurgation, 61 f. , 67 ff. ; family, 11; reformation, 58, 61 ff. ; stage, 2; theology, 4

 Olympian Gods, brought by Northern invaders, 45; character of, 46-58; coming of, 43; why so called, 44 f. 

 Olympian religion, achievements of, 72 ff. ; beauty of, 73; conception of, 131; failure of, 67-72

 Olympians, origin of, 39 ff. 

 Olympus, Mount, 46

 Optimism, 193

 Oracles, 37-8

 Oreibasius, 27

 Oreibates, 27

 Organization, social, 214

 Origins, Religious, 1

 Orphic Hymns, [30:1]; literature, [64:1]

 Orphism, 148

 _Orthia_, 32

 Osiris, 166

 Othin, [50:1]

 οὐσία, [200:1]

 Ovid, [52:2]

 Ozymandia, 144

 Pagan prayer, a, 197 f. ; reaction, 173 f. 

 Paganism, final development of, 192 f. ; struggle with Christianity, 195 f. 

 Palimpsest, manuscript of man's creed as, 199

 Palladion, 52

 Pallas, Athena as, 52, 71

 Panaetius, 145

 Paribeni, R. , [20:2]

 Parker, Mrs. Langloh, 12

 Parmenides, 12, [113:2]

 πάτρια, τὰ, 37

 Paul. St. , 2 f. , 7, 23, 33, 60, 124, 137, 149, 158 _n. _, 161, 164

 Pauly-Wissowa, [14:1]

 Pausanias, [27:3], [54:2], _passim_

 Payne, E. J. , [29:1], [30:1]

 Pelasgians, 42, 44

 πέμπτον σῶμα, 137

 Periclean Age, 87, 89

 Peripatetic School, 114 f. , 116; spirit, 122

 _Peripatos_, 114

 Persecution of the Christians, 181

 Persephone, 74 f. 

 φαρμακός, 34

 Pheidias, 50

 φιλανθρωπία, 156, 158

 φιλία, 104, 109

 Philo, 172, 177

 _Phusis_, 99, 134, [200:1]

 Pindar, [31:3], 43, [52:2]

 Pisistratus, 43, 53

 πίστις, 7

 Planets, seven, history and worship of, 140 ff. 

 Plato, 3, 13 _n. _, 82-4, 109, 126, 129, 163

 Pleasure, pursuit of, 110

 Plotinus, 2, 4, [10:2], 135; his union with God, 149

 Plutarch, [27:3] 32{1}, [34:2], [54:2], _passim_

 Poimandres, 162

 Πολιάς, ἡ, or Πολιεύς, ὁ, 71

 _Poliouchoi_, 67

 Polis, collapse of, 80, 127 f. ; projection of, 71; religion of, 71, 75 f. ; replaces Tribe, 66 f. 

 Polybius, 80

 Porch, 114

 Porphyry, [149:2], [188:2]

 Poseidon, 54

 Posidonius, 146, 159

 Predestination, 145

 Preuss, Dr. , 2

 Proclus, [209:2]

 Proletariates, 194

 Pronoia _or_ Providence, Stoic belief in, 90, 135

 Providence, 210 f. 

 ψυχή, [200:1]

 Ptah, 151

 Ptolemaios Epiphanês, 156 f. 

 Punishment, eternal, 9; why not immediate, 223

 Purpose of Dramaturge, 97-100

 Pythagoras, 167

 Pythias, 116

 Rack, martyrs happy on the, 192

 Reason, as combatant of passion, 91

 Redeemer, of the Gnostics, 162 f. ; Son of the Korê, 138

 Redemption, mystery of, 163

 Reformation, Olympian, 61 ff. 

 Refuge, City of, in the _Laws_, 83

 Refugees, sufferings of, 102

 Reinach, A. J. , [25:1]

 Reinach, S. , [25:1], [68:1], 172

 Reisch, E. , [11:1]

 Reitzenstein, xv, 126, [150:3], 172

 Religion, description of, 5-9; eternal punishment for error in, 9; falseness of, 7 ff. ; Greek, extensive study of, xiii; traditional, 127; significance of, 1

 Religious Origins, 1

 _Republic_, 94

 Retribution, 33

 Reuterskiold, [21:3]

 Revelations, divine, 171; series of, to worshippers, 151

 Revival, Hellenistic, 40 ff. 

 Ridgeway, Professor, [40:1], [54:1]

 Righteousness, City of, in the _Republic_, 83

 Rivers, Dr. , [31:2]

 Robertson Smith, Dr. , 21 f. 

 Rome, a Polis, 127

 Ruah, 138

 Sacraments, 148

 Sacrifice, human, 35, [61:1]; condemned by Theophrastus, [188:2]; Porphyry on, [188:2]; reason for, 219 f. 

 Sallustius, xvi, 165, 179-81, 183-5, 193

 Saturn, 147

 Saviour, as Son of God and Mediator, 161 f. ; dying, 35 f. ; Third One, 33

 Sceptics, _jeux d'esprit_ of, 87

 Schultz, W. , 172

 Schurtz, Ed. , [31:1]

 Schwartz, [159:1]

 Scott, W. , 172

 Seeck, O. , [53:1], 172

 Sky, phenomena of, as origin of man's idea, 136

 Snake, supernatural, 19

 Social structure of worshippers, 151

 Solon, 43

 σῶμα, [200:1]

 Sophocles, 123

 _Sophrosynê_, 73, 83, 114, 152, 197

 _Sors_: _see_ Fortune. 

 Sôtêr, 155

 Soul, divinity of, 153-65; human, as origin of man's idea, 136; immortal, 186; nature of, 209 f. ; salvation of, 164

 Sparta, Athens defeated by, 80; constitution of, 87; power of, 81

 Spirit, Holy, 137; personified, 165

 Stars, divinity of, 136 ff. , [153:1]

 Steiner, von H. , _Mutaziliten_, [10:2]

 Stoicism, 117, 146

 Stoics, 3, 76, 95-7, 104, 109 f. , 119, 128, 130, 145, 160, 165

 Συμπάθεια τῶν ὅλων, 145

 Sun, 187; as Kouros, 30; = both orb and ray, [203:1]; divinity of, 137 ff. ; worship of, 139

 _Sunoikismos_, 63

 Superstition, 130

 Sweetness, Epicurus on, 106

 Swine, sacred, 19

 _Tabu_, 34 ff. 

 Tarn, W. W. , [80:1], [152:2]

 _Teletai_, 32

 Thales, 2

 θαρρεῖν, 95, 103 f. 

 Themis, 36, 37

 Theodoret, 181

 Theoi Adelphoi, 154

 Theophrastus, 143, [188:2]

 θεός = θεσός, 24; use of the word by poets, 12

 Thera, [18:2]

 θεσμοί, derivation of, [16:1]

 Thesmophoria, 16

 Thespis, 43

 Third One _or_ Saviour, 33

 Thomson, J. A. K. , 46 _n. _

 Thoth, 151

 Thought, subjective, 128

 Thracians, 150 f. 

 Thucydides, 41; religion of, 175

 Thumb, A. , [43:1], [45:2]

 Transmigration of souls, 224

 Trigonometry, 122

 Trinity, 164

 Tritos Sôtêr, 163

 Τύχη: _see_ Fortune

 'Tyrants, Thirty', 84

 Uncharted region of experience, 5 ff. , 171, 198

 _Urdummheit_, 2, 44, 72

 Usener, [101:1], [113:2], [129:1], 172

 Uzzah, 68

 Vandal, [40:2]

 Vegetarianism, [8:1]

 Vegetation-spirit, 32

 Verrall, A. W. , [16:1]

 Vice, definition of, 213 f. 

 Virgin, fallen, Korê as, 138

 Virtue, definition of, 213 f. 

 Vision, 104

 Warde Fowler, W. , [17:1]

 Webster, H. , [31:1]

 Week of seven days, established, 142 f. 

 Wendland, P. , xvi, 126, 156, 172

 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. Von, [43:1], 59

 Wisdom, Divine, personified, 165; Wisdom-Teachers, 2

 Woodward, A. M. , [32:1]

 Word, the, personified, 165

 World, ancient and modern, 120; blessedness of, 168; end of, by fire, Christian belief in, 190; eternal and indestructible, 186 f. , 189, 208-9, 220-2

 Xenophanes, 12

 Xenophon, 79, 85, 86

 Ξύνεσις, 73

 Year-Daemon, 32 f. 

 Zeller, E. , 128

 Zeno, 96 f. , 98, 109, 128

 Zeus, Aphiktor, 28; in Magnesia bull-ritual, 21; Kourês, 150; Meilichios, 14-15; origin and character of, 49 f. ; watchdog of, 93

 Zodiac, 144

Transcriber's Notes

The following corrections have been made to the text. 

 Page 99: if[original has is] he a governor, it is his function

 Page 139: some more full-blooded and less critical element[original has critica lelement]

 Page 166: ('holy' and '[opening quote missing in original]sacred', or perhaps more exactly 'lawful' and '_tabu_')

 Page 184: proceeds straight to the traditional[original has traditiona]

 Page 227: Antigonus Gonatas[original has Gonatus], [152:1]

 Page 228: Chaldaeans[original has Chaldeans], 144, 151

 Page 230: Kronos, 45[original has [43:2]]

 Page 231: Mommsen, August, [14:1], [17:1], [comma missing in original] [18:1]

 Page 232: Pausanias, [27:3], [54:2], _passim_[original has extraneous period]

 Page 233: Plutarch, [27:3], [32:1], [34:2], [54:2], _passim_[original has extraneous period]

 Page 234: _Urdummheit_, [comma missing in original] 2, 44, 72

 Footnote [16:2] A. B. Cook, _J. H. S. _ xiv, [comma missing in original] pp. 153-4

 Footnote [28:1] Ἱκταῖος[smooth breathing mark missing in original] are common

 Footnote [33:2] Rom. Vi. [period missing in original] generally, 3-11

 Footnote [53:1] Αθηναία[original has Ἁθηναία] is of course simply 'Athenian'

 Footnote [53:1] ἁ ϝ[original has capital digamma--source document has small digamma]άνασσα;--ἁ θιὸς ἁ Γολγία

 Footnote [90:1] see _Life_ in Diog. [original has Diorg. ] Laert. 

 Footnote [95:1] Diog. [original has Diorg. ] Laert. Vi. 96 ff. 

 Footnote [113:3] φεῦγε τὸ ἀκάτιον[original has κἀάτιον]

 Footnote [152:2] Ferguson's _Hellenistic Athens_, e. G. [period missing in original] p. 108 f. 

 Footnote [164:3] Gal. Iv. [period missing in original] 9

 Footnote [197:1] Mullach, _Fragmenta Philosophorum_, iii. [period missing in original] 7