Chapter IV: The Third Period, 500-338 B.c (2)

_Strength of the traditional religion in the fifth century_.--The question naturally occurs--were the mass of the citizens touched at all in their inward theory of things by the spirit of modernism which breathed from Ionia and inspired the sophists? The culture that was the stock-in-trade of the latter was only offered to those who could pay; and upon these the poorer Athenian looked askance. He heard of it at first with a dislike that might become dangerous. Fanaticism, as we are familiar with it in the pages of European and Semitic history, was happily alien to the Greek temperament. But the banishment of Anaxagoras and Protagoras, and the execution of Sokrates by the city that was to become {125} the schoolmistress of Greece, might seem to savour somewhat of this temper of mind. These acts, indeed, were not inspired solely by religious feelings; but they are clear proofs that the polytheism was by no means moribund and could be dangerous in its own defence. Nothing is more erroneous than the view which is sometimes expressed, that the popular devotion to the old religion was abating and its divine personalities and forms losing life and value towards the close of the fifth century. In their dark days the Athenians bided truer to their old faith than did Rome in her time of terror. We do not find a prostrate Athens turning desperately for aid to alien Oriental cults. We hear indeed of the beginnings of Adonis-cult in the latter part of the Peloponnesian war, the first ripple of a wave of Orientalism that was to surge westward later. But this feminine excess was unauthorised, and Aristophanes hates it and mocks at it. And the shallow view mentioned above would be sufficiently refuted by his comedy of ‘the Clouds,’ in which he, the greatest literary genius of his time, poses as the champion of the reaction against modernism. It is refuted also by other incidents in Athenian history that fall within the last decades of this century; for the rage of the people at the mutilation of the Hermai, at the supposed insult to the Eleusinian mysteries, at the neglect of the dead after the battle of Arginousai, may be evidence of morbid religiosity, and is surely inconsistent with a general prevalence of scepticism. In these episodes the whole people reveal a passionate attachment to their holy mysteries, to their quaint phallic Herme-images on which the luck and the life of the State depended, to {126} the duties of the loving tendance of the dead. Even their animistic beliefs concerning the common phenomena of the physical world had not yet been extirpated or purged by the physical philosophy of Ionia; for according to Plato it was still a dangerous paradox, which his Sokrates disclaims before the jury, to maintain with Anaxagoras that the Sun and the Moon were merely material bodies and not in themselves divine. Intellectually Nikias appears inferior to Homer’s Hektor. It was Athens that produced in the fourth century the ‘superstitious man’ of Theophrastos; but it is right to bear in mind that she also produced the man who could so genially and tolerantly expose that character.

_Influence of comedy_.--Those who believed that the faith in the polytheism was falling into rapid decay by 400 B.C. sometimes quote by way of evidence the astonishing licence of Attic comedy in dealing with the divine personalities; the notorious example is the ludicrous figure and part of Dionysos in the Frogs of Aristophanes. Yet the people who enjoyed the humour of the play were more devoted to Dionysos than to most of the other persons of their pantheon. If the ‘excellent fooling’ of Aristophanes is a proof of popular unbelief, what shall we say of that Attic terra-cotta of the sixth century that represents him half asleep and half drunk on the back of a mule and supported by an anxious Seilenos?[126.1] The present writer has suggested that “this is some peasant’s dedication, who feared his god little but loved him much and treated him _en bon camarade_.” Epicharmos in Sicily had been beforehand with Aristophanes in venturing on the burlesque of divine actions, Hephaistos and Herakles {127} specially lending themselves to ridiculous situations. Even in the epic period the same gay irreverence had occasionally appeared, as in the Homeric hymn to Hermes. These things do not necessarily arise from an anti-religious spirit, but they may be taken as indication of a certain vein in the Hellenic character, a light-heartedness and a reckless freedom in dealing on certain occasions with things divine that is markedly in contrast to the Oriental spirit. Nevertheless, it is not improbable that comedy at Athens and elsewhere did gradually exercise a weakening or a debasing influence on the popular faith. For the other poets of Attic comedy took greater liberties than even Aristophanes; Kratinos and Telekleides of the fifth century, Amphis of the fourth, did not shrink from introducing the High God himself on the stage in ridiculous and licentious situations. There probably was some reserve and no gross indecency in the presentation of these plots. And much is conceded to the spirit of the carnival, especially when a certain αἰσχρολογία was sanctified by custom and ritual. Nevertheless, the more earnest-minded of the Athenians may have agreed with Plato’s condemnation of such a handling of divine personages,[127.1] and though the popular faith may have been robust enough to endure such shocks, one cannot but suspect that the people’s religious imagination suffered a debasement in moral tone. A few South-Italian vases of the fourth century, on which are scenes that appear to have been inspired by such comedies, are the worst examples of Hellenic vulgarity.

The history of Greek religion, then, must reckon with Attic comedy as among the possible causes of {128} religious corruption and decay; but at the worst this is only one side of the picture, for the fragments of the comedies of Menander, as will be shown, contain many a striking expression of the higher religious spirit and advanced ethical sentiment.

_Waning of the political value of Delphi_.--There are certain external events in the history of Greek religion towards the close of the fifth century that must be noted in a general sketch of its career. One is the waning of the political influence of the Delphic oracle; its secular mission appeared to have been accomplished when the era of Greek colonial expansion had closed; at the first terror of the Persian invasion the great states anxiously resorted to Delphi for guidance, but the priesthood failed to rise to the Pan-Hellenic occasion and played a double game. During the Peloponnesian war it was obvious that they were ‘Laconising’; nor were they ever given again an opportunity of leading _la haute politique_ of Hellas, and in the middle of the fourth century Demosthenes could speak contemptuously of ‘the shadow at Delphi,’ although the Amphictyonic League, as the only federal council of Hellas, still retained a nominal value sufficient to induce Philip to scheme for admission. Generally, in the fourth, third and second centuries, the oracle retained influence only in the spheres of religion and morality. Plato still regards the Delphic God as the natural director of the religious institutions of the State. And we have interesting examples in the later literature of consultation of the oracle by individuals whose minds were troubled by religious terrors and remorse. In fact, it came to serve the purposes of a private confessional, giving advice on {129} questions of conscience; and its advice was generally sane and often enlightened and shows the priests as possessed with the progressive spirit of Greek ethical philosophy.[129.1]

_Spread of Asklepios-worship_.--Another event of importance is the diffusion of the cult of Asklepios and the growing influence on the Hellenic mind of this once obscure hero or earth-daimon of the Thessalian Trikka. It was thence that sometime probably in the sixth century he had migrated to Epidauros, where his power expanded through his union with Apollo. His cult-settlement in Kos was connected with the Epidaurian; and already in the fifth century the Asclepieion of this favoured island had reared the great Hippokrates and was thus the cradle of the later medical science of Europe. Towards the close of this century Asklepios and his daughters came even from Epidauros to Athens, and according to a well-founded tradition the poet Sophocles was his first apostle; in the next generation we find the Athenian state regulating his worship, which was soon to conquer the whole Hellenic world. And in the survey of the Hellenistic age it must be reckoned with as one of the main religious forces of later Hellenism. We may note in passing a striking divergence between the European spirit of Hellenic religion and the Oriental spirit of Mesopotamia: the Babylonian God practises magic, the Hellenic Asklepios, though he worked miracles enough, came in a later day at least to foster science, and even his cases at Epidauros were not all merely of the Lourdes type.

_Growth of the Thiasoi_.--Another interesting phenomenon that begins to arrest our attention in {130} the latter part of the fifth century is the growth of private θίασοι or voluntary religious associations independent of the public religion and devoted to a special divinity who might be an alien. The most interesting testimony is the title of a comedy by Eupolis called the ‘Baptai,’ which we may interpret as ‘the Baptisers,’ satirising a society devoted to the Thracian goddess, Kotytto, whose initiation-rites must have included a ceremony of baptism, of which this is the earliest example within the Hellenic area. It will be more convenient to estimate the importance of religious significance of these θίασοι in the survey of the next period of our history. Meanwhile, it is well to mark certain evidence that the most powerful and appealing of these, the Orphic mystery, having failed in the sixth century to capture the States of Magna Græcia, was increasing its private influence in Eastern Greece in the century before the rise of Alexander. Plato’s attack is itself a witness of this. And when Aristophanes[130.1] and an Attic orator contemporary with Demosthenes[130.2] openly acknowledge Orpheus as the apostle to the Hellenes of the most holy mysteries, and the teacher of a higher way of life, we must conclude that the spirit of the Orphic brotherhoods had touched the imagination of the general public outside the circle of the initiated.

_Religion in first half of fourth century B.C._--Yet it is hazardous and probably false to say that the public religion of Greece was decaying visibly throughout the first half of the fourth century. Athens is as usual our chief witness. The restored democracy was all the more strenuous in matters of religion as scepticism was considered a mark of the {131} new culture of the oligarchically-minded. The trial of Socrates is an indication of this temper. We have also evidence from this period of the occasional severity of the Athenian people against those who tried to introduce unauthorised and un-Hellenic cults. The Hellenic tradition is still strong against the contagion of the orgiastic spirit of the Anatolian religion, and it was with difficulty that the Athenian public could tolerate the wild ritual of Sabazios and the Phrygian Mother, nor even in the time of Demosthenes were the participants in it secure from danger. The early fourth-century art still exhales the religious spirit and serious ethos of the Pheidian school; and it created the type, and almost succeeded in establishing the cult, of the new Goddess of Peace, Eirene, for whose presence among them the wearied Athenians might well yearn; it also perfected the ideal of Demeter, the Madre Dolorosa of Greek myth, whose Eleusinian rites with their benign promise of salvation added power and significance to the later polytheism. The literature of this period attests the enduring vitality of the popular religion. The Attic oratory of the fourth century was more religious in its appeal than any modern has been, as might be expected of a time when there was yet no divorce conceivable between Church and State. It is not a question of the religious faith of the individual orator, but of the religious temper of the audience which is attested by many striking passages in the speeches. According to Antiphon, the punishment of sinners and the avenging of the wronged is specially the concern of the deities of the nether world[131.1]; Andokides avers {132} that foul misconduct was a more heinous sin in a man who had been in the service of the Mother and the Maid of Eleusis[132.1]; the speech against Aristogeiton is almost as much a religious as a juridical utterance. Demosthenes may have been a sceptic at heart, believing in chance--as he once says--as the governing force of our life; but otherwise he is glowingly orthodox in respect of Attic religion and mythology, and the greatest of his speeches closes with a fervent and pious prayer.[132.2] And again it is well to remind ourselves that the political or forensic orator is a truer witness to the average popular belief than the poet or the philosopher.

_Plato’s attitude towards the popular religion_.--A consecutive history of Greek religious thought as embodied in the surviving writings or records of the philosophic schools of Hellas is far too large a subject even to be adumbrated here. And a general survey of the religion can only notice shortly the leading thinkers whose works there is reason to suppose had popular vogue and lasting influence upon the religious world.

Among these the primacy belongs to Plato; and the full account of Greek religion, both in the period that precedes the downfall of Greek independence and in the periods that follow, must include a critical estimate of his religious speculation. This is no place for an elaborate consideration of the metaphysic of his ideal theory, or the relation of his ideas to a theistic system; but only the most general observations may be allowed for the purpose of this sketch. To understand his main attitude towards the popular cults, and his influence upon the later {133} educated world of Greece, we must recognise at once that, idealist and reformer as he was, he was no revolutionary or iconoclast in matters of religion; he would reform Greek mythology, purging it of stories of divine conflicts, divine vengeance, divine amours; and, as these fortunately were enshrined in no sacred books, he feels that this might be done gently and easily without disturbance to the established forms of worship. He does not desire to abolish sacrifice or idolatry, but inculcates simplicity in the offerings.[133.1] In one passage he even maintains that the legislator will not change a single detail of the ritual, if only for the reason that he does not know anything of the inner truth that may lie behind such outward forms.[133.2] Even in his most advanced physical and metaphysical speculations he finds a place for the popular pantheon;[133.3] in the hierarchic scale of things the Olympians are ranged somewhere below the supreme transcendental God of the Universe. The ‘Timæus’ dialogue presents some interesting theologic dogma; here[133.4] in the scale of Divine creation the Olympian Pantheon, which seems to be accepted rather for the sake of ancient tradition, is given the third place after the planets and the Sun which are the second works of the Supreme Creator, the first being the cosmic Heaven. These deities of the polytheism, then, are not immortal in their own nature, but are held together for all eternity by the will of the highest God. And it was to them that he committed the formation of man, and lent for this purpose a portion of his own immortality; the mortality of man is thus accounted {134} for; which would have been inexplicable had he sprung directly from the immortal Supreme Being.

It is interesting for our present purpose to note that this esoteric and transcendental system, devised by the great master and parent of Greek theosophy, would leave the established religion more or less unimpaired; it even accepts its data at certain points, namely, the nativity of its Gods, and draws the logical conclusion that Gods, who were born could not be by essence immortal; therefore Zeus could not be accepted as the Absolute and Supreme Being of the Cosmos. Also it proclaims the idea of an immortal element in man, which, again, is in accord not only with Orphic teaching, but also with the contemporary popular faith in the survival of some part of our being after death. But the work which reflects most vividly the popular religion and betrays the strongest sympathy with it is the Laws, a work of his old age in which the conservative spirit of the religious reformer is no less striking than the intellectual decay of the philosopher. He accepts the greater part of the civic political religion, merely purifying the mythology and some of the ideas concerning divinity; and it is striking how easily he finds in it materials ready to his hand on which he can build an exalted ethical-religious system of rights and duties, especially those which concern the life of the family and the groups of kinship.[134.1] In fact, the background of the thought in this lengthy treatise is almost always the Greek Polis, though glimpses may here and there break through of a wider vista. He expresses the prejudices of the Greek citizen against new forms of private or foreign orgiastic cult which {135} were dangerously enticing to women;[135.1] any doubtful question that might arise concerning rite or cult he would leave to the decision of the oracles of Delphi or Dodona or of Zeus Ammon.[135.2] We feel generally that Plato did not assume the part of an apostle of a new order of religion, but that both in his philosophy and religious theory he found a sufficient _point d’appui_ in the old, of which he tried to strengthen the moral potentialities.

The later sects which attached themselves to his name or to his school were deeply interested in religious speculation, which degenerates at last into the mystic superstition of Neoplatonism. Therefore, as the work of Aristotle belongs to the history of European science, so the philosophy of Plato concerns the later history, both of pre-Christian and Christian religious thought. To estimate exactly how his influence worked on the better popular mind in the centuries before Christ is impossible. But we may naturally and with probability surmise that he contributed much to the diffusion of the belief in the spiritual nature and perfection of God, to the extirpation of the crude notions of divine vindictiveness and jealousy, to the interpretation of the external world in terms of mind and spirit as against any materialistic expression, to the acceptance of the belief in the divinity of the human soul and its affinity with God and in the importance of its posthumous life, which was partly conditioned by the attainment of purity. These latter ideas constitute the faith of the Orphic sects, from whom Plato may have silently borrowed them. But whether through Plato or the thiasoi many of them {136} came to appeal strongly to the popular mind of later Hellas.

_Religious art in the fourth century_.--Our general survey is now approaching that period of world-change brought about by the rise of Macedon. But before leaving the scene of the free City-State, we should remember to estimate the religious work done by the great fourth-century masters of sculpture before the power of Alexander reached its zenith. The fiery imagination of Skopas found plastic types for the forms of Dionysos and his thiasos, and his work rivalled at least, if it did not surpass, in inspiration of tumultuous life the masterpieces of the older Attic vase-painters noticed above. Praxiteles, the master of the gentler moods of the soul, in the religious sphere consummated the types of Aphrodite and Demeter; the almost perfect embodiment of the latter goddess, the Cnidian Demeter of the British Museum, a work of his school, combines something of the tearful expression of the Madre Dolorosa with the blitheness of the Corn-Goddess. We are conscious indeed of a change in the representation of divinity. The works of this later generation have lost the majesty and awe, the σεμνότης, as the Greeks called it, of the fifth-century art; nor can the Greek states command any longer the creation of the chryselephantine colossal statues of temple-worship. In these later types, though still divine, there is more infusion of human passion, of the personal experience, the struggles and yearning of the individual soul. Anthropomorphism is pursuing its path, and though still fertile in works of high spiritual value, may come to weary and weaken the religious sense.