Part 4
1. HELLAS.
Grecian religion is worship of the beautiful. Its origin was as that of the other polytheistic religions: its basis was a personification of nature’s forces and of the heavenly bodies, but in its evolution it differed essentially from the religions of the Oriental peoples, who had no sense for the beautiful, and who ascribed to their gods forms quaint, or unnatural, or hideous. In the dawn of their history the Hellenes did, undoubtedly, worship the forces of nature under the form of animals, especially of serpents. In time the human and animal forms were united, and there were deities with heads of animals or the bodies of horses (centaurs) or the hoofs of goats (satyrs). But the native genius of Greece asserted itself at an early period, and the figures of gods came by degrees to express the highest physical perfection with which they were acquainted—the human form. True, the Hellenes, like the Easterns, forgot the astronomic and cosmic signification of their myths; but, whereas, for their neighbors oversea—at least for the mass of the people—the natural powers transformed into gods were simply fetiches existing only in the matter out of which they were made—objects of dumb reverence or of mad terror; for the man of Hellas they became changed into moral forces, into ideas which he represented to himself in beautiful forms that were to him not objects of fear at all, but beings with whom he might converse as with fellowmen, and of whom his poets sang as though of mortal heroes. Here we have the distinguishing characteristic of Grecian religious worship.
The Hellenes knew nothing of dogma, creeds, catechising, or revelation. In their eyes, if a man did but honor the gods as representing the groundwork of morality, he satisfied all the requirements of religion: the how, the when, the where, the how often, were matters left to the discretion of each one; and nobody else judged him concerning them. Of course, we must not apply our modern ethical yardstick to the principles of morality for which the gods stood sponsor, after the origin of the gods had been forgotten. The Greeks were, with regard to matters that we nowadays hold to be within the sphere of ethics, not at all scruple-ridden; and in truth we need to bear in mind their great services on behalf of the beautiful if we would look with some measure of allowance on their shortcomings with regard to virtue. In two points, specially straightforwardness (honesty, candor, truthfulness) and chastity, they left much to be desired; but what else was to be expected, seeing that in their gods, as in course of time they came to conceive of them mistakenly, they had by no means edifying exemplars of the moral principles to which those deities were supposed to give sanction. Nevertheless, history will, even to the Hellenes, forgive much, because they loved much.
Of so little obligation was the Grecian belief regarding the gods, that the several divisions of the Hellenic race were by no means agreed as to the number of the gods and their respective ranks. Of the twelve gods of Olympus, one would be disowned here, another there. In one place greater honor would be paid to this god, in another place to that; the case is exactly that of the saints in Catholic countries to-day. Nay, local deities, e. g., Athene in Athens, often received more homage than Zeus, father of the gods and lord of the thunderclouds. The worship of the beautiful went even so far as to multiply gods, and to divide them among the different localities that possessed renowned statues of them: these statues then came to be regarded as distinct individuals, so that even a Socrates could be in doubt whether the Aphrodite Urania (Aphrodite in the sky) and Aphrodite Pandemos (the popular Aphrodite) were or were not one person. Nay, when the known gods did not suffice, they made gods that had no name: thus we find a “greatest” god, also “pure”, and “reconciling”, and “ruling”, and, as we learn from the “Acts of the Apostles”, “unknown” gods. And now as regards the character of all these deities: for the Greeks, who in all things studied the beautiful, they were neither monsters like the gods of Egypt, India, and Phoenicia, nor incorporeal spirits like the gods of the Persians and the Israelites, but human existences that never could die, mighty beings with human feelings, inclinations, and passions. The Greeks knew no Yahve: but then neither did they know any Devil. Their gods were neither faultless nor virtueless, just like the Greeks themselves. Of course there are to be found in Hellenic religion survivals from that period of mythology in which human and beast forms were mingled. This we see in the Centaurs, the Chimaera, the Minotaur, the Satyrs, etc.; but such beings were become merely figures in folk-tales, and there they enacted parts ranging from terror to farce: they no more received divine honors. And the same is to be said of daemons and malign spirits, relegated to the domain of superstition and the realm of poesy.
2. HELLENIC DIVINE WORSHIP.
Grecian religion was a function of state. Its adogmatism, it is true, abated the apprehension this fact might inspire for freedom of thought: but, on the other hand, religion came to be a cloak for the designs of political parties. Thus, for example, Socrates was put out of the way by the party opposed to him on the pretext that he had apostatized from the religion of the state. Heresy trials, except as stirred up by politicians, had no place among the Greeks. Philosophers and Initiates of the mysteries fearlessly expressed their convictions, however much opposed the same might be on one side or the other to the official theology: nay, comedy, and even the comedies of the tory Aristophanes introduced the gods in the most ridiculous and most disgraceful situations on the stage. It was enough for the state if the public worship of the gods, whose festivals were commanded, and whose sacrifices were prescribed by public authority, went on: for the state what individuals thought was of no consequence: the state cared neither for the upholding of positive nor for the putting down of negative beliefs. The public worship was regarded as a sort of legal transaction between the gods and the people: the gods were entitled to sacrifices, and the people to divine aid, and the two parties were held to make faithful exchange. Violation of temples and profanation of sacred things were, therefore, grievous crimes. One need not believe in miracles wrought by images of gods: but one must leave the images alone. And, inasmuch as the gods were officially recognized as vested with rights before the law, therefore, upon complaint made—and then only—denial of their existence, scoffing, and blasphemy were punished with banishment as the worst sort of crimes. Nor was there in this any fanaticism or any intolerance, simply an idea of right and wrong. That this is so is proved by the fact that there was no prohibition of the bringing in of alien gods or of the worship of such, provided only the customs of the land were not infringed; nay, alien gods, if their religion gained vogue, might be adopted into the religion of the state.
Such freedom of religion could, of course, exist only where no priestly caste existed, nor, in fact, any special priestly class. It was competent for persons in various walks of life to perform religious ceremonies. In the name of the state, the king (or other head of the government) “transacted business” with the gods, for example, conducted the sacrifices. Only in temples and other localities consecrated to divine worship were priests as such employed: but outside the walls of these they had nothing to do; for instance, they had nothing to do with men’s consciences. In Hellas the priest had no privileges, no influence such as he had in Egypt, and priestly societies and priestly secret doctrine were out of the question. The service of some of the gods was conducted by women, and in the worship of certain deities only unmarried priests could engage; there were also certain other restrictions put on the priest’s mode of life.
Among the Greeks religious ministration was no more restricted to certain places than to certain persons. The gods were everywhere, the highest inhabiting Olympus, others the sea, the netherworld, certain groves, trees, streams, mountains, grottoes, etc. Not in temples alone, but everywhere stood altars: in houses, in the streets, in forests. All consecrated places, whether temples or sacred groves, etc., were Asyla, places of refuge for offenders against law. The honor done to the gods consisted in:
1. Invocation, comprising Prayers addressed, whether to the images of the gods or to their supposed abode, and pronounced low or loud or in song; Oaths, summoning the gods as witnesses of truth—this at times degenerated into a species of Ordeal; Imprecations, calling on the gods to punish evildoers.
2. Votive Offerings (anathemata), objects of all kinds laid at the feet of the gods’ images: the offering might be an animal, fattened specially for the god, or it might be a person dedicated for life to the service of the god by himself, his father, or his master.
3. Sacrifices, mostly meat and drink offerings, but sometimes living animals immolated to the gods, in atonement for sin, or to ratify treaties, or to obtain an intimation of the divine will or foreknowledge. In the earliest times human victims were immolated.
If religion consists in a belief in superterrestrial powers and in worship of them, so, on the other hand, the belief in miracle has its root in the conviction that this worship is answered by action of the heavenly powers on the physical world. One instance of this action of the supersensual world is called Revelation. Here the Grecian religion was distinguished from other forms of belief in that it accepted no official standing revelation which every one was required to believe, while it maintained the possibility of a revelation from the gods for emergencies. This belief was firmly held even by the most eminent Grecian philosophers, in particular by Socrates and the Stoics. And if the granting of prayers and the decision of questions by ordeals was a first feeble step toward revelation, the same mistaken belief led to still further degeneration of the religious idea in the forms of Seership, Oracles, and Conjuration.
Seership (in Greek, mantike, seer’s art) was unintentional or intentional. Unintentional seership we see in dreams, and in trance. Intentional seership was practiced by interpretation of signs or omens (sign-reading). A seer (mantis) was one who practiced sign-reading, whether self-deluded or simply pretending to be under divine inspiration. Folklore and history tell of famous seers who foretold the future from observation of the flight of birds, atmospheric phenomena, the position of constellations, and the entrails of animals; or who interpreted dreams and on occasion had ecstasies and visions. Then there were unprofessional practicers of the art who divined the future by other means; thus one would write the letters of the alphabet in a circle on the ground, lay on each letter a grain of corn, then let a cock pick up the grains, the operator meanwhile carefully noting the order in which the grains were picked up: this was known as alectromancy (Gr., alektor, cock; manteia, seership, divination).
Oracles are properly divinations obtainable only in particular places (as temples and other sanctuaries), and practiced only by duly qualified persons. There were several kinds of oracles, viz.:
1. Oracles from Signs. The most ancient oracle of this class was that of Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus, mentioned by Homer. The priests of the sanctuary at Dodona divined by observation of the rustling of the leaves of the sacred oak; they also cast lots on the altar, or questioned a sacred bronze basin.
2. Sententious Oracles. These were all sanctuaries sacred to Apollo, and were numerous in Hellas and Asia Minor. The most notable of them was one at Delphi. The minister of the oracle of Delphi, a virgin priestess called the Pythia, while questioning the oracle sat on a tripod which stood over a crevice in the ground; thence issued a gas, and, intoxicated by inhaling this, the Pythia uttered words which the priests dressed up in verse or in sententious form.
3. Dream Oracles. Of these there were many, in sanctuaries dedicated to Asklepios (Aesculapius, god of leechcraft) to which the sick were taken in order that through interpretation of the dreams they had on the spot they might obtain from the priests of Asklepios counsel upon the healing of their complaints. The most renowned of this class of oracles was at Epidaurus, in Argolis.
Conjuration, which developed into magic, was much used in ancient Greece, especially after the Greeks had come in contact with the Oriental world; but the gods and daemons concerned in this practice were all taken from foreign mythologies. People believed in conjuration of the weather, in transformation of men into animals, in love potions, etc., and employed magic formulas expressed in words that no one understood and that belonged to no earthly language.
3. THE HELLENIC MYSTERIES.
Such was the theology, and such the thaumatology[1]—image and reflection—of Grecian religion. The two elements constitute the popular religion, the religion of feeling, worship of the gods, as far as sensibility is concerned. But in the most ancient times there stood over against the popular religion (in Greece as in Egypt) a religion of priests, their Initiates, and Elect; over against the religion of feeling a religion of reflection; over against the naif, sensorial view, the sentimental, romantic, mystical one, the one which aims to acquire for belief an ethical side, and to subordinate that to faith. This phase of religion results from the mystic consideration that the individual is essentially different from the divine nature, subject thereto, and dependent on it; in short, it results from the idea of “alienation from God,” toward which the superstitions of seership, oracles and magic were already showing the way. It was the impulse, given by reflection, to “seek the lost god” that led to the institution of mysteries in Greece: men were no longer satisfied with gods that were but man’s equals. The mysteries contradict the origin of religion in feeling, they deny its dependence on art and the beautiful; they ponder and brood over the lost god, and are ever seeking him. They would subordinate life and all its interests to his service; they would regulate all man’s acts, and hence morality, according to faith; they hold in contempt either man’s power or his knowledge. The Grecian mysteries, indeed, borrowed from the popular religion its art, and turned it to account, but in them art was not cultivated for itself, and science was completely ignored. As science was free in Hellas and not tied to any priestly order, the mysteries could there render no service: there was nothing for them to do. Of all the many philosophers of Greece, not one employed the doctrines of the mysteries in his system: not one showed any regard for them. The mysteries were then what they had ever been, and still are, to wit, self-introspection, interpretation of divine things, a mourning over the lost god, and search after the same, an endeavor for union with God, for grace and salvation, a sensible delight in the thought of a god suffering and dying, in meditation on the soul’s state after death, on revelation, incarnation, and resurrection; and a representation of all these ideas in dramatic forms and ceremonies the main effect of which is to make an illusive and blinding impression on the senses.
Footnote 1:
The original has Goetterglaube, belief in gods, and Wunderglaube, belief in miracles, in allusion to the preceding section 2. Goetterglaube is of course equivalent to “theology,” and if so, then Wunderglaube is equivalent to “thaumatology” from Greek thaumata, miracles, and logos, discourse.
Thus, the Grecian mysteries were the exact opposite of genuine Hellenism. Cheerfulness, joyousness, clearness of perception and of thought, absence of all mists and vapors, were the notes of your true Hellene: his statues of gods with their grand, bold, full, rounded contours to this day demonstrate this; and his superstition even took things just as they looked to him. On the other hand, gloom, ruefulness, a morbid, overweening, owlish phantastry, symbolry, mysticism, with every shallow trick of strained interpretation, and all the smugnesses of pharisaic piety are the earmarks of your mystic. On the one side day on the other night, there action here quest and longing, there fact here makebelieve, there alertness here moping, there a hearty meal off what is at hand here a hungering and thirsting after truth that never can be attained. The mysteries were therefore in every way ungrecian, outlandish, and abnormal. They had no fit place on Hellenic soil, nor in that age; they were the propaedeutic of a future age when one should come upon the scene who was to hurl Olympos, Okeanos, and Hades into the everlasting night of oblivion.
And yet from the difference between the Grecian mysteries and the ordinary life of the people it by no means follows that the Initiates did not find satisfaction, at least a partial satisfaction, in these mystic exercitations. The man who nurses the feeling of a want for something other than what his times and his surroundings afford, finds at the last in his very brooding the satisfaction of his need. Sentimental, romantic, fanciful, and mystical characters, therefore, must find uncommon delight in mysteries, while practical, clear-sighted, undistorted, and strictly logical minds are unmoved by them. Let us then listen to the testimony of two celebrated mystae, a Grecian and a Roman, both, it is true, living in a time when their respective nations had begun to decline. The tragic poet Euripides sings: “O blest is he whose fortune it is to have learned the divine initiations; he sanctifies his life.” And Cicero (De Legibus II., 14) makes Marcus say to Atticus: “Of all the grand, and as I fain would think, the divine elements imported by thy Athens into human life, there is nought better than those Mysteries whereby we have been developed out of rudeness and savagery and trained to the human manner of life. And we, too, even as the Mysteries are called Initia (beginnings) so in them have found the principles (a play on words, “initia” and “principia,” principles, being homonyms) of right living, and have learned not only to live joyously, but also to die with better hope.” Then, as shadow follows light, he adds: “The thing I do mislike in the nocturnal rites, is told in the comic poets. Were such liberties permitted in Rome, what had not that infamous wretch (Clodius) done, who brought lewdness into the presence of certain sacred rites upon which ’twere sin even to glance unwittingly.”
The Grecian mysteries were no monopoly of the priests or of any other class: no man was excluded except such as by their life proved themselves unworthy of initiation. The origin of these mysteries is found in the rites of Purification and Atonement. In the earliest times the purifications were nothing but bodily cleansings prescribed to those who took part in religious ceremonies: later they took on a moral significance, as the sense of alienation from God gained ground. With the consciousness of sin, with the need of obtaining forgiveness, and, to that end, of knowing a deity free from all sin, and hence totally unlike man, mysticism begins and develops. Expiations came into vogue little by little, especially for bloodguiltiness, and were used in the popular religion. These consisted of certain ceremonies in which the blood of animals and incense were employed; in the case of individuals such rites might lessen the punishment under mitigating circumstances; they might, in the case of cities and states, efface the stains of murderous crimes committed during revolts or civil strifes. In all the mysteries purifications and expiations played a great part. Whatever has been handed down with regard to these mysteries is found in the sections following.
4. THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.
The most ancient, most celebrated, and most venerable among the Grecian mysteries were those instituted at Eleusis, in Attica, in honor of the goddess Demeter (called by the Latins Ceres) and her daughter Persephone (Proserpina), and later of a male deity also, known in the mysteries under the name of Iacchos; and though there is no affinity between the letters I and B, Iacchos came in time to stand for Bacchus. The original Iacchos would seem to have been a god in the people’s religion, and this name is probably related to Jao (found in Jovispater, Jupiter) and to the Hebrew Yahve. Diodorus (I., 94) gives the name Jao to the God of the Hebrews; and an oracular utterance of the Apollo of Claros says:
Know thou that the highest of all the gods is named Jao, and In Winter Aides, and Zeus in opening Spring, then Helios in Summer, and once more Jaos in Fall.
The fact that Jaos was the harvest-god tended strongly to identify him with Bacchus, personification of the sun which ripens the grape; and, besides, Bacchus was allied to Demeter (originally Gemeter—Earthmother) who was the patroness of husbandry. The name of the city, Eleusis, means in Greek “advent”, and it commemorates the stay of Demeter there in the course of her wandering in search of her daughter: a like story is told of Isis in Egypt. In gratitude for their hospitality, Demeter bestowed on the people of Eleusis the bread-grain and the mysteries. From Eleusis the cult of the two deities spread all over Greece and part of Asia Minor, and in a modified form passed into Italy: in several places arose affiliated institutions resembling that at Eleusis, having the same festivals and the same secret cult; but Eleusis always held the supremacy. The buildings at Eleusis, in the pure Doric style, consisted of the temple of Demeter and the Mystic House, in which the secret festivals were held. They were connected with Athens by the “Sacred Way”, a road flanked by temples and sanctuaries: in Athens itself was an Eleusinian building (Eleusinion) in which a portion of the mysteries was celebrated. In front of the city gate toward the Piraeus was also a sanctuary dedicated to this cult, and furthermore an Eleusinion at Agrae. The buildings at Eleusis stood till the fourth century of our era: they were then destroyed by the Goths under Alaric, at the instigation of monkish fanatics.
The Eleusinia were always under the direction of the Athenian Government. When Athens became a democracy the functions till then performed by the King, as protector of the Eleusinia, devolved on the head of the executive, the Archons, who, therefore, bore the title Basileus (king) because the most important duties of the King had been concerned with Eleusis and its Mysteries. The Basileus was assisted by four councilors (epimeletae), of whom two were chosen from among the Athenians, and other two from the two Eleusinian gentes, Eumolpidae, and Kerytae. The report on the celebration of the Mysteries was always rendered to the Grand Council (Boule) of Athens, assembled in the Eleusinion. The function of priest in the institutions at Eleusis was always the exclusive privilege of the Eumolpidae and Kerytae. The chief of the priests was the hierophant, and with him was associated a hierophantess. Next to these in dignity were the torchbearer (daduchus), the sacred herald (hierokeryx), and the “altar-priest.” These officials constituted the Sacred Council, which had the immediate direction of the mysteries.