History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed/Chapter II
CHAPTER II[1].
§ 1. The earliest form of the Greek religion not portrayed in the Homeric poems.—§ 2. The Olympic deities, as described by Homer.—§ 3. Earlier form of worship in Greece directed to the outward objects of Nature.—§ 4. Character and attributes of the several Greek deities, as personifications of the powers and objects of Nature.—§ 5. Subsequent modification of these ideas, as displayed in the Homeric description of the same deities.
§ 1. Next to the formation of language, religion is the earliest object of attention to mankind, and therefore exercises a most important influence on all the productions of the human intellect. Although poetry has arisen at a very early date among many nations, and ages which were as yet quite unskilled in the other fine arts have been distinguished for their poetical enthusiasm, yet the development of religious notions and usages is always prior, in point of time, to poetry. No nation has ever been found entirely destitute of notions of a superior race of beings exercising an influence on mankind; but tribes have existed without songs, or compositions of any kind which could be considered as poetry. Providence has evidently first given mankind that knowledge of which they are most in need; and has, from the beginning, scattered among the nations of the entire world a glimmering of that light which was, at a later period, to be manifested in brighter effulgence.
This consideration must make it evident that, although the Homeric poems belong to the first age of the Greek poetry, they nevertheless cannot be viewed as monuments of the first period of the development of the Greek religion. Indeed, it is plain that the notions concerning the gods must have undergone many changes before (partly, indeed, by means of the poets themselves) they assumed that form under which they appear in the Homeric poems. The description given by Homer of the life of the gods in the palace of Zeus on Olympus is doubtless as different from the feeling and the conception with which the ancient Pelasgian lifted up his hands and voice to the Zeus of Dodona, whose dwelling was in the oak of the forest, as the palace of a Priam or Agamemnon from the hut which one of the original settlers constructed of unhewn trunks in a solitary pasture, in the midst of his flocks and herds.
§ 2. The conceptions of the gods, as manifested in the Homeric poems, are perfectly suited to a time when the most distinguished and prominent part of the people devoted their lives to the occupation of arms and to the transaction of public business in common; which time was the period in which the heroic spirit was developed. On Olympus, lying near the northern boundary of Greece, the highest mountain of this country, whose summit seems to touch the heavens, there rules an assembly or family of gods; the chief of which, Zeus, summons at his pleasure the other gods to council, as Agamemnon summons the other princes. He is acquainted with the decrees of fate, and is able to guide them; and, as being himself king among the gods, he gives the kings of the earth their power and dignity. By his side is a wife, whose station entitles her to a large share of his rank and dominion; and a daughter of a masculine complexion, a leader of battles, and a protectress of citadels, who by her wise counsels deserves the confidence which her father bestows on her; besides these a number of gods, with various degrees of kindred, who have each their proper place and allotted duty in the divine palace. On the whole, however, the attention of this divine council is chiefly turned to the fortunes of nations and cities, and especially to the adventures and enterprises of the heroes, who, being themselves for the most part sprung from the blood of the gods, form the connecting link between them and the ordinary herd of mankind.
§ 3. Doubtless such a notion of the gods as we have just described was entirely satisfactory to the princes of Ithaca, or any other Greek territory, who assembled in the hall of the chief king at the common meal, and to whom some bard sung the newest song of the bold adventures of heroes. But how could this religion satisfy the mere countryman, who wished to believe that in seed-time and in harvest, in winter and in summer, the divine protection was thrown over him; who anxiously sought to offer his thanks to the gods for all kinds of rural prosperity, for the warding off of all danger from the seed and from the cattle? As the heroic age of the Greek nation was preceded by another, in which the cultivation of the land, and the nature of the different districts, occupied the chief attention of the inhabitants (which may be called the Pelasgian period), so likewise there are sufficient traces and remnants of a state of the Grecian religion, in which the gods were considered as exhibiting their power chiefly in the operations of outward nature, in the changes of the seasons, and the phenomena of the year. Imagination—whose operations are most active, and whose expressions are most simple and natural in the childhood both of nations and individuals—led these early inhabitants to discover, not only in the general phenomena of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened coincidence of certain deities. There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of a charming, and at the same time touching simplicity, which had their origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a worship of the powers of Nature. It sometimes also occurs that those parts of mythology which refer to the origin of civil society, to the alliances of princes, and to military expeditions, are closely interwoven with mythical narratives, which when minutely examined are found to contain nothing definite on the acts of particular heroes, but only describe physical phenomena, and other circumstances of a general character, and which have been combined with the heroic fables only through a forgetfulness of their original form; a confusion which naturally arose, when in later times the original connexion of the gods with the agencies of Nature was more and more forgotten, and those of their attributes and acts which had reference to the conduct of human life, the government of states, or moral principles, were perpetually brought into more prominent notice. It often happens that the original meaning of narratives of this kind may be deciphered when it had been completely hidden from the most learned mythologists of antiquity. But though this process of investigation is often laborious, and may, after all, lead only to uncertain results, yet it is to be remembered that the mutilation and obscuring of the ancient mythological legends by the poets of later times affords the strongest proof of their high antiquity; as the most ancient buildings are most discoloured and impaired by time.
§ 4. An inquiry, of which the object should be to select and unite all the parts of the Greek mythology which have reference to natural phenomena and the changes of the seasons, although it has never been regularly undertaken, would doubtless show that the earliest religion of the Greeks was founded on the same notions as the chief part of the religions of the East, particularly of that part of the East which was nearest to Greece, Asia Minor. The Greek mind, however, even in this the earliest of its productions, appears richer and more various in its forms, and at the same time to take a loftier and a wider range, than is the case in the religion of the oriental neighbours of the Greeks, the Phrygians, Lydians, and Syrians. In the religion of these nations, the combination and contrast of two beings (Baal and Astarte), the one male, representing the productive, and the other female, representing the passive and nutritive powers of Nature, and the alternation of two states, viz., the strength and vigour, and the weakness and death of the male personification of Nature, of which the first was celebrated with vehement joy, the latter with excessive lamentation, recur in a perpetual cycle, which must in the end have wearied and stupified the mind. The Grecian worship of Nature, on the other hand, in all the various forms which it assumed in different places, places one deity, as the highest of all, at the head of the entire system, the God of heaven and light; for that this is the meaning of the name Zeus is shown by the occurrence of the same root (Diu) with the same signification, even in the Sanscrit[2], and by the preservation of several of its derivatives which remained in common use both in Greek and Latin, all containing the notion of heaven and day. With this god of the heavens, who dwells in the pure expanse of ether, is associated, though not as a being of the same rank, the goddess of the Earth, who in different temples (which may be considered as the mother-churches of the Grecian religion) was worshipped under different names, Hera, Demeter, Dione, and some others. of less celebrity. The marriage of Zeus with this goddess (which signified the union of heaven and earth in the fertilizing rains) was a sacred solemnity in the worship of these deities. Besides this goddess, other beings are associated on one side with the Supreme God, who are personifications of certain of his energies; powerful deities who carry the influence of light over the earth, and destroy the opposing powers of darkness and confusion: as Athena, born from the head of her father, in the height of the heavens; and Apollo, the pure and shining god of a worship belonging to other races, but who even in his original form was a god of light. On the other side are deities, allied with the earth and dwelling in her dark recesses; and as all life appears not only to spring from the earth, but to return to that whence it sprung, these deities are for the most part also connected with death: as Hermes, who brings up the treasures of fruitfulness from the depth of the earth, and the child, now lost and now recovered by her mother Demeter, Cora, the goddess both of flourishing and of decaying Nature. It was natural to expect that the element of water (Poseidon) should also be introduced into this assemblage of the personified powers of Nature, and should be peculiarly combined with the goddess of the Earth: and that fire (Hephæstus) should be represented as a powerful principle derived from heaven and having dominion on the earth, and be closely allied with the goddess who sprang from the head of the god of the heavens. Other deities are less important and necessary parts of this system, as Aphrodite, whose worship was evidently for the most part propagated over Greece from Cyprus and Cythera[3] by the influence of Syrophœnician tribes. As a singular being, however, in the assembly of the Greek deities, stands the changeable god of flourishing, decaying, and renovated Nature, Dionysus, whose alternate joys and sufferings, and marvellous adventures, show a strong resemblance to the form which religious notions assumed in Asia Minor. Introduced by the Thracians (a tribe which spread from the north of Greece into the interior of the country), and not, like the gods of Olympus, recognized by all the races of the Greeks, Dionysus always remained to a certain degree estranged from the rest of the gods, although his attributes had evidently most affinity with those of Demeter and Cora. But in this isolated position, Dionysus exercises an important influence on the spirit of the Greek nation, and both in sculpture and poetry gives rise to a class of feelings which agree in displaying more powerful emotions of the mind, a bolder flight of the imagination, and more acute sensations of pain and pleasure, than were exhibited on occasions where this influence did not operate.
§ 5. In like manner the Homeric poems (which instruct us not merely by their direct statements, but also by their indirect allusions, not only by what they say, but also by what they do not say), when attentively considered, clearly show how this ancient religion of nature sank into the shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous forms of the deities of the heroic age. The gods who dwell on Olympus scarcely appear at all in connexion with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly exercises his powers as a ruler and a king; although he is still designated (by epithets doubtless of high antiquity) as the god of the ether and the storms[4]; as in much later times the old picturesque expression was used, "What is Zeus doing?" for "What kind of weather is it?" In the Homeric conception of Hera, Athena, and Apollo, there is no trace of any reference of these deities to the fertility of the earth, the clearness of the atmosphere, the arrival of the serene spring, and the like; which, however, can be discovered in other mythical legends concerning them, and still more in the ceremonies practised at their festivals, which generally contain the most ancient ideas. Hephæstus has passed from the powerful god of fire in heaven and in earth into a laborious smith and worker of metals, who performs his duty by making armour and arms for the other gods and their favourite heroes. As to Hermes, there are some stories in which he is represented as giving fruitfulness to cattle, in his capacity of the rural god of Arcadia; from which, by means of various metamorphoses, he is transmuted into the messenger of Zeus, and the servant of the gods.
Those deities, however, which stood at a greater distance from the relations of human life, and especially from the military and political actions of the princes, and could not easily be brought into connexion with them, are for that reason rarely mentioned by Homer, and never take any part in the events described by him; in general they keep aloof from the circle of the Olympic gods. Demeter is never mentioned as assisting any hero, or rescuing him from danger, or stimulating him to the battle; but if any one were thence to infer that this goddess was not known as early as Homer's time, he would be refuted by the incidental allusions to her which frequently occur in connexion with agriculture and corn. Doubtless Demeter (whose name denotes the earth as the mother and author of life[5]) was in the ancient Pelasgic time honoured with a general and public worship beyond any other deity; but the notions and feelings excited by the worship of this goddess and her daughter (whom she beheld, with deep lamentation, torn from her every autumn, and recovered with excessive joy every spring) constantly became more and more unlike those which were connected with the other gods of Olympus. Hence her worship gradually obtained a peculiar form, and chiefly from this cause assumed the character of mysteries: that is, religious solemnities, in which no one could participate without having undergone a previous ceremony of admission and initiation. In this manner Homer was, by a just and correct taste, led to perceive that Demeter, together with the other divine beings belonging to her, had nothing in common with the gods whom the epic muse assembled about the throne of Zeus; and it was the same feeling which also prevented him from mixing up Dionysus, the other leading deity of the mystic worship of the Greeks, with the subject of his poem, although this god is mentioned by him as a divine being, of a marvellous nature, stimulating the mind to joy and enthusiasm.
- ↑ We have thought it absolutely essential, for the sake of accuracy, in treating of the deities of the ancient Greek religion, to use the names by which they were known to the Greeks. As these, however, may sound strange to persons not acquainted with the Greek language, we subjoin a list of the gods of the Romans with which they were in later times severally identified, and by whose names they are commonly Known:—Zeus, Jupiter; Hera, Juno; Athena, Minerva; Ares, Mars; Artemis, Diana; Hermes, Mercury; Demeter, Ceres; Cora, Proserpine; Hephæstus, Vulcan; Poseidon, Neptune; Aphrodite, Venus; Dionysus, Bacchus.
- ↑ The root DIU is most clearly seen in the oblique cases of Zeus, Διϝός Διϝί, in which the U has passed into the consonant form Ϝ: whereas in Ζεὺς, as in other Greek words, the sound DI has passed into Ζ, and the vowel has been lengthened. In the Latin Iovis (Iuve in Umbrian) the D has been lost before I, which, however, is preserved in many other derivatives of the same root, as dies, dium.
- ↑ See Herod. i. 105; and Hist. of Rome, pp. 121, 122.
- ↑ αἰθέρι ναίων· νεφεληγερέτης.
- ↑ Δῆ μήτηρ, that is, γῆ μήτηρ.