Early Greek Religion
From Early Greek Philosophy by Alfred Benn, 1908.
Location: Greece
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Early Greek Philosophy by Alfred Benn, 1908.
Before philosophy arose, Greek curiosity about the origin and structure of the material universe was satisfied by an elaborate system of mythology. It is still a matter of dispute how religion first began, but it seems to be generally agreed that all the progressive races have passed through a stage in which their gods are conceived as personified natural objects or natural forces.
At any rate, that was how the Greeks represented to themselves the beings whom they worshipped. Working, as we may suppose, on a mass of loose and discordant traditions, their poets elaborated the figments of popular religion into a literary scheme of such unfading interest that an acquaintance with Greek mythology has remained part of a liberal education all over the modern Christian world.
It was a unique circumstance in the history of religion that the Greek poets should play such a decisive part in the evolution of theological belief. That the poets were able to exercise this commanding influence over public opinion arose from the absence among the Greeks of a priestly caste or corporation like those which dominated the great Oriental civilisations.
Priests as a class abounded, but they were neither united nor powerful. Each particular sanctuary had its priest, claiming special knowledge of the god to whom it belonged, ready to explain how the favour of that particular divinity could be won or his anger appeased, able perhaps also to tell the legend of the sanctuary, the particular circumstances in which the god came to settle at that place. And even in very ancient times Greek armies on a campaign were attended by soothsayers whom the generals consulted in reference to any great calamity or any striking apparition presumed to be of supernatural origin. But these officials, although habitually treated with great respect, had no more than a personal authority; neither priests nor soothsayers belonged to an order possessing the enormous wealth and political influence of the Babylonian or Egyptian hierocracies, or of the Catholic Church in mediaeval Europe.
Assuming intellectual curiosity and intellectual progress to be good things, it was fortunate for the Greek mind that traditional beliefs had no stronger support than the ordinary conservatism of human nature, that they were not bound up with the material interests of a body accustomed to identify the truth of their opinions about the gods with the preservation of their corporate property.
Greek Mythology in a systematised form was, as I have said, a creation of the poets, and more particularly of Homer and Hesiod. With Hesiod the conception of the gods as nature-powers is quite evident; Homer presents them more as personal beings; but with him also evidence of their purely physical origin and nature is never far to seek.
Zeus constantly appears as the cloud collector, that is, the upper heaven; Athene bears the ægis or cloud-shield of her father Zeus; Apollo, his son, the far-darter, is distinguished by the unmistakable attributes of a solar deity. And there seems to be a latent consciousness, at least in what are supposed to be the more recent portions of the Iliad, not only that the Olympian gods are nature-powers but also that they have no existence except as indwelling spirits of nature.
Their detachment from material objects, the conception of them as self-conscious personal beings, is of course most complete when they are brought together in conclave for purposes of deliberation or festivity. Now it is just on those occasions that Homer takes his gods and goddesses least seriously, presenting them even in a ludicrous light, with a certain sceptical irony.
Nature is not moral; and the gods of Greek poetry are neither exhibited as themselves models of good conduct, nor as necessarily encouraging good conduct among mortals. In fact they behave as men and women might be expected to behave if they lived for ever and were clothed with irresistible power. Their life among themselves is that of a dissolute aristocracy; their treatment of the human race is determined by the frankest favouritism. An organised priesthood would not have tolerated such undignified proceedings in the objects of its worship as Homer reports.
At the same time, in default of a priesthood—better even in some ways than a priesthood—public opinion among the Greeks did something to moralise religion. The gods were supposed to govern human affairs; and rulers, whether real or imaginary, cannot but become associated to some extent with ideas of justice. They became more particularly associated with the keeping of promises, which is the very foundation of social order, by the Greek custom of invoking them as witnesses to oaths. For to break an oath which a god had witnessed was, as the Decalogue puts it, taking his name in vain—conduct which he naturally resented.
Moreover Zeus, the supreme god, 'father of gods and men,' was regarded as being in a particular way the patron of destitute persons and of strangers. At the same time it must not be supposed that morality ever became so completely identified with religion in Greece as in ancient Israel or among Christian nations. And to the fact of their distinction is due the constitution of an independent moral philosophy by the early Greek thinkers—perhaps also the constitution of an independent physical philosophy as well.
Benn, Alfred William. Early Greek Philosophy. Archibald Constable & Co, 1908.
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