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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: HARRISON, JANE ELLEN TITLE: THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE PLACE: LONDON DA TE: 1921 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MTrRQFQRM TARHFT Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 885 IH2464 Restrictions on Use: H24 D885 H243 D885 He 42 Harrison, Jane Ellen, 1850-1928. The relip:ion^ ancient Groecc, by Jane Ellen Harrison ... I^ndon, A. Constable & co., ltd., 1006. 1921 . CG p. 18 cm. {Half-title: Religions: ancient and modern) "Selected works bearing on primitive religion of Greece": p. OG. Copy in Philosophy. 1921. Copy in College Library. 1913. 1. ( J roectv— Religion. 2. Mythology, (Ire<'k. Copy in Barnard". 1913. 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I I ■MiiMii iMMaaialli Religions Ancient and Modern THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE THE RELIGIONS : ANCIENT AND MODERN S»*^- ^I^jT:^ ^^sio^^l.^n£^o?ne'tSion of iSe Uni^... SSlffiionf ol'lSnf SSr gr"^fe-or Gn«. LLJ).. P«.fe«or ot ChlBe.. ^^vv OonncU author of The Spirit of Itlam and Ethte, of Ulam. H^iriL SC. By Dr. A. a HADDOS. P.E.8.. Lecturer on Ethnology •! l«l,^SSdlS'^y Profe«or Rht. Davids. LL.D.. Ut* 8ecret«y of Th. Royri Hiai^" Ifm: L. D. BAKKi^. of the Department of Orlentol Printed Book. to»^r'R.u£S? T^.u.« A. CEAXCOC. Jotot Editor of the Ox/crd En^uH O.ltte^'S!: By Piofeeaor Anwti, Profe-or of Wetoh at Unlvendty Colleg.. Iht iSao'toS*^! Aadent Britain and Ireland. By Chablm 8<»0ikb. author of ,^'.^^?1^*A'.r^i«:'^-r in jaimudic llt«atn« in 0-nbrid.. Univeraity, author of Jemsh Life in A* MiddleAgtt. Tkm |UHiri«" ot Andent Bom*. By Ctwl Baiuet, M.A. SSiSSAaoknt ReMgion ol Japan. By W. Q. Astok C.M^. nTltolifioaof Ancient Mexico and Penu By !-??'« f^,?f,^'JJ;^ i SriTttrlstianity. By 8. B. Black, Profe-or at M'GlUUniversi^. SePwS^lcS Origin and Nature o! Religion. By Profeseor J. H. Liota. The ^Hff *"" ol Ancient Palestine. By Staslkt A. Cook. PHILOSOPHIES E«ly Omk Philoeophy. By A. W. Bekh, author of The PhOuopht of STten^ gtokSTsyProfeMor 8t. Okoeg. Stock, author of Dtduetivt Logic, editor of fJ^*4?'^i.t.TTAru>*, St. Andrew. Unlverdty. author of Th. ProMent of Condutt. Seholaatieitm. By Father Rickabt, B.J. Hobbes. By Proteseor A. E. Taylor. Locke By Professor Alsxasdur. of Owene College. ^ „ j ^ Kmto and ^U. By T. Whittakib, author of The yeoplciemitU, ApOUmiu, of Herl2t1S^!^Vw!H. Hud-o^t. author of An /l^od-rtto. It fipiccf «b. BattoaaUm* ^ !• M. BoBBBtaov. Berpon. By J. Solomoit. RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE BY JANE ELLEN HARRISON Hon, LL.D (Aberdeen), Hon. D.Litt. {Durham), Staff Lecturer and sometime Fellow of Newnbam College, Cambridge LONDON CONSTABLE 6- COMPANY Ltd 1921 - -- --nfM 3 -^2- CONTENTS PAGE InTP-ODUCTORY , • . . • . 7 I. Mythology . • • . . 13 II. Ritual • 37 III. The Mysteries . 46 Conclusion • 62 HiSTOBXOAL SuMKAar • • • 66 SSLEIM BiBLIOOBAPHT . • • • • 66 5 m II I THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE Introductory. Scope of the Book.— The present sketch does not aim at any complete survey, however brief, of the facts of Greek reHgion ; it is not a hand- book. StiU less does it aim at setting down in an elementary form the rudiments of the sub- ject ; it is not a primer. Rather it is, in the Greek sense, a histaria — an inquiry into the nature of Greek religion; an attempt to see whence it came and whither it tended ; how it resembles and how it differs from other reUgions. Especially its object is to ask and, if it may be, to answer the question : "What in Greek reH- gion is characteristically Greek 1 " Two Factors in Religion : Ritual and Mytho- logy.— Every reUgion contains two elements. There is first what a man thinks about the un- seen, his theology, or, if we prefer so to call it. 7 I / RELIGION OP ANCIENT GREECE his mythology ; second, what he (bes in relation to this nnseen-his ritual. In primitive religions though these two elements are clearly to be dis- , tmguished, they are never, or veiy rarely, separ- able. In an living religions these two elements are informed and transfused by a thu-d impulse- that of each man's personal emotion towards the unseen, his sense of dependence on it, his fear his hope, his love. ' Greek Mythology studied hitherto to the exclusion ofRltual—The study of Greek religion is still you^g and struggUng. To many ears the very words Greek reUgion » ring with a certain diZ sonance. But the study of one part of Greek rehgion, of its mythology, is old and honoured How does this come to be ? The answer is simple, and in the sequel it wiU be shown to be significant. Some knowledge of Greek mythology 18. necessary to the understanding of cla^icaJ Greek hterature. The scholar, even after the most ngorous application of grammatical rules was still occasionaUy driven to look up his mythological aUusions." Hence we had. not histones but dictionaries of Mythology. Mytho- logy was regarded not as a subject worthy in iteelf of study, not as part of the history of the human mind, but as « anciUary," as of some service to literature. Nothing so eflFectually 8 ' INTRODUCTORY starves a subject as to make it occupy this " ancillary " position. Greek Hythology formerly studied through a Roman or Alexandrian Medium. — ^Until the last decade it was usual to call Greek gods by Latin names. We need not spend time in slaying dead lions ; the practice is at an end. Jupiter, we now know, though akin to, is not the same as, Zeus ; Minerva is nowise Athena. But a subtler and more dangerous error remains. We are still inclined to invest Greek gods with Latin or Alexandrian natures, and to make them the toy-gods of a late, artificial and highly decorative literature. The Greek god of Love, Eros, we no longer call Cupid ; but we have not whoUy rid our minds of the fat mischievous urchin with his bow and arrows — a conception that would much have astonished his worshippers in his own city of Thespiae, where the most ancient image of Eros was " an unwrought stone."' Three disabilities, then, have atrophied and well-nigh paralyzed the study of Greek religion. First, instead of studying religion as a whole we have studied only one part. Mythology. Second, even Mythology was not studied rationally, as a 1 Pausaoias, ix. 27, !• 9 ( I I I ' RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE whole, but in scraps to explain "allusions." Third, such Mythology as was studied was seen distorted through the medium of Alexandrian and Roman hterature. To read a paragraph of Lem- priere is to wonder that a study reduced to such imbecility could still keep its hold on the human mind. Influence of Modern Scientific Methods. — The study of religion as a whole is a tardy modern growth. So long as religions were divided into one true and the rest false, progress was natu- rally impossible. The slow pressure of science introduced first the comparative, then the his- torical method. The facts of ancient and savage religions being once collected and laid side by* side, it became immediately evident that there were resemblances as well as differences, and some sort of classification was possible. Then came the historical impulse, the desire to see if in religion also there existed a law of development, and if the facts of religion succeeded each other in any ascertainable order. From this intrusion of the comparative and historical methods, two religions long held them- selves aloof : Christianity, as too sacred ; classical religion, as forming part of an exclusive strong- hold, which was supposed to stand in some strange antagonism to science. Greek and Latin religions, 10 INTRODUCTORY as different perhaps as any two religions could be, declared themselves one. Dying of this unnatural partnership, and of their self-imposed isolation, they at last consented to jom hands with the rest of humanity and come to life again. Greek reli- gion is now studied as a whole, not as merely mythology ; as part of the spiritual history of the human race, not as the means of interpreting a particular literature; as contrasted, not as identical, with the reUgion of the Romans. Accession of New Archaeological Material.— The study of Greek religion owes much not only to reform m method, but to a very large recent accession of material, material which has again and again acted as a corrective to mistaken views, and as a means of modifying mistaken emphasis. To take a smgle example: the discovery and study of vase-paintings alone has forced us to see the Greek gods not as the Romans and Alexandrians, but as the early Greeks saw them. We reaUse, for example, that Dionysos is not only the beautiful young wine-god, but also an ancient tree-god, worshipped as a draped post ; that the sirens are not lovely baleful mermaidens, but strange bird-demons with women's heads. Excavation, that used to concern itself with works of art only, now seeks for and preserves every scrap of monumental evidence however II II if I r , RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE humble. This has focussed our attention on ritual. We discover and study not only the Hermes of Praxiteles, but masses of terra-cottas and bronzes, showing the local type under which the god or goddess was worshipped ; we read inscriptions relating to local rites disregarded by Homer and the tragedians. SpeciaUy important in their influence on the study of Greek religion have been excavations on prehistoric sites. The poems of Homer were, as will presently be seen, the great medium through which the popular rehgion of Greece was fixed. Excavations, begun by Dr. ScMiemann on the site of Troy and culminating now in the excava- tions of Dr. Arthur Evans at Cnossos, have taught us something of the rehgion of that civihzation which preceded Homer. Homer, therefore, is no longer the starting point in the history of Greek rehgion. Specific Character of Greek Religion.— For clearness' sake it may be weU to state at the outset the conclusion to which our inquiries will tend. The rmterial of Greek rehgion, in its two departments of theology and ritual, is, in the early stages of its development, much the same as that of other nations. We find ghosts and spirits and nature-gods, ancestor worship, family rehgion, tribal region, anthropomorphism, the 12 MYTHOLOGY formation of a pantheon, individual religion, magical rites, purifications, prayers, sacrifices- all the common stock and the successive phases of religious humanity. What is characteristic of the Greeks is not the material, but their handling of it. Among the Greeks, reUgious imagmations and reUgious acts, though never perhaps with- out their infiuence on conduct, tend to become the impulse of two quite other forms of human activity— forms, bol^ of which are often, though wrongly, regarded as aUen to religion. These two forms are art, both literary and plastic, and phih- sophy. By the action of art and philosophy savage elements are eUminated, and, by this pur- gation from ignorance, ugliness and fear, rehgion became, not only powerless to harm, but potent exceedingly for good. I. Mythology. Current Conceptions of Greek Mythology.— The words " Greek Mythology " bring to the minds of most of us the gods as they are in Homer. We think of Zeus with his thimderbolt, father of gods and men ; of Hera, his wife, queen of heaven ; of Poseidon, the sea-god, with his trident ; of Athene with spear and shield and aegis ; of Apollo with his bow ; of his sister Artemis, the maiden hunt- 13 f m RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE ress ; of Ares, god of war ; of Aphrodite, goddess of Love ; of Hermes, the beautiful young mes- senger with winged sandals. We visualize Olym- pus, where this divine fanuly dweUs and feasts together, somewhat vaguely, as, partly the top of a great mountain, partly a place remote in the skies. In all this we think rightly, for so the Greeks of classical times thought themselves, though, as we shall later see, it is not the whole truth. Herodotus on Greek Theology.— Fortunately for us, Herodotus, under the stimulus of foreign travel', and speciaUy of his visit to Egypt, came to reflect on the origin of his own religion. He has left us this significant statement — ''Bid as to the origin of each particular god, whether they all existed from the beginning, what were their individml forms, the knowledge of these things is, so to speak, but of to-day and yesterday. For Hesiod and Homer are my seniors, I think, by some four hundred years and not more. And it is they who have composed for the Greeks the genera- tions of the gods, and have given to the gods their titles and distinguished their several provinces and special powers and marked their forms'' ^ The chapter in which these words occur is a » Herod, n. 63. 14 MYTHOLOGY veritable little manual of Greek religion, and will form throughout the basis of our exammation. Greek Theology largely a Literary Conception.— Herodotus strikes the key-note of our investiga- tion; the theology of the Greeks, what they believed as to the gods, then: origm, character, habits, attributes, appearance, was, in the mam, the outcome of literature, the work not of the people, nor yet of the priest, but of the poet. . Theology was a thing "composed" advisedly, " put together," by a number of epic singers ; and this process was, according to Herodotus, a thing of " to-day and yesterday," fairly complete some nine centuries before Christ. Current opinion (to endoxa), when fairly ex- amined, generaUy shows some vestige of truth. We have noted the traditional tendency to study Greek mythology apart from ritual and as ancil- lary to Hterature. Now we see how this came to be: Greek mythology is, on the showing of Herodotus, largely the outcome of Hterature. It is for this reason, in addition to its greater familiarity, that our investigation begins with mythology rather than ritual. But, if the reli- gion of Greece, and especiaUy its theology, is mainly made by Homer, what was the material out of which he made it ? No one supposes that Homer created the gods ; he only " composed their i^ / I RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE generations" and marked their forms. What, then, were the gods before Homer- ? The Gods before Homer.— Herodotus again in- forms us. He knows of a people mhabiting Greece before Homer, and their theology, as Herodotus describes it, is in marked contrast to that of Homer. '' Formerly ^ he writes, '' the Pelasgians, on all occasions of sacrifice, called upon theoi (gods), as I know from what I heard at Dodona ; hut they gave m> title nor yet any name to any of them,'' There was a time in Greece, if we may trust Herodotus, when a people dwelt there called Pelasgians, and when this people worshipped gods who were not individuahzed, not caUed by proper names such as Zeus and Athene, nor even by vaguer titles such as " the Grey-eyed One" or "the Loud Thunderer," when, in a word, the gods were Things, not Per- sons. Can we beheve Herodotus? Broadly speaking, we can, because, in the main, he is con- firmed by philology, comparative religion and prehistoric archaeology ; but the precise sense in which we are to accept his statement requires explanation. The Undifferentiated Gods (iAeo^.-Herodotus denves the word theos from the root . 17 B i '1' « f 1 '' ' ■ !ll •' '' fl I BELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE personal they scarcely become until an artist makes of them some image, however rude, or a poet takes them as material for a story. With animism is closely connected fetich-worship. Man- imagines that the spirit-things he vaguely con- ceives of dweU in chance natural objects, and chiefly in stones or trees. >V Pelasgian Worship of Fetich-stones and Pillars. —At Pharae, in the second century a.d., Pau- sanias ^ saw an image of Hermes, the market-god. It was of square shape, surmounted by a head with a beard. Qose .to the Hermes were about thirty square stones, and these the dwellers at Pharae revered, " giving to each stone the title of a god. "2 In even earher days, Pausanias adds : " By all the Greeks the honours due to the images of the gods were paid to unwrought stones." At Thespiae, it has been akeady noted, the image of Eros was an unwrought stone ; at Orchomenos,^ where was a very ancient sanctuary of the Chari- tes or Graces, their images were stones that had fallen from heaven. The square, hmbless " Hermes " was a step in advance of the unwrought stone. Pausanias ^ tells us that the Athenians, zealous in all matters of rehgion, were the first to " use the square- • * vii. 22. 4. » ix. 38. 1. I8 iv. 33. 4. MYTHOLOGY shaped images of Hermes " ; they taught the rest of Greece. The Arcadians,^ another primitive^ Pelasgian people, were "specially partial" to the square form of Hermes. Hermes then, the beautiful young messenger of Homer, with golden rod and winged sandals, was, in Arcadia and Athens, a " Herm," a boundary stone or pillar, a thing to mark the sanctity of a spot, whether it were street or market-place or tomb ; so was Apollo of-the-Ways, and Poseidon, and Athene, and the Sun, and Herakles. Who was it wrought the transformation, made the symbol a person ? " Homer, " says Herodotus ; " Homer," says Pausanias^ " As to Hermes and Herakles— the poems of Homer have given currency to the report that the first is a servant of Zeus, and leads down the spirits of the departed to Hades, and that Herakles performed many hard tasks." The reference is obviously to a wider Homer than merely the Iliad or Odyssey. Minoan and Mycenaean Pillar-cult.— The cult of the nameless imdifferentiated theoi was Pelasgian ; in Greece, as in other places, it preceded the wor- ship of full-blown human gods. From the earliest days, in Pelasgian Attica and Arcadia, and, indeed, all over Greece, there had been a worship of tree- 1 viii. 48. 6. « vlii. 32. 4. 19 V^izr V ! ( J ' ■ 1 , '. t i f > f ■ ' ■ ! ■ \ , I • V RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE trunks,* of iinwrouglit stones and limbless square pillars. To this testimony of literature we finally add the witness of prehistoric archaeology. The Mycenaeans and the subjects of the Cretan Minos worshipped trees and pillars at least a thousand years before the poems of Homer were written. The trees have perished, the pillars survive to-day. The Lion-Gate of Mycenae. — Most familiar of all the monuments of prehistoric Greece is the famous lion-Gate of Mycenae ; yet it is usually misunderstood. In the pediment of the gate is a Doric column, standing on an altar-like basis : at either side is a Hon. We call the monument the Lion-Gate, but it might be called a pillar- sanctuary. The heraldic lions guard the pillar as much as, or more than, the gate. The pillar isatheos. It is of pecuKar shape ; it tapers doum- wards like the human body. And note a curious fact. The square " Hermes " of Hellenistic days, when the artist became conscious and archaeo- logical, also tapers downwards ; it is the lineal descendant of the pillar. On a seal-impression found by Dr. Arthur Evans in Crete, the pillar has come to life as a goddess ; she stands on a rude heap of stones, what the Greeks called a hermaion,^ and, Uke the pillar, she is guarded by * Xen. Mem. I. 1-14. * Etym. Mag., sub. voo. 20 . MYTHOLOGY the heraldic lions. She is the Lady of the Lions, worshipped later as Rhea in Crete, as Cybele in Asia Minor. The imdifferentiated theos has de- veloped for itself sex and even personahty. Ritual of the Pelasgian Theoi. — The ritual of the unwrought stones in Greece was much the same as that paid to sacred stones all the world over. At Delphi ^ was a sacred stone on which the Delphians poured oil every day, and at each festival they put unspun wool on it. Offerings were placed roimd the pillars and " Herms," or hung upon them. In this early stage there is no clear distinction between god and altar. More- over, the unwrought stone often marked a grave, so that hero-worship and pillar- or Hermes-wor- ship are scarcely to be distinguished. Over the grave of Melanippus,^ near Thebes, were three unwrought stones. Over the grave of the sibyl Herophile ^ stood a square " Hermes." Besides the more regular ritual of the imwrought stones, the prayer and anointing and sacrifice, they were believed to have all manner of magical powers ; by them diseases were healed, the pollution of blood was purged away and the madness that came from pollution. In the ritual of the unwrought stones, the >-■ i Fauscuiias, x. 24. 6. > ix. 18. 1. 21 8 X. 12. 6. / ^' \ I i r \ IH t i '1 mi I 1 m RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE pillars and " Hermae," as in their shape, there is nothing specificaUy Greek, nothmg again that necessarily points to foreign influence. Jacob, when he had dreamed of the ladder between earth and heaven and angels ascending and de- scending, that is, when he was sure he was in a sacred spot, set up a stone, anointed it with oil, and caUed the place Beth-El, the House of God.^ It is even probable that the Greeks got their word haetyl from the Semitic Bethel ; but the cusUm of stone-worship is world-wide— character- istic, it would seem, of human nature in an early stage of development, rather than of one race or group of races, "Barbarian" Influence helps to differentiate the Theoi.— By the instance of the " Lady of the Lions," we have seen that Pelasgian religion, within its own limits, began to give form and personality to its gods. But we are veiy far from the diversity, complexity, and highly de- veloped humanity of Homer's Pantheon. Did Homer complete the work of differentiation him- self ? Not even Herodotus thinks this. Hero- dotus took trouble to find out; he went to Dodona, the most ancient oracular sanctuary of Greece, and there the priestesses told him that, * Genes^, xxviii. 18, 19. 22 ( MYTHOLOGY fin course of time, the Pelasgians, with their 'nameless undifferentiated ihem, " Imrtd from Egypt the names of the other gods, and, much later, that of Dionysosr They asked the oracle at Dodona whether they might adopt the names that came from the barbarians, and the oracle said : " Adopt them, and from that time they used the names of the gods when they made sacrificed Herodotus believes that his primitive people, his Pelasgians, got the names for their undiffer- entiated theoi from abroad, from non-Greek- speaking peoples, barbarians, and chiefly from /Egypt. A little before the passage quoted he has said, more definitely, that the names of aU the Greek gods, except Poseidon and the Dios- curi, Hera, Hestia, Themis, the Charites and the Nereids have always existed m Egypt. Posei- don, he says, came from Libya, the rest were Pelasgian ; hero-worship, he adds, did not exist among the Egyptians. Hermes also, he later adds, was Pelasgian. The very fact that he makes careful distinctions inclines us, to think that in his statement is some kernel of truth. About the primitive "Pelasgian" origm of Hermes in his " Herm " form there can be no doubt ; the Charites, it has already been noted, were originally stones that had f aUen from heaven. The undue stress Herodotus lays on Egypt is 23 : T 11 ? » s ( . if ( 1 1 1 If 1 t III 1 I 'I $ EELIGION OP ANCIENT GREECE were mainly Egyptian priests, and that the oracle of Dodona, at which he also inquired, was cLd analogous to, and doubtless in close crmula- in Lir;'; ''' ""'^ °' '^'^^^- '^^ *^e O'a^, .- '*'?7 ,^!f "•* «' Oriental Influence.-We are apt foolishly to resent the notion that Greecl browed from the East. Such resentlrn fa p^ of our exclusive classical tradition. Only slowly have we come to see that the most oriS and most artistic of peoples, a. of indiSS borrow most. The Gx^ks themselves gl^Zt heir borrowings and frankly acknowledg'edTw the legends that told of contact with the e1' were cherished, not ignored, and the truth em boched in these legends is constantly confirm^, lo the ancestor of the Argives, wanders to Egypt ahe bears a son, the swarthy Epaphos, whose^ry name « a Graecized form of the buU-god of Egv^ Apis. Her descendant Danaos retls wrtf£ fifty daughters to Pela^gian Argos. and thrpeopt DanaoT'c^"" """^ ^''''''' ^^ ^--f«St ^anaoi. Cadmus comes from Phoenicia seeking Enr^a; he founds the Cadmeia, the citadeT^f Thebes, dose to Thebes has been discovered Great Gods," the Kabeiroi, Father, and Son 24 MYTHOLOGY In the Iliad » Egypt is only mentioned once, but in that one instance Achilles speaks of the wealth and splendour of " Egyptian Thebes," as though it were as familiar as that of Orchomenos and Pytho. In the Odyssey » it is told as a natural adventure that Menelaos, in his home-coming, wandered over Cyprus and Phoenicia and Egypt and reached the Sidonians and Erembi and Libya. The mixing bowl of silver that Achilles ' set for a prize was "cunningly wrought by artificers of Sidon," and " men of the Phoenicians brought it over the misty sea and landed it in harbour." With all this travel and traffic the wonder is not that there was foreign influence, but that it was not too great to be assimilated, and that it did ux not paralyze rather than stimulate. Archaeological Evidence of Foreign InBuence. — Homer's world is a world touched at every point by the East and South, by Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Crete, Egypt, Libya. Recent excavations on prehistoric sites, Mycenae, Tiryns, Troy, Crete, Egypt, have shown that this contact existed long before Homer. We now know that the whole eastern and probably the western basin of the Mediterranean was, from Neolithic days, occupied ^ by a people whose civilization was, broadly speaking, homogeneous, and that this civilization » II. ix. 381. » 04. iv. 83. * II. xxiii. 741. 35 =r ; a II RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE continued substantially unbroken from Neolithic down to historic days. To this homogeneous civilization belonged the " Pelasgians " of Hero- dotus, and, though he did not know it, the Libyans, from whom came the god Poseidon. Sicily is the remains of a land bridge that in by- gone ages united Europe and Africa ; Crete was always a stepping-stone between North and South. At certain points in this primitive culture, notably at Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, and in Crete, there emerged that peculiar, well-marked civilization which we call " Mycenaean," a civilization be- longing to the Bronze Age, culminating in the second millennium B.C., already decaying before the time of Homer. What concerns us for the moment is this : that this early pre-Homeric civilization, as we see it at Mycenae and at Cnossos, is deep-dyed with Oriental and especially Egyptian influence. On the sword-blades, for example, found in a rock tomb at Mycenae, we find ichneumons himting ducks ; on a wall paint- ing of the fifteenth century B.C., at Egyptian Thebes, we find depicted " Mycenaean " vases. If the " Pelasgians " of Herodotus did not borrow from the " barbarians," it was assuredly from no lack of opportunity. Traditions accounted merely mythological are seen, in the Hght of excavations, to be historically true. 26 MYTHOLOGY Pelasgian Religion taken over by the Hellenes. —Herodotus has told us of the theoi of the Pelas- gians, their primitive undifferentiated character, and of the borrowings from barbarians. Before we come to Homer there is a third step in the development to be noted, and one more signifi- cant than Herodotus himself knew. "Later," he says, " the Hellenes received them (i.e. the gods and their names) from the Pelasgians:' Another question now confronts us : Who, as contrasted with the Pelasgians, were the HeUenes ? What was their share in the making of Greek theology ? The Hellenes a Northern People.— Elsewhere in his history Herodotus ^ tells us that the Pelasgians " had never emigrated," but the Hellenes " had often changed their seat." They came from the North. " Hellen and his sons," says Thucydides* , " grew strong in Phthiotis," i.e. in Thessaly. These Hellenes were the warriors who led the expedition against Troy, the first collective enterprise, accord- mg to Thucydides, that gave unity to Greece ; thek leader was AchiUes. They were no branch of the indigenous Pelasgians, but immigrants from the North. Long ago Mr. Gladstone ^ pomted to Dodona as then: early home in Greece, and noted also the clear analogies between the " Germans " t Herod, i. 52. « Thucyd. i. 3. » Studies in Homer, i. p. 563. 27 il I t ; • '"j i' I'li RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE of Tacitus and the Hellenes, their great stature, their ruddy hair, their blue eyes. What Mr. Gladstone dimly forecast, Professor Ridgeway in his Early Age of Greece has made a vivid reality. In material culture he has shown that the Achaeans of Homer differ in essentials from the Mycenaean Pelasgians and agree with the Celts of the North. The Homeric shield is round, the Mycenaean bipartite, shaped like the figure 8 ; the Achaeans are " well-greaved " or " bronze-greaved " ; no greaves are found in Mycenaean strata ; the Achaeans wear the breast- plate ; this does not occur in Mycenaean finds ; in Homer the safety-pin or fibula is a regular part of the dress of men and women ; it only occurs in the latest Mycenaean finds coincidently with iron. Most important of all, in Homer the dead are \/ uniformly cremated, the Mycenaeans bury their dead intact. In all these details Homer's Achae- ans closely resemble the large - statured, fair- haired, blue-eyed populations of the North, whose blood is in our own veins. They are but an early offshoot of those tribes of Northern warriors who, later as Dorians or Gauls, again and again in- vaded the South and blended with the small, dark, indigenous peoples ; blended with them and, it may be, saved them from being submerged in the great ocean of the East. 28 MYTHOLOGY Complexity of Homer.— To resume: before Homer, before the shaping of theology by Uter- ature, three factors went to the making of Greek religion. First and earliest, the primitive Pelasgian element; next, and at its eaxly stages, perhaps, scarcely distinguishable, foreign elements from Libya, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor ; last, after millenniums of this fusion, succes- sive impulses from the North. Such is the story as told by Herodotus, such are the facts as evidenced by archaeology. The characteristic thing about Greek rehgion is, not only or chiefly this diversity, but the all-important fact that, before the time when Greek history can be said to begin, these factors were akeady taken up by the imagination of a poet, transfused and trans- figured till they became a kingdom rather of fancy than of faith. Homer's Pantheon.— Homer, Herodotus says, " gave to the gods their epithets and distinguished their several provinces and special powers and marked their formsJ' And why? Not consci- ously perhaps, but necessarily, because he gathered them together into one family, dwelling in one home, the Northern Olympus. To the Hellenes, Thucydides has told us, the Greeks owed their first national unity, and to this imity they owe the Pantheon, which caused the sharp 2Q t ! ■ 1 RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE differentiation of the gods. A local god or goddess is necessarily a god-of-all-work ; he will be sub- stantially the same as the local god or goddess of the next tribe or village. Bring them together and each will inevitably tend to speciaHze. Differentiated gods presuppose some sort of Pantheon; a Pantheon argues some kind of poHtical federation. A Pantheon favours, if it does not wholly cause, anthropomorphism, the giving of human shape to the gods. Forced by the condition of their wor- shippers into human and even poUtical relations, they necessarily became himian. Gods who, Uke their worshippers, attend a Boul6 or an Agora must come in human shape. How artificial it all is, we may see in the 20th Iliad S where Themis summons all the gods to council on Olympus. She has to " range all about " to find them. Save Ocean, they all come ; " every River, every Nymph of all that haunt fair thickets and foimts of river and grassy water-meads," and they " sit them down in the polished colonnades." The old iheoi, the local potencies, have to do on human shapes ; we seem to catch them at the very moment of hurried, uneasy metamorphosis. Even in the permanently human Olympians we note 1 V. 3 ff. 30 ■v** MYTHOLOGY that in two of obviously foreign origin. Ares and Aphrodite S they tend to fly back from Olympus to theur own local homes, to Thrace or Cyprus. Northern Atmosphere of Olympus.— The gods dwell on Olympus, a mountain of Northern Thes- saly ; then- head, Zeus himself, has his principal seat of worship at Dodona in Northern Epirus. Once awake to this Northern element in Homer, and we are no longer surprised to find in his Olympus a certam forecast, as it were, of the atmosphere of the Eddas. The gods of Homer, it has often been observed, are magnified men ; but why are they so very big and so very boisterous? Simply because they are in part Northerners. Vastness, formlessness, fantastic excess are not " Greek " in the classical sense ; they are Teutonic and Norse. When Poseidon, the Earth-Shaker, goes down to the battle ^ he shouts mightily " loud as nine thousand or ten thousand men cry in battle," and his shout " puts great strength into the hearts of the Achaeans." We remember how Tacitus ^ noted with amaze- ment the " harsh note and confused roar " of the battle cry of the Germans with which they used to rouse their courage ; it was " not so much an articulate sound as a general cry of valour.'* I 1 Od uui. 265 • It xi. 162. • Tac Qerm. iii. 3^ ^ II (C (C RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE Poseidon ^ takes but three strides to pass from Samothrace to Aegae, surely the gait of Northern giant rather than Greek god. Very Northern, too, are the ahnost Berserker rages of Zeus him- self and the roughness of his divine vengeance. To wave his ambrosial locks and shake Olympus with the nodding of his brows may be both Greek and god-like, but how about such habits as pushing the other gods from their seats," tossing them about the hall," ^ hurling his son by the foot over the battlements of Olympus,^ beating his wife and hanging her up with anvils to her feet,* suggesting that she "would Hke to eat Priam raw " ? ^ Homer has such magic in his words that we are apt to forget that these are not the ways of Greek gods, however primitive, but the rude pranks of irresponsible giants. The old theoi have been indeed considerably " tossed about," and are none the better for the process. Lack of Religious Feeling in Homer. — Critics have often noted that, in their human aspect. Homer does not take his gods very seriously. Zeus, on his atmospheric side, is as majestic as his own thunder ; as husband and father he is lower than the mortals over whom he rules. " There is no » 11 jm^. 11. 2 II xiv. 276. 3 u. i. 580. ] Jl KV. 18-21. « IL iv 34-36 32 MYTHOLOGY god so goody'' IVIr. Gladstone observes, "as the swineherd Eumaeus." The nearer the gods are to the nature-gods which they in part were, the more reverend they remain. Poseidon, who is half sea, half river, " moves in a kind of rolling splendour." Hephaestos as the divine smith is lame, and therefore, to the blunt taste of the Olympian observers, ridiculous ;- as the fire-god who fights with the river-god Xanthus he is a blazing glory. This lack of seriousness is in part accounted for, if we suppose that the gods are a blend of indigenous and immigrant elements. . The bard is singing of divinities who are in part ^ at least " other men's gods." Racial Fusion unconsciously reflected in Homer. — Homer records no conflict with the North, but, quite unconsciously, he reflects it. To take one simple instance. Zeus and Hera, divine husband and wife, are in constant un- seemly conflict. Why this conflict ? From the . human point of view the answer is easy and obvious. Hera is jealous, Zeus in constant ex- asperation. Man makes the gods in his own image. The real reason is quite other ; the relations of Zeus and Hera reflect a racial con- flict. Zeus, father of gods and men, Zeus, the sky-god, with all the heavy fatherhood of Wuotan, is a Northerner, though very early he blended 33 c I- ! Ill I I -1 i RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE with the local mountam-, oak^-, and thunder-gods of the Pelasgian population. Hera is indigenous, Pelasgian ; originally she had no connection with Zeus. She reigns alone at Argos in her Heraeum, alone at Samos ; her temple at Olympia is dis- tinct from and far earlier than that of Zeus. At Dodona, the great oracle-sanctuary of Zeus, there is no Hera, only Dione, his shadowy but real and etymological wife. The conquering Achaeans come down into Greece and marry the daughters of the land. Zeus passing from Dodona to Thessaly with his warrior tribe, drops Dione at Dodona, and he, too, marries a daughter of the land. In Olympus, where she seems merely a jealous and quarrelsome wife, Hera is really a turbulent native princess, coerced but never subdued by an alien conqueror Sometimes the older order of things is reflected in more gracious fashion. It is a touch of genuine courtesy in Zeus that, when he summons rivers and nymphs to Olympus, he forbears to compel the presence of old Okeanos "from whom all rivers flow and every sea and all springs and wells." ^ He might have compelled him, for even he, Okeanos, " hath fear of the Ughtning of great Zeus and his dread thunder." ^ ^ Mr. A. B. Cook, Zeiis, Jupiter and the Oak. CI. Rev. 1903, 1904. a //. xx. 7. ^ xxi. 195. 34 MYTHOLOGY Racial Distinctions survive in Ritual.— Ritual is always conservative. In the ancient ritual of the oath and, noticeably, on the side of the Trojans, we see the contrast between old and new. When Menelaos is about to fight with Paris he says to the Trojans : " Bring ye two lambs, one white ram and one black ewe, for Earth and Sun," and we wiU bring one for Zeus.^ The Trojans, in whom the Pelasgian element predommates, stiU swear by the old nature-gods, and use the old "sympathetic" ritual of the black female victim for black Mother Earth, the white ram for the shining Sun. Earth and Sun, even if we write them with capital letters, can never be more than half humanized ; but, it will be remembered, it was Earth and Sun that, according to Plato (p. 17), the early Greeks had for their gods. Influence of Plastic Art on Greek Theology.— Greek theology, a complex blend of primitive Pelasgian, of Oriental, of Northern elements, was shaped by literature. But not by literature alone; plastic art soon lent its aid. Homer's gods are seen so clearly, in such lovely human shapes, and in an atmosphere so bright and vivid, they seem abeady Hke Uving statues. Id 1 II. m. 104. V 3» i f RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE primitive sanctuaries, such as the Erechtheion, ancient Herms, pillars, unwrought stones re- mained, and down to late days were often the object of the actual ritual ; but to them were added votive images in terra-cotta, in marble, in gold and ivory, of the gods as Homer had shaped them : of Zeus, with his thunder-bolt ; Athene, with spear and shield and a^gis ; of Apollo, with bow and arrows. This is no mere conjecture. Tra- dition expressly states that ^ Pheidias, when asked after what pattern he mtended to exhibit his Olympian Zeus, answered, " By the pattern exhibited by Homer in these lines : * The son of Kronos spake and nodded with his blue-black brows, and his deathless hair waved from the king's immortal head, and he made great Olympus to shake.' " Vase-paintings frequently show us the image and the actual worship of the old Pelasgian theos, the herm or pillar. Sometimes, fortunately, they let us see the actual process of transition from Pelasgian herm to Olympian human god. Two vases in the British Museum show the scene of the oath-taking of Pelops and Oinomaos before then- chariot-race. On one vase,^ between the two rivals, is an altar, and above it, not the image » Strabo, viii. § 353. ' Brit. Mus. Cat, F. 331 36 RITUAL of Zeus, but a four-square pillar inscribed DIOS— " of Zeus." Here We have a herm made by its inscription to belong to Zeus. On the other vase ^ we have the same altar and the same pillar-herm ; but there is no inscription, and on the pillar stands the figure of the wholly human Zeus. We see, as it were, the stratification of cults laid bare before our eyes. II. Ritual. Greek Ritual less Characteristic than Greek Theo- logy. — What a people does in relation to its gods is not shaped by either poet or artist. Hence the ritual of the Greeks is far less characteristically Greek than their theology. From their ritual we learn rather how much they had in common with other peoples, though even in their ritual a certain gentleness and reasonableness of temper is observ- able. In the plam facts of ritual we learn, as akeady noted, more of that conflict of racial elements within the Greek people, a conflict com- pounded and smoothed over by the genius of Homer. Ritual of the Olympians.— Ritual in Homer is simple and uniform. It consists of prayer, accom- * Brit Mus. Cat F. 278. 37 f1 I .} l' I • 11' II RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE panied by the sprinkling of grain, followed by an animal bumt-offering. Part of the flesh is tasted by the worshipper and then made over by burning to the god ; the rest is eaten as a banquet, with abundance of wine. The object is to " persuade the gods," and to a Northern god there is nothing more persuasive than an abundant meal of roast flesh and wine. The method of offering is by fire, because the gods are heavenly gods, and the sacrifice must be subHmated to reach them. In all this there is nothing specifically Greek. Jah- veh, dweUing partly on Mount Sinai, his Olympus, and partly in highest heaven, has his burnt sacri- fice ; his worshippers have their sacrificial fea^t. avilized though the Greeks were, they never, save a few sectarians arid philosophers, seemed to have reahzed the physical disgust of animal sacrifice ; still less did they rise to the spiritual heights of "Sacrifice and bumt-offering thou wouldst not, but mine ears hast thou opened." The gods were biddable, that was much; they were, on the whole, friendly and fairly rational; the worshipper was cheerful and hopeful. Ritual of the Chthonlc or Under-world Powers. Herodotus knows of another ritual, bearing another name, addressed to quite other powers-— the worship paid to dead men, heroes. This 38 RITUAL ritual he did' not think was borrowed from the Ecryptians ; he expressly says, " They have nothing of the kind.'' In the course of his travels he found that Herakles was worshipped with different rites in different places ; finaUy he came to the conclusion^ that "those of the Greeks do most wisely who have set up a double worship of Herakles and who offer bumt-offermgB to the one as an immortal and with the title Olympian, and to the other devote offerings as to a hero." The word enagizein translated " de- vote " means to make over, to consecrate ; it has no exact English equivalent. Herodotus recognizes that the ritual of an Olympian was quite distinct from that of a hero. Pausanias ^ fortunately teUs us what that ntual was. When Phaestos came to the town of Sicyon he found the Sicyonians " devoting offerings to Herakles a« to a hero." Phaestos " would do nothing of this kind, but would offer bumt- offering to him as a god. And, even now, the Sicyonians; when they slay a lamb, eat a portion of the flesh as though it were a sacrificial victim, but the other portion they devote as to a hero." The distinction is clear. The hero takes aU ; you may not eat of dead men's food ; the Olym^ t Herod, ii. 43. a P. ii. 10. 1. 39 ■■■ RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE plan shares the feast offered to him. Moreover, (an important point), the rites of the hero preceded those of the Olympian. Phaestos found the people practising a hero-cult, left them with Olympian rites. We are justified in saying that y4he hero rites belonged to the earlier Pelasgian stratum, the Olympian rites were developed or imported later. Conflict of the Two Rituals.— Sicyon, at the very gateway of the Peloponnese, changed its ritual. It has also changed its name. In Hesiod's ^ time it was called Mekone. A change of name implies a change of, or at Jeast an addi- tion to, population. At Mekone Pausanias ^ tells us there was a primitive home-grown population ; at Mekone, Hesiod says, " Gods and mortal men strove together." The commentator on Hesiod tells us what the strife was about. It was de- cided at Mekone "which gods should obtain mortal men as their portion." At Mekone Pro- metheus played his trick on Zeus, persuading him to take for his portion in the sacrifice the thigh bones covered with fat, that is, the portion regu- larly allotted to the Olympians. Prometheus was of the old order of the Titans. The struggle between Titans and Olympians is over and past 1 Hes. Theog 535 and Schol ad loc. 40 > P. ii. 5. 5. V^ RITUAL in Homer ; Hesiod recounts it in detaU. Pro- metheus was the friend of man against the tyranny of the " newer gods," the Olympians. He suffered because he gave to mortals for theu- own use the fire sacred to the sacrifices of the Olympian. Mek5ne, later Sicyon, like many another place, saw the new worship of the Olympians imposed on the old cult of heroes. Hero-worship and Inhumation.— The cult of the hero at his tomb supposes that the dead man is in some sense aUve and locaUy present, that his spirit is either in the tomb, or in the Herm-tomb- stone, or hovering near, ready to be angered or appeased. When the dead are buried some such beUef is likely to arise, and, indeed, in all parts of the world has arisen. The ghost of a man, strong in life, will be potent after death, and becomes a kind of god ; he is part of the invisible, and, because he is so near, his descendants set up relations with him, bring him ofierings and sacri- fices. But the Greeks of Homer did not bury their dead-they burnt them. The body once burnt, the spirit did not abide in the tomb, but fled to a place far off, beyond a river, a place remote, inaccessible. The ghost of Patroklos' is explicit : " Never any more shall I come back « 71. jcxiii. 764 41 W^ ' i RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE from Hades, when ye have given me my meed of fire." A ghost thus remote tind phantom-like, purged by fire of aU human needs and sympathies, it was worth no one's while to worship. The practice of cremation came, with many another clean, cold custom, from the North, from the Celts of central Europe, who dwelt in- great forests where fuel abounded. The funerals of the Germans, as described by Tacitus,* the burning of the hero, sometimes together with his horse, on a great pyre, are the counterpart of the funeral of Patroklos. Cremation cleansed the survivors from the physical impurity of the dead body ; it also freed them from that greatest fear of primitive man, the haunting terror of the ghost. The Blood-curse and the Blood-price.— All ghosts are apt to be more feared than loved ; an enemy's ghost is sure to be hostile, but most implacable of all is the ghost of a murdered man. According to the primitive view, blood, once shed on the earth, poisoned the earth, and especially poisoned the murderer fed on the fruits of the earth.* The murderer, like Cain,^ was " cursed from the earth." For disease so bred there was no cure, unless like Alcmaeon, * the murderer 1 Tac. Germ. 27. De Verrall ad loo. * Paus. viii. 24, 819, « ^8ch. Ckoeph, 64-68. See • Genesis, iv. 11, 12. 42 RITUAL could find " new land," like the " new earth," thrown up at a great river's mouth, unpolluted, and so able to nourish the murderer. The notion of the polluted earth was supplanted or, rather, perhaps, supplemented by the idea that the dead man's ghost became an embodied curse, an Erinys to haunt the murderer and to suck his life-blood. This blood curse knew no end; murder bred murder. Of all this implacable, endless blood-feud Homer knows nothing. Instead, we have what seems a cold-blooded substitute, the blood-price. But the advance is a real one ; the wrong done is acknowledged, atonement made, and an end is put to the endless, pitiless bloodshedding. Ajax,^ in the Iliad, blames Achilles for his relentless spirit, and reminds him that a man accepts com- pensation from the slayer of his brother or for his dead son, " and so the manslayer for a great price doth abide in his own land and the kins- man's heart is appeased." Here, too, the advance seems to have come irom the North. Tacitus * tells us that among the Germans " feuds are not implacable ; even manslaughter is atoned for by the payment of a certain number of cattle and sheep, and the satisfaction is accepted by the t II ix. 632. * Tac. Germ, ud r\ 43 II I .V RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE whole family." This is no doctrine of tho poisoned earth or the blood-haunting Erinys. Ritual of Magical Purification unknown to Homer. — As Homer knows of no blood-curse, no haunting ghost, so he knows nothing of purifica- tion for blood-guilt or of placation to the angry dead. It is, indeed, notable that to magical puri- fication — the purification of spiritual evil by physi- cal means — ^he never refers. When Odysseus^ has slain the suitors and hanged the bad maidens, he cleanses his home ; but the cleansing is simple, natural, we might say scientific ; the means em- ployed are such as we might use to-day in dis- infecting a polluted house ; he uses water and brimstone. We hear nothing of what the ancients called " ceremonies of riddance," i.e. magical puri- fications. Yet such ceremonies were common enough in historical Greece, and even formed part of the regular ritual of the state. When Plutarch ^ was archon in his own town Chaeronea, he had, in his ofl&cial capacity, to preside over an odd ceremony, which, he tells us, was "largely attended." A household slave was taken to the common hearth of the city, beaten with stalks of agntis castus, a plant of purifying properties, and driven out of 1 Od. xxii. 481 * Plut. QuaesL Synvp. vi. 8, 44 RITUAL doors with the words : *' Out with hunger ; in with wealth and health." The rite was caUed the " driving out of " hunger. Such a ceremony . has nothmg to do with Olympian worship or even with the cult of the vaguest theoi. It is franklyi/ magical. Moreover, it is nowise characteristically ^ Greek. All primitive peoples are apt to think of evil, physical and moral, as a substance that can be transferred. The children of Israel ' put their sins on the head of a scapegoat and drove him forth into the desert. The modem inhabitants of Pithuria, Dr. Frazer ' tells us, at an outbreak of influenza make a small carriage, harness a pak of goats to it, drive it into a wood, and " In- fluenza " comes back no more. Contrast of Olympian and Pelasgian Ritual.— Broadly, then, it is seen that in ritual, as in theology, there are two strata : we have an upper stratum of rites belonging to the Olympians, either actuaUy imported or deeply influenced by Northern conquerors ; and, second, a lower stra- tum of rites belonging to the indigenous South- erners. These last include the elements common to the East— worship of piUar and herm, of hero and ghost, ceremonies also that are purely magi- cal, and that presuppose neither ghost nor god. > 1 Levit. xvi. 21. \/ « Golden Bough, 2nd edit. iii. p. 93 ff. 45 ' h' RELIGION OF ANCIENT GKEECE The orator Isocrates * knows of no racial conflict, yet he very clearly sets out the difference : " Those of the gods who are the source to us of good things have the title of Olympians ; those whose depart- ment is that of calamities and punishments have Imrsher titles ; to the first class both private persons and states erect altars and temples ; the second is not worshipped either with prayers or burnt sacri- fices, but in their case we perform ceremonies of riddance,^* III. The Mysteries. m The Mysteries of Demeter and Dionysos. — So far, and certainly in the eyes of Isocrates, Olym- pian ritual may seem, as compared with chthonic, to be more advanced, more hmnane ; but, though rites of " riddance " have a harsh and barbarous sound, we cannot forget that this " riddance " — half physical though it is — ^has in it the germs of a higher thing, the notion of spiritual purification. This comes out very clearly in a class of rites of which Homer knew, or at least tells, nothing ; rites addressed to no Olympian — I mean the Mysteries. These Mysteries are in Greece con- nected chiefly with the names of a goddess and * Isoc. Orat. v 117. 46 THE MYSTERIES a god who have no place in Homer's Olympus, Demeter and Dionysos. A " mystery," even in its most primitive form, has always two parts. First, a preliminary puri- fication ; second, a rite in which certain sacred foods are tasted and sacred objects handled, or sights seen or words heard, which cannot be safely tasted, handled, seen or heard without this pre- liminary purification. The man in process of initiation was called, when he had been purified, a mystes, and when he had seen, tasted, handled, an epoptes, a beholder. The Greeks had no creeds, no dogmas, no hard- and-fast formulation of belief. But in the case 6i the Mysteries they had what we should call a Confiteor, or avowal of rites performed. Fortun- ately, the " avowals," or, as the Greeks called them, the " tokens " of the Eleusinian Mysteries, are preserved. We know also what the prelimi- nary purification was. Each candidate took down to the sea a young pig ^ and bathed with it. Sacrificer and sacrifice were together purified by sea-water. The ceremony was called elasis — driving ; and when we remember the " driving out " at Chaeronea, the meaning is clear. It was a rite of " riddance." The "tokens" or avowal of rites are for 1 Plut. Vit. Phoc. xjcviii. 47 RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE Eleusis as follows : " / jasted ; I dranh the Kyheon ; I took from the basket . . . / put back in the basket and from the basket into the chest, ^* ^ The fast was, of course, part of the purification ; after this came two things, the drinking of the Kykeon and the handling of certain unknown sacred objects. The Eleusinian Mysteries were " sacred to " Demeter, the Earth Mother, and Kore, her daughter. We, with our modern minds, should expect an Eleusinian creed to begin : "I believe m Demeter, the mother, and in her daughter, Kore ; I beUeve that Kore for the" third part of the year descended into Hades and rose again in the springtime." The Greek demanded an avowal of ritual acts done — on that chapter he was rigid ; thought, imagination, he instinctively left free. / Drank of the Kykeon, — This is the equivalent of " I tasted the first-fruits." The new grain was made into a sort of posset of pelanos. Till the time came for the solemn tasting, this new grain was under a tahoo — ^forbidden food. Mysteries among the savages of central Australia are con- nected with the removal of certain taboos on food. The gist of the second act is less clear. We do not know for certain what the sacred objects ^ Clement of Alexandria. Protr ii 18. 48 i THE MYSTERIES handled in the mysteries of Eleusis were. From other mysteries we can conjecture. In the Thesmophoria they were objects symboHc of fertility— fir-cones and the like ; in the Mysteries of Zagreus, objects that seem to us trivial — ^aball, a mirror, a " bull-roarer " ; but objects fraught, no doubt, to the initiated, with intense significance. Such objects are still in use at savage ceremonies of initiation. But the Mysteries were not merely magical rites to promote the fertihty of crops and the general material prosperity of man in this world ; they also held out a hope — and herein undoubtedly lay the secret of their extraordinary influence — of help and guidance, nay, even of certain and substantial bliss in the dim shadow-land that lay beyond the grave. The Mysteries and a Future Life.— We are now- adays apt to think that rehgion is necessarily con- nected with hopes and fears as to a life after death. Yet, in Homer's scheme of things, though we have theology and ritual, we have practically no escha- tology. The gods, indeed, are, it is assumed, im- mortal, but good heroes do not go to Olympus to dwell with them for ever, nor are bad heroes sent down to Tartarus. In Homer, Tartarus is not a hell for the wicked, but simply the abode of rebel Titans. Later, it and they are transferred to 49 D RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE Hades. Homer's heroes, good and bad alike, after death are merely shadowy images (eidola) " strengthless heads of the dead." Even the Pelasgian heroes, who live on locally as objects of worship in their own tombs, have no activities save in relation to their survivors. On them they depend for food and sustenance, to them they act as gods-of-all-work ; for themselves we hear of no bliss, no eternal peace and rest. Yet the Greeks of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. had, we know, a definite hope of future bliss and a less definite fear of future misery. These hopes and fears were communicated in the Mysteries. Plato ^ says : " Whoever goes un- initiated to Hades will He in mud, but he who has been purified and is fully initiate, when he comes thither will dwell with the gods." Pindar * says : " Blessed is he, whoso having seen these things, goes below the hollow earth ; he sees the end of life and the beginning given of the gods,'' In the Mysteries, it is clear, not only were sacred things tasted and handled, but some revelation was made of man's beginning as divine and of his end. Such a doctrine, alien to Homer and his Olympian system, was not developed out of in-, digenous hero-worship, nor out of a vague behef * Phaedo 69c. t'rg. 102. 50 THE MYSTERIES in eidola. It came in with certain aspects of the worship of the two non-Olympian mystery-gods, Demeter and Dionysos ; and it came mainly from the South, from Egypt, probably by way of Crete. Cretan and Egyptian Elements in the Mysteries. — According to tradition^ Demeter, no less than Dionysos, came as an inmiigrant to Attica ; she was received at Eleusis by Keleos, he by Ikarios ; ' their coming was in the reign of Pandion, that is, according to traditional chronology, about 1500 B.C. Demeter in the Hymn ^ says she came from Crete. The Cretans ^ claimed to have given the Mysteries to Greece. Moreover, they said that the rites, which at Eleusis and elsewhere in Greece were performed secretly as mysteries, had been among them from ancient days, "done openly and commimicated to all." Crete for religion, as for civilization generally, was the stepping-stone from Egypt to Greece. Demeter, Isocrates* says, brought to Attica " twofold gifts." These were " crops " and the " Rite of Initiation." He adds that those who partake of this rite have " fairer hopes concern- ing the end of life." An attempt has often been made to establish some inherent connexion be- l Apollod. 3. 14. 7. " V 490. ♦ Isocr. Panegyr. 28. 51 » Diod. V. 77, RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE tween the second gift and the first. The Greeks saw, it is thought, in the sowing of the seed and its uprising at spring-time, a symbol of the death and resurrection of man's body and soul. A simpler reason for the connexion hes to hand. Demeter gives her " two-fold gifts " because she borrowed them from Isis. Isis, the Egyptian goddess of agriculture, was also, as wife of Osiris, Queen of the Under-world. The Egyptians, pos- sibly because their climate favoured the conser- vation of the body, developed very early a some- what material doctrine of immortality, and this doctrine was intimately connected with the rites of the culture god and goddess Osiris and Isis. Diodorus * is, with some reservation as to details, right when he says that " the whole mythology of Hades " was brought from Egypt into Greece. The Mysteries of Osiris, he tells us, are the same as those of Dionysos, and those of Isis are just like the mysteries of Demeter, " the names only being changed." He adds : "In introducing the punishments of the impious and the fields of the blessed, Orpheus is hvJt imitating the things that took 'place