Greek Popular Religion: The House and the Family

Another Zeus, for whose occurrence in the house cult there is no evidence, must be mentioned because he is not infrequently represented as a snake. This is Zeus Meilichios, who was much venerated in Attica (Fig. 27). He is also represented as seated on a throne with a cornucopia (Fig. 28); he is accordingly

akin to Zeus the Acquirer. His name signifies the one who has been propitiated, he is the propitious one. This is probably the reason why he became like Zeus the Acquirer. Zeus Soter, the Savior, also seems to have been connected with Meilichios at Piraeus. I do not speak here of that Zeus Soter whom the cities celebrated as the savior of their political freedom, but of the Zeus Soter of the house cult. To him, some of the altars which were found in the houses of the island of Thera are dedicated. Aeschylus says that besides the upper and nether gods he is the third protector of the house. At the symposium the first and third libations were devoted to him. No representations of him in snake form are known, however. Finally, we must mention Agathos Daimon, the Good Daemon, whose name is inscribed on one of the house altars from Thera. At the end of the daily meal a few drops of unmixed wine were poured out on the floor as a libation to Agathos Daimon. He too is represented as a snake.

Why Zeus was the protector of the house is clear if we consider the epithet "father," which is very often given to him by the Greeks, the Indians, the Illyrians, 11 and the Romans, in whose language the epithet coalesced with the noun to form the name "Jupiter." The occurrence of this epithet among these four peoples of Indo-European stock proves that it is an ancient heritage from the time before they had separated. It is generally supposed to designate Zeus as father of gods and men, but this is clearly erroneous. It cannot be believed that in those ancient times, before the Indo-European peoples separated and began their great migrations, there was a nobility which traced its pedigree back to the gods as Homeric heroes did. Nor did Zeus create man or the world. He is neither creator nor father of men in the physical sense. Consequently,

the epithet must designate him as pater familias, the head of

the family, which perfectly agrees with the patriarchal social conditions of the Indo-European peoples. And this is the reason why Zeus was the obvious protector of the house.

But the astonishing fact is that Zeus appears as a snake. This Zeus was, of course, called by modern scholars a chthonian deity, because the snake is always considered to represent the souls of, the dead. Certainly it does so very often, but we may question whether this is always the case. It was once supposed that all family and domestic cults had sprung from the cult of the dead. This doctrine should be reduced to its proper proportions. It would surely be astonishing if the house cult had no other roots than the cult of the dead. Among many European peoples, as well as in other parts of the world, we find the snake as the guardian of the house. In my own country--Sweden--the house snake was extremely common, and only a few years ago there died a farmer of whom I know that he was wont to offer milk to the house snakes. The house snake is still generally venerated in the Balkan Peninsula and in modern Greece. When it appears it is greeted with reverent words, such as "welcome, lady of the house," "your obedient servant," "guardian," or "guardian spirit of our house." It is related that in ancient Egypt the houses were full of snakes, which were so tame that they came to partake of offerings when they were called. The Minoan snake-goddess was a house goddess. 12 She was a snake-goddess, not because, as Sir Arthur Evans asserts, she was the lady of the nether world and of the dead, but because she was a house goddess. The guardian spirit of the house had been anthropomorphized, and the house snake had become her attribute. Kipling, in "Letting in the Jungle," says of the doomed village: "Who could fight against the jungle, when the very village cobra had left his

hole in the platform under the peepul." The holy snake of Athena also went away when the Athenians evacuated their city at the coming of the Persians, as Herodotus reports. Athena was the house goddess of the Mycenaean king. She inherited the snake from the Minoan house goddess. The great goddess had statues, and the snake could be given to her as her attribute, but in the common house cult there were no statues or even statuettes. Hence, it seems that the house god Zeus himself appeared as a snake. But in reality the association is rather loose and came about because Zeus was the protector of the house and the snake was its guardian spirit in bodily form. Many snakes may live in a house, and therefore people sometimes called them the sons of Zeus, the Dios kouroi. In the cult of the house snake we have come upon another striking similarity between modern folklore and ancient Greek popular religion. We see how modern folklore is helpful to a correct understanding of Greek popular religion. The cult of the house snake also survives in modern Greece.

In the middle of the great living room of the Greek house, the megaron, was a fixed hearth. The fire of this hearth warmed the house on cold days, and over this fire meals were prepared. The fixed hearth was brought to Greece by the Greeks, for in Minoan houses there were only portable fire pots of the sort used for preparing meals in Hellenistic and even in modern times. 13 The sanctity of the hearth is common to the Greeks and the Romans, and it is very probable that the Greek name of the goddess of the hearth, Hestia, and her Roman name, Vesta, are both derived from the same word, although this has been contested. 14 The sanctity of the hearth

is bound up with the fixed hearth. Consequently, the Greeks are responsible for it, not the pre-Greek population, who did not have a fixed hearth. The hearth is the center of the house and the symbol of the family. When Herodotus counts the number of families in a town he counts the hearths. 15 The hearth was sacred. A suppliant took his place on the hearth, as did Odysseus, Telephus, and Themistocles, because he was protected by its sanctity. People swore by the hearth. The newborn babe was received into the family by being carried around the hearth, a ceremony which was called amphidromia and took place on the fifth day after birth.

The hearth was the center of the house cult and of the piety of daily life. We should remember that while our piety is expressed chiefly in words, by prayers, the piety of the ancients was expressed chiefly by acts. In our schools the day begins with a morning prayer, but in the Greek gymnasia there was a hero shrine at which cult rites were performed. This fact is particularly evident in daily life. Whereas we say a prayer before and after the meal, the Greeks before the meal offered a few bits of food on the hearth and after it poured out a few drops of unmixed wine on the floor. The libation was said to be made to Agathos Daimon, the Good Daemon, the guardian of the house, who appears in snake form. It is not stated to whom the food offering was made, but if someone is to be mentioned it must be Hestia, the goddess of the hearth.

Thus, the hearth was sacred, and the daily meal was sacred. The sanctity of the meal found expression in the rites which accompanied it. It is a widespread custom to regard the meal as sacred. Among many peoples a stranger who has been permitted to take part in a meal is thereby received under the protection of the tribe and becomes inviolable. The meal unites with sacred bonds all who partake of it. One may recall the old Russian custom of offering a distinguished visitor bread and

salt before the gates of the city. The same feeling was alive in Greece. "Thou hast forsaken thy great oath, the table, and the salt," the poet Archilochus says reproachfully to someone; 16 and the orator Aeschines asked emphatically of his colleagues by whom he thought he had been deceived: "Where is the salt? where the table? where the drink-offering?" 17

This sanctity of the meal, which knits the partakers together in a sacred community, will help us to understand the best known and most prominent of all the rites of Greek religion, animal sacrifice. Its meaning and origin have been vigorously discussed. A great scholar, W. Robertson Smith, advanced the hypothesis of a totemistic origin. 18 The animal sacrificed was the god himself, Smith thought, and by eating his flesh the worshippers were united with the god and imbued with his power. This hypothesis has been somewhat modified by Jane Harrison 19 and others, but it is untenable. Not the slightest trace of totemism appears among the Greeks or other Indo-European peoples. The sacredness of the meal suffices to explain the peculiarities of animal sacrifice. The sacrifice is a meal common to the god and his worshippers, linking them together in a close unity. The god is invited by prayer to come to the meal. He receives his portion, and the men, who are the greater number, feast on their portions. This is the reason why only a small portion of the flesh is offered on the altar of the god, a custom which had already struck Hesiod as so peculiar that he invented a mythical explanation of it. 20 The sacrifice is sacred. This is the reason why it is often forbidden to carry parts of it outside the holy precinct. Even the refuse, the bones,

and the ashes are sacred and are left in the sanctuary. Such a sacrifice was performed not only at festivals but occasionally in daily life. Whenever an animal was slaughtered, it was considered as a sacrifice and was accompanied by the usual rites. The word philothytes (fond of sacrifices) signifies simply "hospitable."

The sanctity of the hearth was not conferred by any god but was immanent. Hestia was never wholly anthropomorphized. She was given a place in mythology, but her statues are artistic inventions, not cult statues. Nevertheless, her importance was great. A Greek proverb says: "Begin with Hestia," that is to say, "Begin at the right end." If an animal was slaughtered and a sacrifice was performed in the house, the first pieces of the sacrificial meal were offered to her, just as at all meals a few pieces were laid on the hearth. This is the reason why it seems to have been customary to offer the first pieces of all sacrifices, even public ones, to Hestia. The position of Hestia is also reflected in semiphilosophical speculations, in which it is said that Hestia is enthroned in the middle of the universe, just as the hearth is the center of the house.

A few words must be added concerning the role of the hearth in public cult, for this role is the best argument for the belief that the family was the model and basis of Greek state organization. Just as each family had its hearth, so the state had its hearth in the council house, where the officials and a few especially honored citizens took their daily meals. When a colony was founded, the emigrants carried fire from this hearth to kindle the fire on the hearth of the new city.

The cult of the hearth comes down from hoary antiquity, from Indo-European times. It induces me to add a remark of general bearing in regard to the difference between our religion and that of the Greeks, especially their popular religion. This difference is less appreciated than it ought to be, because

our attitude is not the same as that of the Greeks. The sanctity of the hearth was great, and we rightly speak of a cult of the hearth because certain sacred acts were performed there. But there were no prayers, no images, and no gods, for Hestia herself was not a full-fledged personality but only a pale personification. The cult consisted in acts. The place was sacred in itself according to the ideas of the ancients. For us it is not so. Nowadays a place is made sacred by erecting a house of God on it. Sanctity is conferred upon the building by its consecration as a church. In antiquity sanctity was inherent in the place. The place was not made holy by building a house for a god on it, but a house for a god was built on a certain place because the place was holy. Finally, although the hearth was sacred, the same hearth was used for nonreligious purposes--for roasting meat and cooking food, for boiling water and heating the room. Here we come upon another difference between ancient and modern religious ideas, which is perhaps greater than any other. We make a clear distinction between the sacred and the profane, we object to using holy things for ordinary purposes. Religion is our Sunday suit. The ancients also made a distinction between the sacred and the profane. Sacred things could not be treated as profane things. But the sacred and the profane were intermingled in daily life in a manner of which there are almost incredible examples. Religion was much more a part of daily life among the ancients than among us. It consisted in acts more than in words. Obviously, there was a danger that these acts might become a mere routine, and in general they probably did. They were deprived of real religious feeling even more than our grace is when it is recited by custom and without thinking.

The sanctity of the hearth was so great that everyone who sat on it was sacred and could not be violated. One would probably say that he was under the protection of the gods. This

was, in fact, considered to be so, but the statement is not quite correct. The hearth was sacred in itself, and its sacredness was conferred upon anybody touching it. There was no question of any personal god as mediator. But, on the other hand, everyone who sought protection at the hearth was under the protection of the gods and, it should be added, of a quite special god, Zeus. This takes us back to early times, in which law and justice and the state were only slightly developed. Divine protection to foreigners and suppliants was much more important then than in historical times, when life was regulated by state institutions and laws and was relatively secure. It should be added that respect for certain religious rules in regard to foreigners and suppliants is found among most primitive peoples, and such rules must have existed in very ancient Indo-European times.

Under primitive conditions a foreigner is excluded from the protection of law and custom enjoyed by members of the tribe. The word "guest" and the Latin word hostis (foe) are the same word. A suppliant is a man who by trespassing against law and custom has put himself outside their protection. Such a man might be purified and pardoned. As for foreigners, there might be reasons for entering into friendly relations with them. They might, for example, be merchants, for trade, however restricted, always existed, even in early times and under the most primitive conditions. From ancient times there was a god who conferred his protection upon foreigners and suppliants, namely, Zeus. He, and almost he alone, has epithets referring to this function (xenios, hikesios), and they were very commonly used in the historical age. Zeus was the protector of suppliants and foreigners because he, being "the father," the divine pater familias, upheld the unwritten laws and customs on which the power of the head of the family depended. Such laws and customs were necessary, for otherwise a person who

had trespassed would not have been able to make atonement, nor would commerce or other relations with people outside the tribe have been possible. So Zeus was the protector of the unwritten laws, of the moral order, and of customs invested with religious sanctity in primitive Greek society. But as political life gradually developed and life became more secure, this function of Zeus receded into the background in actual practice. Generally speaking, people did not need to turn to Zeus for protection. Theoretically, Zeus always remained the heavenly ruler and the protector of justice and morality, but hardly more than theoretically.

From of old, Zeus had been the protector of the house, the family, and its rights. But as the power of the state increased and internal peace was secured, life became safer and consequently the importance of Zeus in private life diminished. Zeus Ktesios and Zeus Herkeios remained, but not much was said of them. The old rites were performed in a routine fashion, more or less without thought. The importance of Zeus and his cult was noticeably less in the classical age than in Homer. He was still officially the highest god, the protector of the state and of the law. But in daily life people cared more for other gods who were nearer to them.

If in historical times people were relatively safe from the assaults of enemies and from robbery, they feared dangers of other kinds which threatened them and their houses. Belief in magic and witchcraft is primeval and was not lacking even in the classical age. The house also had to be protected against secret perils from these sources, and for this purpose people resorted to gods who were able to avert evils of all kinds. One of these was the great hero Heracles, who had vanquished so many monsters, ghosts (Antaeus was a ghost), and even Death. Above the entrance to the house was placed the inscription:

Another great averter of evil was Apollo, the god of sanctity and purifications. A connection with the cult of stones was peculiar to this god, and holy stones were common in Greece. Xenophon speaks of certain men who did not venerate temples or altars and of others who venerated stones, pieces of wood, and animals. 21 Theophrastus mentions superstitious people who poured oil on stones standing at the crossroads, fell on their knees before them, and greeted them with a kiss of the hand. 22 The omphalos of Apollo at Delphi is especially famous. In origin it was neither a tomb nor the center of the world, but simply one holy stone among many which was made famous by the fame of the god. Holy stones stood before the doors of houses. Perhaps they did in prehistoric times also. Square-cut stones have been found before the gates of the Homeric Troy by Dörpfeld, as well as by recent American excavators. 23 Since they could have served no practical purpose, it is supposed that their purpose was religious. We may perhaps venture to go further. Hrozný has published the inscriptions of four Hittite altars and read their pictographs. 24 Among other gods there is mentioned one whose name is read Apulunas. He is a god of the gates. If this be so, then the oriental origin of Apollo, which has often been asserted but which has also been vehemently contested, is proved beyond doubt. This oriental Apollo was the protector of the gates; so was the Apollo of classical Greece.

Before every Greek house a high conical stone was erected

Fig. 30). It was called Apollo Agyieus (Apollo of the street) because it stood in the street before the door of the house. Oil was poured on it, and it was decorated with fillets. Hence, it was sometimes called an altar, and sometimes an altar was erected at its side. We do not know whether the holy stone is older than Apollo himself. At all events, the stone protected the house against evil, and in the classical age it was sacred to Apollo, the great averter of evil.