In a previous chapter I strongly emphasized the fact that in early times Greece was a country of tillers of the soil and of herdsmen, who subsisted on the products of their own labor. To these, of course, we must add the owners of the great landed estates, the nobility. But I have not forgotten that Greece was also a country of city-states. In some of the towns industrial and commercial activities were started, and these towns played the leading role in the development of Greek culture and even in religion. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Greece was apparently overpopulated. The products of its soil were not sufficient for the increasing number of its inhabitants. We know from Hesiod how straitened were the circumstances of the small farmers. The stress was relieved not only by emigration and the founding of colonies around the Mediterranean, but also by the rise of industry and commerce in certain towns. At that time the laborers in the many workshops were not slaves, as they were in the classical age. The poor country population crowded into the towns, where they could find work and earn a livelihood which, although poor, was more certain than that provided by the seasonal labor of agriculture. This is the background of the social and political changes of the early historical age in Greece. The power of the nobility broke down. In the towns which were ahead in the development of industry and commerce
tyrants arose. The rule of the tyrants was founded on the broad mass of the city population, and the tyrants strove to promote the interests of the masses. But this was only an interlude. The tyrants were expelled before the early age reached its end, and democracy, or at least a mitigated aristocracy, was established. 1
After this time the cities were the leaders in Greek culture, although many parts of Greece remained rural and backward. We have heard how the cities took over parts of the old rural religion in their festivals and modified them accordingly. The great gods, who protected the state and the citizens, had their home in the city, and their greatness was enhanced by art and literature. We should not forget these gods, but we should also like to know what the man in the street thought and what he believed in. There was a popular religion of the townspeople also, though little is said of it.
The great gods of the Greeks came down from various peoples and ages. Some of them were derived from the pre-Greek population, others were Greek, and still others were immigrants. Most of them were very complex. Many of them were venerated by the rural population. We have met several of them already. But the cults of the countryside were not responsible for their greatness. For this they were indebted to the cults of the cities and to art and literature. According to Herodotus, 2 Homer and Hesiod created the Greek gods, and this statement is true to a certain degree. Homer impressed his representations of the gods indelibly on the Greek mind. I may add that the great temples of the gods adorned with works of art were, of course, erected in the cities, except for a few erected in places which attracted a
stream of visitors for special reasons--Olympia, Delphi, Delos, and at a later time Epidaurus. I shall return to these later. The sanctuaries described by Homer were simple rustic sanctuaries--an altar in a grove, on the trees of which votive offerings were suspended. Great temples were erected at the earliest in the seventh century B.C. That there was a certain connection between this building activity and the rule of the tyrants was already remarked by Aristotle, who says that the tyrants erected great buildings in order to give occupation to the people. Their wish to make a show of their power and glory was certainly another reason. The great temple at Corinth, of which seven heavy columns are still standing, belongs to the age of the tyrants. 3 At Athens, Pisistratus rebuilt the temple of Athena on a magnificent scale and began building a colossal temple of Zeus Olympios.
Very little is known concerning the policies of the tyrants in religious matters, but we can be sure that they followed the course along which democracy proceeded further, that of humoring the people by instituting elaborate festivals and games. This is known to be true of Athens, where Pisistratus introduced the Great Dionysia and made considerable additions to the magnificent celebration of the Panathenaea.
After the great victory over the Persians, Athens took the lead in commerce and culture. Its people were, of course, proud of its great achievements and of the empire which it had acquired. Patriotic and even chauvinistic feelings sprang up, and in this age they could find expression only in religion. The state and the gods were a unity. The gods had given victory, power, and glory to the Athenian state. The Athenians gloried in being the most pious of all peoples and in celebrating
the most numerous and magnificent festivals in honor of the gods. They were able to do this because they could afford the costs. Great sacrifices, in which hundreds of animals were sometimes slaughtered, accompanied the cult observances. Portions of the sacrifices were distributed among the people, who were even permitted to take them home. The people feasted at the expense of the gods, and they soon learned the ad-vantages of this kind of piety. The great temples erected in this age, of which the most famous is the Parthenon, enhanced not only the glory of the gods but also the glory of the capital of the empire.
In the long run this kind of religion was no boon to the great gods. Religion was to a certain degree secularized. When Aristophanes mentions the festivals, he speaks only of the feasting and the markets connected with them, and in one passage he refers to certain ceremonies of the Dipolia as to something antediluvian. 4 The great gods became greater and more glorious, but religious feeling gave way to feelings of patriotism and to display in festivals and sacrifices. The state gods, the great gods, thus became more remote from human beings. We shall soon see examples of this in the case of the city goddess Athena.
The population of the large industrial and commercial towns consisted to a great extent of laborers, or, to speak more exactly, of artisans, for the ancient factories were mere workshops and the methods of production were those of handicraft. The crafts also needed divine protection. We know a little about this, especially in regard to one craft which was of extreme importance in this age, that of the potter. It gave its name to a large district in the city of Athens, the Kerameikos. In the seventh century it was of equal importance at Corinth. From the beginning the potters addressed themselves
to the great gods of the town. In a sanctuary of Poseidon at Corinth was found a great mass of painted clay tablets, some of which represent scenes connected with the potters' art--the making and firing of vessels, their exportation, and so forth. 5 The tablets are votive offerings dedicated to Poseidon by potters.
The potters feared lesser gods and daemons who might destroy their work. Among the relics of popular poetry preserved in the biography of Homer ascribed to Herodotus there is a potters' song. It begins with a prayer that Athena may hold her hand over the potters' oven, and that the vessels may be well fired, receive a beautiful black color, and yield a good profit when they are sold. But if the potters do not reward the poet, he conjures up daemons to destroy the vessels in the oven: Smaragos, who makes them crack; Syntrips, who smashes them; Asbestos, the inextinguishable one; Sabaktes, who shatters them; and Omodamos. The significance of the last is not clear, though the first part of the compound refers to crude clay. Finally the poet threatens to bring in the witch Circe and the ferocious centaurs. He uses the common mythology, of course; but it is interesting to note not only that Athena is the potters' protectress, but also, and especially, that the potters believed in a lot of mischievous goblins which were apt to destroy their work. Perhaps some such goblin is depicted on one of the tablets from the sanctuary of Poseidon.
In Athens, Athena was the protectress of the artisans. This was quite natural, for she was already so in Homer. She protected the weaving of the women and the art of the gold-smiths and the coppersmiths. An Attic vase shows her in a potter's workshop (Fig. 34). For the popularity of Athena among the artisans at this time some verses of Sophocles are
characteristic: "Come out in the street you, all the people of the handicraftsmen, who venerate the daughter of Zeus, Ergane, with sacrificial baskets and beside the heavy anvil, beaten with hammers." 6 Evidently Sophocles hints at some popular festival of Athena celebrated by the artisans in the streets of the town. There was such a festival, the Chalkeia. The word signifies the festival of the coppersmiths. It belonged to Athena, but at a later date another god of the Athenian artisans, Hephaistos, was associated with Athena. 7 These two even had a common temple. In Homer, Hephaistos is the divine goldsmith. He probably came from the island of Lemnos or, perhaps, from Asia Minor. In origin he was a daemon of fire coming up from the earth. Gas which takes fire and burns is considered by many peoples to be divine. Later a volcano was considered to be his smithy. He had almost no cults in Greece except in Athens. No doubt the Athenian artisans took up his cult and placed him at the side of Athena. He seemed, perhaps, to be nearer to them than the great city goddess. But in the early age it was she who was the protectress of the Athenian craftsmen.
Many thousand shards of vases have been found in the debris left on the Acropolis after its devastation by the Persians; some of these vases were certainly dedicated by their makers. In the same debris a great many inscriptions have been found on bases on which votive gifts had been placed. Among the people who set them up were craftsmen. From the point of view taken here their diminishing number in later times is very significant. The second and third volumes of the Attic inscriptions, which commence with the year 403 B.C., contain only thirty-three dedications to Athena, and of these
twenty-two belong to the fourth century B.C., one to the Hellenistic age, and ten to the Roman age. 8 The few inscriptions from the time after 403 B.C. reflect the decline of Athenian industry and Athenian importance, but the small number from the fourth century B.C. is also significant. It cannot be explained except on the ground that Athena had become too exalted to be a goddess of the common people.
Man needs gods who are near to him. In the countryside there were minor gods to whom the simple peasants prayed and made offerings. There were minor gods in the town also, and they were certainly venerated. But these minor gods were too insignificant; they were not able to satisfy the human need for divine help and protection. When a gap exists it is usually filled, and as the Greek gods did not meet the needs of the Greek people, other gods were brought in from other peoples with whom the Greeks had intercourse. First came Hecate from the southwestern corner of Asia Minor, as early as the early archaic age. Propaganda was resorted to on behalf of her cult, as is apparent in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and in a long passage inserted into Hesiod's Theogony, in which she is praised as omnipotent. 9 That Hecate originated in Caria is proved by the fact that proper names compounded with her name are very frequent in this district and rare or absent elsewhere. 10 We do not know what kind of goddess Hecate was in Caria. In Greece the attempt to make a great goddess of her did not succeed. She was always the goddess of witchcraft and sorcery who walked at the crossroads on moonless nights, accompanied by evil ghosts and barking dogs. Offerings were thrown out to her at the crossroads, and her image was triple because she had to look
in three directions. She was often called Enodia (she of the roads). Some scholars think that Enodia was a native Greek goddess of witchcraft, 11 but their arguments are not very convincing. At all events Hecate was accepted by the Greeks because there was a place for a goddess of witchcraft and ghosts. Her popularity is accounted for by this fact, and it proves that base superstition was only too common among the Greeks.
The Greeks also knew about other gross and uncanny specters: Mormo, with whom imprudent nurses were wont to frighten small children; Gello; Karko; Sybaris; Empousa, who according to Aristophanes was able to change herself into a beast, a dog, a snake, or a fair woman; Onoskelis, who had an ass's leg. These monsters attacked men, sucked their blood, and ate their entrails. Educated people did not trouble about them, but they found a refuge in nursery tales and were cherished by the people. It is characteristic that they became still more popular in the Roman age, during which superstition continually increased. A generic name for such beings was lamia, and whereas the great gods are forgotten, the lamia still lives on among the Greek people. The lamia is mentioned in the Middle Ages, and nowadays it is customary to frighten children with the name. If a child dies suddenly, it is said that the lamia strangled it. An ugly or insatiable woman is called a lamia. 12 Such ghosts seem to be immortal. The gods were not so.
We return to the foreign gods who migrated into Greece. The Great Mother of Asia Minor came to Athens before the Persian Wars, and a temple, the Metroon, was built for her 13
Fig. 35). Pindar celebrates her and mentions her orgiastic cult with its cymbals, castanets, and torches. 14 He also celebrates Ammon, the god from the Great Oasis who had ram's horns, knowledge of whom was probably transmitted by the Cyrenaeans, for from Cyrene there was a road to the Great Oasis. 15 His oracle was frequented by the Greeks when their belief in their own oracles began to wane, and the Athenians brought him a sacrifice on behalf of the state in the fourth century B.C. These cults seem, however, not to have been very important for popular belief. The Great Mother was thoroughly assimilated to the Greek Mother, Demeter, and her cult lost its orgiastic character. In this case there was a return to native customs. Ammon seems hardly to have been popular in the strict sense of the word.
Other foreign gods were popular. The Cabiri 16 are mentioned in the fifth century B.C. Aristophanes, in his comedy The Peace, makes Trygaios turn to the spectators and ask the help of those who had been initiated into the mysteries of the Cabiri on the island of Samothrace, for he sees a great storm approaching. There must have been such men in the audience and the mysteries of the Cabiri must have been well known. The Cabiri were venerated by the Greeks as protectors of seafarers. Although they were a seafaring people, the Greeks were apparently not content with their own sea-gods.
The Thracian goddess Bendis was introduced by Thracians living at Peiraeus (Fig. 36). She was so respected that the state approved a great festival for her, which is described
by Plato, 17 and paid large sums for sacrifices to her. There is, however, nothing to indicate that she had any real religious importance. Another Thracian goddess, Kotyto, was perhaps a little more popular at Corinth and in Sicily. 18 One of the rites in her cult was baptism, and her cult seems to have had an orgiastic character. The Phrygian god Sabazios, who was another form of Dionysus, is better known because of the graphic description of his cult in Demosthenes' speech against Aeschines. He is mentioned by Aristophanes also. Demosthenes says that Aeschines read the holy books when his mother performed the initiations, wore a fawnskin at night, mixed the wine, purified those who were to be initiated, wiped them with clay and bran, and made them rise and cry out, "I escaped the evil, I found the better." By day he led the crowds through the streets, crowned with fennel and poplar twigs, carried snakes in his hands, danced, and cried out: euoi, saboi. Scenes like this were to be seen in the streets of Athens at that time. Apparently, not a few people felt the appeal of such orgiastic cults.
Very characteristic of the age is the sudden rise of the cult of Asclepius at the end of the fifth century B.C. (Fig. 38). He was a healing hero, mentioned by Homer only as the father of the surgeons Machaon and Podaleirios. Apollo was the great god of healing for the Greeks, but in many places various heroes served as gods of healing, like the saints in Mohammedan countries today. Asclepius supplanted them all. His most famous sanctuary was at Epidaurus, but he had many derivative cults (Fig. 37). There was one on the island of Aegina, one at Sicyon, one at Delphi, one at Pergamum, and no less than three in Attica--one at Peiraeus, one near
But man needs divine help and comfort. 19 The great gods had become too exalted to give help in the concerns of daily life. Even if men were materialistic they still needed aid and solace at least in sickness. In our own day we have seen people stream to certain places and churches to which they are attracted by miraculous healings. In modern Greece they go to the famous Panagia Euangelistria on the island of Tenos. When human skill is of no avail, men put their trust in the divine, in miracles. At this time, when the old bonds imposed by tradition and the state were beginning to be loosened and broken, men were not content with the gods of the state and the family, with whom they were linked from birth. They sought new gods for themselves. If the gods of the ancestors could not help them, they turned to other gods. These circumstances explain the sudden popularity of Asclepius, the great healer and comforter in sickness and distress. They also explain why foreign gods began to migrate into Greece.
We have seen that certain of these foreign gods represented mystic and orgiastic cults. The Greek civic cult was sober and well regulated. There was not much in it that was orgiastic and mystic, with the exception of the Eleusinian Mysteries. But religion has its emotional side, and if this is repressed it finally breaks out. This is the reason why the cults mentioned took hold on some people, though in general they were despised. On the whole, women are more emotional than men, a fact which is very apparent in Greek religion. The Dionysiac orgies were suppressed in the historical age and were celebrated chiefly in art and literature, but there are traces enough to show that the Dionysiac frenzy had once spread like fire in dry grass and had especially affected the women.
Greek society was an extremely male society, especially in Athens and the Ionian cities. Women were confined to their houses and seldom went outdoors. But religion did not exclude them. There were priestesses in many cults, and women regularly took part in the festivals and sacrifices. Some festivals were reserved for them. Virgins carried the sacred implements and provisions at the sacrifices. These kanephoroi, as they were called, appeared in all processions. Women even had to be allowed to take part in certain nocturnal festivals. The violating of a virgin on such an occasion is a common motif in the New Comedy. Aristophanes informs us that the women were proud of the sacred ceremonies in which they had taken part. 20
Nevertheless, women had only a subordinate position. Men had fashioned the religion according to their own ideas and had left too little room for emotionalism. The women had a longing for an emotional religion, and Aristophanes tells us that they found means of satisfying it. He says that when the women gathered in the sanctuaries of Bacchos, Pan, Genetyllis, or Kolias (Genetyllis and Kolias were special goddesses of women) it was hardly possible to get through because of the cymbals, and he gives us to understand that the women were devoted to the cults of Sabazios and Adonis. 21 Sabazios has already been mentioned. Adonis, according to the myth, was the beloved of Aphrodite and was killed in his youth while hunting. His cult came from the Orient and was highly emotional. One of the customs associated with the cult was the growing of plants in pots, where they sprouted quickly and soon withered (Fig. 39) They were symbolic of the vegetation cycle, which Adonis represented. The women bewailed him, tore their clothes,
and beat their breasts. According to Plutarch, they did this when the Athenian fleet was about to sail for Sicily. 22
It may be added that Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, was one of the deities to whom the women were especially devoted. Aristophanes makes a woman pray to Hecate before the door when she leaves her house, 23 and he records a game performed by women in her honor. 24 The reason for her popularity with women is that in ancient Greece sorcery and witchcraft were the concern of women. It is a notable fact that we hear of witches but not of sorcerers.
Thus we see that the religion of the women had its special features in the classical age. It was much more emotional than the ordinary religion. Women had scarcely any influence on the religious development of this age, but one may guess that they contributed to the dissemination, which was then beginning, of mystic and orgiastic forms of religion. 25 In late antiquity such forms became increasingly popular. In the long run, therefore, the exclusion of women was disastrous to the old religion.
I wish now to discuss briefly a subject which students of Greek religion generally pass over lightly because it seems to have little to do with religion, although religion is its foundation. I mean the great festivals and meetings which the Greeks called panegyreis (gatherings of all). 26 They took place in some sacred precinct, they were dedicated to some god, and they were accompanied by sacrifices. In some of these gatherings games were the most important element. There were great festivals, huge sacrifices, and games in many cities
above all in the great and prosperous cities such as Athens--but properly speaking these were not panegyreis. It was characteristic of a panegyris that people flocked to it from more than one state. In fact people came from all neighboring towns and even from all Greece. The sanctuaries in which the panegyreis took place were thus in a certain measure common to all parts of the Greek race, although the sanctuaries were administered by the city in whose territory they were situated. This gave rise to conflicts. The control of the Olympic games was contested more than once. Pisa, to which Olympia belonged, was in early times conquered by the Eleans. Sometimes a league of neighboring states was formed in order to protect one of these sanctuaries. Such a league was called an amphictyony. Examples are the league of Calauria and, most famous of all, the league which took care of Delphi. The latter was originally formed in order to protect a small sanctuary of Demeter at Anthela near Thermopylae, but its protection was extended to the great sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. Delphi was situated in the territory of Crisa. The Crisaeans were charged with harassing and extorting money from the pilgrims who went to Delphi. At any rate, there were conflicts, and in the early part of the sixth century B.C. a war broke out in which Crisa was destroyed. Delphi became free and was placed under the protection of the Amphictyons. Their part in the politics of a later age is well known and is of slight importance in this connection. I have recalled these facts in order to show how important these great assembly places were for what one might call the international life of the Greeks. The basis of their importance was religion.
The great games--the Olympia, the Pythia, the Isthmia, and the Nemea--were preëminently panegyreis in this sense. Most famous are the Olympic games. The interest in the games
themselves was so great that one hardly thinks of the religious element. But we should bear in mind the great temples erected at Olympia, the great sacrifices offered, and the many cults attended to by numerous priests. All this is described at length by Pausanias. The celebration at Olympia was the largest panegyris of the Greeks. People from all towns and cities came together, and even the colonies took a large part in the assembly. The great games were of the highest importance for impressing upon the Greek mind a consciousness of the unity of the Greek nation. All men were admitted provided that they spoke Greek, although women were excluded. Anyone who had something on his mind that he wanted to lay before the nation found the best opportunity for doing so at the games. It was here that Gorgias, during the storms of the Peloponnesian War, exhorted the Greeks to concord. Here many other Sophists exhibited their art. Here also the rhapsodist Cleomenes is said to have recited to the public the Katharmoi of Empedocles. The importance of the Olympic games and similar assemblies for the development of national feeling and the cultivation of interrelationships and even for the cultural life of the Greeks can hardly be overestimated.
It must be added that a truce was proclaimed for a few months in order to make it possible for everyone to visit the great games. This was quite necessary, because the Greek cities were constantly warring against each other. A truce was likewise proclaimed on the occasion of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Among the Dorians the month of Karneios, in which the Karneia was celebrated, was a holy month, during which an armistice was to prevail. In the Hellenistic age several cities tried to institute panegyreis and to get them acknowledged by the other Greek states. Embassies were sent to such festivals from other states. Many inscriptions referring to such diplomatic exchanges have come down to us.
Surely all this seems to have very little to do with religion. But the panegyreis had a religious foundation in the cult of the gods, and although they seem to be secular, they represent a side of Greek religion which should not be ignored. I may recall what I said earlier about the intimate relations between the cult of the gods and secular life in ancient Greece, relations which are of such a character that they sometimes astonish us. We are strongly under the influence of Protestant and Puritan ideas, which make a sharp division between matters pertaining to God and the affairs of our mundane life. They do not allow sacred and secular occupations to be intermingled. It is otherwise in southern Europe, and especially in Greece. Whoever has seen a modern Greek panegyreis is strongly reminded of the ancient ones. The cult is new, being
that of the Panagia or some saint, but the life is the same. Tents, bowers, and booths are erected, and the people feast and make merry. Of course religion has been secularized, but this form of religion, which seems to us hardly to be religion at all, has shown an extreme tenacity. It satisfies the need which men feel to get together, to enjoy themselves, to feast, and to make merry, and likewise the need of interrupting and lighting up the monotonous course of daily life. These are social needs which should not be overlooked, and Greek religion should not be blamed because it fulfilled them. In this respect it was more lasting than in any other.
In concluding this chapter I may remark that I have treated the changes which Greek popular religion underwent from a social point of view. The increase of the population in certain towns and the life of the towns remodeled the old rustic cults and made them insufficient for the new wants which arose through the change in social conditions. The development of the power and glory of the city exalted the great gods too far above the common people. Such people needed a religion which was nearer to them, gods who could help them in the affairs of daily life, and a cult in which the emotional element had its due share. The way was opened for new gods. On the other hand Greek religion did have a social aspect. The cult of the gods provided opportunities for assembling and feasting and for mutual intercourse between people from neighboring towns and even from all Greek countries. The panegyreis were an extremely important part of Greek social life, and the service which Greek religion rendered through them should not be undervalued.
85:1 See my Dill lecture, The Age of the Early Greek Tyrants (Belfast, 1936).
85:2 Herodotus, II, 53.
86:3 Weinberg in Hesperia, VIII (1939), 191 ff., seems on archaeological grounds to have proved that this temple was built about 540 B.C. and that it was preceded by an earlier temple.
87:4 Nubes, vs. 984.
88:5 Published in Antike Denkmäler, II (1908), Pls. 23, 24.
89:6 Frag. 760, in Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta.
89:7 L. Malten, "Hephaistos," Jahrbuch des Deutschen archäol. Instituts, XXVII (1912), 232 ff.
90:8 Noted by A. Körte in Gnomon, XI (1935), 639.
90:9 Theogony, vss. 411-52.
90:10 E. Sittig, De Graecorum nominibus theophoris (Dissertation, Halle, 1911), pp. 61 ff.
91:11 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin, 1931-32), I, 169 ff.
91:12 Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, pp. 173 ff.
91:13 See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 687 ff.
92:14 For Magna Mater see Pindar, Pythia, III, vss. 77 ff., and frags. 79, 80, 95, in Bergk, Poetae lyrici Graeci.
92:15 For Ammon see Pausanias, IX, 16, 1.
92:16 See O. Kern, "Kabeiros and Kabeiroi," in A. Pauly, Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, new ed. by G. Wissowa (Stuttgart, 1894-).
93:17 Republic, p. 327; and Inscriptiones Graecae, Editio minor, Vols. II-III, Pt. 2, No. 1496, A, a, l. 86, and b, l. 117.
93:18 S. Srebrny, "Kult der thrakischen Göttin Kotyto in Korinth and Sicilien," Mélanges Franz Cumont (Brussels, 1936), pp. 423 ff.
95:19 See my paper, "Reflexe von dem Durchbruch des Individualismus in der griechischen Religion um die Wende des 5. and 4. Jhts. v. Chr.," Mélanges Franz Cumont, pp. 365 ff.
96:20 Lysistrata, vss. 641 ff.
96:21 Ibid., vss. 388 ff.
97:22 Nicias, 13, and Alcibiades, 18.
97:23 Lysistrata, vs. 64.
97:24 Ibid., vs. 700.
97:25 Cf. what is related of the mother of Aeschines by Demosthenes, XVIII, 259 ff., and of the priestess Ninos by Demosthenes, XVIII, 281 and scholion.
97:26 Little attention has been paid to this subject. See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 778 ff.