Acter

If various animals seemed suitable ex- ressions or embodiments of the might of the Divine nature, the human analogy most of all affected the mind, and commended itself as proper to convey some idea of the Godhead.

That the anthropomorphic tendency existed from the begin- ning alongside of other forms of expression which have been described, seems indubitable (just as the aniconic idea has been traced as surviving even in the most developed iconic period); and it has given rise to far the largest mass of myth. (1) The Great Mother.—The characteristic which specially distinguishes the Anatolian religion is its conception of the Divine Being as the mother, not the father, of mankind.

This feature runs through the social system and the history of the land. Strong traces of Mutterrecht have been observed and collected by several writers. Even in the Greco-Roman period, when those traces had al- most disappeared from the cities owing to the spread of Greek manners, women magistrates are very frequently alluded to.

The life of man was conceived in that old religion as coming from the Great Mother: the heroes of the land were described as the sons of the goddess, and at death they returned to the mother who bore them.

The god, the male element in the Divine nature, was conceived as a secondary figure to the Great Mother; he was recognized as only an incidental and subsidiary actor in the drama of nature and of life, while the permanent feature of the Divine nature is its motherhood, as the kindly protecting and teaching power. In later develop- ment, under the influence of external conditions and foreign immigration, more importance (especi- ally in the exoteric cult) was attached to the god: see § VIII (7).

That conception of the Divine power was prompted and strengthened by the physical char- acter of the land. The great plateau, where the religion had its ancient home, was separated from the sea by broad and lofty mountain walls (and it is on the sea that the sense of personality and individual initiative are most encouraged) ; and its character tends to discourage the sense of personal power, and to impress on the mind the insignificance of man, and his absolute dependence on the Divine power.

* But the Divine was kind, lavish of good gifts in rain and useful winds and fountains of water and everything that was needed ; but all those good things required skill and work and obedience to the divinely taught methods, in order to take advantage of them. Dis- obedience to the Divine commands meant ruin and unproductiveness. Obedience was the prime neces- sity. With patience and observance the children of the earth found that the Divine power was a protecting, watchful, and kind mother.

That character is permanently impressed on the history of the land and the people; not vigour and initiative, but receptivity and impressibility, swayed the spirit of the people, breathed through the atmosphere that surrounded them, and marks their fate throughout history ;+ and this spirit can be seen as a continuous force, barely percep- tible at any moment, yet powerful in the Yoneeranl acting on every new people, and subtly influencing “See the art.

on ‘Geographical Conditions determining History and Religion in Asia Minor’ in the Geographical Jour- nal, Sept. 1902, where the subject is more fully treated. t See the art. in the Geographical Journal, as in previous RELIGION OF GREECE every new religion that came into the land. Thus, for example, the earliest trace of the high venera- tion of the Virgin Mary in the Christian religion is in a Phrygian inscription of the 2nd cent.

; and the earliest example of a holy place consecrated to the Mother of God as already almost a Divine per- sonality is at Ephesus, where her home among the mountains * is probably as old as the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431. In regard to the nature of the Goddess-Mother, it is unnecessary to repeat what has been said in vol. i. p. 605 on the nature of Diana: that whole Be may be ree eh ri of the (2) The growth of mythology as the story of t life of the Great Mother.

ine Great Mowe evidently, was often imagined simply as the Divine guardian and protecting mother, without any distinctly sexual character being thought of. But her character as the mother could not be separated from the sexual idea in the popular mind ; and, naturally, it is on this side that most of the mythology and dramatic action connected with the Divine stor or The ba pig!

of life, the succession of child to parent and of cro to seed, the growth of plant and tree and anim and man, lay deep in the minds of the primitive Anatolian people or peoples. They regarded all these phenomena as manifestations of the same ultimate Divine power. The custom of killing a human being in the field that his life may Biase into the coming crop and make it grow well, is clearly implied in the legend of Lityerses at Cel- zene.

Similarly, the life of the tree is the life of the Dryad or Nymph. Each form can pass into the others, if the suitable situation occurs. The life of nature begins anew every spring. This process is the life of the Great Mother: her child is born every year. Sometimes this birth was imagined as originating through her own innate power; she combined, as it were, the male and the female principle in herself.

In Caria and in Cyprus this took the grotesque form that the supreme god was bisexual, and some repulsive legends were founded on this barbarous idea. These are probably not strictly Anatolian; they are distortions of the original thought, for a male deity imagined as endowed with some bisexual characteristics does not explain the continuance and perpetuation of the life of nature.

They robably arose among immigrant peoples, like the arians, whose national character substituted a god for a mother-goddess as the supreme concep- tion of Divinity. Certainly, that bisexual idea was on the whole rejected in the development of Anatolian religious symbolism ; and little mythology was founded on it. More common is the idea that the Great Mother conceives through the influence of some flower or fruit, or in some other non-sexual way, as in the birth of Attis at Pessinus.

t Not un- related to this is the already mentioned idea that ae eeaaeerpene was the father of the Divine c But far more characteristic and widespread, and more simple and natural, is it to describe the Divine life more exactly according to the analogy of the natural world.

The Divine nature is then imagined as divided between the two sexes; there is the cod and the goddess, and the process of the Divine life evolves itself in the reciprocal action of the Divine pair and the birth of a new offspring: thus we find that the God-Father, the Goddess- Mother, and the Son (Dionysos, Sabazios, etc.) or the Daughter (Kora, etc.), are all assumed as essential to the drama of Divine life in numerous cults and myths.

While we cannot penetrate, in the dearth of * See above, § IV (2). t Pausanias, vii. 17. ee a ee ee ae ee Peto SB) EES! ies RELIGION OF GREECE aE RELIGION OF GREECE 123 evidence, to the earliest forms of these sacred myths and of the cult usages with which they are connected, it seems only reasonable to suppose that they began in a simple and self-consistent form.

The view which forces itself on us is that the drama of the Divine life was at first understood and presented to the worshippers in some single and definite form at a time, and not in a confused mixture of different forms.

In this ancient ritual the goddess is generally the important and essen- tial figure, while the god is an adjunct needed for the proper Jie age of her life, who passes out of notice when he has fulfilled his part in the drama; and in many cases the union of the two is described as a crime against some law, or actu- ally as an act of fraud or violence even of the most abominable character, which sometimes entails punishment even unto death. (3) Myths of the goddess and the god.

—Some- times the union of the goddess and the god is ictured under the forms of agriculture, as of Detector with Jasion ‘in the thrice-ploughed fal- low field.” Thus the goddess bears the Divine child; but Iasion is slain by the thunderbolt; for a life must be given in primitive ritual that the crop may acquire the power to grow.

This cult myth (lepds Adyos) is connected with the Samothra- cian Mysteries and with Crete, two ancient centres of the primitive population, which we may now call Pelasgian, using the same name that the Greeks used, though modern scholars long ridiculed it. Most important and most instructive as to the nature of the Anatolian religion is the idea, de- scribed above in § III (7), that the Divine power and the Divine life are revealed in the nature of the bee.

As we have seen, the form of the Ephesian goddess (a form not restricted to Ephesus, but widely prevalent in Lydian and Phrygian cities) is modelled far more closely on the shape of the bee than of the woman. Now, the life of the queen bee (as described in the Encyclopedia Britannica®, whose account sone given more shortly in the fol- lowing terms) is the best explanation of the Attis legend.

As regards reproduction, the opinion was once maintained that the see bee was in herself sufficient without any male bee, or that the male principle was conveyed to the queen without her coming into contact witha male. But it has been clearly proved that the queen comes into relation with a male bee while taking a flight in the air; and if she does not find a mate within three weeks of her birth the power of intercourse seems to become lost.

In the intercourse the male is robbed of the organs concerned; and thus mutilated is left to perish on the ground. His existence seems to have no object apart from the queen bee, and he fulfils no other function and no other duty in life. This description applies with striking exactness to the relation between the Mother- Goddess and the god, who (as we have seen) exists merely to be her consort, and is quite an insignifi- cant personage apart from his relation to her.

We must here anticipate what is said in later sections as to the character and original import- ance of the Goddess-Mother, and as to the growth of the dignity of the god in historic development, in order to tite out the bee nature in her life- history.

The god consorted with the goddess by stealth and violence: the goddess was angry at the outrage: she mutilated the assailant, or caused him to be mutilated (exsectis virilibus semivirum tradidit), Even the false but not unnatural opinions about the impregnation of the queen bee have obvious analogies in the myths about the Mother- Goddess, The myths riot in variations on this ugly theme, and we need not allude to them, except in so far as they are necessary for understanding the facts.

The god, though mutilated, must still be living in poe form, for the life of nature (whose annual loom he represents) is renewed in perfection eve year; and accordingly the myth sometimes tells that the penalty was inflicted vicariously, drocrdoas 6 Leds rob Kptod rods dudtpous Pépwwv ev péco.s Eppue rots kddrots THs Anods, Tinwplay Wevdh ris Balas cvupmdokhs éxt.wviwy, where there is an obvious reference to the treatment which the sacred instructions prescribe fordomesticated animals.

* Further, purely fanciful developments in Greek myth produced such tales as that the goddess was a lover of the god, and mutilated him in jealousy, or that the mutilation was intended to compel and enforce chastity. Such tales are absolutely opposed to the original Anatolian idea, which is intended to account for the fruitfulness and new life of nature. The subject offered a good opening for attack to the Christian polemical writers, Clemens Alexandrinus, Firmicus Maternus, Arnobius, etc.

; and they are our best authorities. The accounts which they give, hideous as they are and concentrating atten- tion only on the evils, must be accepted as cor- rectly stating facts: it would have ruined their effect if they had not been recognized as true statement of facts. Moreover, they are corrobor- ated in various details by pagan authorities; and as a whole they bear the unmistakable stamp of truth, but not the whole truth.

The myths in their older form, as distinguished from the fanciful variations, are obviously in the closest relation to the ritual: they are simply descriptions of the drama as represented in the sacred rites, At other times the union of the two Divine natures is pictured after the animal world: Demeter as the mare meets the horse Zeus, Pasiphae became the cow, and so on.

Popular and poetic imagina- tion, which sported in the most licentious fashion with all those myths of the Divine unions, worked out this class of tales especially with the most diabolical and repulsive ingenuity; and it is in the degraded conception of the Divine nature implied in these abominable fantastic develop- ments that the Christians who inveighed against the pagan religion found their most telling weapons.

The mythology that grew around this subject would in itself make a large subject; but, though it pos- sesses considerable interest as bearing on history and social customs, it has little value from a re- ligious point of view. These exaggerated and really distorted myths did not remain mere tales. They reacted on the ritual, which grew and elaborated itself and took in new elements in the lapse of time.

But in this process of elaboration there was no real religious development, but simply degradation. (4) Lhe birth and death of the Divine nature.— The mystery of birth is matched by the mystery of death, and the one occupied the mind of the rimitive Anatolian peoples as much as the other.

eath was regarded and imagined by them under similar illustrative forms drawn from external nature; and the Divine nature, which is the model and prototype of all the activity of man, was seen living and dying in the life of trees and plants, of grass and corn.

The recurring death of nature, ~ the bright and beautiful luxuriance of spring cut off in its prime by the sun of summer, the joy and warmth of the summer alternating with the cold- ness and darkness of the long severe winter on the Anatolian plateau, the light of day transformed into the deadness of night, furnished a series of expressions of the same principle; and mythology and cult are full of them.

In numberless local varieties the same truth is expressed: the young hero is slain in the pride of life and the joy of hia * Bee above, § III (7%), 124 RELIGION OF GREECE RELIGION OF GREECE art: Marsyas the sweet rustic musician vies with the god, and is by the god hung up on the plane tree and flayed: Hylas is drowned in the fountain by the nymph who longs for him and takes him away to herself from the earth: the twelve chil- dren of Niobe are all slain by the wrath and arrows of the god: Achilles must die young, and _ his grave was shown at various seats of his worship, in Elis, in the Troad, on the south Russian coasts.

The eternal contradiction repeats itself: the life of nature is slain, yet reappears: it is slain by the Divine power, yet it is in itself the embodiment of the Divine power: the god slays the god: on this, shy hOMEY. plays in endless variations of the same tale. With this obvious fact of the death of nature, its birth is equally obviously connected. The life of nature never ends: it dies only to be born, different and yet the same.

Men mourn for the dead god, and immediately their mourning is turned to joy, for the god is reborn. The mourn- ing over Actis in the Phrygian worship of Cybele was succeeded by the Hilaria, as the lamentation for Adonis or ‘ Thammuz yearly wounded’ in Syria was followed by the rejoicing over his rejuvenation. With this subject the largest and the most valu- able class of myths is connected; but the few examples which have been quoted above must suffice. VII. RirvAL AND CEREMONIAL.

— We have spoken of the growth of mythology before speak- ing of the ritual in which the Anatolian religious ideas sought to express themselves. This order must not be taken as implying the opinion that myth is, either logically or chronologically, prior to ritual. On the contrary, ritual comes first, and myth is secondary: myth grows around the rite, and explains it or justifies it or enlarges it to the popular mind.

But myth begins from the very origin of ritual, and there was probably never a time when rite existed free from myth. The human mind must from the beginning describe and think about and imagine to itself the reason and nature of the religious rite; and its thought and fancy and description express themselves as myth.

_ But the ritual has perished, while fragments of the mytho- logy have been preserved ; and it is through the myths, compared with some rare pieces of evidence about the rites, that we penetrate back to the ritual. (1) The origin of ritual.—The ritual of the Anatolian religion is very imperfectly known. So far as we are able to discover, it is founded entirely on the idea that the Divine nature is the model according to which human life must be arranged.

The god, or rather the Goddess- Mother, is the teacher, protector, corrector, and guide for an obe- dient family of children. What they ought to do is to imitate the Divine life and practise the divinely revealed methods. The ritual is the whole body of Divine teaching.

The sacrifice, as the method whereby man can approach and seek help from Divine power, has been revealed by God; so the god was at the beginning the first priest, and the ritual is the repetition before successive genera- tions of mankind of the original life of the Divine beings. The successive priests in the cultus were each of them representative for the time being of the god ; each wore the dress and insignia, and even bore the name of the god.

In accordance with this principle various reliefs are to be explained, in which the representation is grouped in different zones: in the upper zone the ivine figures appear in their own proper circle of circumstances ; in the lower zone the Divine figures appear as brought into relations with mankind, their worshippers, and, ¢.g., as teaching men the method of sacrifice and offering. One of the best examples has been published by an old traveller, Wagener, in his Jnscr. rec.

en Asie Mineure, pl. i. It is still in existence, and will be republished in the proper chapter of the Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, iii. According to our view, then, the Anatolian religious ritual was a representation or repetition of the stages and actions of the Divine life. The important stages in human life were embraced therein ; and human individuals made their lives right and holy by performing their actions after the Divine plan. This is a large subject.

It is as wide as the life of the ancient Anatolian races, and in its full breadth it would have to include the progress of history and the march of conquerors and of immi- gration, for all those events atiected and modified ritual. Here we touch on a few details only.

Fortunately, circumstances favoured the preserva- tion, throughout the dominance of paganism, of an important part of the primitive ritual under the form of Mysteria in many of its original seats, not merely in Anatolia, but mi in Attica, Samothrace, etc. The primitive forms were not, indeed, kept ure, but were adulterated by many additions; ut still they remained ; and if we had a complete knowledge of the Mysteria, we could go far to recover the primitive forms.

It is necessary here to treat together the Anatolian and the Greek Mysteries, anticipating part B. (2) The Mysteries. —The ancient ritual of the Greek or Pelasgian tribes was overlaid but not de- stroyed by later religious forms of more ‘ Hellenic’ character. In mythology this is expressed by tales of the conquest of the old deities by younger gods, Kronos or Saturn by Zeus or Jupiter, Marsyas b Apollo, etc. In such cases the old religion, thoug conquered, is not extirpated, but only submerged.

It takes a long time, and much education, to eradicate a religion from the popular heart: the hearts of the educated and privileged classes are more easily changed. When the new religion stands on a distinctly higher platform than the old, or is of an uncompromising nature, the ancient beliefs persist in some such form as magic and witchcraft and rites proscribed as unhallowed and evil, and the older gods are stigmatized as devils: see B, §$ I, V; C, § III (5).

But in this case the new religion was not un- compromising, but singularly accommodating in type. Its spirit was Pe theistic and eclectic in the highest degree. It had little objection to a pair or a score or a hundred of additional gods, old or new. Where laws existed in the Greek cities forbidding the introduction of ‘new gods,’ the intention was.

rather political than religious: the dread was lest anything should be introduced that would disturb the delicate equilibrium of Hellenic city-constitution, and especially anything that would prove self-assertive or bigoted, and would tend to subvert the established city religion, which formed an essential element of the city- constitution, and was to a great extent political in character: see B, § IV (14).

Accordingly, the old forms persisted in the form of Mysteries, sanctioned by the State as ancient and holy, yet distinctly regarded as a survival not quite in keeping with the true Hellenic religion. The old gods were still considered and reverenced as gods, admitted as members of the Hellenic Pantheon; and though Zeus was nominally the supreme god, yet in some ways the old gods whom he had dethroned were esteemed more holy and more efficacious than he.

The name Mysteria, which was given to the ancient rites, was indicative of an element of secrecy, and a certain uncanny char- ‘acter, as of ideas which were not to be itted as part of ordinary life. _ far beyond the bounds of Phrygia. RELIGION OF GREECE What, then, were the Mysteries? In what lay their essential character?

Before trying to answer this question we must point out that, though there is in the general view a distinct separation be- tween Mysteries and the cults of the properly Hellenic gods, yet in practice and in detail they pass into one another, so that it is impossible in some cases to say what category certain rites fall under.

But there is a general type characterizing all the cults called Mysteries; and, as we shall see, the _ great Mysteries were in Roman times developed s0 as to be even more strikingly similar to one another.

The Mysteries of the Anatolian religion may be conveniently summed up under the name Phrygian Mysteries, as they are commonly called by the ancient writers ; but they were celebrated The name Mysteria was, doubtless, given to them in Asia Minor rather from their analogy to the Mysteria | of Greece proper; and not because they were con- _ sidered there so mystic and separate from ordinary religion as they were in Greece proper.

, cities of Asia Minor, however, the Greek or | Hellenic views of religion became steadily more In the | effective; and as those views grew stronger, the native religion was more and more felt to be of the nature of Mysteria. (3) Nature of the Mysteries.

—In the Anatolian | religion, either originally or at some stage in its history (whether through contact with some other _ race or through some other educational influence), | ‘the idea of the recurring death and new birth of the natural world —regarded, of course, as the annual death and rebirth of the Divine life—was combined with the fact of the sequence of genera- tions in human life. The same sequence must | exist in the Divine nature, for the Divine nature in all stages of its history.

and the Divine child correspond to the _ The drama of this Divine life was set before the _ worshippers in the Mysteries, is the counterpart and pees of the human he Divine parents uman, But again in the Divine life, as we see it in the, annual life of nature, the father is the son, the, mother a eg as the daughter: it is never possible to draw any definite line of division be- tween them: the Divine child replaces the parent, different and yet the same.

If that is the case with the Divine, the same must be the case in human life. The stream of human life goes on | continuously, changing yet permanent ; and death _ is only a moment in the succession. _ entire religion [see a q il i] i Rt Here the idea of immortality and a life of man wider than the _ limits of the material world is touched. Obviously, an important aspect of religion is here introduced.

Human life is regarded as permanent and everlasting, like the Divine life of nature ; and the religion of the grave is the foundation of the is § VIII (5)]. That man when he dies becomes a god, was considered already in the 4th cent. B.C. to be part of the teaching conveyed in the Mysteries, as is shown in the curious metrical inscriptions engraved on plates of gold which have been found in graves of South Italy and Crete, _ and which belong to that and the following cen- turies.

There the deification is considered to be the result of initiation; but in the primitive re- ligion, when all men were religious and the Mys- teries were the religion of the whole people and not restricted to sone chosen myst@, the dead all went back to the god from whom they came. In @ very ingenious paper, S.

Reinach has discovered the mystic formula uttered by the initiated—‘a kid I bare fallen into the milk,’ which conveyed in symbolic terms the same meaning as the words which the goddess of the world of death seems to have addressed to the initiated dead who came before her—‘ thou hast become a god instead of RELIGION OF GREECE 125 a@ man,’ or ‘thou shalt be a god instead of a mortal.

’ * It is certain that the pagan apologists, defend- ing the established religion and attacking the Christian, found this philosophic meaning in the ritual of the a pecan in which that early re- ligion still lived on. That this meaning was implicit in the ritual from the beginning seems fairly certain. That it was understood by some persons is probable, and that some development of the ritual was made at some time or times to give more emphasis to the meaning is also probable.

Not merely people in general, but also some of the most educated among the Greeks, believed in the salutary effect of the Eleusinian Mysteries; and this salutary effect is expressly connected with the future world.t Advantages in the world of death (or of life) are said to be gained by those who are initiated ; and those advantages are not the result of the mere ritual observance.

The initiated are said to grow better; and salvation in the future life is said by Isocrates to be gained both by the initiated and by all who live a pious and just life (Symm. xii. 266). But this effect of the Mysteries was not attained or helped by any formal instruction. It was dependent entirely on the intense interest and eager contemplation of the initiated, and the strong impression produced on their minds.

The ceremonies at Eleusis took place at night, after a considerable period of preparation and purification : the purification consisted otal in ritualistic acts, but not entirely so, for probably some stress was laid on the condition that the initiated must be pure in heart and not conscious of having com- mitted any crime: they were, certainly, Tet to judge for themselves of their own moral purity, and the best ancient pagan conception of purity was consistent with habitual disregard of some of the elementary moral rules of the Christian and of the Hebrew religion.

But the principle of moral ney was admitted, even though only in a very efective and poor form; and that was a great thing, at least in comparison with the general character of ancient paganism.

After this preparation, and when in a state of high expectancy, the initiated were admitted to see the drama of the Divine life: the words spoken in the drama were few, and concerned only with the action: the mystic objects were simple in character: the most holy and crowning act at Eleusis was the ear of corn mowed down silently.

But there was a belief ready in the minds of the spectators that certain truths were enigmatically expressed in the action, though, as the ancient writers say, a philosophic training and a reverent religious frame of mind were required to compre- hend them. The details of the Mystic drama set before the worshippers cannot here be described. A very * That the kid is here the mystic form of Dionysos, as the God-Son in the Divine nature, is generally recognized: see 8. Reinach, Rev. Arch., Sept.

1901, p. 205 (though we cannot go with him beyond what we have adopted from him in the text above). The Phrygian Zeus Galaktinos, or Galaktios, may be brought into comparison (Histor. Geogr. As. Min. p. 235, and A. Korte, Betlage zw Vorlesungsverzeichniss, Greifswald, 1902, p. 30): he is the god of the pastoral people of the great plains and the grassy hills of Phrygia. 5 : + Plato, Pheedr. p. 250, inomis, p. 986; Isocr. Paneg. vi. p. 59, § 28 ; Pindar, fr. 96 (H.) ; Soph. fr. 719\(Dind.)

; Crinagoras in Anthol. ii. 332 (Jac.); Diodorus Sic. Hist. v. 49; Cicero, de Legg. ii. 14; Andocides, de Myst. § 31; Sopater, Dier. Zetem. p. 121 in Walz, Rhet, Grec.; Theon. Smyrn. Mathem. i. p. 18 (Bull); Strabo, p. 467f.; Philostr. Vit. Apoll. i. 15, 17; Herod. viii. 65 ; and many other passages (see Lobeck, Aglaoph. i. p. 67ff., etc. ; Lenormant in Contemp. Review, Sept. 1880, p. 429ff., and in Daremberg-Saglio’s Dict. Antig. if. p. 579 ff. etc.) eee Aristotle, quoted by Synesius, Orat. p.

48, ed. Petau; Galen, de Us. Part. vii. 14 (ed. Kuhn); Plut. Defect. Orac. 22, ete, ; see preceding note. 26 RELIGION OF GREECE 1 brief description is given, in vol. iii. p. 467, of the ceremonial of the Eleusinian Mysteries ; and in the last few paragraphs we have had those Mysteries chiefly in mind. (4) The character of the Phrygian and the Greek Mysteries.

—Probably there was not a wide differ- ence even in the beginning, and still less ia later times, between the Eleusinian and the Phrygian Mysteries as regards actual ritual: many cere- monies were probably common to both, and in both there was much that was disgusting and repulsive.

Yet the Phrygian Mysteries are described as abomin- able and immoral by the older Greek writers, even by those who praise and admire the Eleusinian : the former were believed to ruin and degrade a Greek city, but the latter to save and ennoble it. The difference lay not simply in the fact that some repulsive ceremonies are quoted by the Christians as peculiar to the Phrygian Mysteries ; for much of what remains in Clemens’ description of the Eleusinian is equally detestable.

The real superi- ority of the Eleusinian over the Phrygian Mysteries lay, first, in a certain difference of spirit, as the Greek sense of order and measure and art un- doubtedly gave a harmony and artistic character to their version of the Oriental forms; and, secondly, in the fact that, as known in Greece proper, the Phrygian Mysteries were introduced by slaves and foreigners, and participated in by the superstitious and the ignorant: they were celebrated for money by strolling f pee fos and any one who paid a fee was initiated without preparation except some ritual acts: there was no solemnity in the sur- roundings, and no dignity in the ceremonial, but all was vulgar and sordid.

A very few persons, also, might observe that the slight requirement of moral purity made at Eleusis had become a mere phrase in those street celebrations, and that ad- vantages in the future world were promised in return for mere participation in those vulgar rites. But that observation was probably beyond the ordinary range of even the educated Greeks.

As regards the many disgusting details against which the Christian writers direct their polemic, the admirers of the Mysteries might defend them by arguing* that religion places us face to face with the actual facts of life, and that, when the mind is exalted and ennobled by intense religious feeling, it is able to contemplate with pure insight phenomena of nature and life in which the vulgar mind sees nothing but grossness.

They would point out that the language of religion may be and ought to be plainer and more direct than the language of common life. These arguments are weighty ; but one has only to read the undeniable accounts given by Clemens, Arnobius, ete., to see how insufficient they are to palliate the ugliness of the ritual. In primitive thought the direct and simple ex- pression of the facts of life would need no apology and no explanation.

The feature of the Mysteries that needs and is incapable of apology is that, as known to us in later time, they are not simple and direct : they are elaborate and artificial products of diseased religion. They stand before us as the culmination of a long development; and the de- velopment has been a depravation, not an eleva- tion, of a ritual which had at first been naive and direct in its simple rudeness. (5) The growth of ritual.—The process of growth in ritual went on in two ways.

(a) In the meeting of two different races their respective religions affected one another. Doubt- less, the one generally swamped and submerged the other; but the apparent victor was not unaffected in the process. An indubitable example is seen * The following sentences are slightly modified from the writer's article ‘ Mysteries’ in the Hncyclopadia Britannica), RELIGION OF GREECE in the Lydian Katakekaumene, otherwise called Meonia.

Here an old Meonian or Lydian popula- tion was mixed with a body of colonists introduced by the Persian kings five centuries B.c.; and in the Roman inscriptions six or seven hundred years later the goddess is called Artemis Anaitis, the first name being her ordinary title in Lydian cities, and the second being Persian.

In other Lydian cities, where the same mixture of population took place, the goddess is called Artemis Persike, in which the same religious mixture is even more clearly expressed. In cultus, obscure as that sub- ject always is, it is certain that the fire-worship and Magian priests of the Persians were thus in- troduced into those Lydian cities.* (6) There was often a conscious and deliberate elaboration of forms and ritual by the priesthood.

This enlargement of the ceremonial was the result of an attempt to adapt the established religion to popular taste, and was accomplished chiefly by in- troducing rites that had proved fashionable. The Mysteries celebrated at different religious centres competed with one another in attractiveness, for there was much to gain from a great concourse of worshippers in any city.

Hence all of them adapted to their own purposes elements which seemed to be effective in others; and thus a marked similarity of character between the rites of Eleusis, Samothrace, and Anatolia came to exist. Sometimes, at least, new priests were added along with the new ceremonies.

These ceremonies were often derived from or influenced by the growth of mythology, and they seem (so far as the scanty evidence justifies an opinion) to have generally tended to obscure any healthy religious idea that lay in the ritual, and to have increased the ugly and repulsive element. The older forms of religion are the simpler, but it is not probable that any form was ever abso- lutely simple.

There is a certain tendency in human nature to mingle forms, and to see the Divine idea under several aspects. Just as in early literary expression metaphors are often mixed, so in primitive thought different envisage- ments of the Divine power arise simultaneously, and these pass into one another without the in- consistency being felt.

Still, it is beyond question that, when we get any of these religious ideas at an early stage, it has a simpler form and embodies a single process, though the accompanying religious myth may express the process in a way that in- volves some inconsistency in details. This ancient form is markedly and unmistakably different from the elaborate and artificial ritual of later times.

Especially, the elaborate dramas of the later Mysteries, as played before the initiated in the Roman Imperial period, are obviously composed by @ process of syncretism out of various inhar- monious and inconsistent cults. In the story enacted in the Eleusinian Mysteries, as described by Clemens Alexandrinus, there are traces so obviously Phrygian, that many modern scholars have regarded his whole description as applying to the Phrygian Mysteries alone.

But Clemens distinctly implies that he is describing the Eleu- sinian Mesterin and he illustrates his description and his invective by ques other details, saying that these are taken from the Phrygian Mysteries. The explanation of these facts, undoubtedly, must be that the later Eleusinian Mysteries had been influenced by the Phrygian Mysteries.

That details from various sources were united in those later Mysteries is shown by their composite character; there is not merely the fundamental element, the story of the Divine father and mother * Pausanias, v. 27. 6, viI.6. 6; the name Artemis Persike is found often on coins of Hierocesarea in Lydia. See also Head, Catalogue of Coins, Brit. Mus. : Lydia, pp.

lviii-lxvi and 111f£ RELIGION OF GREECE RELIGION OF GREECE 127 and the birth of the child: there are several such stories interlocked in one another: the god-bull, the ae the god-serpent, appear in different details, and pass into each other in kaleidoscopic fashion. There is here an original germ and a series of successive additions due to the reception of new religious forms and ideas, which were in- corporated in the growing ceremonial. (6) Purification.

—This subject has been alluded to in § III (6), where the later rules of ceremonial purity are mentioned. But there can be no doubt that certain practices of purification were prescribed in the original Anatolian ritual. The Greek puri- ficatory rules for homicides were identical with the Lydian ;* and, as the Lydian cannot be supposed to be derived from the Greek, we must here see an example of the influence which throughout ancient times was exerted by Anatolian religion on Greek.

In these and in the preparation for the Mysteries the swine was the cleansing animal. The ceremonial of purification after homicide cairies the inquirer back to a very primitive stage. As the ritual was common to Greece and Lydia (and doubtless Phrygia also, as is probable though unattested), we may presume that the early Greek ideas connected with it are true of Anatolia also.

Now, one of the rites of the Dionysiac festival Anthesteria was called ‘the Cans’ (Xdées), because every celebrant drank out of a separate can ; and the myth explained that Demophon, son of Theseus, instituted the custom when Orestes came to Athens unpurified: wishing to receive him hos- pitably, yet not to let an impure person drink out of the same cup as the pure worshippers, the king ordered that every person should drink from his own can separately, and proposed a prize to the best drinker.

Here the rite of competition and prize-giving to an individual victor is Hellenic, and belongs to the later development (B, § III). But other elements in the ceremony point to an early date ; the chief rite was the marriage of the representative woman or queen among the people (the wife of the Archon Basileus) to the god; and the idea was also associated with this day that it was accursed, for the dead arose on it and must be propitiated.

Here again the idea of connecting evil omen and a curse with the dead is Hellenic and late (see B, § V); but the association of the rising from the dead with the Divine marriage is rimitive and original. Similarly, we may regard e horror against a homicide partaking of the common cup as a thoroughly primitive idea; he must be purified before taking part in that sacred ceremony of civilized man, the drinking of the common cup.

But the application of this to the rite of ‘the Cans’ is late, and probably founded on a misconception. In the marriage of the risen god and the queen, as an annual rite to ensure wealth and increase to the land (which at that season, 12th February, was being prepared for the coming year’s crop and harvest), the common cup was ken of only by the bridal pair [see § VIII (1)]; and the people in general rejoice separately as individual spectators of the holy rite.

The distinction between the unity and close re- lationship implied by the ritualistic drinking from the common cup and the separateness implied by drinking from separate cups is a noteworthy feature ; and explicit emphasis was probably placed on it in the ceremony; but the details are unknown.

Similarly, in the Christian Sacrament the Saviour laid emphasis on the breaking and distribution from one loaf, in contrast to the use in ordinary Oriental meals of a loaf for each guest (see 1 Co 10"), See further, § VIII (1) and (6). The most important fact for us in purification fe that it implies some germs of a conception of * Herod. i. 31. sin which has to be atoned for before the wor- shipper may approach the Divine power.

Break- ing an oath and refusal to restore money entrusted to one’s care entail impurity; and the Divine anger punishes any owe who approaches the sanc- tuary without expiating such a crime.

It is, however, true that impurity equally results from offence against purely ceremonial rules, and that the conception of sin and expiation which is re- vealed in the evidence on this subject is of a very humble kind ; but there was at least a germ cap- able of higher development, though there is little or no sign that any development ever took place, except perhaps to some small extent through the contact with and resistance to Christianity. Guilt and impurity entailed punishment.

The punishment seems to have been inflicted in some cases independently of any disrespect to the Deity due to entering the holy place in a state of impurity. The sin results directly, and without the sinner entering the sanctuary, in punishment at the hand of the god or goddess, who therefore must some- times have been conceived as on the watch to punish sin. Here again there is the germ of higher moral conceptions.

* But the utilitarian element which is so clear in many features of the primitive Anatolian religion can be distinctly traced also in the rules of puri- fication. The Goddess-Mother was the teacher and guide of her people from their birth till she received them back to her in death. The ablutions which she required from them were an excellent sanitary precaution ; and if the whole system of purificatory rules were known to us, this side would probably be much more obvious and incontestable.

(7) Confession. —A remarkable and important fact in connexion with impurity and sin was that the process of expiation seems to have involved (whether obligatorily or voluntarily, we cannot be sure; but probably obligatorily) a public con- fession. Sense of guilt was brought home to the individual by some punishment, generally disease (fever, in which the unseen Divine fire consumes the strength and the life, was recognized as the most characteristic expression} of Divine wrath).

Thereupon the sinner confessed, acknowledged the power, and appeased the anger of the god or goddess, and was cured and forgiven. Finally, as a warning to others, the confession, the punish- ment, and the absolution were engraved often ona stele and deposited in the sanctuary.t See also below, C, § III (4). (8) Approaching the Deity.

— Apart from pre- scribed ritual, the worshipper came voluntarily to the god or goddess for three purposes: (a) to pray for good for himself or his family; this was called evx7 in Greek, and the prayer was necessarily accompanied by giving, or by a pro- inise to give, something in return to the Deity, if the desire was granted: thus edx7 (in Latin, votum) involved both prayer and sacrifice or vow: it was a sort of bargain with the Divine power; (0) to imprecate evil on one’s enemies (dpd, katdpa, érapd): this was really a variety of the former, for apd strictly means ‘prayer’; but in the development of Greek religion it was commonly and almost invariably addressed to the powers of the old régime, who had become mysterious, occult, and uncanny, and passed more and more into the sphere of magic.

The vow in this case fell into disuse, for the occult powers were not gratified b, public gifts, but by the mere recognition of their * See papers on ‘ The Early Church and the Pagan Ritual’ in the Eapository Times, 1898-99 (vol. x.), especially p. 108 f. + This is shown most clearly in the curses engraved on leaden tablets, in which the wrath of the Deity is invoked against any enemy or false friend; it is usually the Divine fire which is invoked to destroy the fever-struck wretch.

t On this subject see op. cit, in footnote above. 12& RELIGION OF GREECE efficaciousness: the mere approaching them in the proper ritual and method enabled the worshipper to call them into action on his side, and he could as it were compel them to act by addressing them by the proper formule (which thus acquired a magic character); but some kind of sacrifice was an invariable part of the ritual. (c) To invoke the Deity as a witness of what they were about to say or had said (8pxos).

This, again, was strictly a variety of the previous class, for the horkos was simply an imprecation of evil on oneself in case one were speaking falsely. The person swears by the Deity whom he invokes as a witness, and who is his horkos; and, as the form was very ancient, the object sworn by might be an animal or a stone, as the primitive embodiment or home of Divine power: such was the old Cretan oath associated with the name of Rhadamanthus (though the Scholiast on Aristoph. Av.

520 speaks as if Rhada- manthus were the inventor of such milder forms of oath, as by the dog, the goose, the ram, etc.) : such also was the sacred Latin oath, per Jovem lapidem. An oath, as being really a prayer to the Deity, was properly accompanied by a sacri- fice. In all such cases the prayer or oath is binding on the descendants or representatives of him who has invoked the Deity, and the consequences may fall on them even generations later.

It was not uncommon to bring the children to the place where the oath was taken, and thus make them explicitly and publicly parties to the act and sharers in its consequences. These voluntary and occasional acts, which per- sisted alongside of the stated ritual, were older than, and gave rise to, ritual. The asking of hel from the god in difficulties or troubles was as old as the idea of a god; for in the Anatolian belief the god was the helper and teacher.

The way in which he was eflicaciously approached naturally came gradually to be stereotyped as ritual, and was regarded as revealed by the god, who was in this way his own first priest, and teacher of his own rites. (9) Priests.—The original idea which gave rise to the Anatolian priesthood has become clear in the preceding investigation. The priest is the bearer of the Divine knowledge; he can teach men how to approach and propitiate the Divine power.

This knowledge was originally taught by the Divine Being personally to men; in other words, the god is the first priest, performing as an ex- ample to his successors the due ceremonies.

The idea of a Divine revelation, through which man becomes aware of the nature and will of God, is here present in a very crude and rude form; and it is hardly possible to distinguish how far this rudeness is the real primitive simplicity of a very early stage, when thought is hardly separated from the sensuous accompaniments through which it is ide ies to men, and how far it may be im- parted by degeneration, i.e.

by the stereotyping of primitive sensuous forms, and the loss of the germ of thought implicated in those forms. While the priest in this ancient stage of religion possesses the knowledge and imparts it to the worshippers, he is not considered to be necessary in himself.

The worshipper, whether a private individual who approaches the Deity on behalf of himself and his family, or an official or magistrate who acts on behalf of the State or body which he represents, needs no intermediary between himself and the god. Provided he can perform fully and correctly his part in the transaction,+ the Deity is saliaged and must respond. The priest or helper * This second purpose frequently passed into the sphere of wagic: see O, § III (4).

t iuexopixy cpa vis tin téxvn 4 corns: Plato, Huth. 14 E, RELIGION OF GREECE is needed only to keep the wormiene right, ta guard him against errors, and to help him ta understand the way in which the Deity replieq or conveys information; in other words, the helpiig priest merely acts as instructor, while the wor- shipper plays the part of priest-officiator, and per- forms the series of acts which the god himself originally did as an example to mankind who come after him.

In this stage there is not, in the strict sense, any priest or any sacerdotal order or caste, though naturally the Divine knowledge would tend to be handed down from father to son. Priests in the strictest sense begin only when a person per- manently assumes the place of the god’s represen- tative, and plays the part of the god regularly in the ritual as it was rehearsed at the proper intervals before a body of worshippers.

The priest in this fuller sense was connected with and helped the growth of an anthropomorphic conception of the Deity. He was the representative on earth of the god as the priestess was of the goddess; and the two played their parts year after year in the Divine drama, which constituted the most im- portant part of the growing body of ritual. The priest who represented the god wore his dress, * and in some cases, probably in most, assumed his name.

In Pessinus, for example, the chief priest was called Atis, as is shown by inscriptions of the 2nd cent. B.c.; and undoubtedly this was smply the name of the god variously spelt Attis or Atys or Ates, and was assumed as an official title, implying that the office was lepdévupos, i.e. the bearer lost his individual name and assumed a hieratic name when he entered on office.

In Asia Minor the succession to the priesthood was, in all probability, hereditary (according to some principle of inheritance not as yet deter- mined) in early times. Where the Greek element entered sufficiently strongly, this principle was usually altered ; some more democratic principle of succession was substituted ; and sometimes life- tenure was changed to tenure for a period of four years, or more frequently of one year, or occasion- ally even of a shorter period.

In some of the more thoroughly Greek cities of the coast, such as Erythre, the priesthoods of the numberless deities were put up to auction by the State, and sold to the highest bidder. But wherever an early or a more purely Anatolian and less Hellenized con- dition can be traced, the great priesthoods seem to be for life, and to be connected with certain families. The number of priests, in this fuller sense, tended to increase from various causes, and to become a sacerdotal order.

The possession of knowledge of the Divine law was a powerful engine, for the body of ritual was steadily growing in volume, and any mistake in it would have nullified its effect. Attention was entirely con- centrated on details, and the spirit seems to have been wholly lost. But the knowledge of the multi- tudinous details required study and teaching ; and this caused the formation of a priestly caste or order, in which the tradition was handed down.

The power of that order rested on the inaccessi- bility and difficulty of their lore, and on the ignor- ance of the worshippers; and hence there was every temptation to keep up that ignorance, to multiply details of cultus and make the knowledge of it harder, and to create a bar of separation be- tween the priestly order and the people. But no details are known, though the general principle may be confidently assumed.

Moreover, as the great religious centres or Hiera grew into importance (see § IV (4), above), they required a permanent staff of priests and ministers, * See Cities and Bish. of Phrygia, i. pp. 56, 108, 110. RELIGION OF GREECE RELIGION OF GREECE 129 in order that the increasing number of persons who frequented them might always find help and counsel. In turn the increase of the permanent staff at the great Hiera tended to foster the growth of the established ritual.

Instead of merely aiding the individual worshipper to perform one single act of the Divine action which suited his special circumstances at the moment, the priests of each Hieron on stated occasions set the whole Divine drama before the eyes of bodies of worshippers.

While this more elaborate ceremonial had its justification in producing a certain good effect on the spectators, and in imparting ideas to them, yet there was the strongest temptation for the per- manent “cae to refrain from emphasizing this aspect of the ceremonial, and to elaborate the ate side in the way described above.

In the simpler Anatolian system of society this strengthened their power (§ VIII (7), below) ; and in the developed Hellenic system it added to the wealth and influence of the Hieron by attracting immense crowds to the great festivals accom- panying the annual (or in rare. cases biennial) ceremonies. Thus there was, necessarily, a large establish- ment maintained at the principal religious centres : see § IV (4).

Besides the great priesthoods there were required large numbers of inferior priests, ministri and ministre, to perform the details of the cultus (see § II, above) and prophecy and give attention to the worshippers and the offerings ; also hierodouloi, of whom there were many thou- sands at the greatest Hiera.

The hierodouloi had become serfs or slaves attached to the Hieron in various ways, and were protected and governed by the theocratic administration of the Hieron: on the female hierodouloi, see § VIII (2), below. Finally, there was « class of persons called hierot: see next § (10). It is clearly established by numerous cases, that, in later times at least, there was a college of priests in every religious centre in Anatolia.

This college was a hierarchy, with distinct gradation of authority andallotted duties. At Pessinusa priest is described as occupying the fifth or tenth place in order of rank; and in other cases where the evidence shows only that there was a chief and various subordi- nate priests, we may probably assume from the analogy of Pessinus that strict gradation extended throu oh the college.

Every religious act was probably the work of the priests as a body (though the chief priest would be the leader) ; and this fur- nishes some argument in favour of the Bezan read- ing lepeis in Ac 14'8, where Prof. Blass condemns that reading on the incorrect ground that there was only one priest for each temple. (10) Hierot.

—This class of persons, mentioned at Ephesus and many other religious centres, and evidently very numerous, have been much dis- cussed, with varying results, by many modern writers. Their status is very obscure. The opinion advocated in the writer’s Cities and ishoprics of Phrygia, i. 147£., is that the hieroi are merely a modification of the non-Hellenic in- stitution of the Aierodoulot under the influence of Hellenic institutions and spirit.

The hierodouloi were serfs, but not slaves; whereas the Greek law knew only the grand distinction between freemen and slaves. doulot to the Hieron gave a power to the latter which was alien to the Hellenic spirit ; and the old hierodoulor seem to have been transformed in the Hellenized cities into an inferior order of the city population, distinct alike from citizens and from resident strangers and from freedmen.

The rela- tion of the hieroi to the Hieron, and their ser- vice at the Hieron, seem to have been more a voluntary matter; and violation of it was left