Objects
As a preliminary, we may ask what | traces of the worship of inanimate things can be | observed in Asia Minor or Greece, and what isthe | idea involved in this worship? Many examples are known of such things being regarded with deep religious veneration. (1) Stones, Pillars, Columns, ete.—A rude and shapeless stone, which had fallen from heaven | (Scorers), doubtless a meteorite, existed originally | at Pessinus, and was brought to Rome about B.c.
| 204; it is a type of many other similar stones at Orchomenos, Thespie, Synnada, Adada, ete. | Many of these stones had some approximate regu- | larity of shape, sometimes halos: accidental, in other cases distinctly due to human workmanship. | Such were the conical or roughly pyrsciaet stones | in the temples at Paphos (of Aphrodite), Perga — (Artemis), Delphi (Apollo), ete.
: obelisks, columns, and stones of a distinctly tetragonal shape are indicated in many other cases: above all other gods | in Greece such stones or pillars were connected with Hermes, and called Hermaia or Hermai.* | It admits of no doubt that many sacred stones | had primarily a purpose in family life or social or } political organization.
Boundary stones or termini were erected by mutual agreement between dis- — | putants, and were consecrated by every religious sanction known at the time, by ceremonial, and j by a curse on the violator or remover; and the /} belief indubitably was that the ceremonies of erec- tion and consecration had caused Divine power | and life to take up its abode in the stone: this 4 in recognition | Divine power demanded worshi and propitiation, and was able and ready to punish | neglect or violation.
The terminus was valueless | * psOopiov eryodépesves vd ‘Epuaiey (Polysnus, Strat. vi. 24); 8 Epustents 3 Mecenview sod jrpmeicpelig f ely spo: (Pau vill. 34. 6), These Hermaia were columns, or heaps of stones, — | or single stones. A useful collection of ancient authorities . | will be found in Mr. M. W. de Visser’s treatise, de Gracorum | dtis non referentibus humanam speciem, Leyden, 1900.
RELIGION OF GREECE unless it was respected and inviolate: human need was urgent that it should be respected, but mere human power was unable to make it so: accord- ingly, the Divine power was invoked to supply the deficiency, and by proper rites was brought down and caused to dwell in the pillar or the stone. One of the ceremonies proper to the cult of such sacred stones was the pouring of oil on them; and in general a similar ceremonial to that described in § II was practised.
Similarly, in a house any peculiarly important bearing member, a central pillar or roof-tree, was placed under Divine protec- tion by invoking the Divine power to reside in it. In all cases there is but one method and one Pole. The more urgent man’s need is, and jhe more important for his life and well-being any stone or erection is, the more does it become necessary to make the Divine power take up its abode in the stone.
In other words, the stone becomes a Beth-el, or ‘House of God’; the pillar embodies the god Hermes. The subject in its bearing on early Greek religion has been admirably treated by Mr. A. J. Evans in an elaborate paper on ‘Mycenzxan Tree and Pillar Cult’ (Journ. of Hell. Stud. 1901, pp. 99-203), which will henceforth be regarded as fundamental in this department, though it will doubtless receive development and improvement and correction in details from both the author and others.
The preceding remarks will show why the objection recently raised against Mr. Evans’ theory in Journ. of Hell. Stud. 1901, pp. 268-275, cannot weigh with us: the objection is that many of his examples of ‘sacred pillars’ are obviously structural members, and need not therefore be considered to have any religious purpose: we, however, hold that the structural importance pro- duced the sacred character of the ‘pillar.
’ sacredness of rude purposeless stones was perhaps due to ‘false analogy,’ that fruitful agency in thought, and should be regarded as not primitive, but cases of degradation. Probably no one could doubt that the rude meteoric stone was worshipped because it had fallen from heaven, and was obviously and un- mistakably a mark and sign and example of Divine activity and power.
Similarly, it seems beyond doubt that the boundary stone, or the supporting member of the family home and roof, is made into a dwelling-place of Divine power, in order that human needs may be satisfied by Divine aid. The same principle of interpretation must be applied in many other cases where the stone was neither in itself an object useful to man, nor marked by its natural character and origin as Divine.
It was often urgently necessary to pro- tect a locality for the common use of men, and this was done in a similar way by setting up one or more sacred stones in it; but in such cases the sacred stone was an addition, and not an integral part of the structure or equipment. In a town it was urgently required that the street, the common property and a necessary con- venience for all, should be inviolate and properly kept and respected by the dwellers or passers-by.
The common need was guaranteed by the sacred Hermai or pillars, which were made the residence ‘of Divine power by charming it into them through the proper rites; and misdemeanour in the street or encroachment on it was thus constituted a dis- respect of the divinity, and punished by him.
a more developed state of ony roads lead- ing from city to city were probably put under Divine protection in a similar way ; and the sacred stones were commonly made useful to human re- dees eae by having distances engraved on them, us becoming milestones. But such stones Curtius, Gesch. des griech. Wegebaus. he RELIGION OF GREECE generally belonged to a more advanced stage of thought, when men refused to consider a stone the abode of Divine power.
On the Roman Imperial roads they were dedicated to the Emperor, and thus placed under the guardianship of the Imperial god incarnate in human form on the earth. The god and the stone are in this stage separated in thought, but the stone remains sacred in a new way as the property of the god.
A meeting of three roads or streets, as an im- portant point, was placed under the guardianship of the Divine ele When the anthropomorphic tendency had become strong, the Divine guardian of the triple crossing was represented as the goddess (under the name Hekate in Greece) with three faces, looking to the three ways (just as in Italy the god protecting the archway and the door was represented with two faces looking in the two directions).
But before the anthropo- morphic idea had gained full strength, there was doubtless some other way of symbolizing the Divine guardianship of the meeting of the ways; and the suggestion seems obvious that the symbol was the ¢riskeles, three human legs and feet, diverging from a common centre, and typify- ing the walking of men along the three ways which radiated from the meeting-place (compitum).
Little is known with regard to this form of oleae except in Rome, where the feast of the Compitalia was an important part of the city-religion; but few will doubt that, as streets and roads became important, a cultus corresponding to the Compitalia developed in primitive Anatolia. In the coinage of Anatolia the ¢riskeles is almost entirely con- fined to the cities least affected by Hellenic cul- ture, in Pisidia, Isauria, and early or inner Lycia.
Moreover, the epithets rpixdpavos, rerpaxdpavos, ap- plied to Hekate-Selene, are doubtless to be under- stood as applying to the goddess who guards the trivium or the quadrivium.* It may therefore be reasonably maintained that in many other places, where we know only that in te thought a stone was regarded as sacred and made the object of worship in the Greek world, the fundamental character was the same.
The stone was worshipped as home and symbol and proof of Divine power—a power able and ready to Ae ond to human needs. See also below, (2), and § IV (1). As Greek thought developed in the direction of anthropomorphism and polytheism, there arose an opinion that the old sacred stone was either a representation and image of a god, the rudest be- inning of a statue, or an altar dedicated to the god.
uch views seem not to be original and genuine religious conceptions, but merely philosophic in- terpretations by which more developed thought tried to bring primitive religious facts into con- formity with itself.
Thus the pillars, mentioned above, in streets and open places, which were originally called agyiai or agyieis, were regarded as altars or representations of a Deity, sometimes Helios, sometimes Dionysos, but most commonly Apollo; and Agyiews was then usually regarded as an epithet of Apollo. ‘The Greeks themselves hesitated whether to call the pillars. altars or statues of Apollo, a sure proof that neither de- scription was complete and true.
The pillars or stones in open places and gymnasia, by roads, at boundaries, originally and commonly styled Hermai, i.e. embodiments of Hermes, came to be regarded rather as statues of Hermes, and were developed ey in art, as we shall see in the ensuing paragraph. The institution of sacred stones was modified bv another influence, Art was engaged in the service * See Hermes, iv. p. 64; Ramsay, Hist. Com. on Gabotians p. 219.
a= 112 RELIGION OF GREECE of the anthropomorphic tendency in religion, and wrought out ideal expression in human form of the various gods: the types of gods and god- desses were elaborated, and distinguished from one another, in the ruder stage to a considerable extent by symbols and equipments, but in the more de- veloped and perfected stage by the varying artistic expression af the idealized conception of each deity as an individual character.
Alongside of this rapid progress in the artistic presentation of dif- ferent types of Divine character as different per- sonal gods in human form, there was another line of development, through which the sacred pillars (which still continued to be erected in numbers during this more developed period) were made to assume more resemblance to the human form.
The top of the pillar was carved into a bust, and parts of the body were indicated on the sides: such figures were commonly called Hermai, and Greek art developed the type at a later time in various ways, making the ee portraits of real human persons. In all such cases art takes the view that the pillar is a rude statue of some deity or hero, and makes additions or modifications to bring out this character more clearly.
The epithet of meteoric stones, dvomeris, was sometimes transferred to certain very archaic statues, about which the legend grew that the had fallen from heaven: such was the case with the rude figure of barely human form in which Artemis of Ephesus was represented (Ac 19%). The nature of those rude old idols will be more fully considered in § III (1) and § V (1). (2) Thrones.
—The ancients mention many stones in Greece which were said to derive their sacred character from having been the seat of deities or heroes (who in these cases may usually be regarded as deities degenerated in popular legend). Such were the Agelastos Petra at Eleusis (or at Athens) on which Demeter sat sorrowing for her lost Kora,* or, as another legend said, where Theseus sat before descending to Hades; the chair of Manto at Thebes, the stone of Telamon at Salamis, etc.
The bed of Acteon at Platza and various other stones may be classed with these. The Omphalos at Delphi is often represented with Apollo sitting on it. In Asia Minor there are examples of rocks cut to the rough form of a seat. The ‘Throne of Pelops’ in Sipylus beside Magnesia (Pausanias, v. 13.
7) is robably to be identified with the rock-cutting, orming a sort of broad seat, or platform with a back, on the highest point of an early rock citadel on the slope of Sipylus, about 4 or 5 miles east of Magnesia. Dr. Reichel has elaborated these facts into a theory of Throne-worship: viz., that the Divine nature, not yet represented in personal haman form, was symbolized by the throne or seat, which was regarded as an indication of its presence. Some of Dr.
Reichel’s examples of Divine thrones rest on his own far-fetched and almost certainly erroneous explanations ;+ in other cases the re- corded story about a Divine or heroic throne may be only a later popular explanation of an older religious fact, no longer understood. But whether that aspect of his theory is only pressed too far and applied to unsuitable cases, or whether it is wholly erroneous, there is, at any rate, another and a true side to his theory.
He is right in his view that before the period of images and image- worship we must admit the existence of an imageless wor- ship in the Aigean lands and Asia Minor generally: a Divine power invisible to man was approached * A similar stone and legend probably existed in Asia Minor ; and a Christian form was given to it later; see Journ. of Hell. Stud. 1882, p. 349. + See A. J. Evans in Journ. of Hell. Stud. 1901, p. 189; Fritze in Rhein. Musewm, 1900, p. 688.
RELIGION OF GREECE and adored ; it was felt in the phenomena of the world, in the growth and life and productivity of nature; its presence and power were symbolized and envisaged to its worshippers in various ways, but the symbols were not considered as images or likenesses of that Divine nature, but rather as its home or residence, or as an effect and exemplifica- tion of its power. The statement of Nicol. Dam. Synag. fr. 19 (B 148), and Stobzeus, Serm. xii. p.
292, that the Phrygians did not swear or exact from another an oath (by any god), probably has some reference to this belief in a Divine nature without images.* On this topic see further, § V (1). Dr. Reichel has erred, as we believe, only in the direction in which he has developed a correct observation.
It was not the seat or throne of the formless and invisible Divine nature that was in the beginning worshipped; for the very idea of a seat already involves the attribution of something like form and personality to the power which needs and uses a seat. The fundamental idea was that of the home and abode, or the origin of Divine power. Out of this springs all the symbolism and all the earlier phenomena of Anatolian religious observances.
The sacred stone or the sacred tree is the home of the Divine nature: the cave among the wild mountains, the simple shrine, are easy developments of the same idea.t (3) Weapons.—Other inanimate objects besides stones were made the object of worship. The Alani, a rude barbarian tribe south-east of the Black Sea, are said to have worshipped a naked sword, which they fixed for the occasion in the ground.
This sae be disregarded as a savage custom which had come in from Central Asia, were it not that one of the reliefs—among the most important, to judge from its size—portrayed on the walls of the adytum before the eyes of the initiated at Boghaz-Keui (Pteria probably), east of the Halys,t represents a gigantic sword stuck in the ground, with only the hilt and a small part of the blade protruding.
The hilt in itself is evi- dently a symbol or representative of Divine power, composed of two pairs of animals, evidently lions, surmounted by a human head wearing the tall pointed hat characteristic of the supreme god. It is therefore not open to doubt that the custom of the Alani in the 4th cent. after Christ was the same as the ancient Anatolian custom. We see clearly that the sword was regarded not as a god in and for itself, but as a symbol of a vague per- vading Divine power.
That power resides mainly in the hilt, not in the blade, and is moulded not altogether unlike the human form, and yet differ- ing essentially from it, full of the terror and strength of savage nature embodied in the four lions, but human-headed. If some tribes worshipped the sword, others re- garded the batile-aze as sacred.
The difference obviously arises from difference of warlike custom: the omer to which the tribe trusted especially in battle was esteemed by it the home of the Divine strength by which they conquered and hoped to conquer. In Caria and in Crete the axe appears as a Divine symbol. We may confident assume that it was made the object of a sponta cult, like the Sword-god among the Alani.
Though this is not exactly proved definitely by the evidence, yet the importance of the Carian name Labrys (bipennis, ‘battle-axe’) in Carian religion leaves little doubt on the point: Labranda was one of the chief centres of the worship of the Carian god, who was actually called Labrawndos,§ and one of * The Pontic oath by Men Pharnakes (Strabo, p. 557) is later (cf. p. 128) ; but see Roscher, Selene, p. 122. t On the shrine see § V (3); on the sacred cave, § IV (2).
{ See Perrot, Histoire deV Art dans PAntiqusté, iv. pp. a“ 647; Chantre, Voyage en Cappadoce, gives the latest accow' § Helleniand: nb Gove Labrateutons = i’ RELIGION OF GREECE RELIGION OF GREECE 113 the Kouretes in Carian mythology was Labrandos.* But, even more unmistakably than the sword, the axe was a symbol of a Divine power felt as lying behind it and expressing itself through it, and not as a power or a terror in itself.
The god carrying the battle-axe on his shoulder is one of the most familiar and widely diffused symbols in east Lydian and west Phrygian coinage. ft We notice that the worship of the axe belongs to the Carians, a people who beyond doubt were an immigrant race; and we shall see among them some examples of divergence from the Anatolian type of religion (see § VI(2)).
The worship of the axe must regarded as also a divergence from that type; and, in accordance with the principle stated at the beginning of the article, this diver- ence is to be attributed to the character of the arian race. In the same way the worship of the sword, though traceable in the religion of the central plateau in the earliest period known to us, is probably a development out of the original Anatolian type due to pressure from the east and north-east.
The east Kemtolinn type of cultus is of a much more bellicose type than the central Anatolian (see § IX (2)), and the reason indubit- ably lies in the rough and warlike character of the tribes on that side, such as the Kardouchoi, modern Kurds, ete. (4) Wooden posts.—A rude wooden post was sometimes worshipped in a way similar to the more common sacred stone.
The Divinity at Samos was originally symbolized by a wooden plank ; and in the more anthropomorphic develop- ment, when the Divinity had come to be thought of as the goddess Hera, this plank was called the earliest statue of her. Many other similar stumps of wood experienced the same development in an- thropomorphic thought. In origin some, and probably most, of those sacred stumps or planks were holy trees, decayed and dead ;¢ and they strictly fall under § II.
But in other cases the original was a wooden pillar or column, the support of a chamber or house, and falls under the class described above, § I (1); this was clearly the case with the Dionysos Kadmos at Thebes, described by Pausanias, ix. 12. 4 (which de Visser, p. 88, has aptly illustrated from Diod. Sic. I. xxiii. 4). ¢ II. SACRED TREES.—The worship of sacred trees is one of the most widely spread religious phe- nomena in the early Greek world.
The ancient Homeric hymn to the Aphrodite of the Troad (264-272) mentions that the life of the mountiin nymphs, who shall nurse the goddess’s son, is associated with the life of the sacred trees, which man may not cut down; and that, when a tree withers and dies, the nymph dies with it. The oaks of Dodona were Divine, and the sound of the motion of their branches was the voice of the god declaring his will and revealing the future to men.
The bay tree of Apollo, the olive of Athena, and many others, had doubtless the same origin. In later time the popular legend often attached itself to such trees, that they had been planted by some hero or Divine figure (so with two oaks at Heraclea in Pontus), or in some other fashion they were in- yolved in his life-history (a frequent form being that the god or hero or heroine had been sus- pended from the tree).
§ The worship of the tree was conducted on pre- * The Carian local names Laryma and Léryma (both bishop- rics) may be connected (through an intermediate form Lavryma) ; also Lobrine, a title of Oybele at Cyzicus. t See list in Head’s Catalogue of Coins Br. Mus. : Lydia, p. exxviii. 4 ae in great number are alluded to by Maximus Tyrius, vill. 1 (de Visser, p. 88). § The oaks at Heraclea, Plin. HN, xvi. 89.
On the whole subject Boetticher, Bawmkultus, is fundamental; but Mann- it and many other writers must be consulted.