Religion (Hastings' Dictionary)

While the religion of the country ceased to satisfy the wants of the people, the out- ward show became greater and greater. The Scholiast on Aristophanes (Vesp. 661) says that the year consisted really of only ten months, as two were occupied by festivals ; and Strabo (vi. p. 429) says that finally at Tarentum there were more feasts than days in the year. But the spirit in which the rites had once been performed was now lost; people tolerated the duties as traditional ceremonial, and enjoyed the festivals merely as fine shows. The word ddosioicOa, ‘to discharge oneself of what is due to the gods,’ came to denote careless and perfunctory performance. The duty of performing the public sacrifices was hired out to the lowest bidder. Zeus had to mourn the neglect into which he had fallen compared with the more recent gods (Lucian, Jearom. 24). In truth, the Hellenic religion in its most typical form could not permanently maintain its hold on human nature. It was the evanescent, rare, and delicate product of a pculer period and of special conditions in human history. It was tlie belief of an aristocracy of talents and opportunities, filled for the moment with the delight of activity and expansion, and the mere joy of living. It required the Hellenic City-State for the theatre of its development, and the existence of a class, sup- ported and set free from mere drudgery by a large enslaved population, but too numerous and too various in worldly circumstances to be only a narrow, privileged, and idle aristocracy of birth. But such conditions are rarely possible, and can never last long. Where an approximation to them occurs for a time in any considerable section of the population of any land, there results a tendency to a similar artistic development of religion. But there has never been elsewhere an experiment on such a scale as in Greece, where economic and social facts, natural surroundings, and relation to foreign nations, conspired to give a glory and an intoxicated consciousness of life to the small, energetic, busy, keenly competing cities of the Hellenes, But even there the conditions soon ceased. Greece sank into its inevitable place as a third- rate province in some larger empire. It was essential to true Hellenism that it should be sup- ported by the spirit of a self-governing people; its proud Ee een cionsness and joy in its own life and activity were inconsistent with servitude. A mournful consciousness that the ‘gods of Greece’ were dead is often apparent in the later Greek literature, as, for example, in the well-known story preserved by Plutarch (de Defectu Orac. 17), that in the reign of Tiberius, when a ship sailing from Greece to Italy was among the Echinades Islands, off the Acarnanian coast, a voice was heard summoning by name a certain Bayer pilot who chanced to be on board; and, when he answered the third summons rather reluctantly, the voice bade him announce when he reached Palodes that ‘Pan the great is dead.’ It is a fitting conclusion to Hellenic religion that the Oracles became dumb; and especially that the Delphic Oracle, which had played so important and, for a time, so noble a part in guiding its development, lost first its influence and finally its RELIGION OF GREECE 155 voice. As a force in history it had long lost all power; in the Ist cent. after Christ, Delphi and Ammon had given place to Chaldzan astrologers, as Strabo and Juvenal agree in saying, and Plu- tarch wrote a treatise inquiring into the reason ; and in the 4th cent., when Julian sent to consult the Delphic Oracle, the last response was uttered for him: ‘Tell the king, to earth has fallen the beautiful mansion ; no longer has Pheebus a home, nor a prophetic laurel, nor a fount that speaks: gone dry is the talking water.’ + elrare TH Bach, xapual wéce daldados avrAd’ ovKéTe PoiBos exer KaNvBav, ob udvTida dapyyy, ov mayav hadéovoay’ amécBero kal Addov Vdwp. The religious forms of Greece had served their day; they were now antiquated, and the world passed on to other forms. The alternatives pre- sented to the people were Christianity or vulgar superstition, while a steadily diminishing remnant of the educated class clung to a philosophical form of paganism. LiTERATURE.—Besides the many general Dictionaries and works on Greek Antiquities, which usually include Religious Antiquities, such as Daremberg-Saglio’s Dict. des Antiquités gr. et rom. (A-M published in 1902), Pauly-Wissowa, Real- Encyclopedie (A-Dem. in 1902), Smith (who includes Mytholo; under Biography, and Ritual under Antiquities), etc., the wor devoted expressly to Greek Religion (under which some casual information is given about cults of Asia Minor), either gener- ally or in some particular department or aspect, are extremely numerous, and complete enumerations unnecessary and hardl possible. The reader who looks at the discussion of any detail in a few of the following works will find in them sufficient indications to guide him to the vast literature (much of it not in itself valuable) that has accumulated round most of the chief topics. Owing to the capricious and subjective nature of the treatment (which can hardly be avoided), the information which is most important for an investigator from a novel point of view may, however, be passed unnoticed in several of the most elaborate works, and may be found only by looking into some of the older or the less important and honoured works The old-fashioned and unpretending Handwérterbuch der griechischen u. rom. Mythologie of Jacobi (Coburg, 1835), with its bare and bald lists of references to ancient authorities, is still often most practically useful for the investigator, because there he gets facts unencumbered with opinions: in the voluminous and indispensable, and in many respects far more complete, work of Roscher, Lexicon der griech. und rom. Mythologie (still unfinished: A-Par, published in November 1902), facts are apt to be concealed by opinions: but the variety of writers in the Lexikon on cognate topics often supplies a useful diversity of opinion. Those who desire to study the history of modern opinion will find the following list, while inadequate, yet a suflicient introduction from which to make a beginning (only, as a rule, one work by any author is named: the most recent writers as a rule are given, and the older can be followed up from them).— Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grece ancienne; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. and ii. 1896 (sequel not ready in 1902); Foucart, Recherches sur orp et la nature des Mystéres d’Eleusis, 1895, etc.; Preller-Robert, Griechische Mythologie4, 1887 ; A. Mommsen, Feste der Athener (new edition of Heortologie); E. Curtius, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, etc. ; Dieterich, Nekyia; Diels, Sibyllinische Bldtter, 1890; Bouché-Leclereq, Histoire de la Divination ; Usener, Religions- geschichtliche Untersuchungen, 1889, Griechische Gotternamen, etc.; Gruppe, Die griech. Kulte u. Mythen; Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, 1901; many articles and other works by these writers, and also by 8S. Reinach, Miss J. E. Harrison, Wernicke, Wilamowitz, Robert, Maass, Kuhnert, Korte, Bloch, Drexler, Vitry, Perdrizet, Berard, Cumont, Studniczka, Rohde, Timpel, Marillier, Beurlier, Miss A. Walton, Krause, Keller, Stengel, Weinhold, Crusius, Hoffmann, Reichel, Thraemer, Toepffer, von Fritze, Ziebarth, Ziemann, Buresch, Diimmler, etc. Anrich, Das Antike Mysterienwesen, 1894; Wobbermin, Religions- gesch, Studien, 1896 ; Gardner, Origin of the Lord's Rey ta 1894, etc., treat of the relation of the Mysteries to early Chris- tianity : Anrich is the least imaginative ; Gardner takes a more subjective view. Cf. also S, Cheatham, The Mysteries (Huls. Lect. 1896-97). On the origin of rites and their relation to savage ritual, Bétticher, Bawmkultus; A. B. Cook, Animal-Worship in the Mycencean Age; Frazer, Golden Bough? (nominally on Italian, really more on Greek), 1900; Mannhardt, Wald- und Feld- RKulte, ete.; Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, 1896 (totemistic). In Bursian’s Jahresbericht from time to time reviews of the entire literature can be found. Juv. Sat. vi. 653; Strab, xvii. p. 1168; Plutarch, de Defectu Oraculorum. ; + Oedrenus, i. p. 532, has preserved the oracle, which is haps the work of a triumphant Obristian or of one of the pagan philosophers. 156 STYLE OF SCRIPTURE STYLE OF SCRIPTURE On the religious ideas in the Greek poets and philosophers: Zeller, ‘Entwickelung des Monotheismus bei den Griechen’ in his Vortrdge und Abhandiungen Geschichtl. Inhalts, 1865, Ueber das Wesen der Religion, Tibingen, 1845 ; Trendclenburg, ‘ Nothwendigkeit und Freiheit in der griech. Philosophie’ in the second volume of his Historische Beitrdge zur Philosophie ; and many scattered references and discussions in the com- mentaries on the leading authors, and in the Histories of Literature and Philosophy. Verrall, Huripides the Rationalist, states well some of the difficulties which are caused by a too superficial view of the thought of Euripides ; but the solution suggested suffers from the want of any attempt to estimate the place of that poet in the development of Greek thought, and the failure to emphasize that Euripides must be studied in relation to the preceding and succeeding writers. W. M. Ramsay.