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                         THE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
                             OF THE GREEKS

                       FROM HOMER TO THE TRIUMPH
                            OF CHRISTIANITY

                                   BY
                        CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE
                PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

                             [Illustration]

                               CAMBRIDGE
                        HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
                        LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
                        OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
                                  1916

                            COPYRIGHT, 1916
                        HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

                 First impression issued November, 1916
                Second impression issued December, 1916

TO MY WIFE




PREFACE


In this book eight lectures given before the Lowell Institute in
Boston during the late autumn of 1914 are combined with material drawn
from a course of lectures delivered the previous spring before the
Western Colleges with which Harvard University maintains an annual
exchange—Beloit, Carleton, Colorado, Grinnell, and Knox. The lecture
form has been kept, even at the cost of occasional repetition.

The purpose of these lectures is to present within a moderate compass
an historical account of the progress of Greek religious thought
through something over a thousand years. No attempt has been made
to give a general treatment of Greek religion, or to deal with
pre-Hellenic origins, with religious antiquities, or with mythology.
The discussions are confined rather to the Greeks’ ideas about the
nature of the gods, and to their concepts of the relations between
gods and men and of men’s obligations toward the divine. The lectures
therefore deal with the higher ranges of Greek thought and at times
have much to do with philosophy and theology.

Yet I have felt free to interpret my subject liberally, and, so
far as space allowed, I have touched on whatever seemed to me most
significant. Ethics has been included without hesitation, for the
Greeks themselves, certainly from the fifth century B.C.,
regarded morals as closely connected with religion. A treatment of the
oriental religions seemed desirable, since the first two centuries and
a half of our era cannot be understood if these religions are left out
of account. Still more necessary was it to include Christianity. In my
handling of this I have discussed the teachings of Jesus and of Paul
with comparative fullness, in order to set forth clearly the material
which later under the influence of secular thought was transformed into
a philosophic system. Origen and Plotinus represent the culmination of
Greek religious philosophy.

Such a book as this can be nothing more than a sketch; in it the
scholar will miss many topics which might well have been included. Of
such omissions I am fully conscious; but limitations of subject and of
space forced me to select those themes which seemed most significant in
the development of the religious ideas of the ancient world.

It is not possible for me to acknowledge all my obligations to others.
I wish, however, to express here my gratitude to Professor C. P.
Parker, who has shared his knowledge of Plato with me; to Professor J.
H. Ropes, who has helped me on many points in my last two lectures,
where I especially needed an expert’s aid; and to Professor C. N.
Jackson, who has read the entire book in manuscript and by his learning
and judgment has made me his constant debtor. The criticism which these
friends have given me has been of the greatest assistance even when I
could not accept their views; and none of them is responsible for my
statements.

The translations of Aeschylus are by A. S. Way, Macmillan, 1906-08;
those of Euripides are from the same skilled hand, in the Loeb
Classical Library, Heinemann, 1912; for Sophocles I have drawn on the
version by Lewis Campbell, Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1883; and
for Thucydides and Plato I have used the classic renderings of Jowett
with slight modifications in one or two passages.

In an appendix will be found selected bibliographies for each lecture.
To these lists I have admitted, with one or two exceptions, only such
books as I have found useful from actual experience; and few articles
in periodicals have been named.

                         CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE.
  CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
        August 1, 1916.




                        CONTENTS

                                                      PAGE

     I. HOMER AND HESIOD                                 3
    II. ORPHISM, PYTHAGOREANISM, AND THE MYSTERIES      40
   III. RELIGION IN THE POETS OF THE SIXTH AND
           FIFTH CENTURIES B.C.                         74
    IV. THE FIFTH CENTURY AT ATHENS                    109
     V. PLATO AND ARISTOTLE                            144
    VI. LATER RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHIES                   183
   VII. THE VICTORY OF GREECE OVER ROME                221
  VIII. ORIENTAL RELIGIONS IN THE WESTERN HALF
            OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE                        257
    IX. CHRISTIANITY                                   296
     X. CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM                      326

  APPENDIX  I (BIBLIOGRAPHIES)                         361
  APPENDIX II (SPECIMEN OF ROMAN CALENDAR)             370
  INDEX                                                373

THE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT OF THE GREEKS




THE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT OF THE GREEKS




I

HOMER AND HESIOD


“Homer and Hesiod created the generations of the gods for the
Greeks; they gave the divinities their names, assigned to them their
prerogatives and functions, and made their forms known.” So Herodotus
describes the service of these poets to the centuries which followed
them.[1] But the modern historian of Greek religion cannot accept
the statement of the father of history as wholly satisfactory; he
knows that the excavations of the last forty years have revealed to
us civilizations of the third and second millenia before Christ, the
Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, of which the historical Greeks were
hardly conscious, but which nevertheless made large contributions to
religion in the period after Homer. Yet at the most the Mycenaean and
Minoan Ages were for the Greek of the sixth and fifth centuries only a
kind of dim background for the remote history of his race. The Homeric
poems represented for him the earliest stage of Hellenic social life
and religion. We are justified, then, in taking the Iliad and Odyssey
as starting points in our present considerations. These matchless epics
cast an ineffable spell over the imaginations of the Greeks themselves
and influenced religion hardly less than literature.

It is obvious that in this course of lectures we cannot consider
together all the multitudinous phases of Greek religion: it will be
impossible to discuss those large primitive elements in the practices
and beliefs of the ancient Greek folk which are so attractive to many
students of religion today, for these things were, by and large, only
survivals from a ruder past and did not contribute to the religious
progress from age to age; nor can we rehearse the details of worship,
or review all the varieties of religious belief which we find in
different places and in successive centuries; still less can we concern
ourselves with mythology. Alluring as these things are they do not
concern our present purpose. I shall invite you rather to trace with
me the development of Greek religious thought through something over a
thousand years, from the period of the Homeric poems to the triumph of
Christianity. In such a survey we must be occupied for the most part
with the larger movements and the higher ranges of Greek thought, with
the advance which was made from century to century; and we shall try
to see how each stage of religious development came to fruition in the
next period. To accomplish this purpose we must take into due account
the social, economic, and political changes in the Greek world which
influenced the course of Hellenic thinking. Ultimately, if our study
is successful, we shall have discovered in some measure, I trust, what
permanent contributions the Greeks made to our own religious ideas.
With these things in mind, therefore, let us return to the Homeric
Poems.

Whatever the date at which the Iliad and the Odyssey received their
final form, the common view that they belong to a period somewhere
between 850 and 700 B.C. is substantially correct. They
represent the culmination of a long period of poetic development
and picture so to speak on one canvas scenes and deeds from many
centuries. Yet the composite life is wrought by poetic art into one
splendid whole, so that the ordinary reader, in antiquity as today,
was unconscious of the variety and contradictions in the poems; only
the analytic mind of the scholar detects the traces of the varied
materials which the epic poet made his own. It is important that we
should realize the fact that the Homeric poems made the impression of a
consistent unity upon the popular mind in antiquity, for the influence
of these epics through the recitations of rhapsodes at great public
festivals and through their use in school was enormous. The statement
of Herodotus, with which I began, was very largely true.

These poems were composed to be recited at the courts of princes in
Ionia for the entertainment of the nobles at the banquet or after the
feast was over. This purpose naturally influenced the poet