2^O RELIGION AND EDUCATION x
difficult to say how far the native Athenian population was
affected by the foreign cults. Frequently there were indi-
vidual conversions rather than mass suggestion, though we
hear of processions of women who bewailed the dead Adonis,
and the Bendideia was a public festival.1
Thucydides clearly states that as a result of the plague both
fear of the gods and the law of men had lost their power, and
that piety and impiety were generally held to lead to the same
end 2 The horrors of those years obviously only strengthened
what was already a characteristic symptom of the age. The
sanctity of altars was violated more than once at that time,
and Theramenes was well aware that the altar would not give
him asylum.3 Even from the position of higher ethics a plea
could be made against the indiscriminate right of refuge at
the altar for good and bad men alike 4 So to protect the sacred
olives it became necessary to send out supervisors every month
and inspectors once a year 5 Since men began to doubt the
power of the gods, the former close intimacy with them
and the belief in their vivid presence gave way to an opposite
feeling, and the number of those who denied even the existence
of gods increased Demosthenes asks his colleague, the old-
fashioned and pious Nikias, the question which was in the
minds of many people at that time and which was repeatedly
voiced on the stage by Euripides. 'Do you really believe that
there are gods?>6 While formerly the gods lived m each of
their statues, they gradually became no more than statues,
and the sculptors therefore were the real makers and creators
of gods.7 Hermes pretends to be one of the wooden statues
of Daidalos which could both talk and walk.8 When the gods
were like statues, one might soon come to seek one's gods
1 Adorns Plut Nik 13, 11, Alk 18, 5 Recent research lias shown that wor-
shippers of foreign deities — usualh citizens but sometimes foreigners as well —
formed associations of the traditional type (opyeooves or OICCOXOTCU) Cf W S
Ferguson, Harvard Theol Rev XXXVII (1944), 6yf, 968, io^ff, loyff, he
shows also that Athenian officials were an charge of the festival of the Bendideta —
A kind of 'official' reception was given to the worship of Bendis, according to a
Boeotian vase-painting* by Therms who, with torch and KCCVOUV, greets hery
apparently as a newcomer to local cult Cf my Rechtsidee imfruhen Gnechentum,
32f, 52f, 140, and plate
2 Thuc II, 53,4 3 Xen kelL II, 3, 53.
4 Eur Ion 13128" * Lysias VII, 25 fc K 32
" e g, C i478ff and the Eirene in the Peace — frg. 786-7. 8 Plat 188