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;;:ggss*

36.1

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Trans, by JOSEPH MCCABE.

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RICHARD GARVETT.

JULIAN S. HUXLEY.

ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON.

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EVANS BELL.

LEWIS SPBNCE.

H. G. WELLS,

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Sir JOHN MACDONELL, K.C.B.

WINWOOD READ*.

COLLET DOBSON COLLET.

H. BRADLAUGH BOWER.

JOHN LANGDON-DAVIES.

ANATOLE FRANCE.
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HERBERT SPENCEK.

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WALDO B

mvsoff chosen and arranged by

79* The World as I See It.

ft*. Th* TJtMvfcv nf Man. nd Other

GERALD BUU.ITT.

GERALD BUUJCTT.
HAVBLOOK BIAIS.
E. S. P. HATKE.
ALBERT EINSTEIN.
R. G. INOKKSOLL.

FIVE STAGES OF
GREEK RELIGION

BOOK

I PRODUCTION]

I WVR ECONOMY)

STANDARD

THE PAPER (AND BINDING) OF
THIS BOOK CONFORMS TO THE
AUTHORIZED ECONOMY STANDARD

The Thinker' 3 Library^ No. 52.

FIVE STAGES OF
GREEK RELIGION

Studies based on a Course of Lectures

delivered in April ^912 at

Columbia University

BY
GILBERT MURRAY

RBGIVS PROFESSOR OF CREEK IN THI UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON :

WATTS & CO,,
5 & 6 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, EC.4

First published in this form, 1935
Second impression 1943

Printed and PuWUhei in Great Biftain by C. A. WatU * C6. Limited,

r J 1? f> .

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

" FIVE STAGES OF GREEK RELIGION ".was first pub-
lished by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, Oxford,
in association with the Columbia University Press,
New York; and The Rationalist Press Association
Ltd. desires to acknowledge the courtesy of the
Delegates in authorizing its inclusion in the Thinker's
Library.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

IN revising the Four Stages of Greek Religion I have
found myself obliged to change its name. I felt there
was a gap in the story. The high-water mark of Greek
religious thought seems to me to have come just be-
tween the Olympian Religion and the Failure of Nerve ;
and the decline if that is the right word which is
observable in the later ages of antiquity is a decline not
from Olympianism but from the great spiritual and
intellectual effort of the fourth century B.C., which
culminated in the Metaphysics and the De Anima and
the foundation of the Stoa and the Garden. Conse-
quently I have added a new chapter at this point and
raised the number of Stages to five.

My friend Mr. . E. Genner has kindly enabled me
to correct two or three errors in the first edition, and
I owe special thanks to my old pupil, Professor . R.
Dodds, for several interesting observations and criti-
cisms on points connected with Plotinus and Sallustius.
Otherwise I have .altered little. I am only sorry to
have left the book so long out of print.

G. M.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

THIS small book has taken a long time in growing.
Though the first two essays were only put in writing
this year for a course of lectures which I had the
honour of delivering at Columbia University, the
third, which was also used at Columbia, had in its
main features appeared in the Hibbert Journal in 1910,
the fourth in part in the English Review in 1908 ; the
translation of Sallustius was made in 1907 for use with
a small class at Oxford. Much of the material is much
older in conception, and all has been reconsidered.
I must thank the editors of both the above-named
periodicals for their kind permission to reprint.

I think it was the writings of my friend Mr. Andrew
Lang that first awoke me, in my undergraduate days,
to the importance of anthropology and primitive
religion to a Greek scholar. Certainly I began then
to feel that the great works of the ancient Greek
imagination are penetrated habitually by religious
conceptions and postulates which literary scholars like
myself had not observed or understood. In the
meantime the situation has changed. Greek religion
is being studied right and left, and has revealed itself
as a surprisingly rich and attractive, though somewhat
controversial, subject. It used to be a deserted
territory; now it is at least a battle-ground. If ever
the present differences resolved themselves into a
simple fight with shillelaghs between the scholars and
the anthropologists, I should without doubt wield my
- xi

xii PREFACE

reluctant weapon on the side of the scholars. Scholar-
ship is the rarer, harder, less popular and perhaps the
more permanently valuable work, tod it certainly
stands more in need of defence at the moment. But
in the meantime I can hardly understand how the
purest of ' pure scholars ' can fail to feel his knowledge
enriched by the savants who have compelled us to
dig below the surface of our classical tradition and to
realize the imaginative and historical problems which
so often lie concealed beneath the smooth security ef
a verbal ' construe '. My own essays do not for a
moment claim to speak with authority on a subject
which is still changing and showing new facets year
by year. They only claim to represent' the way of
regarding certain large issues of Greek Religion which
has gradually taken shape, and has proved practically
helpful and consistent with facts, in the mind of a very
constant, though unsystematic, reader of many various
periods of Greek literature.

In the first essay my debt to Miss Harrison is great
and obvious. My statement of one or two points is
probably different from hers, but in the main I follow
her lead. And in either case I cannot adequately
describe the advantage I have derived from many years
of frequent discussion and comparison of results with
a Hellenist whose learning and originality of mind are
only equalled by her vivid generosity towards her
fellow-workers.

The second may also be said to have grown out of
Miss Harrison's writings. She has by now made the
title of ' Olympian ' almost a term of reproach, and
thrown down so many a scornful challenge to the
canonical gods of Greece, that I have ventured on

PREFACE xiii

this attempt to explain their historical origin and plead
for their religious value. When the essay was already
written I read Mr. Chadwick's impressive book on
The Heroic Age (Cambridge, 1912), and was delighted
to find in an author whose standpoint and equipment
are so different from mine so much that confirmed or
clarified my own view.

The title of the third essay I owe to a conversation
with Professor J. B. Bury. We were discussing the
change that took place in Greek thought between,
say, Plato and the Neo-Platonists, or even between
Aristotle and Posidonius, and which is seen at its
highest power in the Gnostics. I had been calling it
a rise of asceticism, or mysticism, or religious passion,
or the like, when my friend corrected me. ' It is not
a rise ; it is a fall or failure of something, a sort of
failure of nerve.' We are treading here upon some-
what firmer ground than in the first two essays. The
field for mere conjecture is less : we are supported
more continuously by explicit documents. Yet the
subject is a very difficult one owing to the scattered
and chaotic nature of the sources, and even where
we get away from fragments and reconstructions and
reach definite treatises with or without authors' names,
I cannot pretend to feel anything like the same clear-
ness about the true- meaning of a passage in Philo or
the Corpus Hermeticum that one normally feels in a
writer of the classical period. Consequently in this
essay I think I have hugged my modern authorities
rather close, and seldom expressed an opinion for which
I could not find some fairly authoritative backing, my
debt being particularly great to Reitzenstein, Bousset,
and the brilliant Hdlenistisch-rdmische Kuttur oi

xiv

P. Wendland. I must also thank my old pupil,
Mr. Edwyn Bevan, who was kind enough to read
this book in proof, for some valuable criticisms.
The subject is one of such extraordinary interest that
I offer no apology for calling further attention to it.

A word or two about the last brief revival of the
ancient religion under ' Julian the Apostate ' forms
the natural close to this series of studies. But here our
material, both historical and literary, is so abundant
that I have followed a different method. After a short
historical introduction I have translated in full a very
curious and little-known ancient text, which may be
said to constitute something like an authoritative
Pagan creed. Some readers may regret, that I do not
give the Greek as well as the English. I am reluctant,
however, to publish a text which I have not examined
in the MSS., and I feel also that, while an edition of
Sallustius is rather urgently needed, it ought to be an
edition with a full commentary.

I was first led to these studies by the wish to fill up
certain puzzling blanks of ignorance in my own mind,
and doubtless the little book bears marks of this origin.
It aims largely at the filling of interstices. It avoids
.the great illuminated places, and gives its mind to the
stretches of intervening twilight. It deals little with
the harvest of flowers or fruit, but watches the incon-
spicuous seasons when the soil is beginning to stir, the
seeds are falling or ripening.

G. M.

CONTENTS

PAOX

I. SATURNIA REGNA ..... i
II. THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 39

III. THE GREAT SCHOOLS .... 79

IV, THE FAILURE OF NERVE . . .123
V. THE LAST PROTEST . . . .173

APPENDIX : TRANSLATION OF THE TREATISE OF

SALLUSTIUS, mpl 0e&v xal K6qAOo . . 200

INDEX ....... 227

O Ttp&To; &v6pc*7toc foe
6 Kupioc; ^ oupotvoii.

' The first man is of the earth, earthy ; the second
man is the Lord from heaven/

SATURNIA REGNA

MANY persons who are quite prepared to admit the
importance to the world of Greek poetry, Greek art,
and Greek philosophy, may still feel it rather a paradox
to be told that Greek religion specially repays our study
at the present day. Greek religion, associated with
a romantic, trivial, and not very edifying mythology,
has generally seemed one of the weakest spots in the
armour of those giants of the old world. Yet I will
venture to ftiake for Greek religion almost as great
a claim as for the thought and the literature, not only
because the whole mass of it is shot through by those
strange lights of feeling and imagination, and the
details of it constantly wrought into beauty by that
instinctive sense of artistic form, which we specially
associate with Classical Greece, but also for two
definite historical reasons. In the first place, the
student of that dark and fascinating department of
the human mind which we may call Religious Origins,
will find ii\ Greece an extraordinary mass of material
belonging to a very early date. For detail and variety
the primitive Greek evidence has no equal. And,
secondly, in this department as in others, ancient
Greece has the triumphant if tragic distinction of
beginning at the very bottom and struggling, however
precariously, to the very summits. There is hardly
any horror of primitive superstition of which we can-
not find some distant traces in our Greek record.

2 SATURNIA REGNA

There is hardly any height of spiritual thought attained
in the world that has not its archetype or its echo in
the stretch of Greek literature that lies between
Thales and Plotinus, embracing much of the ' Wisdom-
Teachers ' and of St. Paul.

The progress of Greek religion falls naturally into
three stages, aJl of them historically important. First
there is the primitive Euttheia or Age of Ignorance,
before Zeus came to trouble men's minds, a stage to
which our anthropologists, and explorers have found
parallels in every part of the world. Dr. Preuss
applies to it the charming word ' Urdummheit ', or
' Primal Stupidity '. In some ways characteristically
(jTreekTin others it is so typical of similar stages of
thought elsewhere that one is tempted to regard it as
the normal beginning of all religion, or almost as the
normal raw material out of which religion is made.
There is certainly some repulsiveness, but I confess
that to me there is also an element of fascination in
the study of these ' Beastly Devices of the Heathen ',
at any rate as they appear in early Greece, where each
single ' beastly device ' as it passes is somehow touched
with beauty and transformed by some spirit of upward
striving.

Secondly there is the Olympian or classical stage,
a stage in which, for good or ill, blunderingly or
successfully, this primitive vagueness was reduced to a
kind of order. This is the stage of the great Olym-
pian gods, who dominated art and poetry, ruled the
imagination of Rome, and extended a kind of romantic
dominion even over the Middle Ages. It is the stage
tbat we learn, or mis-learn, from the statues and the
handbooks of mythology. Critics have said that this

SATURNIA REGNA 3

Olympian stage has value only as art and not as
religion. That is just one of the points into which
we shall inquire.

Thirdly, there is the Hellenistic period, reaching
roughly from Plato to St. Paul and the earlier Gnostics.
The first edition of this book treated the whole period
as one, but I have now divided it by writing a new
chapter on the Movements of the Fourth Century B. c.,
and making that my third stage. This was the time*
when the Greek mind, still in its full creative vigour, j
made its first response to the twofold failure of the?
world in which it had put its faith, the open bank- '
ruptcy of the Olympian religion and the collapse of the
city-state. Both had failed, and each tried vainly to
supply the place of the other. Greece responded by
the creation of two great permanent types of philo-
sophy which have influenced human ethics ever since,
the Cynic and Stoic schools on the one hand, and the
Epicurean on the other. These schools belong
properly, I think, to the history of religion. The
successors of Aristotle produced rather a school of
progressive science, those of Plato a school of refined
scepticism. The religious side of Pkto's thought was
not revealed in its full power till the time of Plotinus
in the third century A. D. ; that of Aristotle, bne
might say without undue paradox, not till its exposi-
tion by Aquinas in the thirteenth.

The old Third Stage, therefore, becomes now a
Fourth, comprising the later and more popular move-
meats of the Hellenistic Age, a period based on the
consciousness of manifold failure, and consequently
toadied both with morbidity and with that spiritual |
exaltation which is so often the companion of morbid- 1

4 SATURNIA REGNA

ity. It not only had behind it the failure of the
Olympian theology and of the free city-state, now
crushed by semi-barbarous military monarchies; it
lived through the gradual realization of two other
failures the failure of human government, even when
backed by the power of Rome or the wealth of Egypt,
to achieve a good life for man ; and lastly the failure
of the great propaganda of Hellenism, in which the
long-drawn effort of Greece to educate a corrupt and
barbaric world seemed only to lead to the corruption
or barbarization of the very ideals which it sought to
spread. This sense of failure, this progressive loss of
hope in the world, in sober calculation, and in organ-
, ized human effort, threw the later Greek back upon his
own soul, upon the pursuit of personal holiness, upon
emotions, mysteries and revelations, upon the com-
parative neglect of this transitory and imperfect world
for the sake of some dream-world far off, which shall
subsist without sin or corruption, the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever. These four are the really signifi-
cant and formative periods of Greek religious thought ;
but we may well cast our eyes also on a fifth stage, not
historically influential perhaps, but at least romantic
and interesting and worthy of considerable respect,
wtibn the old religion in the time of Julian roused itself
for a last spiritual protest against the all-conquering
4 atheism ' of the Christians. I omit Plotinus, as in
earlier chapters I have omitted Plato and Aristotle, and
for the same reason. As & rule in the writings of
Julian's circle and still more in the remains of popular
belief, the tendencies of our fourth stage are accentu-
ated by an increased demand for definite dogma and
a still deeper consciousness of worldly defeat.

SATURNIA REGNA 5

I shall not start with any definition of religion.
Religion, like poetry and most other living things,
cannot be defined. But one may perhaps give some
description of it, or at least some characteristic marks.
In the first place, religion essentially deals with the
uncharted region of human experience: A large
part of human life has been thoroughly surveyed and
explored ; we understand the causes at work ; and we
are not bewildered by the problems. That is the
domain of positive knowledge. But all round us on
every side there is an uncharted region, just fragments
of the fringe of it explored, and those imperfectly;
it is with this that religion deals. And secondly we
may note that religion deals with its own province not
tentatively, by the normal methods of patient intellec-
tual research, but directly, and by methods of emotion
or sub-conscious apprehension. Agriculture, for in-
stance, used to be entirely a question of religion ; now
it is almost entirely a question of science. In an-
tiquity, if a field was barren, the owner of it would
probably assume that the* barrenness was due to
' pollution ', or offence somewhere. He would run
through all his own possible offences, or at any rate
' those of his neighbours and ancestors, and when he
eventually decided the cause of the trouble, the steps
that he would take would all be of a kind calculated
not to affect the chemical constitution of the soil,
but to satisfy his own emotions of guilt and terror,
or the imaginary emotions of the imaginary being he
had offended. A modern man in the same predica-
ment would probably not think of religion at all, at
any rate in the earlier stages ; he would say it was a
case for deeper ploughing or for basifc slag. Later on,

6 SATURNIA REGNA

if disaster followed disaster till he began to feel him-
self a marked man, even the average modern would, I
think, begin instinctively to reflect upon his sins.
A third characteristic flows from the first. The
uncharted region surrounds us on every side and is
apparently infinite; consequently, when once the
things of the uncharted region are admitted as factors
in our ordinary conduct of life they are apt to be
infinite factors, overruling and swamping all others.
The thing that religion forbids is a thing never to be
done ; not all the inducements that this life can offer
weigh at all in the balance. Indeed there is no
balance. The man who makes terms with his con-
science is essentially non-religious ; the religious man
knows that it will profit him nothing if he gain all this
finite world and lose his stake in the infinite and
eternal. 1

1 Professor mile Durkheim in his famous analysis of the
religious emotions argues that when a man feels the belief and
the command as something coming from without, superior,
authoritative, of infinite import, it is because religion is the
work of the tribe and, as such, superior to the individual.
The voice of God is the imagined voice of the whole tribe,
heard or imagined by him who is going to break its laws.
I have, some difficulty about the psychology implied in this
doctrine : surely the apparent externality of the religious
command seems to belong to a fairly common type of ex-
perience, in which the personality is divided, so that first one
part of it and then another emerges into consciousness.
If you forget an engagement, sometimes your peace is dis-
turbed for quite a long time by a vague external annoyance
or condemnation, which at last grows to be a distinct judge-
ment ' Heavens I I ought to be at the Committee on
So-and-so.' But apart from this criticism, there is obviously
much historical truth in Professor Durkheim's theory, and ft
is not so different as it seems at first sight from the ordinary
beliefs f religious men. The tribe to primitive man is not
a mere group of human beings. It is his whole world. The
savage who is breaking the laws of his tribe has all his world

SATURNIA REGNA 7

Am I going to draw no distinction then between
religion and mere superstition? Not at present.
Later on we may perhaps see some way to it. Super*
stition is the name given to a low or bad form of
religion, to the kind of religion we disapprove. The
line of division, if we made one, would be only an
arbitrary bar thrust across a highly complex and
continuous process,

Does this amount to an implication that all the
religions that have existed in the world are false ? Not
so. It is obvious indeed that most, if analysed into
intellectual beliefs, are false ; . and I suppose that
a thoroughly orthodox member of any one of thei
million religious bodies that exist in the world must be
clear in his mind that the other million minus one arg
wrong, if not wickedly wrong. That, I think, we must
be clear about. Yet the fact remains that man must
have some relation towards the uncharted, the mys-
terious, tracts of life which surround him on every
side. And for my own part I am content to say that
his method must be to a large extent very much what
St. Paul calls wferns or faith : that is, some attitnkle
not of the conscious intellect but of the whole being,
using all its powers of sensitiveness, all its feeblest and
most inarticulate feelers and tentacles, in the effort

totems, tabus, earth, sky and all against him. He canmot
be at peace with God.

The position of the hero or martyr who defies his tribe for
the sake of what he thinks the truth or the right can easily
be thought out on these lines. He defies this false temporary
Cosmos in loyalty to the tree and permanent Cosmos. -

See Duifeheim, ' 1*8 Formes efementaices de la vie* reii-
gteuse', ill r*t*w# dt VAwnto Socioloeiqut, 19x2; or GJ
Davy, ' La Socfologfed* M. Durkheim ', in An;.
xxxvi, pp. 42-^1 and 160-85.

8 SATURNIA REGNA

somehow to touch by these that which cannot be
grasped by the definite senses or analysed by the
conscious reason. What we gain thus is an insecure
but a precious possession. We gain no dogma, at least
no safe dogma, but we gain much more. We gain
something hard to define, which lies at the heart not
only of religion, but of art and poetry and all the
higher strivings of human emotion. I believe that
at times we actually gain practical guidance in some
questions where experience and argument fail. 1 That
is a great work left for religion, but we must always
remember two things about it : first, that the liability
to error is enormous, indeed almost infinite; and
second, that the results of confident error are very
terrible. Probably throughout history the worst
things ever done in the world on a large scale by
decent people have been done in the name of religion,
and I do not think that has entirely ceased to be true
at the present day. All the Middle Ages held the

1 I suspect that most reforms pass through this stage.
A man somehow feels clear that some new course is, for him,
right, though he cannot marshal the arguments convincingly
in favour of it, and may even admit that the weight of obvious
evidence is on the other side. We read of judges in the seven-
teenth century who believed that witches ought to be burned
and that the persons before them were witches, and yet
would not burn them evidently under the influence of
vague half-realized feelings. I know a vegetarian who thinks
that, as far as he can see, carnivorous habits are not bad for
human health and actually tend to increase the happiness
of the species of animals eaten as the adoption of Swift's
Modest Proposal would doubtless relieve the economic troubles
of the human race, and yet feels clear that for him the
ordinary flesh meal (or ' feasting on corpses ') would ' partake
of the nature of sin '. The path of progress is paved with
inconsistencies, though it would be an error to imagine that the
people who habitually reject any higher promptings that come
to them are really any more consistent.

SATURNIA REGNA 9

strange and, to our judgement, the obviously insane
belief that the normal result of religious error was
eternal punishment. And yet by the crimes to which
that false belief led them they almost proved the truth
of something very like it. The record of early
Christian and medieval persecutions which were the
direct result of that one confident religious error
comes curiously near to one's conception of the
wickedness of the damned.

To turn to our immediate subject, I wish to put
forward here what is still a rather new and un-
authorized view of the development of Greek religion ;
readers will forgive me if, in treating so vast a subject,
I draw my outline very broadly, leaving out many
qualifications, and quoting only a fragment of the
evidence.

The things that have misled us moderns in our
efforts towards understanding the primitive stage in
Greek religion have been first the widespread and
almost ineradicable error of treating Homer as primi-
tive, and more generally our unconscious insistence on
starting with the notion of ' Gods '. Mr. Hartland, in
his address as president of one of the sections of the
International Congress of Religions at Oxford, 1 dwelt
on the significant fact about savage religions that
wherever the word ' God ' is used our trustiest witnesses
tend to contradict one another. Among the best
observers of the Arunta tribes, for instance, some hold
that they have no conception of God, others that they
are constantly thinking about God. The truth is that

1 Transactions of the Third International Congress of*
Religions. Oxford, 1908, pp. 26-7.

io SATURNIA REGNA

this idea of a god far away in the sky I do not say
merely a First Cause who is ' without body parts or
passions', but almost any being that we should
naturally call a ' god ' is an idea not easy for primi-
tive man to grasp. It is a subtle and rarefied idea,
saturated with ages of philosophy and speculation.
And we must always remember that one of the chief i
religions of the world, Buddhism, has risen to greatj
moral and intellectual heights without using the con- f
ception of God at all ; in his stead it has Dharma, the*
Eternal Law. 1

Apart from some few philosophers, both Christian
and Moslem, the gods of the ordinary man have as
a rule been as a matter of course anthropomorphic.
Men did not take the trouble to try to conceive
them otherwise. In many cases they have had the
actual bodily shape of man ; in almost all they have
possessed of course in their highest development
his mind and reason and his mental attributes. It
causes most of us even now something of a shock to be
told by a medieval Arab philosopher that to call God
benevolent or righteous or to predicate of him any
other iiuman quality is just as Pagan and degraded as
to say that he has a beard. 2 Now the Greek gods
seem at first sight quite particularly solid and anthro-
pomorphic. The statues and vases speak clearly,
and they are mostly borne out by the literature. Of
course we must discount the kind of evidence that
misled Winckelmann, the mere Roman and Alex-
andrian art and mythology ; but even if we go back

. * The Buddhist Dharma, by Mrs. Rhys Davids.

* See Di* Mutaxiliten, oder dig Freidenker im Islam, von
H. Sterner, 1865. This Arab was clearly under the influence
of Plotinus or some other Neo-Platoaist.

SATURNIA REGNA n

to the fifth century B. c. we shall find the ruling
conceptions far nobler indeed, but still anthropo-
morphic. We find firmly established the Olympian
patriarchal family, Zeus the Father of gods and
men, his wife Hera, his son Apollo, his daughter
Athena, his brothers Poseidon and Hades, and the rest.
We probably think of each figure more or less as like
a statue, a habit of mind obviously wrong and indeed
absurd, as if one thought of ' Labour ' and ' Grief * as
statues because Rodin or St. Gaudens has so repre-
sented them. And yet it was a habit into which the
late Greeks themselves sometimes fell ; l their arts of
sculpture and painting as applied to religion had been
so dangerously successful : they sharpened and made
vivid an anthropomorphism which in its origin had
been mostly the result of normal human laziness. The
process of making winds and rivers into anthropomor-
phic gods is, for the most part, not the result of using
the imagination with special vigour. It is the result of
not doing so. The wind is obviously alive ; any fool
can see that. Being alive, it blows; how? why,
naturally ; just as you and I blow. It knocks things
down, it shouts and dances, it whispers and talks.
And, unless we are going to make a great effort of the
imagination and try to realize, like a scientific man,
just what really happens, we naturally assume that it
does these things in the normal way, in the only way
we know. Even when you worship a beast or a stone,
you practically anthropomorphize it. tt happens
indeed to have a perfectly clear shape, so you accept
that. But it talks, acts, and fights just like a man as

1 Cf. E Reisch, Entstehung und Wandcl griechiscket Goiter-
Vienna, 1909.

12 SATURNIA REGNA

you can see from the Australian Folk Tales published
by Mrs. Langloh Parker because you do not take
the trouble to think out any other way of behaving.
This kind of anthropomorphism or as Mr. Gladstone
used to call it, ' anthropophuism ' ' humanity of
nature ' is primitive and inevitable : the sharp-cut
statue type of god is different, and is due in Greece
directly to the work of the artists.

We must get back behind these gods of the artist's
workshop and the romance-maker's imagination, and
see if the religious thinkers of the great period use, or
imply, the same highly human conceptions. We shall
find Parmenides telling us that God coincides with the
universe, which is a sphere and immovable ; l Heracli-
tus, that God is ' day night, summer winter, war peace,
satiety hunger '. Xenophanes, that God is all-seeing,
all-hearing, and all mind ; 2 and as for his supposed
human shape, why, if bulls and lions were to speak
about God they would doubtless tell us that he was
a bull or a lion. 8 We must notice the instinctive
language of the poets, using the word 6e6$ in many
subtle senses for which our word ' God ' is too stiff,
too personal, and too anthropomorphic. T6 cfrruxefv,
' the fact of success ', is ' a god and more than a god ' ;
T*> Y l TKfc<v ^IXous, ' the thrill of recognizing a
friend ' after long absence, is a ' god ' ; wine is a
' god ' whose body is poured out in libation to gods;
and in the unwritten law of the human conscience
' a great god liveth and groweth not old '.* You will

1 Ptan. FT. 8, 3-7 (Diels*).

* Xen.'Fr. 24 (Dids 1 ).
1 Xen. Fr. 15.

* Aesch. Cko. 60; Eur. Hel. 560; Bac. 284; Soph. O.T.

SATURNIA REGNA 13

say that is mere poetry or philosophy : it represents
a particular theory or a particular metaphor. I
think not. Language of this sort is used widely
and without any explanation or apology. It was
evidently understood and felt to be natural by the
audience. If it is metaphorical, all metaphors have
grown from the soil of current thought and normal
experience. And without going into the point at
length I think we may safely conclude that the soil
from which such language as this grew was not any
system of clear-cut personal anthropomorphic
theology. No doubt any of these poets, if he had to
make a picture of one of these utterly formless Gods,
would have given him a human form. That was the
recognized symbol, as a veiled woman is St. Gaudens's
symbol for ' Grief '.

But we have other evidence too which shows abun-
dantly that these Olympian gods are not primary, but
are imposed upon a background strangely unlike them-
selves. For a long time their luminous figures
dazzled our eyes ; we were not able to see the half-lit
regions behind them, the dark primeval tangle of
desires and fears and dreams from which they drew
their vitality. The surest test to apply in this question
is the evidence of actual cult. Miss Harrison has

871. Cf. also 17 <t>p6i>7)oit ayaOri 0os pfyas. Soph. Fr. 836, 2
(Nauck).

o irAotiro?, ovfywcmwcc, rots ao^oi? 0c<fe. Eur. Cycl. 316.

o votf? yap foafv arw eV ^acmp 0c&. Eur. Fr. !Ol8.

</>06vos KaicioTOs KaSiKwraros 0fc. Hippothodn Fr. 2.
A certain moment of time : aptf teal 0c& & dvOpttnrc** iBpvfUvq
^Jet iwkro. PI. Leg. 775 E.

r uwpa yelp -rravr* larlv 'Ajpotinj Pporols. Eur. Tro. 989^

3\$tv te Sals 0<Ucia irpcofttoTii $&v. Soph. Fr. 548.

14 SATURNIA REGNA

here shown us the right method, and following her we
will begin with the three great festivals of Athens,
the Diasia, the Thesmophoria, and the Anthesteria. 1

The Diasia was said to be the chief festival of
Zeus, the central figure of the Olympians, though our
.authorities generally add an epithet to him, and call
him Zeus Meilichios, Zeus of Placation. A god
with ant ' epithet ' is always suspicious, like a human
being with an ' alias '. Miss Harrison's examination
(Prolegomena, pp. 28 ff .) shows that in the rites Zeus
has no place at all. Meilichios from the beginning has
a fairly secure one. On some of the reliefs Meilichios
appears not as a god, but as an enormous bearded
snake, a well-known representation of underworld
powers or dead ancestors. Sometimes the great snake
is alone ; sometimes he rises gigantic above the small
human worshippers approaching him. And then, in
certain reliefs, his old barbaric presence vanishes, and
we have instead a benevolent and human father of gods
and men, trying, as Miss Harrison somewhere expresses
it, to look as if he had been there all the time.

There was a sacrifice at the Diasia, but it was not a
sacrifice given to Zeus. To Zeus and all the heavenly
gods men gave sacrifice in the form of a feast, in which
the god had his portion and the worshippers theirs.
The two parties cemented their friendship and feasted
happily together. But the sacrifice at the Diasia was
& holocaust : * every shred of the victim was burnt to
ashes, that no man might partake of it. We know

1 See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, i, ii. iv; Mommsen,
Fests d*t Stadi Atk*** 1898, pp. 308-22 (Thesmophoria),
384-404 (Anthesteria), 421-6 (Diasia). See also Pauly
Wissowa, s.v.

1 Prolegomena* p. 15 1

SATURNIA REGNA 15

quite well the? meaning of that form of sacrifice : it
is a sacrifice to placate or appease the powers below,
the Chthonioi, the dead and the lords of death. It
was performed, as our authorities tell us, {xerdfc <JTUYV<$-
TTJTOC, with shuddering or repulsion. 1

The Diasia was a ritual of placation, that is, of
casting away various elements of pollution or danger
and appeasing the unknown wraths of the surrounding
darkness. The nearest approach to a god contained
in this festival is Meilichios, and Meilichios, as we shall
see later, belongs to a particular class of shadowy
beings who are built up out of ritual services. His
name means ' He of appeasement ', and he is nothing
else. He is merely the personified shadow or dream
generated by the emotion of the ritual very much,
to take a familiar instance, as Father Christmas is a
' projection ' of our Christmas customs.

The Thesmophoria formed the great festival of
Demeter and her daughter Kor, though here again
Demeter appears with a clinging epithet, Thesmo-
phoros. We know pretty clearly the whole course of
the ritual : there is the carrying by women of certain
magic charms, fir-cones and snakes and unnameable
objects made of paste, to ensure fertility; there is
a sacrifice of pigs, who were thrown into a deep cleft
oi the earth, and their remains afterwards collected
and scattered as a charm over the fields. There is
more magic ritual, more carrying of sacred objects,
a fast followed by a rejoicing, a disappearance of life
below the earth, and a rising again of life above it ;
but it is hard to find definite traces of any personal
1 Luc. Icaro-Menippos 24 schol. ad Joe.

16 N SATURNIA REGNA

goddess. The Olympian Demeter arid Persephone
dwindle away as we look closer, and we are left with
the shadow Thesmophoros, ' She who carries Thesmoi ',*
not a substantive personal goddess, but merely a
personification of the ritual itself : an imaginary
Charm-bearer generated by so much charm-bearing,
just as Meilichios in the Diasia was generated from
the ritual of appeasement.

Now the Diasia were dominated by a sacred snake.
Is there any similar divine animal in the Thesmophoria ?
Alas, yes. Both here, and still more markedly in the
mysteries of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, we
regularly find the most lovely of all goddesses,
Demeter and Persephone, habitually I will not say
represented by, but dangerously associated with, a
sacred Sow. A Pig is the one animal in Greek re-
ligion that actually had sacrifice made to it. 2

The third feagt, the Anthesteria, belongs in classical
times to the Olympian Dionysus, and is said to be the
oldest of his feasts. On the surface there is a touch of
the wine-god, and he is given due official prominence ;
but as soon as we penetrate anywhere near the heart of

1 Frequently dual, ro> @a/io<opo>, under the influence of
the ' Mother and Maiden ' idea : Dittenberger Inscr. Sylloge
628, Ar. Thesm. 84, 296 et passim. The plural at 9corjxo^4foc
used in late Greek is not, as one might imagine, a projection
from the whole band of worshippers ; it is merely due to the
disappearance of the dual from Greek. I accept provisionally
the derivation of these fcapot from fea- in Ofooaovai, 6Joif>aros t
04wcAo?, iroAiftcorroff, airolcoro?, &c. : cf. A. W. Verrall in
/. H. 5. xx, p. 114; and Prolegomena, pp. 48 ff., 136 f. But,
whatever the derivation, the Thesmoi were the objects carried.

* Frazer, Golden Boufh, ii. 44 ff. ; A. B. Cook. /. H. S. xiv
pp. 153-4; } E. Harrison, Themis, p. 5. See also A. Lang,
Homeric Hymns, 1899, P- 63.

SATURNIA REGNA 17

the festival, Dionysus and his brother gods are quite
forgotten, and all that remains is a great ritual for
appeasing the dead. All the days of the Feast were
nefasti, of ill omen ; the first day especially was it; tt>
irav dbro^pdcs. On it the Wine Jars which were also
Seed and Funeral Jars were opened and the spirits of
the Dead let loose in the world. 1 Nameless and
innumerable, the ghosts are summoned out of their
tombs, and are duly feasted, each man summoning his
own ghosts to his own house, and carefully abstaining
from any act that would affect his neighbours. And
then, when they are properly appeased and made
gentle, they are swept back again out of this world
to the place where they properly belong, and the
streets and houses cleaned from the presence of death.
There is one central stage indeed in which Dionysus
does seem to appear. And he appears in a very
significant way, to conduct a Sacred Marriage. For,
why do you suppose the dead are summoned at all?
What use to the tribe is the presence of all these
dead ancestors? They have come, I suspect, to be
born again, to begin a new life at the great Spring
festival. For the new births of the tribe, the new
crops, the new kids, the new human beings, are of
course really only the old ones returned to earth.*
The important thing is to get them properly placated
and purified, free from the contagion of ancient sin or
underworld anger. For nothing is so dangerous as the
presence of what I may call raw ghosts. The Anthes-

1 Feste for Stadt A then, p. 390 f. On Seed Jars, Wine Jars
and Funeral Jars, see Themis, pp. 276-88, and Warde Fowler,
' Mundus Patet/ in Journ. Roman Studies, ii, pp. 25 ff . Cf .
below* p. 28 f .

1 Dieterich, Mutter erde, 1905, p. 48 f.
B

r8 SATURNIA REGNA

teria contained, like other feasts of the kind, a
Y^AOC, or Holy Marriage, between the wife of the
Basileus or Sacred King, and the imaginary god. 1
Whatever reality there ever was in the ceremony has
apparently by classical times faded away. But the
place where the god received his bride is curious. It
was called the Boukolion, or Bull's Shed. It was not
originally the home of an anthropomorphic god, but
of a divine animal.

Thus in each of these great festivals we find that the
Olympian gods vanish away, and we are left with three
things only : first, with an atmosphere of religious
t , dread; second, with a whole sequence of magical
ceremonies which, in two at least of the three cases, 1
produce a kind of strange personal emanation of

1 Dr. Frazer, The Magic Art, ii. 137, thinks it not certain
that the ydpos took place during the Anthesteria, at the same
time as the oath of the yepaepm . Without the ydaas, however,
it is hard, to see what the /3a<n'/Wva and yepeupat hod to do in
the festival; and this is the view of Mommsen, Feste dcr
Stadt Athen, pp. 391-3 ; Grnppe in Iwan Mullet, Mythologie
*nd Rttigiansgeschickte, i. 33 ; Farnell, Cults, v. 217.

1 One' might perhaps say, in all three. 'Arfumypor rod
IIvflovpijoToO KOIVOV is the name of a society of worshippers in
the island of Them, J. G. I. iii. 329. - This gives a god
Anthister, who is clearly identified with Dionysus, and seems
to be a projection of a feast Anthisteria Anthesteria.
The inscription is of the second century B. c. and it seems
likely that Anthister-Anthisteria, with their clear derivation
from a?0tcty, are corruptions of the earlier and difficult forms
' A^Ari^p-'Aitfttrrif pia. It is noteworthy that Thera, an island
lyiny rather outside the m *w i i chuwwfootf civilization, kept up
throughout its history a tendency to treat the ' epithet as a
full person. Hikesios and Koures come vexy early; also
BoUeus and Stoiehaios without the name Zeus;
Karneios, Aiglatas, and Aguieus without Apollo.

See Killer von Gaertringen in the Festschrift ftirO.
p. ^28. Also Nilsson, Griechischo Festt. 1906, p. 267, B. 5.

SATURN1A REGNA 19

themselves, the Appeasements producing Meilichios,
the Charm-bearings Thesmophoros; and thirdly,
with a divine or sacred animal. In the Diasia we
find the old superhuman snake, who reappears so;
ubiquitously throughout Greece, the regular symbol;
of the underworld powers, especially the hero or
dead ancestor. Why tl>e snake was so chosen we can
only surmise. He obviously lived underground :
his home was among the Chthonioi, the Earth-
People. Also, says the Scholiast - to Aristophanes
(Plut. 533), he was a type of new birth because he
throws off his old skin and renews himself. And if that
in itself is not enough to show his supernatural power,
what normal earthly being could send his enemies to
death by one little pin-prick, as some snakes can ?

In the Thesmophoria we found sacred swine, and
the reason given by the ancients is no doubt the right
one. The sow is sacred because of its fertility, and;
possibly as practical people we should add, because
of its cheapness. Swine are always prominent in
Greek agricultural rites. And the bull? Well, we
modern town-dwellers have almost forgotten what a
real bull is like. For so many centuries we have
tamed him and penned him in, and utterly deposed
him from his place as lord of the forest. The bull was
the chief of magic or sacred animals in Greece, chief
because of his enormous strength, his size, his rage, in
fine, as anthropologists call it, his mana ; that primi-
,tive word which comprises force, vitality, prestige,
holiness, aad power of magic, and which may belong
equally to a lion, a chief, a medicine-mart, or a battle*
axe.

Now in the art and the handbooks these sacred.

20 SATURNIA REGNA

animals have all been adopted into the Olympian
system. They appear regularly as the ' attributes ' of
particular gods. Zeus is merely accompanied by a
snake, an eagle, a bull, or at worst assumes for his
private purposes the forms of those animals. The
cow and the cuckoo are sacred to Hera ; the owl and
the snake to Athena ; the dolphin, the crow, the lizard,
the bull, to Apollo. Dionysus, always like a wilder
and less middle-aged Zeus, appears freely as a snake,
bull, he-goat, and lion. Allowing for some isolated
exceptions, the safest rule in all these cases is that
the attribute is original and the god is added. 1 It
comes out very clearly in the case of the snake and the
bull. The tremendous mana of the wild bull indeed
occupies almost half the stage of pre-Olympian
ritual. The religion unearthed by Dr. Evans in Crete
is permeated by the bull of Minos. The heads and
horns are in almost every sacred room and on every
altar. The great religious scene depicted on the
sarcophagus of Hagia Triada 2 centres in the holy
blood that flows from the neck of a captive and dying
bull. Down into classical times bull's blood was a
sacred thing which it was dangerous to touch and
death to taste : to drink a cup of it was the most heroic
form of suicide. 8 The sacrificial bull at Delphi was
called Hosidtir : he was not merely hosios, holy ; he

1 Miss Harrison, ' Bird and Pillar Worship in relation to
Ouranian Divinities ', Transactions of the Third International
Congress for the History of Religion, Oxford, 1908, vol. ii,
p. 154; Faraell, Greece and Babylon, 1911, pp. 66 if.

* First published by R. Paribeni, ' II Sarcofago dipinto di
Hagia Triada ', in Monument* antichi della R. Accademia dei
Lincei t xix, 1908, p. 6, T. i-iii. See also Themis, pp. 158 ff.

* AT. Equites, 82-4 or possibly of apotheosis. See
Themis, p. 154, n. 2.

SATURNIA REGNA 21

was Hosidter, the Sanctifier, He who maketh Holy. It
was by contact with him that holiness was spread to
others. On a coin and a vase, cited by Miss Harrison, 1
we have a bull entering a holy cave and a bull standing
in a shrine. We have holy pillars whose holiness con-
sists in the fact that they have been touched with the
blood of a bull. We have a long record of a bull-ritual
at Magnesia, 2 in which Zeus, though he makes a kind of
external claim to be lord of the feast, dare not claim
that the bull is sacrificed to him. Zeus has a ram to
himself and stands 'apart, showing but a weak and
shadowy figure beside the original Holy One. We have
immense masses of evidence about the religion of
Mithras, at one time the most serious rival of Christi-
anity, which sought its hope and its salvation in the
blood of a divine bull.

Now what is the origin of this conception of the
sacred animal? It was first discovered and ex-
plained with almost prophetic insight by Dr. Robertson
Smith. 8 The origin is what he calls a sacramental
feast : you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the
divine animal in order here I diverge from Robertson
Smith's language to get into you his mana, his
vital power. The classical instance is the sacramental
eating of a camel by an Arab tribe, recorded in the
works of St. Nilus, 4 The camel Was devoured on
a particular day at the rising of the morning star. He
was cut to pieces alive, and every fragment of him had

1 Themis, p. 145, fig. 25 ; and p. 152, fig. 28 b.

* O. Kern, Inschnjten v. Magnesia, No. 98, discussed by
O. Kern, Arch. Ant. 1694, p. 78, and Nilsson, Griechische Feste,
p. 23.

* Religion of the Semites, 1901, p. 338; Reuterskiold, in
Arckivf. Relig. xv. 1-23.

Nili Opera, Narrat. Hi. 28.

22 SATURNIA KEGNA

to be cpnsumed /before the sun rose. If the life had
once gone out of the flesh aund blood the sacrifice would
have been spoilt ; it was the spirit, the vitality, of the
camel thai this tribesmen wanted. The only serious
error that later students have found in Robertson
Smith's statement is that he spoke too definitely -of
tbe sacrifice as affording communion with the tribal
god. There was no god there, only the raw material
out of which gods are made. You devoured the holy
animal to get its mana, its swiftness, its strength, its
great endurance, just as the savage now will eat his
enemy's brain or heart or hands to get some particular
quality residing there. The imagination of the pre-
Heflenic tribes was evidently dominated above all
things by the bull, though {here were other sacramental
feasts too, combined with sundry horrible rendings
and drinkings of raw blood. It is strange to think that
even small things like kids and fawns and hares should
have struck primitive man as having some uncanny
vitality wfcich he longed for, or at least some uncanny
power over the weather or the crops. Yet to him it
no -doubt appeared obvious. Frogs, for instance, could
always bring rain by croaking for it, and who can limit
tbe powers and the knowledge of birds ? *

Here' comes a difficulty. If the Olympian god was
not there to start with, how did he originate ? We can
understand at least after a course of anthropology
this desire of primitive man to acquire for himself the
superhuman forces of the bull ; but how does he make
the transition from the real animal to the imaginary

1 See Aristophanes' Birds, e. g. 685-736.: cf. the practice
of augury from birds, and the art-types of Winged Kres,
Victories and Angels.

SATURNIA REGNA 33

human god? First let us remember tke innate
tendency of primitive man everywhere, and not
especially in Greece, to imagine a personal cause, like
himself in all points not otherwise specified, for every
striking phenomenon. If the wind blows it is because
some being more or less human, though of course
superhuman, is blowing with his cheeks. If a tree is
struck by lightning it is because some one has thrown
his battle-axe at it. In some Australian tribes there
is no belief in natural death. If a man dies it is
because ' bad man kill that fellow '. St. Paul, we
may remember, passionately summoned the heathen
to refrain from worshipping TTJV XTIOW, the creation,
and go back to T&V xTiaavra, the <^:eator, human aaad
masculine. It was as a rule a road that they were only
too ready to travel. 1

But this tendency was helped by a second factor.
Research has shown us the existence in early Mediter-
ranean religion of a peculiar transitional step, a man
wearing the head or skin of a holy beast. The
Egyptian gods are depicted as men with beasts' heads :
that is, the best authorities tell us, their shapes .awe
derived from the kings and priests who OH preat
occasions of sacrifice covered their heads with a bea&t-
mask. 2 Minos, with his projection the Minotaur, was
a bull-god and wore a bull-mask. From early Island
gems, from a fresco at Mycenae, from Assyrian reliefs,
Mr. A. B. Cook has collected many examples of this
mixed figure a man wealing the pr&tome^ or mask and
mane, of a beast. Sometimes we can actually see him

1 Romans, i. 25; viii. 20-3.

* Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 1906, ii. 284;
130; Moret, Car active religieux de la Mvnmvcbie
Dieterich, Mtthrtsliturgie, 1903,

24 SATURNIA REGNA

offering libations. Sometimes the worshipper has
become so closely identified with his divine beast
that he is represented not as a mere man wearing the
protome of a lion or bull, but actually as a lion or bull
wearing the protome of another. 1 Hera, pocoms, with
a cow's head ; Athena, yXauxcom?, with an owl's head,
or bearing on her breast the head of the Gorgon;
Heracles clad in a lion's skin and covering Iris brow
8cwo> x&nAOTi 0w6<; ' with the awful spread jaws of
the wild beast ', belong to the same class. So does
the Dadouchos at Eleusis and other initiators who let
candidates for purification set one foot one only and
that the left on the skin of a sacrificial ram-, and
called the skin Ai&c x&ots, the fleece not of a ram,
but of Zeus. 8

The mana of the slain beast is in the hide and head
and blood and fur, and the man who wants to be in
thorough contact with the divinity gets inside the skin
and wraps himself deep in it. He begins by being
< a man wearing a lion's skin : he ends, as we have seen,
by feeling himself to be a lion wearing a lion's skin.
And who is this man ? He may on particular occasions
be only a candidate for purification or initiation. But
par excellence he who has the right is the priest, the
medicine-man, the divine king. If an old suggestion
of my own is tight, he is the original 0*6$ or 6c06c, the
incarnate medicine or spell or magic power.* He at

1 A. B. Cook in /. H. 5. 1894, ' Animal Worship in the
Mycenaean Age '. See also Hogarth on the ' Zakro Sealings ',
J. H. S. 1902; these seals show a riot of fancy in the way of
mixed monsters, starting in all probability from the simpler
form. See, the quotation from Robertson Smith in Hogarth,
p. 91.

1 F*sU for Stmdt Atken.p. 416.

* Anthropology and the Classics, 1908, pp. 77, 78.

SATURNIA REGNA 25

first, I suspect, is the only 6e<fc or ' God ' that his
society knows. We commonly speak of ancient kings
being ' deified ' ; we regard the process as due to an
outburst of superstition or insane flattery . And' so no
doubt it sometimes was, especially in later times
when man and god were felt as two utterly distinct
things. But ' deification ' is an unintelligent and
misleading word. What we call ' deification ' is only
the survival of this undifferentiated human 6c6c,
with his mana, his xpdtTo; and pta, his control of the
weather, the rain and the thunder, the spring crops
and the autumn floods ; his knowledge of what was
lawful and what was not, and his innate power to
curse or to ' make dead '. Recent researches have
shown us in abundance the early Greek medicine-
chiefs making thunder and lightning and rain. 1 We
have long known the king as possessor of Dike, and
Themis, of justke and tribal custom ; we have known
his effect on the fertility of the fields and the tribes,
and the terrible results of a king's sin or a king's
sickness. 8

What is the subsequent history of this medicine-
chief or Oc6c ? He is differentiated, as it were : the
visible part of him becomes merely human ; the sup-
posed supernatural part grows into what we should
call a God. The process is simple. Any particular

1 A. B. Cook, Class. Rev. xvii, pp. 275 ff.; A. J. Reinach,
Rev. de I' Hist, des Religions, Ix, p. 178; S. Reinach, Cultts,
Mythes. &>c. t ii, 160-6.

1 One may suggest in passing that this explains the
enormous families attributed to many sacred kings of Greek
legend : why Priam or Danaus have their fifty children,
and Heracles, most prolific of all, his several hundred. The
particular numbers chosen, however, are probably due to
other causes, e. g. the fifty moon-months of the Penteteris.

26 SATURNIA RBGNA

medicine-man is bound to have his iaikres. As
Dr. Frazer gently reminds ins, every single pretension
whidi he puts forth on every day of his life is a lie, and
, liabl^ sooner or later to be found out. Doubtless men
are tender to their own delusions. They do not at
once condemn the medicine-chief as a fraudulent insti-
tution, but they tend gradually ito say that he is not the
real all-powerful 6*6<;. He is only his representative.
The real 6$c, tremendous, infallible, is somewhere far
away, hidden in clouds perhaps, on the summit of some
inaccessible mountain. If the mountain is once climbed
tha god will move to the upper sky. The medacine-
chief meanwhile stays on earth, still influential. He
has some connexion with the great god more intimate
than that of other men ; at worst he possesses the god's
sacred instruments, his lepi or Spywc ; he knows the
rules for approaching him and making prayers to
him.

There is therefore a path open from the divine
beast to the anthropomorphic god. From beings like
Thesmophoros and Meilkhios the road is of course
much easier. They are already more than half anthro-
pomorphic ; they only lack the concreteness, the lucid
shape and the detailed personal history of the Olym-
pians. In this connexion we must not forget the
power of hallucination, still fairly strong, as the history
of religious revivals in America will bear witness, 1
but far stronger, of course, among the impressionable
hordes of early men. ' The god ', says M . J>outt6 in
his profound study of Algerian magic, ' c'est le d6sir
ooHectif perso&nifi& ', the collective desire

1 See PriuMv* ffVate in *gnK Jfrv&afc* by F. H.
8Tew Yack, 1906.

SATURNIA REGNA 37

as it were, or personified. l Think of the gods who have
appeared in great crises of battle, created sometimes
by the desperate desire of men who have for years
prayed to them, and who are now at the last extremity
for lack of their aid, sometimes by the confusedand ex-
cited remembrances of the survivors after the victory.
The gods who led the Roman charge at Lake Regillus, 2
the gigantic figures that were seen fighting before the
Greeks at Marathon, 3 even the celestial signs that
promised Constantine victory for the cross : * these
are the effects of great emotion : we can all understand
them. But even in dailylif e primitive men seem to have
dealt more freely than we generally do with apparitions
and voices and daemons of every kind. One of the
most remarkable and noteworthy sources for this kind
of hallucinatory god in early societies is a social custom
that we have almost forgotten, the religious Dance.
When the initiated young men of Crete or elsewhere
danced at night over the mountains in the Oreibasia or
Mountain Walk they not only did things that seemed
beyond their ordinary workaday strength; they also
felt themselves led on and on by some power which
guided and sustained them. This daemon has no
necessary name : a man may be named after him
' Oreibasius ', ' Belonging, to the Mountain Dancer ',
just as others may be named Apollonius ' or ' Dioroy-
sius '. The god is only the spirit of the Mountain

1 . Doutte, Magi* et religion dans I'Afrique dit Nord, 1909,
p. 601.

1 Cicero, de Nat. Deontm, ii. 2; iii. 5, 6; Floras, ii. 12.

1 Plut. Theseus, 35; Paus. i. 32. 5. Herodotus only men-
tioas a bearded and gigantic figure who struck Epizefos blind
(vi.iiT^

4 Eusebius, Vit. Constant., I. i,cc. sS, 29,30; N*z*rhis4ntei>
Panegyr. Vet. x. 14. 15.

28 SATURNIA REGNA

Dance, Oreibates, though of course he is absorbed at
different times in various Olympians. There is one
god called Aphiktor, the Suppliant, He who prays for
mercy. He is just the projection, as M. Doutt6 would
say, of the intense emotion of one of those strange pro-
cessions well known in the ancient world, bands of
despairing men or women who have thrown away all
i means of self-defence and join together at some holy
place in one passionate prayer for pity. The highest
| of all gods, Zeus, was the special patron of the sup-
; pliant ; and it is strange and instructive to find that
Zeus the all-powerful is actually identified with this
Aphiktor : Zc&c p&v 'A^txrcop ta&oi rcpo^pivco;. 1 The
assembled prayer, the united cry that rises from the
oppressed of the world, is itself grown to be a god, and
the greatest god. A similar projection arose from the
dance of the Kouroi, or initiate youths, in the dithy-
ramb the magic dance which was to celebrate, or
more properly, to hasten and strengthen, the coming
on of spring. That dance projected the Megistos
Kouros, the greatest of youths, who is the incarnation
of spring or the return of life, and lies at the back of so
many of the most gracious shapes of the classical pan-
theon. The Kouros appears as Dionysus, as Apollo,
as Hermes, as Ares : in our clearest and most detailed
piece of evidence he actually appears with the char-
acteristic history and attributes of Zeus. 2

This spirit of the dance, who leads it or personifies
its emotion, stands more clearly perhaps than any

1 Aeach. Supp*- * * 47$ Zc^ IKTJJ>. Rise of the Greek
Epic*, p. 275 n. Adjectival phrases like Zc& 'Iiccoios, '
IKTQMS are common and caU for no remark. '

1 Hymn of the Kouretes, Themis, passim.

SATURNIA REGNA 29

other daemon half-way between eart*h and heaven. A
number of difficult passages in Euripides' Bacchae and
other Dionysiac literature find their explanations when
we realize how the god is in part merely identified with
the inspired chief dancer, in part he is the intangible
projected incarnation of the emotion of the dance.

' The collective desire personified ' : on what does the

collective desire, or collective dread, of the primitive

community chiefly concentrate ? On two things, the

food-supply and the tribe-supply, the desire not to die

of famine and not to be harried or conquered by the

neighbouring tribe. The fertility of the earth and the

fertility of the tribe, these two are felt in early religion

as one. 1 The earth is a mother : the human mother

j is an tfpoupa, or ploughed field. This earth-mother is

ithe characteristic and central feature of the early

I Aegean religions. The introduction of agriculture

{made her a mother of fruits and corn, and it is in that

' form that we best know her. But in earlier days she

had been a mother of the spontaneous growth of the

soil, of wild beasts and trees and all the life of the

mountain. 3 In early Crete she stands with lions erect

on either side of her or with snakes held in her hands

and coiled about her body. And as the earth is mother

1 See in general I. King, The Development of Religion,
1910; E. J. Payne, History of the New World, 1892, p. 414.
Also Dieterich, Muttererde, esp. pp. 37-58.

' ~ ~ J. E. Ham

See Dieterich, Muttererde, J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena,
chap, vi, ' The Making of a Goddess ' ; Thetnis, chap, vi,
' The Spring Dr6menon '. As to the prehistoric aft-type' of
this goddess technically called ' steatopygous ', I cannot
refrain from suggesting that it may be derived from a mountain
A turned into a human figure, as the palladion or figure-?
type came from two round shields. See p. 52.

30 SATURNIA REGNA

when the harvest comes, so in spring she is maiden
of Korfi, but a maiden fated each year to be wedded
and made fruitful ; and earlier still there has been the
terrible time when fields are bare and lifeless. The
Kor has been snatched away undeiiground, among the
dead peoples, and men must wait expectant till the
first buds begin to show and they call her to rise again
with the flowers. Meantime earth as she brings
forth vegetation in spring is Kourotrophos, rearer of
Kouroi, or the young men of the tribe. The nymphs
and rivers are all Kourotrophoi. The Moon is
Kourotrophos. She quickens the young of the tribe
in their mother's womb ; at one terrible hour especially
she is ' a lion to women ' who have offended against her
holiness. She also marks the seasons of sowing and
ploughing, and the due time for the ripening of
crops. When men learn to calculate in longer units,
the Sun appears: they turn to the Sun for their
calendar, and at all times of course the Sun has been
a powerin agriculture. He is not called Kourotrophos,
but the Young Sun returning after winter is himself
a Kouros, 1 and all the Kouroi have some touch of the
Sun in them. The Cretan Spring-song of the Kouretes
prays for v*ot TTOXTTOW, young citizens, quite simply
among, the other gifts of the spring, 8

This is best shown by the rites of tribal initiation,
which seem normally to have formed part of the spring

1 Hymn Qrph. 8, 10 <Lporp6<f>c xovpt .

* For the order in which men generally proceed in worship,
turning their attention to (i) the momentary incidents of

weather, , rain, sunshine, thunder, &c. ; (2) the Moon; (3) the
Sun and stars, see Payne* History of tfo Now World called
America, vol. i, p. 474, cited by Miss Harrison, Themis,
P- 390.

SATURNIA REGNA 31

Dr6mena or sacred performances, The Kouroi, as we
have said, aire the initiated young men. They pass
through their initiation ; they become no longer icatftcc ,
boys, but &v&t*c, men. The actual name Kouros is
possibly connected with xCpew, to shave, 1 and may
mean that after this ceremony they first cut their long
hair. Till then the xoupog is db<cpocx6iAiic with hair
unshorn. They have now open to them the two roads
that belong to #v$pc alone r they have the work of
begetting children for the tribfe, and the work of
killing the tribe's enemies in battle.

The classification of people according to their age is
apt to be sharp and vivid in primitive communities.
We, for example, think of an old man as a kind of man,
and an old woman as a kind of woman ; but in primi-
tive peoples as soon as a man and woman cease to be
able to perform his and her due tribal functions they
cease to be men and women, #v$pc and
the ex-man becomes a yipcov ; the ex-woman a
We distinguish between ' boy ' and ' man ', between
' girl * and ' woman ' ; but apart from the various
words for baby, Attic Greek would have four sharp
divisions, watc, ^$0$, <Mjp, v^paw. 3 In Sparta the

1 On the subject of Initiations see Webster, Primitive
Secret Societies, New York,, 1908 ; Schttrtz, Altersklassen und
Mdnnerbunde, Berlin, 1902 ; Van Gennep, Rites de Passage,
Paris, 1909 ; NHsson, Grundtage des Spartamschen Lebens in
Klto xii (1912), pp. 308-40,' Themis, p. 337, n. i. Since the
above, Rivera, Social Organization, 2924.

* Cf . Dr; Rivers on mate, ' Primitive Conception of Death ',
ffibbert Journal, January 1912, p. 393.

* Cf. Cardinal virtnes, Pindar, Nem. iii. 72 :

tv ircuai vtotoi no. is, Iv av&paoiv dvrfp, rptrov
& woAcuWpoici iilpos, fxaoTov otov cyo^cr
f$p6rwv iOvos. ^A$ W *ai rtcaapas opcrdr
ofoards alatv,
also Pindar, Pyth. iv. 281.

32 SATTIRNIA REGNA

divisions are still sharper and more numerous, cen-
tring in the great initiation ceremonies of the Iranes,
or full-grown youths, to the goddess called Orthia
or Bortheia. 1 These initiation ceremonies are called
Teletai, ' completions ' : they mark the great ' rite
of transition ' from the immature, charming, but half
useless thing which we call boy or girl, to the T&tioc
dtvVjp, the full member of the tribe as fighter or '
counsellor, or to the TeAetoc yuvVj, the full wife and
mother. This whole subject of Greek initiation
ceremonies calls pressingly for more investigation. It
is only in the last few years that we have obtained the
material for understanding them, and the whole mass
of the evidence needs re-treatment . For one instance,
it is clear that a great number of rites which were
formerly explained as remnants of human sacrifice are
simply ceremonies of initiation. 2

At the great spring Drdmenon the tribe and the

growing earth were renovated together : the earth

arises afresh from her dead seeds, the tribe from its

r4ead ancestors ; and the whole process, charged as it is

' with the emotion of pressing human desire, projects its

anthropomorphic god or daemon. A vegetation-spirit

we call him, very inadequately ; he is a divine Kouros,

a Year-Daemon, a spirit that in the first stage is living,

1 See Woodward in B. S. A. xiv, 83. Nikagoras won four
(successive ?) victories as /uKJaxtoficvo?, ir/xJiratf, irai?, and
peAAcl/oipr, i. e. from his tenth to fifteenth year. He would
then at 14 or 15 become an iran. Plut. Lye.' 17 gives the age
of an iran as 20. This agrees with the age of an tyyfios at
Athens as ' 15-20 ', ' 14-21 ', ' about 16 ' ; see authorities in
Stephanas s. v. c^/for . Such variations in the date of ' puberty
ceremonies ' are common.

* See Rise of the Greek* Epic, Appendix on Hym. Dem. ; and
W. R. Halliday, C. JR. xxv, 8. Nilsson's valuable article has
appeared since the above was written (see note i, p. 31).

SATURNIA REGNA 33

then dies with each year, then thirdly rises again from
the dead, raising the whole dead world with him the
Greeks called him in this phase ' the Third One ', or the
' Saviour '. The renovation ceremonies were accom-
panied by a casting off of the old year, the old gar-
ments, and everything that is polluted by the infection
of death. And not only of death ; but clearly I think,
in spite of the protests of some Hellenists, of guilt or sin
also. For the life of the Year-Daemon, as it seems to
be reflected in Tragedy, is generally a story of Prideand
Punishment. Each Year arrives, waxes great, com-
mits the sin of Hubris, and then is slain. The death is
deserved ; but the slaying is a sin : hence comes the
next Year as Avenger, or as the Wronged One re-risen.
' All things pay retribution for their injustice one to
another according to the ordinance of time.' l It is
this range of ideas, half suppressed during the classical
period, but evidently still current among the ruder
and less Hellenized peoples, which supplied St. Paul
with some of his most famous and deep-reaching
metaphors. ' Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not
quickened except it die/ 2 ' As He was raised from the
dead we may walk with Him in newness of life.' And
this renovation must be preceded by a casting out and
killing of the old polluted life ' the old man in us
must first be crucified '.

' The old man must be crucified.' We observed
that in all the three Festivals there was a pervasive

1 Anaximander apud Simplic. phys. 24. 13; Diets,
Fragment* der Vorsokratiker, i. 13. See especially F. M.
Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (Cambridge, 1912).
i; also my article on English and Greek Tragedy in Essays
of the Oxford English School, 1912. This explanation of the
rplros aorrfip is m$r conjecture.

1 i Cor. xv. 36; Rom. vi generally, 3-11.

34 SATORNIA REGNA

element of vague fear. Hitherto we have been dealing
with early Greek religion chiefly from the point of view
of mana, the positive power or force that man tries to
acquire from his totem-animal or his god. But there
is also a negative side to be considered : there is not
only the mana, but the tabu, the Forbidden, the Thing
Feared. We must cast away the old year ; we must
put our sins on to a ^ccpn<xx6<; or scapegoat and drive it
out. When the ghosts have returned and feasted with
us at the Anthesteria we must, with tar and branches of
buckthorn, purge them out of every corner of the rooms
till the air is pure from the infection of death. We must
avoid speaking dangerous words ; in great moments
we must avoid speaking any words at all, lest there
should be even in the most innocent of them some
unknown danger; for we are surrounded above and
below by K&res, or Spirits, winged influences, shape-
less or of unknown shape, sometimes the spirits of
death, sometimes of disease, madness, calamity ; thou-
sands and thousands of them, as Sarpedon says, from
whom man can. never escape nor hide ; * ' all the air so
crowded with them ', says an unknown 'ancient poet,
' that there is not one empty chink into which you
could push the spike of a blade of com.' *

The extraordinary security of our modern life in
times of peace makes it hard for us to realize, except
by a definite effort of the imagination, the constant
precariousness, the frightful proximity of death, that
'was usual in these weak ancient communities. They
were in fear of wild beasts; they were helpless

i JfL M. 336 t pvpUir*: od* <rrt ^uyeTv ftxmJw owS' ^ncMifai.
*~ Bfcg* Ap. Hat. ConsoL aeL Apoll* xxvi . . &n '**&*%* pir
vata KO.K&V irAein 6i daAaaaa" *al "raui&i dntaatm ttaxa. fea*&
i TC 5pc* cftcftrat, 4 &' cTtr&ia^ oW Mfa " (MS.

SATURNIA REGNA 35

against floods, helpless against pestilences. Their food
depended on the crops of one tiny plot of ground ; and
if the Saviour was not reborn with the spring, they
slowly and miserably died. And all the while they
knew almost nothing of the real causes, that made
crops* succeed or fail. They only felt sure it was
somehow a matter of pollution, of unexpiated defile-
ment. It is this state of things that explains the curious
cruelty of early agricultural doings, the human sacri-
> fices, the scapegoats, the tearing in pieces of living
animals, and perhaps of living men, the steeping- of the
fields in blood* Like most cruelty it has its roots in
terror, terror of the breach of Tabu the Forbidden
Thing. I will not dwell on this side of the picture : it
is well enough known . But we have to r&nember that,
like so many morbid growths of the human mind, it has
its sublime side. We must not forget that the human
victims were often volunteers. The records of Car-
thage and Jerusalem, the long list in Greek legend of
princes and princesses who died for their country, tell
the same 'story. In most human societies, savage as
well as civilized, it is not hard to find men who are
ready to endure death for their fellow-citizens. We
need not suppose that the martyrs were always the
noblest of the human race. They were sometimes mad
hysterical or megalomaniac : sometimes reckless and
desperate : sometimes, as in the curious case attested
of the Roman armies on the Danube, they were men of
strong desires und weak imagination ready to die at the
end of a short period, if in the meantime they might
glut all their senses with unlimited indulgence. 1

1 Ftazer, Lectures on ike Early History of the Kingship,
267; F. Curnont* ' Les Aotes de S. Dasius', in Analcct*

36 SATURNIA REGNA

Still, when all is said, there is nothing that stirs
men's imagination like the contemplation of martyr-
dom, and it is no wonder that the more emotional cults
of antiquity vibrate with the worship of this dying
Saviour, the S6sipolis, the S6t^r, who in so many
forms dies with his world or for his world, and rises
again as the world rises, triumphant through suffering
over Death and the broken Tabu.

Tabu is at first sight a far more prominent element
in the primitive religions than Mana, just as misfortune
and crime are more highly coloured and striking than
prosperity and decent behaviour. To an early Greek
tribe the world of possible action was sharply divided
between what was Themis and what was Not Themis,
between lawful and tabu, holy and unholy, correct
and forbidden. To do a thing that was not Themis
was a sure source of public disaster. Consequently
it was of the first necessity in a life full of such perils
to find out the exact rules about them. How is that
to be managed ? Themis is ancient law : it is T wdcTpta,
the way of our ancestors, the thing that has always
been done and is therefore divinely right. In ordinary
life, of course, Themis is clear. Every one knows it.
But from time to time new emergencies arise, the like
of which we have never seen, and they frighten us. We
must go to the Gerontes, the Old Men of the Tribe ;
they will perhaps remember what our fathers did.
What they tell us will be Presbiston, a word which
means indifferently ' oldest ' and ' best ' alcl Bk VCCOTPOI
v, ' Young men are always being foolish '.

BollandiAna, xvi. 5-16; cf. especially what St. Augustine
says about the disreputable hordes of would-be martyrscalled
Circumctlliones. See Index to Augustine, vol. xi in Migne :
some passages collected in Seeck, Gesch. d. Unter gangs der
antiken Welt, vol. iii, Anhang, pp. 503 ff .

SATURNIA REGNA 37

Of course, if there is a Basileus, a holy King, he by
his special power may perhaps know best of all, though
he too must take care not to gainsay the Old Men.

For the whole problem is to find out tcdfe ndfrpwc, the
ways that our fathers followed. And suppose the Old
Men themselves fail us, what must we needs do ? Here
we come to a famous and peculiar Greek custom, for
which I have never seen quoted any exacf parallel or
any satisfactory explanation. If the Old Men fail us,
we must go to those older still, go to our great ancestors,
the %6>e;, the Chthonian people, lying in their sacred
tombs, and ask them to help. The word XP*V means <
both ' to lend money ' and ' to give an oracle ', two
ways of helping people in an emergency. Sometimes
a tribe might happen to have a real ancestor buried
in the neighbourhood; if so, his tomb would be an
oracle. More often perhaps, for the memories of
savage tribes are very precarious, there would be no
well-recorded personal tomb. The oracle would be at
some place sacred to the Chthonian people in general,'
or to some particular personification of them, a Delphi
or a cave of Trophdnius, a place of Snakes and Earth.
You go to the Chthonian folk for guidance because they
are themselves the Oldest of the Old Ones, and they
know the redl custom : they know what is Presbiston,
what is Themis. And by an easy extension of this
knowledge they are also supposed to know what is.
He who knows the law fully to the uttermost also
knows what will happen if the law is broken. It is, I
think, important to realize that the normal reason for
consulting an oracle was not to ask questions of fact.
It was that some emergency had arisen in which men
simply wanted to know how they ought to behave,
advice they received in this way varied from

58 SATURNIA REGNA

the virtuous to the abominable, as the religion itself
varied. A great mass of oraclescan be quoted enjoining
the rules of customary morality, justice, honesty,
piety, duty to a man j s parents, to the old, and to the
weak. But of necessity the oracles hated change and
strangled the progress of knowledge. Also, like most
manifestations of early religion, .they throve upon
human terror : the more blind the terror the stronger
became their hold. In such an atmosphere the lowest
and most beastlike elements of humanity tended to
come to the front ; and religion no doubt as a rule
joined with them in drowning the voice of criticism and
of civilization, that is, of reason and of mercy. When
really frightened the oracle generally fell back on some
remedy full of pain and blood. The medieval plan of
burning heretics alive had not yet been invented. But
the history of uncivilized man, if it were written, would
provide a vast list of victims, all of them innocent, who
died or suffered to expiate some portent or monstrum
some reported ripen; with which they had nothing
whatever to do, which was in no way altered by their
suffering, which probably never really happened at all,
and if it did was of no consequence. The sins of the
modern world in dealing with heretics and witches
have perhaps been more gigantic than those of primi-
tive men, but one can hardly rise from the record of
these ancient observances without being haunted by
the judgement of the Roman poet :

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,

and feeling with him that the lightening of this cloud,
the taming of this Blind dragon, must rank among
the very greatest services that Hellenism wrought for
mankind.

II

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

I. Origin of the Olympians

THE historian of early Greece must find himself
often on the watch for a particular cardinal moment,
generally impossible to date in time and sometimes
hard even to define in terms of development, when
the clear outline that we call Classical Greece begins
to take shape out of the mist. It is the moment when,
as Herodotus puts it, ' the Hellenic race was marked
off from the barbarian, as more intelligent and more
emancipated from silly nonsense '.* In the eighth
century B. c., for instance, so far as our remains indi-
cate, there cannot have been much to showthat the in-
habitants of Attica and Boeotia and the Peloponnese
were markedly superior to those of, say, Lycia or
Phrygia, or even Epirus. By the middle of the fifth
century the difference is enormous. On the one side ts
Hellas, on the other the motley tribes of 'barbarai '.
^Wfieh the change does come and is consciously felt
we may notice a significant fact about it . It does not
announce itself as what it was, a new thing in the

Hdt. i. 6 foci V* wwcp#i) c' *rAaiW/ov

As to the date here suggested for the definite >e^wii
of Hellenism Mr. Edwyn Beran writes to me : 'I iave oftea
wondered w3iat the reason is that about that time a new age
began ail over the world that we know. In Nearer Asia the
OMi^Siautic snana&chieB gave pfog* to the Zwqa gtrfaf" Apwros^
hi 'Itadfa it was -the time of Btoddha, in China of Coafecius.'
E^Ay 1^*0? is almost ' Untommheit '.

40 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

world. It professes to be a revival, or rather an
emphatic realization, of something very old. The new
spirit of classical Greece, with all its humanity, its in-
tellectual life, its genius for poetry and art, describes
itself merely as being ' Hellenic ' like the Hellenes.
And the Hellenes were simply, as far as we can make
out, much the same as the Achaioi, one of the many
tribes of predatory Northmen who had swept down on
the Aegean kingdoms in the dawn of Greek history. 1
This claim of a new thing to be old is, in varying
degrees, a common characteristic of great movements.
The Reformation professed to be a return to the Bible,
the Evangelical movement in England a return to the
Gospels, the High Church movement a return to the
early Church. A large element even in the French
Revolution, the greatest of all breaches with the past,
had for its ideal a return to Roman republican virtue
or to the simplicity of the natural man. 2 I noticed
quite lately a speech of an American Progressive leader
claiming that his principles were simply those of
Abraham Lincoln. The tendency is due in part to the
almost insuperable difficulty of really inventing a new
word to denote a new thing. It is so much easier to
take an existing word, especially a famous word with
fine associations, and twist it into a new sense. In
part, no doubt, it comes from mankind's natural love

1 See in general Ridgteway, Early- Age of Greece, vol. i;
Leaf, Companion to Homer, Introduction; JR. G. E., chap, ii;
Chadwick, The Heroic Age (last four chapters); and J. L.
Myres, Dawn of History, chaps, viii and be.

* Since writing the above I find in Vandal, L'Avenemeni de
Bonaparte, p. 20, in Nelson's edition, a phrase about the
Revolutionary soldiers : ' Us se modelaient sur ces Remains
... stir ces Spartiates . . et ils creaient un type de haute
vertu guerriere, quand ils crovaient settlement le reproduire.'

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 41

for these old associations, and the fact that nearly all
people who are worth much have in them some in-
stinctive spirit of reverence. Even when striking out
a new path they like to feel that they are following at
least the spirit of one greater than themselves.

The Hellenism of the sixth and fifth centuries was
to a great extent what the Hellenism of later ages was
almost entirely, an ideal and a standard of culture.
The classical Greeks were not, strictly speaking, pure
Hellenes by blood. Herodotus and Thucydides l are
quite clear about that. The original Hellenes were
a particular conquering tribe of great prestige, which
attracted the surrounding tribes to follow it, imitate
it , and call themselves by its name. The Spartans were,
to Herodotus, Hellenic ; the Athenians on the other
hand were not. They were Pelasgian, but by a certain
time ' changed into Hellenes and learnt the language '.
In historical times we cannot really find any tribe of
pure Hellenes in existence, though the name clings
faintly to a particular district, not otherwise important,
in South Thessaly. Had there been any undoubted
Hellenes with incontrovertible pedigrees still going,
very likely the ideal would have taken quite a different
name. But where no one's ancestry would bear much
inspection, the only way to show you were a true
Hellene was to behave as such : that is, to approximate
to some constantly rising ideal of what the true Hellene
should be. In all probability if a Greek of the fifth
century, like Aeschylus or even Pindar, had met a
group of the real Hellenes or Achaioi of the Migrations,
he would have set them down as so many obvious and
flaming barbarians.

1 Hdt. i. 56 f.<; Th. i. 3 (Hellen son of Deucalion, in both).

42 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

We do not know whether tJae odd Hellenes had any
.general word to denote.the swrroiundkig peoples (' Pelas-
giansand divers other barbarous tribes '*) whom they
conquered or accepted as allies. 2 In any case by the
time of the Persian Wars (say 500 B. c.) all these tribes
together considered themselves Hellenized, bore the
name of ' Hellenes ', and formed a kind of unity
against hordes of * barbaroi ' surrounding them on every
side and threatening them especially from the east.

Let us consider for a moment the dates. In political
history this self-realization of the Gfleek' tribes as
Hellenes against barbarians seems to have been first
felt in the Ionian settlements on the coast of Asia
Minor, where the ' sons of Javan ' (Yawan = 'tecov)
clashed as invaders against the native Hittite and
Semite. It was emphasized by a similar clash in the
further colonies in Pontus and in the West. If we
wish for a central moment as representing this self-
realization of Greece, I should be inclined to find it
in the reign of Pisistratias (560-527 B. c.) when that
monarch made, as it were, the first sketch of an
Athenian empire based -on alliances and took over to
Athens the leadership of the Ionian race.

In literature the decisive moment is clear. It came
| when, in Mr. Mackail's phrase, ' Homer came to
j Hellas *. 3 The date is apparently the same, and the

1 Hdt. i. 58, In viii. 44 the account is more detailed.

8 The Homeric evidence is, as usual, inconclusive. The
wood ifdpflapoi is absent from both poems, an absence which
must be intentional on the part of the later reciters, but
may ireU tome from the original sources. The compound
fltytfiapAfannt occurs in B 867, but who knows the date of
that particular line in that particular wording ?

* Paper read to the Classical Association at Birmingham in

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 43

influences at work are the same. It seems to have
been under Pisistratus that the Homeric Poems, in
some form or other, came from Ionia to be recited in
a fixed order at the Panathenaic Festival, and to find
a canonical form and a central home in Athens till the
end of the classical period. Athens is the centre from
which Homeric influence radiates over the mainland
of Greece. Its effect upon literature was of course
enormous. It can be traced in various ways. By the
content of the literature, which now begins to be
filled with the heroic s$ga. By a change of style which
emerges in, say, Pindar and Aeschylus when compared
with what we know of Corinna or Thespis. More
objectively and definitely it can be traced in a remark-
able change of dialect. The old Attic poets, like Solon,
were comparatively little affected by the epic in-
fluence; the later elegists, like Ion, Euenus, aad
Plato, were steeped in it. 1

In religion the cardinal moment is the same. It
consists in the coming of Homer's ' Olympian Gods ',
and that is to be the subfect of the present essay.
I am not, of course, going to describe the cults amd
characters of the various Olympians. For that inquiry
the reader will naturally go to the five learned volumes

1 For Korinna see Wilamowitz in Berliner Klassikertexte,
V % xiv, especially p. 55. The Homeric epos drove out poetry
like Corinna's. She had actually written : ' I sing the great
deeds of heroes and heroines ' (tWet $'

, fr. 10, Bergk) , so that presumably her style was sufficiently
' heroic ' lor an un-Homeric generation. For the change of
dialect in elegy, &c. t see Thumb, Handbuch cL.gr. Dialekte, pp.
327-30, 368 fi., and tile literature there cited. Fide and
Hoffmann overstated the change, but Hoffmann's new state-
ment in Die grieckische Sprtche. 191 1, sections on Die Elegie,
seems just. The question of Tyrtaeus is complicated by
other problems.

44 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

of my colleague, Dr. Farnell. I wish merely to face
certain difficult and, I think, hitherto unsolved pro-
blems affecting the meaning and origin and history of
the Olympians as a whole.

Herodotus in a famous passage tells us that Homer
and Hesiod ' made the generations of the Gods for
the Greeks and gave them their names and dis-
tinguished their offices and crafts and portrayed their
shapes ' (2. 53) . The date of this wholesale proceeding
was, he thinks, perhaps as much as four hundred
years before his own day {c. 430 B. c.) but not more.
Before that time the Pelasgians i. e. the primitive
inhabitants of Greece as opposed to the Hellenes
were worshipping gods in indefinite numbers, with no
particular names; many of them appear as figures
carved emblematically with sex-emblems to represent
the powers of fertility and generation,like the Athenian
' Herms '. The whote account bristles with points for
discussion, but in general it suits very well with the
picture drawn in thte first of these essays, with its
Earth Maidens and Mothers and its projected Ktiuroi.
The background is the pre-Hellenic ' Urdummheit ' ;
the new shape impressed upon it is the great anthropo-
morphic Olympian family, as defined in the Homeric
epos and, more timidly, in Hesiod. But of Hesiod
we must speak later.

Now who* are these Olympian Gods and where do
they come from ? Homer did not ' make ' them out
of nothing. But the understanding of them is beset
with problems.

In the first place why are they called * Olympian ' ?
Are they the Gods of Mount Olympus, the old sacred

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 45

mountain of Homer's Achaioi, or do they belong to
the great sanctuary of Olympia in which Zeus, the lord
of the Olympians, had his greatest festival ? The two
are at opposite ends of Greece, Olympus in North
Thessaly in the north-east, Olympia in Elis in the
south-west. From which do the Olympians come?
On the one hand it is clear in Homer that they dwell
on Mount Olympus ; they have ' Olympian houses '
beyond hum^n sight, on the top of the sacred moun-
tain, which in the Odyssey is identified with heaven.
On the other hand, when Pisistratus introduced the
worship of Olympian Zeus on a great scale into Athens
and built the Olympieum, he seems to have brought
him straight from Olympia in Elis. For he introduced
the special Elean complex of gods, Zeus, Rhea, Kronos,
and G Olympia. 1

Fortunately this puzzle can be solved. The Olym-
pians belong to both places. It is merely a case of
tribal migration. History, confirmed by the study of
the Greek dialects, seems to show that these northern
Achaioi came down across central Greece and the Gulf
of Corinth and settled in Elis. 2 They brought with
them their Zeus, who was already called ' Olympian ',
and established him as superior to the existing god,
Kronos. The Games became Olympian and the
sanctuary by which they were performed ' Olympia \ 8

1 The facts are well known : see Paus. i. 18. 7. T^he in-
ference was pointed put to me by Miss Harrison.

1 I do not here raise the question how far the Achaioi have
special affinities with the north-west group of tribes or
dialects. See Thumb, Handbuch d. gr. DMekte (1909), P.
1 66 f . The Achaioi must have passed through South Thessaly
in any case.

1 That Kronos was in possession of the Kronion and
Olympia generally before Zeus came was recognized in an-

46 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

As soon as this point is clear, we understand also why
there is more than one Mount Olympus, We can all
think of two, one in Thessaly and one across the Aegean
in Mysia. But there are many more; some twenty-
odd, if I mistake not, in the whole Greek region.
It is a pre-Greek word applied to mountains; and
it seems clear that the ' Olympian ' gods, wherever
their worshippers moved, tended to dwell in the
highest mountain in the neighbourhood, and the
mountain thereby became Olympus.

The name, then, explains itself. The Olympians
are the mountain gods of the old invading Northmen,
the chieftains and princes, each with his comitatus or
loose following of retainers and minor chieftains, who
broke in upon the ordered splendours of the Aegean
palaces and, still more important, on the ordered sim-
plicity of tribal life in the pre-Hellenic villages of the
mainland. Now, k is a canon of religious study that
all gods reflect the social state, past or present, of
I their worshippers. From this point of view what
appearance do the Olympians of Homer make ? What
are they there for ? What do they do, and what are
their relations one to another ?

. The gods of most nations claim to have created the
world. The Olympians make no such claim. The
most they ever did was to conquer it. Zeus and his
comitatus conquered Cronos and his ; conquered and
expelled them Stent them migrating beyond the
horizon, Heaven knows where. Zeus took the chief
dominion and remained a permanent overlord, but he

tiquity; Paus. v. 7. 4 and 10. Also Mayer in Roscher's
Lexicon, ii t p. 1508, 50 fL ; Rise of Greek Epic 1 , pp. 40*8 ;
J. A. K. Thomson. Studies in the Odyssey (1914), chap. vii f
viii; Chadwick, Heroic Age (191 1), pp. 282, 289.

THE OLYMPIAN' CONQUEST 47

apportioned large kingdoms to his brothers Hades and
Poseidon, and confirmed various of his children and
followers in lesser fiefs. Apollo went off on his own
adventure and conquered Delphi. Athena conquered
the Giants. She gained Athens by a conquest over
Poseidon, a point of which we will speak later.

And when they have conquered their kingdoms,
what do they do ? Do they attend to the government ?
Do they promote agriculture ? *Do they practise trades
and industries ? Not a bit of it. Why should they do
any honest work ? They find it easier to live on the
revenues and blast with thunderbolts the people who
do not pay. They are conquering chieftains, royal buc-
caiieers. They fight, and feast, and play, and make
music ; they drink deep, and roar with laughter at the
lame smith who waits on them. They are never
afraid, except of their own king. They never tell
lies, except in love and war.

A few deductions may be made from this statement,
but they do not affect its main significance. One god,
you may say, Hephaistos, is definitely a craftsman.
Yes : a smith, a maker of weapons. The one craftsman
that a gang of warriors needed to have by them ; and
they preferred him lame, so that he should not run
away. Again, Apollo herded for hire the cattle of
Admetus ; Apollo and Poseidon built the walls of Troy
for Laomedon, Certainly in such stories we have
an intrusion of other elements ; but in any case the
work done is not habitual work, it is a special punish-
ment Again, it is not denied that the Olympians
bare some effect am agriculture and on justice : they
destroy the harvests of these who offend them, they
punish oath-breakers and the like. Even in the Heroic

48 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

Age itself if we may adopt Mr. Chadwick's convenient
title for the Age of the Migrations chieftains and
gods probably retained some vestiges of the functions
they had exercised in more normal and settled times ;
and besides we must always realize that, in these
inquiries, we never meet a simple and uniform figure.
We must further remember that these gods are not
real people with a real character. They never existed.
They are only concept^, exceedingly confused cloudy
and changing concepts, in the minds of thousands
of diverse worshippers and non-worshippers. They
change every time they are thought of, as a word
changes every time it is pronounced. Even in the
height of the Achaean wars the concept of any one
god would 'be mixed up with traditions and associa-
tions drawn from the surrounding populations and
their gods ; and by the time they come down to us in
Homer and our other early literature, they have passed
through the minds of many different ages and places,
especially Ionia and Athens.

The Olympians as described in our text of Homer,
or as described in the Athenian recitations of the sixth
century, are mutatis mutandis related to the Olympians
of the Heroic Age much as the Hellenes of the sixth
century are to the Hellenes of the Heroic Age. I say
' mutatis mutandis ', because thte historical development
of a group of imaginary concepts shrined in tradition
and romance can never be quite the same as that of the
people who conceive them. The realm of fiction is
/ apt both to leap in front and to lag in the rear of the
(march of real life. Romance will hug picturesque
darknesses as well as invent perfections. But the gods
of Homer, as we have them, certainly seem to show

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST. 49

traces of the process through which they have passed ;
of an origin among the old conquering Achaioi, a
development in the Ionian epic schools, and a final
home in Athens. 1

For example, what gods are chiefly prominent hi
Homer ? In the IKad certainly three, Zeus, Apollo,
and Athena, and much the same would hold for
the Odyssey. Next to them in importance will be
Poseidon, Hera, and Hermes.

Zeus stands somewhat apart. He is one of the very
few gods with recognizable and undoubted Indo-
germanic names, Djeus, the well-attested sky- and
rain-god of the Aryan race. He is Achaian; he is
' Hellanios ', the god worsliipped by all Hellenes. He is
also, curiously enough, Pelasgian, and Mr. A. B. Cook *
can explain to us the seeming contradiction. But the
Northern elements in the conception of Zeus have on
the whole triumphed over any Pelasgian or Aegean
sky-god with which they may have mingled, and Zeus,
in spite of -his dark hair, may be mainly treated as the
patriarchal god of the invading Northmen, passing
from the Upper Danube down by his three great
sanctuaries, Dodona, Olympus, and Olympia . He had

i I do not touch here on the subject of the gradual ex-
purgation of the Poems to suit the feelings of a more civilized
audience; see Rise of the Greek Epic? pp. 120-4. Many
scholars believe that the 'Poems did not exist as a written book
till the public copy was made by Pisistratus; gee Cauer,
Grundfragen der Homerkritik* (1909), pp. 113-45; JR. G. ./
pp. 304-16; Leaf , //* ad, voL i, p. xvi. This view is templing,
though the evidence seems to be insufficient to justify a
pronouncement either way. If it is true, then various
pasaages< which show a verbal use of earlier documents (like
the Bellerophon passage, & G. J5.,* pp. 175 ff.> cannot have
been put in before the Athenian period.

8 In his Zeus, the Indo-Eutopean Sky-God (1914, 1924).
See R. G. ., pp* 40 ff .
C

50 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

I an extraordinary power of ousting or absorbing the
| various objects of aboriginal worship which he found
j in his path. The story of Meilichios above (p. 14) is
a common one. Of course, we must not suppose that
the Zeus of the actual Achaioi was a figure quite like
the Zeus of Pheidias or of Homer. There has been
a good deal of expurgation in the Homeric Zeus, 1 as
Mr. Cook clearly shows. The Counsellor and Cloud-
compeller of classical Athens was the wizard and rain-
maker of earlier times ; and the All-Father surprises
us in Thera and Crete by appearing both as a babe and
as a Kouros in spring dances and initiation rituals. 2
It is a long way from these conceptions to the Zeus
of Aeschylus, a figure as sublime as the Jehovah of
Job ; but the lineage seems clear.

Zeus is the Achaean Sky-god. His son Phoebus
Apollo is of more complex make. On one side he
is clearly a Northman. He has connexions with the
Hyperboreans. 8 He has a ' sacred road ' leading far
into the North, along which offerings are 'sent back
from shrine to shrine beyond the bounds of Greek
knowledge. Such ' sacred roads ' are normally the
roads by which the God himself has travelled; the
offerings are sent back from the new sanctuary to
the old. On the other side Apollo reaches back to an
Aegean matriarchal Kouros. His home is Delos,
where he has a mother, Leto, but noyery visible father.
He leads the ships of his .islanders, sometimes in the
form of a dolphin. He is no ' Hellene '. In the fight-

1 A somewhat similar .change occurred in Othin, though he
always retains more of the crooked wizard.

* Themis, chap. i. On the Zeus of Aeschylus cf. R. G. E.*
pp. 277 ff. ; Compere, Greek Thinkers, ii. 6-8.

* Farnell, Cults, iv. 100-4. See, however, Gruppe, p. 107 f .

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 51

ing at Troy he is against the Achaioi : he destroys
the Greek host, he champions Hector, he even slays
Achilles. In the Homeric hymn to Apollo we read
that when the great archer draws near to Olympus
all the gods tremble and start from their seats ; Leto
alone, and of course Zeus, hold their ground. 1 What
this god's original name was at Delos we cannot be
sure : he has very many names and ' epithets '. But
he early became identified with a similar god at
Delphi and adopted his name, ' Apoll6n ', or, in the
Delphic and Dorian form, ' Apelton ' presumably the
Kouros projected from the Dorian gatherings called
' apettae '.' As Phoibos he is a sun-god, and from
classical times onward we often find him definitely
identified with the Sun, a distinction which came
easily to a Kouros.

In any case, and this is the important point, he is at
Delos the chief god of the lonians. The lonians are
defined by Herodotus as those tribes and cities who
were sprung from Athens and kept the Apaturia.
They recognized Delos as their holy place and wor-
shipped Apollo Patrdos as their ancestor. 1 The Ionian
Homer has naturally brought us the Ionian god ; and,
significantly enough, though the tradition makes him
an enemy of the Greeks, and the poets have to accept
the tradition, there is no tendency to crab or belittle
him. He is the most splendid and awful of Homer's
Olympians.

1 Hymn. Af. init. Cf. Wilamowitz's Oxford Lecture on
' Apollo ' (Oxford, 1907).

* Themis, p. 439 f . Cf. o 'Ayopafef . Other explanations
of the name in Gruppe, p. * 224 f., notes.

Hdt. i. 147; Plato, Euttyd. 302 c : Socrates. ' No
Ionian recognizes a Zeus Patroos; Apollo is our Patrdos,
because he was father of Ion/

52 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

The case of Pallas Athena is even simpler, though it
leads to a somewhat surprising result. What Apollo
is to Ionia that, and more, Athena is to Athens. There
are doubtless foreign elements in Athena, some Cretan
and Ionian, some Northern. 1 But her whole appear-
ance in history and literature tells the same story as her
name. Athens is her city and she is the goddess of
Athens, the Athena or Athenaia KorS. In Athens she
can be simply ' Parthenos '^.the Maiden; elsewhere
she is the ' Attic' 1 or ' Athenian Maiden'. As
Glaucopis she is identified or associated with the
Owl that was the sacred bird of Athens. As Pallas she
seems to be a Thunder-maiden, a sort of Keraunia or
bride of Keraunos. A Palladion consists of two
thunder-shields, set one above the other like a figure
8, and we can trace in art-types the development of
this 8 into a human figure. It seems clear that the
old Achaioi cannot have called their warrior-maiden,
daughter of Zeus, by the name Athena or Athenaia.
The Athenian goddess must have come in from
Athenian influence, and it is strange to find how deep
into the heart of the poems that influence must have
reached. If we try to conjecture whose place it is
that Athena has taken, it is worth remarking that her
regular epithet, ' daughter of Zeus ', belongs in Sans-
; krit to the Dawn-goddess, E6s. a The transition might
-be helped by some touches of the Dawn-goddess that
seem to linger about Athena in myth. The rising
Sun stayed his horses while Athena was born from

1 See Gruppe, p. 1206, on the development of his ' Philistine
thunderstorfn-goddess '.

* Hoffmann, Gesch. d. triecMscketo Sprache, Leipzig,
xgxx, p* 16. Cf. Find. 01. vii. 35; Ov. Met*m. ix. 421; xv.
191, 700, &c.

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 53

the head of Zeus. Also she was born amid a snow-
storm of gold. And E6s, on the other hand, is, like
Athena, sometimes the daughter of the Giant Pallas. 1
Our three chief Olympians, then, explain themselves
very easily. A body of poetry and tradition, in its
origin dating from the Achaioi of the Migrations,
growing for centuries in the hands of Ionian bards,
and reaching its culminating form at Athens, has
prominent in it the Achaian Zeus, the Ionian Apollo,
the Athenian Korfi the same Kor6 who descended in
person to restore the exiled Pisistratus to his throne. 8

1 As to the name, 'Atiyvaia is of course simply ' Athenian ' ;
the shorter and apparently original form 'A&ava, 'Afbjvw is not
so clear, but it seems most likely to mean ' Attic '. Cf . Meister,
Gr. Dial. ii. 290. He classes under the head of Oertliche
Bestimmungen : d 0c& Uatf>ia (Collitz and Bechtel, Sammlung
der griechischen pialekt-Inschrijten, 2, 3, 14*, b , 15, 16). ' In
Paphos selbst hiess die Gottin nur d 0etfe oder d Favaaaa ; d
Ow d ToAy/a (61) <i &<fc d 'Aftfe/a d irfy 'H&Oioy (60, 27, 28),
' die Gottin, die Athenische, die uber Edalion (waltet) ';
* 'A0-dva ist, wie J. Baunaclc (Stitdia Nicolaitana, s. 27) gezeigt
hat, das Adjectiv zu (*'Aw^ f Seeland ') : *Arr-ts; 'Ar^-fe;
*'AB-ls ; also 'A^-avo = 'ATT-UCIJ, 'A0-jjv<u ursprun^lich ' AB-ijvat
Kama*.' Other derivations in Gruppe, p. 1194. Or again of
'Awfvat may be simply * the place where the Athenas are %
like ol IxOvfs, the fish-market ; the Athenas ' would be statues,
like ol 'Ep/icu the famous ' Attic Maidens ' on the Acropolis.
This explanation would lead to some interesting results.

We need not here consider how, partly by identification
with other Korae, like Pallas, Onka, &c., partly by a genuine
spread of the cult, Athena became prominent in other cities.
As to Homer, Athena is far more deeply imbedded in the
Odyssey t-^-n in the Iliad. I am inclined to agree with those who
believe that out Odyssey was very largely composed in Athens,
so that in most of the poem Athena is original. (Cf . O. Seeck,
Die Quellen der Odyssee (1887), pp. 366-420; Mulder, Die
Ilias und ihre Quetten (1910), pp. 350-5.) In some parts of
the Iliad the name Athena may well have been substituted
for some Northern goddess whose name is now lost.

8 It is worth noting also that thfc Homeric triad seems also
to be recognized as the chief Athenian triad. Plato, Eutkyd.
302 c, quoted above, continues : Socrates. ' We have Zeus

54 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

We need only throw a glance in passing at a few
of the other Olympians. Why, for instance, should
Poseidon be so prominent ? In origin he is a puzzling
figure. Besides the Achaean Earth-shaking brother
of Zeus in Thessaly there seems to be some Pelasgian
or Aegean god present in him. He is closely connected
with Libya ; he brings the horse from there. l At times
he exists in order to be defeated ; defeated in Athens
6y XHieha, in Naxos by Dionysus, in Aegina by Zeus,
in Argos by Hera, in Acrocorinth by Helios though
he continues to hold the Isthmus. In Trozen he
shares a temple on more or less equal terms with
Athena.* Even in Troy he is defeated and cast out
from the walls his own hands had built. 3 These
problems we need not for the present face. By the
time that concerns us most the Earth-Shaker is a sea-
god, specially important to the sea-peoples of Athens
and Ionia. He is the father of Neleus, the ancestor
of the Ionian kings. His temple at Cape Mykale is the
scene of the Panionia, and second only to Delos as a
religious centre of the Ionian tribes. He has intimate
relations with Attica too. Besides the ancient contest
with Athena for the possession of the land, he appears

with the names Herkeios and Phratrios, but not Patroos,
and Athena Phratria.' Dionysodorus. ' Well, that is enough.
You have, apparently, Apollo and Zeus and Athena ? '
Socrates. ' Certainly.' Apollo is put first because he has
been accepted as Patroos. But see R. G. E. t * p. 49, n.

1 Ridgeway. Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred
Horse, 1905, pp. 287-93; and Early Age of Greece, 1901, p.
223.

Gf. Plut;. Q. Conv. ix. 6; Paus. ii. i. 6; 4. 6; 15. 5;
30. 6.

So in the non-Homeric tradition, Eur. Troades init.
In the Iliad he is made an enemy of Troy, like Athena, who
is none the less the Guardian of the city.

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 55

as the father of Theseus, the chief Athenian hero. He
is merged in other Attic heroes, like Aigeus and Erech-
theus. He is thespecial patron of the Athenian knights.
Thus his prominence in Homer is very natural.

What of Hermes ? His history deserves a long mono-
graph to itself; it is so exceptionally instructive.
Originally, outside Homer, Hermes was simply an old
upright stone, a pillar furnished with the regular
Pelasgian sex-symbol of procreation. Set up over a
tomb he is the power that generates new lives, or, in
the ancient conception, brings the souls back to be
born again. He is the Guide of the Dead, the Psycho-
pompos, the divine Herald between the two worlds*
If you have a message for the dead, you speak it to
the Herm at the grave. This notion of Hermes as
herald may have been helped by his use as a boundary-
stone the Latin Terminus. Your boundary-stone is
your representative, the deliverer of your message, to
the hostile neighbour or alien. If you wish to parley
with him, you advance up to your boundary-stone.
If you go, as a Herald, peacefully, into his territory,
you place yourself under the protection of the same
sacred stone, the last sign that remains of your own
safe country. If you are killed or wronged, it is he,
the immovable Watcher, who will avenge you.

Now this phallic stone post was quite unsuitable to
Homer. It was not decent ; it was not quite human ;
and every personage in Homer has to be both. In
the Iliad Hermes is simply removed, and a beautiful
creation or tradition, Iris, the rainbow-goddess, takes
his place as the messenger from heaven to earth. In
the Odyssey he is admitted, but so changed and
castigated that no one would recognize the old Herm

56 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

in the beautiful and gracious youth who performs the
gods' messages. I can only detect in his language
one possible trace of his old Pelasgian character. 1

Pausanias knew who worked the transformation. In
speaking of Hermes among the other ' Workers ', who
were ' pillars in square form ', he says, ' As to Hermes,
the poems of Homer have given currency to the report
that he is a servant of Zeus and leads down the spirits
of the departed to Hades'. 2 In the magic papyri
Hermes returns to something of his old functions;
he is scarcely to be distinguished from the Agathos
Daimon. But thanks to Homer he is purifiedjpfjiis
old phallicism.

TTera, too, the wife of Zeus, seems to have a curious
past behind her. She has certainly ousted the original
wife, Dione, whose worship continued unchallenged
in far Dodona, from times before Zeus descended upon
Greek lands. When he invaded Thessaly he seems
to have left Dione behind and wedded the Queen o!
the <x>nquered territory. Hera's permanent epithet is
' Argeia ', ' Argive '. She is the Argive Korfi, or Year-
Maiden, as Athena is the Attic, Cypris the Cyprian.
But Argos in Homer denotes two different places,
a watered plain in the Peloponnese and a watered plain
in Thessaly . Hera was certainly the chief goddess of
Peloponnesian Argos in historic times, and had brought
her consort Herakles * along with her, but at one time
she seems to have belonged to the Thessalian Argos.

1 Od. B 339 ff .

J See Paus. viii. 32. 4. Themis, pp. 295, 296.

* For the ^connexion of "H/m ^f/xo; 'HpaxAn? ('HpwcaAos in.
Sophron, fr. 142 K) see especially A. B. Cook, Class. Review.
2906, pp. 365 and 416. The name *Hpa seems probably to be
an ' ablaut ' form of wpa : of. phrases like *Hpa rthcia. Other
literature in Gruppe, pp. 452, 1122.

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 57

'She helped Thessalian Jason to launch the ship Argo,
and they launched it from Thessalian Pagasae. In the
Argonaaitica she is a beautiful figure, gracious and
strong, the lovely patroness of the young hero. No
element of strife is haunting her. But in the Iliad for
some reason she is unpopular. She is a shrew, a scold,
and a jealous wife. Why? Miss Harrison suggests
tfiat the quarrel with Zeus dates from the time of the
invasion, when he was the conquering alien and she
the native queen of the land. 1 It may be, too, that
the Ionian poets who respected their own Apollo and
Athena and Poseidon, regarded Hera as representing
some race or tribe that they disliked. A goddess of
Dorian Argos might be as disagreeable as a Dorian. It
seems to be for some reason like this that Aphrodite,
identified with Cyprus or some centre among Oriental
barbarians, is handled with so much disrespect ; that
Ares, the Thracian Kouros, a Sun-god and War-god, is
treated as a mere bully and coward and general pest. 2
There is not much faith in these gods, as they appear
to us in the Homeric Poems, and not much respect,
except perhaps for Apollo and Athena and Poseidon.
The buccaneer kings of the Heroic Age, cut loose from
all local and tribal pieties, intent only on personal gain
and glory , were not the people to build up a powerful
religious faith. They left that, as they left agriculture
and handiwork, to the nameless common folk. 9 And

1 Prolegomena, p. 315, referring to H. D. Muller, Mytholoei*
4. cr. Stdmme, pp. 249-55. Another view is suggested by
Mulder, Die Was und *** Quellen, p. 136. The Jealous
Hera comes from the Heracles-saga, in which the wife hated
-the^bastard. -

1 P. Gardner, in Nutriematic Chronicle, K.B. xx, * Ares as a
Sun-God '.

* Chadwick, Heroic Age. especially pp. 414, 459-63.

58 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

it was not likely that the bards of cultivated and
scientific Ionia should waste much religious emotion
on a system which was clearly meant more for
romance than for the guiding of life.

Yet the power of romance is great. In the memory
of Greece the kings and gods of the Heroic Age were
transfigured. What had been really an age of bucca-
neering violence became in memory an age of chivalry
and splendid adventure. The traits that were at all
tolerable were idealized ; those that were intolerable
were either expurgated, or, if that was impossible,
were mysticized and explained away. And the savage
old Olympians became to Athens and the mainland of
Greece from the sixth century onward emblems of
high humanity and religious reform.

II. The Religious Value of the Olympians

Now to some people this statement may seem a wil-
ful paradox, yet I believe it to be true. The Olympian
religion, radiating from Homer at the Panathenaea,
produced what I will venture to call exactly a religious
reformation. Let us consider how, with all its flaws
and falsehoods, it was fitted to attempt such a work.

In the first place the Poems represent an Achaian
tradition, the tradition of a Northern conquering race,
organized on a patriarchal monogamous system vehe-
mently distinct from the matrilinear customs of the
Aegean or Hittite races, with their polygamy and
polyandry, their agricultural rites, their sex-emblems
and fertility goddesses. Contrast for a moment the
sort of sexless Valkyrie who appears in the Iliad under
the name of Athena with the Korfi of Ephesus,
strangely called Artemis, a shapeless fertility figure,

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 59

covered with innumerable breasts. That suggests the
contrast that I mean.

Secondly, the poems are by tradition aristocratic;
they are the literature of chieftains, alien to low
popular superstition. True, the poems as we have
them are not Court poems. That error ought not
to be so often repeated. As we have them they are
poems recited at a Panegyris, or public festival. But
they go back in ultimate origin to something like lays
sung in a royal hall. And the contrast between the
Homeric gods and the gods found outside Homer is
well compared by Mr. Chadwick 1 to the difference
between the gods of the Edda and the historical traces
of religion outside the Edda. The gods who feast with
Odin in Asgard, forming an organized community or
comitatus, seem to be the gods of the kings, distinct
from the gods of the peasants, cleaner and more war-
like and lordlier, though in actual religious quality
much less vital.

Thirdly, the poems in their main stages are Ionian,
and Ionia was for many reasons calculated to lead the
forward movement against the ' Urdummheit '. For
one thing, Ionia reinforced the old Heroic tradition, in
having much the same inward freedom. The lonians
are the descendants of those who fledirom the invaders
across the sea, leaving their homes, tribes, and tribal
traditions. Wilamowitz has well remarked how the
imagination of the Greek mainland is dominated by
the gigantic sepulchres of unknown kings, which the
fugitives to Asia had left behind them and half
forgotten. 2

1 Chap, xviii.

* Introduction to his edition of the Cholphoroe. p, 9.

60 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

Again, when the lonians settled on the Asiatic coast!
they were no doubt to some extent influenced, but thej
were far more repelled by die barbaric tribes of the
interior. They became conscious, as we have said, oi
something that was Hellenic, as distinct from some-
thing else that was barbaric, and the Hellenic part
of them vehemently rejected what struck them as
superstitious, cruel, or unclean. And lastly, we must
\ remember that Ionia was, before the rise of Athens,
| not only the most imaginative and intellectual part oJ
j Greece, but by far the most advanced in knowledge
> and culture. The Homeric religion is a step in the
self-realization of Greece, and such self-realization
naturally took its rise in Ionia.

Granted, then, that Homer was calculated to pro-
duce a kind of religious reformation in Greece, what
kind of reformation was it ? We are again reminded
of St. Paul. It was a move away from the ' beggarly
elements ' towards some imagined person behind them.
The world was conceived as neither quite without
external governance, nor as merely subject to the
incursions of mana snakes and bulls and thunder-stones
and monsters, but as governed by an organized body of
personal and reasoning rulers, wise and bountiful
fathers, like man In mind and shape, only unspeakably
higher.

For a type of this Olympian spirit we may take a
phenomenon that has perhaps sometimes wearied us :
the reiterated insistence in the reliefs of the best period
on the strife of men against centaurs or of gods against
giants. Our modern sympathies are apt to side
with the giants and centaurs. An age of order likes
romantic violence, as landsmen safe in their houses like

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 61

storms at sea. But to the Greek, this battle was full
of symbolical meaning. It is the strife, the ultimate
victory, of human intelligence, reason, and gentleness,
against what seems at first the overwhelming power
of passion and unguided strength. It is Hellas
against the brute world. 1

The victory of Hellenism over barbarism, of man
over beast : that was the aim, but was it ever accom-
plished ? The Olympian gods as we see them in art
appear so calm, so perfect, so far removed from the
atmosphere of acknowledged imperfection and spiritual
striving, that what I am now about to say may again
seem a deliberate paradox. It is nevertheless true that
the Olympian Religion is only to the full intelligible
and admirable if we realize it as a superb and baffled
endeavour, not a telos or completion but a movement
and effort of life.

We may analyse the movement into three main
elements : a moral expurgation of the old rites, an j
attempt to bring order into the old chaos, and lastly

1 The spirit appears very simply in Eur. Iph. Taw. 386 ff . ,
where Iphigenia rejects the gods who demand human sacrifice :

These tales be false, false as those f eastings wild
Of Tantalus, and gods that tare a child.
This land of murderers to its gods hath given
Its own lust. Evil dwelleth not in heaven.

Yet just before she has accepted the loves of Zeus and Leto
without objection. ' Leto* whom Zeus loved, could never
have given birth to such a monster 1 ' Cf. Plutarch, Vit.
Pelop. xxi, where Pelopidas, in rejecting the idea of a human
sacrifice, says : ' No high and more than human beings
could be pleased with so barbarous and unlawful a sacrifice.
It was not the fabled Titans and Giants who ruled the world,
but one who was a Fattier of all gods and men/ Of course,
criticism and expurgation of the legends is too common to
need illustration. See especially Kaibel, Daktyloi Iduiol,
1902, p. 512.

62 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

an adaptation to new social needs. We will take the
three in order.

In the first place, it gradually swept out of religion,
or at least covered with a decent veil, that great mass
of rites which was concerned with the Food-supply
and the Tribe-supply and aimed at direct stimulation
of generative processes. 1 It left only a few reverent
and mystic rituals, a few licensed outbursts of riotous
indecency in comedy and the agricultural festivals. It
swept away what seems to us a thing less dangerous,
a large part of the worship of the dead. Such worship,
our evidence shows us, gave a loose rein to superstition.
To the Olympian movement it was vulgar, it was semi-
barbarous, it was often bloody. We find that it has
almost disappeared from Homeric Athens at a time
when the monuments show it still flourishing in un-
Homeric Sparta. The Olympian movement swept
away also, at least for two splendid centuries, the
worship of the man-god, with its diseased atmosphere
of megalomania and blood-lust.* These things return
with the fall of Hellenism ; but the great period, as it
urges man to use all his powers of thought, of daring
and endurance, of social organization, so it bids him
remember that he is a man like other men, subject to the
same laws and bound to reckon with the same death.

So much for the moral expurgation : next for the
bringing of intellectual order. To parody the words
of Anaxagoras, ' In the early religion all things were
together, till the Homeric system came and arranged
them*.

1 'Aristophanes did much to reduce this element in comedy ;
see Clouds. 537 ff. : also Albany Review. 1907, p. 201.
* R.G.E.'p. 139!.

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 63

We constantly find in the Greek pantheon beings
who can be described as iroXX&v 6vo(xdcrcov pop^j) pla,
' one form of many names '. Each tribe, each little
community, sometimes one may almost say each caste
the Children of the Bards, the Children of the
Potters had its own special gods. Now as soon as
there was any general ' Sunoikismos ' or ' Settling-
together ', any effective surmounting of the narrowest
local barriers, these innumerable gods tended to melt
into one another. Under different historical circum-
stances this process might have been carried resolutely
through and produced an intelligible pantheon in which
each god had his proper function and there was no
overlapping one Kor6, one Kouros, one Sun-God, and
so on. But in Greece that was impossible. Imagina-
tions had been too vivid, and local types had too often
become clearly personified and differentiated. The
Madden of Athens, Athena, did no doubt absorb some
other Korai, but she could not possibly combine with
her of Cythftra or Cyprus, or Ephesus, nor with the
Argive Kort or the Delian or the Brauroniah. What
happened was that the infinite cloud of Maidens was
greatly reduced and fell into four or five main types.
The Korai of Cyprus, CythSra, Corinth, Eryx, and some
other places were felt to be one, and became absorbed
in the great figure of Aphrodite. Artemis absorbed
a quantity more, including those of Delos and Brauron,
of various parts of Arcadia and Sparta, and even, as
we saw, the fertility Korg of Ephesus. Doubtless she
and the Delian were originally much closer together,
but the Delian differentiated towards ideal virginity,
the Ephesian towards ideal fruitfulness. The Kouroi,
or Youths, in the same way were absorbed into some

64 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

half-dozen great mythological shapes, Apollo, Ares,
Hermes, Dionysus, and the like.

As so often in Greek development, we are brought
up against the immense formative power of fiction or
romance. The simple Korfe or Kouros was a figure of
indistinct outline with no history or personality. Like
the Roman functional gods, such beings were hardly
persons; they melted easily one into another. But
when the Greek imagination had once done its work
upon them, a figure like Athena or Aphrodite had
become, for all practical purposes, a definite person,
almost as definite as Achilles or Odysseus, as Macbeth
or Falstaff. They crystallize hard. They will no
longer melt or blend, at least not at an ordinary tem-
perature. In the fourth and third centuries we hear
a great deal about the gods all being one, ' Zeus the
same as Hades, Hades as Helios, Helios the same as
Dionysus ',* but the amalgamation only takes place in
the white heat of ecstatic philosophy or the rites of
religious mysticism.

The best document preserved to us of this attempt
to bring order into Chaos is the poetry of Hesiod.
There are three poems, all devoted to this object,
composed perhaps under the influence of Delphi and
certainly under that of Homer, and trying in a quasi-
Homeric dialect and under a quasi-Olympian system;
to bring together vast masses of ancient theology
and folk-lore and scattered tradition The Tfoogony
attempts to make a pedigree and hierarchy of the
Gods; The Catalogue of Women and the Eoi*i,

1 Justin, Cohort, c. 15. But such pantheistic language is
common in* Orphic and: other mystic literature. See the
fragments of the Orphic Atol^ieai (pp. 144 ft. in Abel's Hymni),

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 65

preserved only in scanty fragments, attempt to fix
in canonical form the cloudy mixture of dreams and
boasts and legends and hypotheses by which most
royal families in central Greece recorded their descent
from a traditional ancestress and a conjectural God.
The Works and Days form an attempt to collect and
arrange the rules and tabus relating to agriculture.
The work of Hesiod as a whole is one of the most valiant
failures in literature. The confusion" and absurdity
oi it are only equalled by its strange helpless beauty
and its extraordinary historical interest. The Hesiodic
system when compared with that of Homer is much
more explicit, much less expurgated, infinitely less
accomplished and tactful. At the back of Homer lay
the lordly warrior-gods of the Heroic Age, at the back
of Hesiod the crude and tangled superstitions of the
peasantry of the mainland. Also the Hesiodic poets
worked in a comparatively backward and unenlight-
ened atmosphere, the Homeric were exposed to the
full light of Athens.

The third element in this Homeric reformation is an
attempt to make religion satisfy the needs of a new
social orfer. The earliest Greek religion was clearly!
based on the tribe, a band of people, all in some sense
kindred and normally living together, people with "the
same customs, ancestors, initiations, docks and herds
and fields. This tribal and agricultural religion can
hardly have maintained itself unchanged at the
great Aegean centres, like Cnossus and Mycenae. 1 It

1 I have not attempted to consider the Cretan cults.
They lie historically outside the range of these essays, and I
am not competent to deal with evidence that is purely
archaeological. But in general I imagine the Cretan religion
to be a developmenl from the religion described in my first

66 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

certainly did not maintain itself among the marauding
chiefs of the heroic age. It bowed its head beneath
the sceptre of its own divine kings and the armed heel
of its northern invaders, only to appear again almost
undamaged and unimproved when the kings were
fallen and the invaders sunk into the soil like storms
of destructive rain.

But it no longer suited its environment. In the
age of the migrations the tribes had been broken,
scattered, re-mixed. They had almost ceased to exist
as important social entities. The social unit which had
taken their place was the political community of men,
of whatever tribe or tribes, who were held together
in times of danger and constant war by means of
a common circuit-wall, a Polis. 1 The idea of the
tribe remained. In the earliest classical period we
find every Greek city still nominally composed of
tribes, but the tribes are fictitious. The early city-
makers could still only conceive of society on a tribal
basis. Every local or accidental congregation of
^people who wish to act together have to invent an
imaginary common ancestor. The clash between the
old tribal traditions that have lost their meaning,
though not their sanctity, and the new duties imposed

essay, affected both by the change in social structure from
village to sea-empire and by foreign, especially Egyptian,
influences. No doubt the Achaean gods were influenced on
their side by Cretan conceptions, though perhaps not so much
as Ionia was. Cf. the Cretan influences in Ionian vase-
painting, and e. g. A. B. Cook on 'Cretan Axe-cult outside
Crete ', Transactions of the Third International Congress for the
History of Religion, ii. 184. See also Sir A. Evans's striking
address on ' The Minoan and Mycenaean Element in Hellenic
Life ', /. H. S. xxxiL 277-97.
See R.G.E.* p. 58 f.

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 67

by the actual needs of the Polls, leads to many strange
and interesting compromises. The famous constitu-
tion of Cleisthenes shows several. An old proverb
expresses well the ordinary feeling on the subject :

&C xc 7?6Xi; sis, vofios 8* dc

' Whatever the City may do ; but the old custom is
the best/

Now in the contest between city and tribe, the
Olympian gods had one great negative advantage.
They were not tribal or local, and all other gods were.
They were by this time international, with no strong
roots anywhere except where one of them could be
identified with some native god; they were full of
fame and beauty and prestige. They were ready to be
made ' Poliouchoi ', ' City-holders ', of any particular
city, still more ready to be ' Hel&nioi ', patrons of all
Hellas.

In the working out of these three aims the Olympian
religion achieved much : in all three it failed. The
moral expurgation failed owing to the mere force of
inertia possessed by old religious traditions and local
cults. We must remember how weak any central
government was in ancient civilization. The power
and influence of a highly civilized society were apt to
end a few miles outside its city wall. All through
the backward parts of Greece obscene and cruel rites
lingered on, the darker and worse the further they were
removed from the full light of Hellenism.

But in this respect the Olympian Religion did not
merely fail : it did worse. To make the^elements of

68 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

a nature-religion human is inevitably to make them
vicious. There is no great moral harm in worshipping
a'thunder-storm, even though the lightning strikes the
good and evil quite recklessly. There is no need to
pretend that the Lightning is exercising a wise and
righteous choice. But when once you worship an
imaginary quasi-human being who throws the light-
ning, you are in a dilemma. Either you have to admit
that you are worshipping and flattering a being with
no moral sense, because he happens to be dangerous,
or else you have to invent reasons for his wrath against
the people who happen to be struck. And they are
pretty sure to be bad reasons. The god, if personal,
becomes capricious and cruel.

When the Ark of Israel was being brought back from
the Philistines, the cattle slipped by the threshing
floor of Nachon, and the holy object was in danger
of falling. A certain Uzzah, as we all know, sprang
forward to save it and was struck dead for his pains.
Now, if he was struck dead by the sheer holiness of the
tabu object, the holiness stored inside it like so much
electricity, his death was a misfortune, an interesting
accident, and no more. 1 But when it is made into
the deliberate act of an anthropomorphic god, who
strikes a well-intentioned man dead in explosive rage
for a very pardonable mistake, a dangerous element
has been introduced into the ethics of that religion.
j A being who is the moral equal of man must not behave
like a charge of dynamite.

Again, to worship emblems of fertility andgeneration,
as was done in agricultural rites all through the Aegean

1 2 Sam.* vi. 6. See S. Reinach, Orpheus, p. 5 (English
Translation, p. 4).

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 69

area, is in itself an intelligible and not necessarily
a degrading practice. But when those emblems are
somehow humanized, and the result is an anthropo-
morphic god of enormous procreative power and in-
numerable amours, a religion so modified has received
a death-blow. The step that was meant to soften its
grossness has resulted in its moral degradation. This
result was intensified by another well-meant effort at
elevation. The leading tribes of central Greece were,
as we have mentioned, apt to count their descent from
some heroine-ancestress. Her consort was sometimes
unknown and, in a matrilinear society, unimportant.
Sometimes he was a local god or river. When the
Olympians came to introduce some order and unity
among these innumerable local gods, the original tribal
ancestor tended, naturally enough, to be identified
with Zeus, Apollo, or Poseidon. The unfortunate
Olympians, whose system really aimed at purer morals
and condemned polygamy and polyandry, are left with
a crowd of consorts that would put Solomon to shame.
Thus a failure in the moral expurgation was deepened
by a failure in the attempt to bring intellectual order
into the welter of primitive gods. The only satisfac-
tory end of that effort would have been monotheism.
If Zeus had only gone further and become completely,
once and for all, the father of all life, the scandalous
stories would have lost their point and meaning* It is
curious how near to monotheism, and to monotheism
of a very profound and impersonal type, the real reli-
gion of Greece came in the sixth and fifth centuries.
Many of the philosophers, Xenophanes, Parmenides,
and others, asserted it clearly or assumed it without
hesitation. Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato,in their deeper

70 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

moments point the same road. Indeed a metaphysician
might hold that their theology is far deeper than that
to which we are accustomed, since they seem not to
make any particular difference between ol 6tot and
6 66$ or T& OtTov. They do not instinctively suppose
that the human distinctions between ' he ' and ' it ',
or between ' one ' and ' many ', apply to the divine.
Certainly Greek monotheism, had it really carried
the day, would have been a far more philosophic
'thing than the tribal and personal monotheism of
the Hebrews. But unfortunately too many hard-
caked superstitions, too many tender and sensitive
associations, were linked with particular figures in
the pantheon or particular rites which had brought
the worshippers religious peace. If there had been
some Hebrew prophets about, and a tyrant or two,
progressive and bloody-minded, to agree with them,
polytheism might perhaps actually have been stamped
out in Greece at one time. But Greek thought,
always sincere and daring, was seldom brutal, seldom
ruthless or cruel. The thinkers of the great period
ielt their own way gently to the Holy of Holies, and
did not try to compel others to take the same way.
Greek theology, whether popular or philosophical,
seldom denied any god, seldom forbade any worship.
, What it tried to do was to identify every new god with
some aspect of one of the old ones, and the result was
naturally confusion. Apart from the Epicurean school,
which though powerful was always unpopular, the
religious thought of later antiquity for the most part
took refuge in a sort of apotheosis of good taste, in
which the great care was not to hurt other people's
feelings, or else it collapsed ijito helpless mysticism.

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 71

The attempt to make Olympianism a religion of the
Polis failed also. The Olympians did not belong to
any particular city : they were too universal ; and no
particular city had a very positive faith in them.
The actual Polis was real and tangible, the Homeric
gods a little alien and literary. The City herself was
a most real power ; and the true gods of the City, who
had grown out of the soil and the wall, were simply
the City herself in her eternal and personal aspect, as
mother and guide and lawgiver, the worshipped and
beloved being whom each citizen must defend even
to the death. As the Kouros of his day emerged from
the social group of Kouroi, or the Aphiktor from the
band of suppliants, in like fashion f) IloXidcc or 6 IIoXu<;
emerged as a personification or projection of the city,
jj IIoXu&c in Athens was of course Athena ; 6 IloXuric
might as well be called Zeus as anything else. In
reality such beings fall into the same class as the hero
Argos or ' Korinthos son of Zeus '. The City worship
was narrow; yet to broaden it was, except in some
rare minds, to sap its life. The ordinary man finds it
impossible to love his next-door neighbours except
by siding with them against the next-door-but-one.

It proved difficult even in a city like Athens to have
gods that would appeal to the loyalty of all Attica. On
the Acropolis at Athens there seem originally to hav
been Athena and some Kouros corresponding with her,
some Waterer of the earth, like Erechtheus. Then
as Attica was united and brought under the lead oi
its central city, the gods of the outlying districts began
to claim places on the Acropolis. Pallas, the thunder-
maid of Pallene in the south, came to form a joint
personality with Athena. Oinoe, a town in the north-

72 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

sast, on the way from Delos to Delphi, had for its
special god a ' Pythian Apollo ' ; when Oinoe became
\ttic a place for the Pythian Apollo had to be found
:>n the Acropolis. Dionysus came from Eleutherae,
Demeter and Korfe from Eleusis, Theseus himself
perhaps from Marathon or even from TrozSn. They
wrere all given official residences on Athena's rock,
ind Athens in return sent out Athena to new
temples built for her in Prasiae and Sunion and
various colonies. 1 This development came step by
step and grew out of real worships. It was quite
different from the wholesale adoption of a body of
non-national, poetical gods: yet even this develop-
ment was too artificial, too much stamped with the
marks of expediency and courtesy and compromise.
It could not live. The personalities of such gods
vanish away ; their prayers become prayers to ' all
gods and goddesses of the City ' footc xal 6cft<n Tract
xal Trdtoflm; those who remain, chiefly Athena and
Theseus, only mean Athens.

What then, amid all this failure, did the Olympian
religion really achieve? First, it debarbarized the
worship of the leading states of Greece not of all
Greece, since antiquity had no means of spreading
kBo^edge^mj>aral)le to purs. It reduced the horrors
of the ' Drdaunmheit ', for the most part, to a ro-
mantic memory, and made religion no longer a mortal
danger to humanity. Unlike many religious systems,
it gneraBypennit ted progress ; it encouraged not only
the obedient virtues but the daring virtues as well.
It had in it the spirit that saves from disaster, that

* Cf. Sam Wide fei 'Gercke and Nordea's Handbucb, il.
8x7-19.

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 73

knows itself fallible and thinks twice before it hates
and curses and persecutes. It wrapped religion in
Sophrosynfi.

Again, it worked for concord and fellow-feeling
throughout the Greek communities. It is, after all,
a good deal to say, that in Greek history we find
almost no warring of sects, no mutual tortures or even
blasphemies. With many ragged edges, with many
weaknesses, it built up something like a united Hellenic
religion to stand against the ' beastly devices of the
heathen '. And after all, if we are inclined on the
purely religious side to judge the Olympian system
harshly, we must not forget its sheer beauty. Truth,
no doubt,is greater than beauty. But in many matters
Beauty can be attained and truth cannot. All we know
is that when tlie best minds seek for truth the result
is apt to be beautiful. It was a great thing that men
should envisage the world as governed, not by Giant s,
and Gorgons and dealers in eternal torture, but by
some human and more than human Understanding
(Suveot?), 1 by beings of quiet splendour like many a
classical Zeus and Hermes and Demeter. If Olym-
pianism was not a religious faith, it was at least a vital
force in the shaping of cities and societies which remain
after two thousand years a type to the world of beauty
and freedom and high endeavour. Even the stirring
of its ashes, when they seemed long cold, had power
to produce something of the same result ; for the

1 The Sweat? in which the Chorus finds it hard to believe,
&ippolytus, 1105. Cf. Iph. Aid. 394, 1189; Here. 635;
also the ideas in Sufipl. 203, Eur. Fr. 52, 9, where HtWov is
implanted in man by a special grace of God. The gods are
fwcrat, but of course Euripides goes too far ic actually praying
, Ar. Frogs, 893-

74 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

f classicism of the Italian Renaissance is a child, however
j fallen, of the Olympian spirit.

Of course, I recognize that beauty is not the same as
faith. There is, in one sense, far more faith m some
hideous miracle-working icon which sends out starving
peasants to massacre Jews than in the Athena of Phidias.
Yet, once we have rid our minds of trivial mythology,
there is religion in Athena also. Athena is an ideal,
an ideal and a mystery ; the ideal of wisdom, of inces-
sant labour, of almost terrifying purity, seen through
the light of some mystic and spiritual devotion like, but
transcending, the love of man for woman. Or, if the
way of Athena is too hard for us common men, it is not
hard to find a true religious ideal in such a figure as
Persephone. In Persephone there is more of pathos and
of mystery. She has more recently entered the calm
ranks of Olympus ; the old liturgy of the dying and
re-risen Year-bride still clings to her. If Religion is
that which brings us into relation with the great
world-forces, there is the very heart of life in this
home-coming Bride of the underworld, life with its
broken hopes, its disaster, its new-found spiritual joy :
life seen as Mother and Daughter, not a thing con-
tinuous and unchanging but shot through with parting
and death, life as a great love or desire ever torn
asunder and ever renewed.

' But stay/ a reader may object : ' is nbt this the
Persephone, the Athena, of modern sentiment ? Are
these figures really the goddesses of the Iliad and of
Sophocles?' The truth is, I think, that they are
neither the one nor the other. They are the goddesses
of ancient reflection and allegory ; the goddesses, that
is, of the best and most characteristic worship that

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST 75

these idealized creations awakened. What we have
treated hitherto as the mortal weakness of the Olym-
pians, the fact that they have no roots in any particular
soil, little hold on any definite primeval cult, has turned
out to be their peculiar strength. We must not think
of allegory as a late post-classical phenomenon in
Greece. It begins at least as early as Pythagoras and
Heraclitus, perhaps as early as Hesiod; for Hesiod
seems sometimes to be turning allegory back into
myth. The Olympians, cut loose from the soil, en-
throned only in men's free imagination, have two special
regions which they have made their own : mythology
and allegory. The mythology drops for the most part
very early out of practical religion. Even in Homer
we find it expurgated; in Pindar, Aeschylus, and
Xenophanes it is expurgated, denied and allegorized.
The myths survive chiefly as material for literature,
the shapes of the gods themselves chiefly as material
for art. They are both of them objects not of belief
but of imagination. Yet when the religious imagin-
tion of Greece deepens it twines itself still round these
gracious and ever-moving shapes; the Zeus of
Aeschylus moves on into the Zeus of Plato or of
Cleanthes or of Marcus Aurelius. Hermes, Athena,
Apollo, all have their long spiritual history. They
are but little impeded by the echoes of the old frivolous
mythology ; still less by any local roots or sectional
prejudices or compulsory details of ritual. As the
more highly educated mind of Greece emerged from a
particular, local, tribal, conception of religion, the old
denationalized Olympians were ready to receive her.

The real religion of the fifth century was, as we have
said, a devotion to the City itself.- It is expressed

76 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

often in Aeschylus and Sophocles, again and again with
more discord and more criticism in Euripides and
Plato ; for the indignant blasphemies of the Gorgias
and the Troades bear the same message as the ideal
patriotism of the Republic. It is expressed best
perhaps, and that without mention of the name of
a single god, in the great Funeral Speech of Pericles.
It is higher than most modern patriotism because it is
set upon higher ideals. It is more fervid because the
men practising it lived habitually nearer to the danger-
point, 'and, when they spoke of dying for the City,
spoke of a thing they had faced last week and might
face again to-morrow. It was more religious because
of the unconscious mysticism in which it is clothed even
, by such hard heads as Pericles and Thucydides, the
| mysticism of men in the presence of some fact for
| which they have no words, great enough. Yet for all
its intensity it was comdemned by its mere narrowness.
By the fourth century the average Athenian must
have recognized what philosophers had recognized long
before, that aj/e^jon L to be true, must be universal
and not the privilege of a particular people. As soon
as the Stoics had proclaimed the world to be ' one
great City of gods and men ', the only Gods with which
Greece could satisfactorily people that City were the
idealized band of the old Olympians.

They are artists' dreams, ideals, allegories; they
are symbols of something beyond themselves. They
are Gods of half-rejected tradition, of unconscious
make-believe, of aspiration. They are gods to whom
doubtful philosophers can pray, with all a philosopher's
due caution, as to so many radiant and heart-searching
hypotheses. They are not gods in whom any one

THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

77

believes as a hard fact. Does this condemn them?
Or is it just the other way? Is it perhaps that one
difference between Religion and Superstition lies
exactly in this, that Superstition degrades its worship
by turning its beliefs into so many statements of brute
fact, on which it must needs act without question,
without striving, without any respect for others or any
desire for higher or fuller truth ? It is only an accident
though perhaps an invariable accident that all the
supposed facts are false. In Religion, however precious
you may consider the truth you draw from it, you
know that it is a truth seen dimly, and possibly seen
by others better than by you. You know that all your
creeds and definitions are merely metaphors, attempts
to use human language for a purpose for which it was
never made. Your concepts are, by the nature of
things, inadequate ; the truth is not in you but beyond
you, a thing not conquered but still to be pursued.
Something like this, I take it, was the character of
the Olympian Religion in the higher minds of later
Greece. Its gods could awaken man's worship and
strengthen his higher aspirations ; but at heart they
knew themselves to be only metaphors. As the most
beautiful image carved by, man was not the god, but
only a symbol, to help towards cc

1 Cf . the beautiful defence of
Or. viii (in Wilamowitz's

last paragraph :

* God Himself, the father
older than the Sun or the Sky,
and all the flow of being, is
unutterable by any voice, not
being unable to apprehend I"
and names and pictures, of
of plants and rivers, mount

for the knrvwlfirlcrft of Him.

"A

78 THE OLYMPIAN CONQUEST

so the god himself, when conceived, was not the reality
but only a symbol to help towards conceiving the
reality. That was the work set before them. Mean-
time they issued no creeds that contradicted know-
ledge, no commands that made man sin against his
own inner light.

that is beautiful in this world after His naturejust as
happens to earthly lovers. To them the most beautiful sight
will be the actual lineaments of the beloved, but for re-
membrance' sake they will be happy in the sight of a lyre,
a little spear, a chair, perhaps, or a running-ground, or any-
thing in the world that wakens the memory of the beloved.
Why should I further examine and pass judgement about
Images ? Let men know what is divine (TO Oftov y&o?), let
them know : that is all. If a Greek is stirred to the re-
membrance of God by the art of Pheidias, an Egyptian by
paying worship to animals, another man by a river, another
by fire I have no anger for their divergences ; only let them
know, let them love, let them remember.'

Ill

THE GREAT SCHOOLS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY,
B. C.

THERE is a passage in Xenophon describing how, one
summer night, in 405 B. c., people in Athens heard a
cry of wailing, an oimdgB, making its way up between
the long walls from the Piraeus, and coming nearer and
nearer as they listened. It was the news of the final
disaster of Kynoskephalai, brought at midnight to the
Piraeus by the galley Paralos. ' And that night no one
slept. They wept for the dead, but far more bitterly
for themselves, when they reflected what things they
had done to the people of Melos, when taken by siege,
to the people of Histiaea, and Skion and Tor6ne and
Aegina, and many more of the Hellenes.' x

The echo of that lamentation seems to ring behind
most of the literature of the fourth century, and not the
Athenian literature alone. Defeat can on occasion
leave men their self-respect or even their pride ; as it
did after Chaeronea in 338 and after the Chremonidean
War in 262, not to speak of Thermopylae. But the
defeat of 404 not only left Athens at the mercy of her
enemies. It stripped her of those things of which she
had been inwardly most proud ; her ' wisdom ', her
high civilization, her leadership of all that was most
Hellenic in HeUas. The ' Beloved City * of Pericles
had become a tyrant, her nature poisoned by war, her
government a by-word in Greece for brutality. And
1 Hellen. ii. 2, 3-
79

8o THE GREAT SCHOOLS

Greece as a whole felt the tragedy of it. It is curious
how this defeat of Athens by Sparta seems to have been
felt abroad as a defeat for Greece itself and for the
hopes of the Greek city state. The fall of Athens
mattered more than the victory of Lysander. Neither
Sparta nor any other city ever attempted to take her
place. And no writer after the year 400 speaks of any
other city as Pericles used to speak of fifth-century
Athens, not even Polybius 250 years later, when he
stands amazed before the solidity and the ' fortune '
of Rome.

The city state, the Polis, had concentrated upon
itself almost all the loyalty and the aspirations of the
Greek mind. It gave security to life. It gave mean-
ing to religion. And in the fall of Athens it had
failed. In the third century, when things begin to
recover, we find on the one hand the great military
monarchies of Alexander's successors,- and on the
other, a number of federations of tribes, which were
generally strongest in the backward regions where
the city state had been least developed. T6 xoiv&v
T<OV AlTtoXSSv or TCOV 'AxaieSv had become more im-
portant than Athens or Corinth, and Sparta was only
strong by means of a League. 1 By that time the
Polis was recognized as a comparatively weak social
organism, capable of very high culture but not quite
able, as the Covenant of the League of Nations
expresses it, ' to hold its own under the strenuous
conditions of modern Hfe '. Besides, it was not now
ruled by the best citizens. The best had turned away
from politics.

1 Cf. Tafn, Antigonus Gonatas, p. 52, and authorities there
quoted.

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 81

This great discouragement did not take place at
a blow. Among the practical statesmen probably
most did not form any theory about the cause of the
failure but went on, as practical statesmen must, doing
as best they could from difficulty to difficulty. But
many saw that the fatal dangerto Greece was disunion,
as many see it in Europe now. When Macedon proved
indisputably stronger than Athens Isocrates urged
Philip to accept the leadership of Greece against the
barbarian and against barbarism. Hdpaight thus both
unite the Greek cities and also evangelize the world. .
Lysias, the democratic and anti-Spartan orator, had
been groping for a similar solution as early as 384 B. c.,
and was prepared to make an even sharper sacrifice for
it. He appealed at Olympia for a crusade of all the
free Greek cities against Dionysius of Syracuse, and
begged Sparta herself to lead it. The Spartans are ' of
right the leaders of Hellas by their natural nobleness
and their skill in war. They alone live still in a city
unsacked, unwalled, unconquered, uncomipted by
faction, and have followed always the same modes of
life. They have been the saviours of Hellas in the past,
and one may hope that their freedom wiH be ever-
lasting.' x A great and generous change in one who
had ' learned by suffering ' in the Peloponnesian War.
Others no doubt merely gave their submission to the
stronger powers that were now rising. There were
openings for counsellors, for mercenary soldiers, for
court savants and philosophers and poets, and, of
course, for agents in every free city who were prepared

And there were always also those who had neit

1 Lysias, xxxiii.

82 TitE GREAT SCHOOLS

learned nor forgotten, the unrepentant idealists ; too
passionate or too heroic or, as some will say, too blind,
.to abandon their life-long devotion to ' Athens ' or to
' Freedom ' because the world considered such ideals
out of date. They could look the ruined Athenians in
the face, after the lost battle, and say with Demos-
thenes, ' OOx gtmv, oux gcrriv 67rcoc rjnapTere. it cannot
be that you did wrong, it cannot be 1 ' x

But in practical politics the currents of thought are
inevitably limited. It is in philosophy and speculation
that we find the richest and most varied reaction to the
Great Failure. It takes different shapes in those
writers, like Plato and Xenophon, who were educated in
the fifth century and had once believed in the Great
City, and those whose whole thinking life belonged to
the time of disillusion.

Plato was disgusted with democracy and with Athens,
but he retained his faith in the city, if only the city
could be set on the right road. There can be little
doubt that he attributes to the bad government of the
Demos many evils which were really due to extraneous
causes or to the mere fallibility of human nature. Still
his analysis of democracy is one of the most brilliant
things in the history of political theory. It is so acute,
so humorous, so Affectionate; and at many different
ages of the world has seemed like a portrait of the
actual contemporary society. Like a modem popular
newspaper, Plato's democracy makes it its business to
satisfy existing desires and give people a ' good time '.
It does not distinguish between higher and lower. Any
one man is as good as another, and so is any impulse or
any idea, Consequently the commoner have the pull.
1 Dem. Crown, 208.

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 83

Even the great democratic statesmen of the past, he
now sees, have been ministers to mob desires; they
have ' filled the city with harbours and docks and walls
and revenues and such-like trash, without Sophrosyng
and righteousness '. The sage or saint has no place in
practical politics. He would be like a man in a den of
wild beasts. Let him and his like seek shelter as best
they can, standing up behind some wall while the storm
of dust and sleet rages past. The world does not want
truth, which is all that he could give it. It goes by
appearances and judges its great men with their clothes
on and their rich relations round them. After death,
the judges will judge them naked, and alone ; and then
we shall see ! l

Yet, in spite of all this, the child of the fifth century
cannot keep his mind from politics. The speculations
which would be scouted by the mass in the market-
place can still be discussed with .intimate friends and
disciples, or written in books for the wise to read.
Plato's two longest works are attempts to construct an .
ideal society; first, what may be called a City of
'Righteousness, in the Republic ; and afterwards in his
old age, in the Laws, something more like a City of
'Refuge, uncontaminated by the world; a little city
on a hill-top away in Crete, remote from commerce and
-riches and the ' bitter and corrupting sea ' which carries
-them; a city where life shall move in music and
discipline and reverence for the things that are greater
'than man, and the songs men sing shall be not common
-songs but the preambles of the city's laws, showing

1 'Such-like trash', Gorgias, 519 A; dust-storm, Rep.
-vi. 496; Clothes, Gorg. 523 E; ' democratic man ', Rep. viii.
: 556 fi.

84 THE <2REAT SCHOOLS

their : purpose and their principle ; where no wall wiU
be needed to keep out the possible enemy, because the
courage and temperance of the citizens will be wall
enough, and if war comes the women equally with the
men 'will -fight ior their young, as birds do '.

This hope is very like despair; but, such as it is,
Plato's thought is always directed towards .the city.
No other form of social life ever tempts him away, and
he anticipates -no insuperable difficulty in keeping the
city in the right path: if once he can get it started right.
Thie<first step, the necessary revolution, is -what makes
the difficulty. And he sees only one way. In real life
he had supported the conspiracy of the , extreme
oligarchs in 404 which led to the rule of the ' Thirty
Tyrants ' ; but the experience sickened him of such
methods. There was* no hope unless, by some lucky
combination, a philosopher should become a king or
some young king turn philosopher. ' Give me a city
governed by a tyrant/ he says in the Z^w, 1 ' and let
the tyrant be^young, with a good memory, quick at
learning, of high> courage and a/generous nature. . . .
And besides/ let him have a wise counsellor I ' Ironical
fortune granted him an- opportunity to try the experi-
ment, himself at the court of Syracuse, first with the
elder and then, twenty years later, with the younger
Dionysius 1(387' and .367 ^3. Q>). <It is a story .of dis-
appointment, of course ; 'bitter, humiliating and, ludi-
crous -disappointment, but with a touch of that
sublimity which seems so often to hang about the
I errors of the wise. One can study them in Seneca
at the court of Nero, or in Turgot with Louis ; not
so 'well "perhaps iu Voltaire with Frederick. /Plato

1 Laws, jog E, cf. Letter VII.

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 85

failed in bis enterprise, but he did keep faith with
the ' Righteous City '.

Another of the Socratic circle turned in a different
direction. Xenophon, an exile 'from his country,
a brilliant soldier and adventurer as well as a man of
letters, is perhaps the first Greek on record who openly
lost interest in the city. He thought less about cities
and constitutions than about great men and nations,
or generals and armies. To him it was idle to spin
cobweb formations of ideal laws and communities.
Society is right enough if you have a really fine man to
lead it. It may be that his ideal was formed in child-
hood by stories of Pericles and the great age when?
Athens was ' in name a democracy but in truth an ;
empire of one leading man '. He gave form to hist
dream in the Education of Cyrus, an imaginary account
of the training which formed Cyrus the Great into an
ideal king and soldier. The Cyropaedeia is said to have
been intended as a counterblast to Plato's Republic, and
it may have provoked Plato's casual remark in the
Laws that ' Cyrus never so much as touched education '.
No doubt the book sufferedin persuasiveness from being
so obviously fictitious. 1 For example, the Cyrus of
Xenophon dies peacefully in his bed after much
affectionate and edifying advice to his family, whereas
ail Athens knew from Herodotus how the real Cyrus
had been killed in a war against the Massagetae, and
his head, to slake its thirst for that liquid, plunged into J
a wineskin full of human blood. Perhaps also the
monarchical rule of Cyrus was too absolute for Greek

i Autos Gdflius, xiv. 3; Plato, Laws, p. 695; Xen.
viii. 7, compared with Hdt. i. 214.

86 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

taste. At any rate, later on Xenophon adopted a more
real hero, whom he had personally known and admired.
Agesilaus, king of Sparta, had been taken as a type
of ' virtue ' even by the bitter historian Theopompus.
Agesilaus was not only a great general. He knew how
to ' honour the gods, do his duty in the field, and to
practise obedience '. He was true to friend and foe.
On one memorable occasion he kept his word even
to an enemy who had brokenhis. Heenjoinedkindness
to enemy captives. When he found small children
left behind by the barbarians in some town that he
occupied because either their parents or the slave-
merchants had no room for them he always took care
of them or gave them to guardians of their own jace :
' he never let the dogs and wolves get them '. On the
other hand, when he sold his barbarian prisoners he
sent them to market naked, regardless of their modesty,
because it cheered his own soldiers to see how white
and fat they were. He wept when he won a victory
over Greeks ; ' for he loved all Greeks and only hated
barbarians '. When he returned home after his
successful campaigns, he obeyed the orders of the
ephors without question ; his house and furniture were
,as simple as those of a common man, and his daughter
the princess, when she went to and Jfro to Amyclae,
went simply in the public omnibus. He reared chargers
and hunting dogs; the rearing of chariot horses he
thought effeminate. But he advised his sister Cynisca
about hers, and she won the chariot race at Olympia.
' Have a king like that ', says Xenophon, ' and all will
be well. He will govern right; he will beat your
enemies ; and he* will set an example of good life. If
you want Virtue in the state look for it in a good

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 87

man, not in a speculative tangle of laws. The
Spartan constitution, as it stands, is good enough for
any one/

But it was another of the great Socratics who
uttered first the characteristic message of the fourth
century, and met the blows of Fortunje with a direct
challenge. Antisthenes was a man twenty years older
than Plato. He had fought at Tanagra in 426 B. c.
He had been friends with Gorgias and Prodicus, the
great Sophists of the Periclean age. He seems to have
been, at any rate till younger and more brilliant men
cut him out, the recognized philosophic heir of
Socrates. 1 And late in life, after the fall of Athens and
the condemnation and death of his master, the man
underwent a curious change of heart. He is taunted
more than once with the lateness of his discovery of
truth, 2 and with his childish subservience to the old
jeux d* esprit of the Sceptics which professed to prove
the impossibility of knowledge. 8 It seems that he had
lost fj}ith in speculation and dialectic and the elaborate

1 This is the impression left by Xenophon, especially in the
Symposium. Cf. Dummler, Antisthenica (1882) ; Akademika
(1889). Cf. the Life, of Antisthenes in Diog. Laert.

a Tcpwv m/iipadfa, Plato, Soph. 251 B, Isocr. Helena, i. 2.

8 e. g. no combination of subject and predicate can be true
because one is different from the other. ' Man ' is ' man *
and ' good ' is* ' good ' ; but ' man ' is not ' good '. Nor can
' a horse ' possibly be ' running ' ; they are totally different
conceptions. See Plutarch, adv. Co. 22. i (p. 1119); Plato,
Soph. 251 B; Arist. Metafh. io24 b 33; Top. 104* 20; Plato,
Euthyd. 285 B. For similar reasons no statement can ever
contradict another; the statements are either the same or
not the same; and if not th*same they do not touch. Every
object has one Aoyo? or thing to be said about it ; if you say a
different Aoyos you are speaking of something else. See
esiascially Scholia Arist., p. 732* 30 ff. on the passage in the
Metaphysics, 1024* 33.

88 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

superstructures which Plato and others had built upon
them; and he felt, like 1 many moralists alter him,
a sort, of hostility to all knowledge that was not
immediately convertible into conduct.

But this scepticism was only part of a general dis-
belief in the wprld. Greek philosophy had from the
first been concerned with a fundamental question
which we moderns seldom put clearly to ourselves.
It asked ' What is the Good ? ' meaning thereby ' What
is the element of value in life ? * or ' What should be our
chief aim in living ? ' A medieval Christian would
have answered without hesitation 'Togo to Heaven and
not be damned ', and would have been prepared with
the necessary prescriptions . for ' attaining that end.
But the modern world is not intensely enough con-
vinced of the reality of Sin and Judgement, Hell and
Heaven, to accept this answer as an authoritative guide
in life, and has not clearly thought out any other. The
ancient Greek spent a great part of his philosophical
activity in trying, without propounding supernatural
rewards and punishments, or at least without laying
stress on them, to think out what the Good of man
really was.

The answers given by mankind to this question seem
to fall under two main heads. Before a battle if both
parties were asked what aim they were pursuing, both
would say without hesitation ' Victory '. After the
battle, the conqueror would probably say that his
purpose was in some way to consolidate or extend his
victory ; but the beaten party, as soon as he had time
to think, would perhaps explain that, after all, victory
was not everything. It was better to have fought for
the right, to have done your best and to have failed,

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 89

than to revel in the prosperity of the unjust. And,
since it is difficult to maintain, in the midst of the
triumph of the enemy and your own obvious misery
and humiliation, that all is well and you yourself
thoroughly contented, this second answer easily
develops a third : ' Wait a little, till God's judgement
asserts itself ; and see who has the best of it then ! '
There will be a rich reward hereafter for the suffering
virtuous.

The typical Athenian of the Periclean age would
have been in the first state of mind. His * good ' would
be in the nature of success : to spread Justice and
Freedom, to make Athens happy and strong and her
laws wise and equal for rich and poor. Antisthenes
had fallen violently into the second. He was defeated
together with all that he most cared for, and he com-
forted himself with the thought that nothing matters
except to have done your best. As he phrased it
Arete is the good, Aret meaning ' virtue ' or ' good-
ness ', the quality of a good citizen, a good father,
a good dog, a good sword.

The things of the world are vanity, and philosophy
as vain as the rest. Nothing but goodness is good ;
and the first step towards attaining it is to repent.

There was in Athens a gymnasium built for those *
who were base-born and could not attend the gymnasia
of true citizens. It was called Kynosarges and was
dedicated to the great bastard, Heracles. Antisthenes,
though he had moved hitherto in the somewhat
patrician circle of the Socratics, remembered how that
his mother was a Thrackn slave, and set up his school
in Kynosarges among the disinherited of the earth.
He made friends with* the ' bad/ who needed befriend-

go THE GREAT SCHOOLS

ing. He dressed like the poorest workman. He would
accept no disciples except those who could bear .hard-
ship, and was apt to drive new-comers away with his
stick. Yet he also preached in tjie streets, both in
Athens and Corinth. He preached rhetorically, with
parables and vivid emotional phrases, compelling the
attention of the crowd. His eloquence was held to be
bad style, and it started the form of literature known
to the Cynics as xPk* ' a help ', or 8taTpi[Mj, ' a study ',
and by the Christians as 6(uX(<x, a ' homily ' or sermon.

This passionate and ascetic old man would have
attracted the interest of the world even more, had it
not been for one of his disciples. This was a young
man from Sinope, on the Euxine, whom he did not
take to at first sight ; the son of a disreputable money-
changer who had been sent to prison for defacing the
coinage. Antisthenes ordered the lad away, but he
paid no attention ; he beat him with his stick, but he
never moved. He wanted ' wisdom ', and saw that
Antisthenes had it to give. His aim in life was to do
as his father had done, to ' deface the coinage ', but on
a much larger scale* He would deface all the coinage
current in the world. Every conventional stamp was
false.. The men stamped as generals and kings ; the
things stamped as honour arid wisdom and happiness
and riches; all were base metal with lying super-
scriptions. All must have the stamp defaced. 1

This young man was Diogenes, afterwards the most
famous of all the Cynics. -He started by rejecting all
stamps and superscriptions and holding that nothing
but Arete, 'worth' or 'goodness', was good. He

1 To wJuia/ia irapayaoarrciv : see Life in Diorg. Laert., frag-
ments in Mullach, vol. li, and the article in Pauly-Wissowa.

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 91

rejected tradition. He rejected the current religion
and the rules and customs of temple worship. True
religion was a thing of the spirit, and needed no
forms. He despised divination. He rejected civil life
and marriage. He mocked at the general interest in
the public games and the respect paid to birth, wealth,
or reputation. Let man put aside these delusions ahd
know himself. And for his defences let him arm him-
self ' against Fortune with courage, against Convention
with Nature, against passion with Reason '. For
Reason is ' the god within us '.

The salvation for man was to return to Nature, and
Diogenes interpreted this return in the simplest and
'crudest way. He should live like the beasts, like
primeval men, like barbarians. Were not the beasts
blessed, pcta coovre<; like the Gods in Homer? And
so, though in less perfection, were primitive men, not
vexing their hearts with imaginary sins and conven-
tions. Travellers told of savages who married their
sisters, or ate human flesh, or left their dead unburied.
Why should they not, if they wished to ? No wonder
Zeus punished Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, who had
brought all this progress upon us and left man civilized
and more unhappy than any beast ! He deserved his
crag and his vulture !

Diogenes took his mission with great earnestness.
He was leader in a ' great battle against Pleasures and
Desires '. He was ' the servant, the message-bearer,
sent by Zeus ', ' the Setter-Free of mankind* 1 and the
' Healer of passions '.

The life that he personally meant to live, and which
he recommended to the wise, was what he called T&V
plov, ' a dog's life ', and he himself wished to

92 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

be * cynic ' or ' canine '. A dog was brave and faith-
ful ; it had no bodily shame, no false theories, and few
wants. A dog needed no clothes, no house> no city,
no possessions, no titles; what he did need was
* virtue ', Aretfc, to catch his prey, to fight wild beasts,
and to defend his master ; and that he could provide
for himself . Diogenes found, of course, that he needed
a little more than an ordinary dog ; a blanket, a wallet
or bowl to hold his food, and ajstafj, 'to beat op dogs
and bad men '. It was the regular uniform of a beggar.
He asked for no house. There was a huge earthen
pitcher not a tub outside the Temple of the Great
Mother ; the sort of vessel that was used for burial in
primitive Greece and which still had about it the
associations of a coffin. Diogenes slept there when he
wanted shelter, and it became the nearest approach
to a home that he had. Like a dog he performed any
bodily act without shame, when and where he chose.
He obeyed no human laws because he recognized no
city. He was Cosmopolites, Citizen of the Universe ;
all men, and all beasts too, were his brothers. He lived
preaching in the streets and begging his bread;
except that he did not ' beg ', he ' commanded '.
Other folk obeyed his commands because they were
still slaves, while he ' had never been a slave again since
Antisthenes set him free '. He had no fear, because
there was nothing to take from him. Only slaves are
afraid.

Greece' rang with stories of his mordant wit, and
every bitter saying became fathered on Diogenes.
Every one knew how Alexander the Great had come
to see the 'famous beggar and, standing before him
where he sat in the open air, had asked if there was

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 93

any boon he could confer on him. ' Yes, move tram
between me and the sun.' They knew the king's
saying, ' If I were not Alexander I would be Diogenes ',
and the pddte answer ' If I were Jnot Diogenes I would
be Alexander *. The Master of the World and the
Rejector of the World met on an equality. People
told too how the Cynic walked about with a lamp in
the daytime searching, so he said, ' for a man '. They
knew his scorn of the Mysteries with their 'doctrine at
exclusive salvation ; was a thief to be in bHss because
he was initiated, while Agesilaus andEpaminondaswere
w outer darkness? A few of the stories are more
whimsical. A workman carrying a pole accidentally
hit Diogenes and cried ' Look out ! ' ' Why/ said he,
' are you going to hit xne again ? '

He had rejected patriotism as he rejected culture.
Yet he suffered as he saw Greece under the Mace-
donians and Greek liberties disappearing. When Ms
death was approaching some disciple asked his wishes
about his burial ; ' Let the dogs and wolves have me/
he said ; ' I should like to be of some use to my
brothers when I die/ When this request was refused
his thoughts turned again to the Macedonian Wars ;
' Bury me face downwards ; everything is soon goiag
to be turned the other way up/

He remains the permanent and unsurpassed type of
one way of grappling with the horrco: of life; 'Fear
nothing, desire nothing, possess nothing; and then
life with all its ingemiity of malice cannot disappoint
you. If man cannot enter into life nor yet depart
from it save through agony and filth, let him learn
to. endure the one and be indifferent to the other.
The watchdog of Zeus <on earth has to fulfil his special

94 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

duty, to warn mankind of the truth and to set slaves
free. Nothing else matters.

< The criticism of this solution is not that it is selfish.
It is not. The Cynic lives for the salvation of his fellow
creatures. And it is worth remembering that before
the Roman gladiatorial games were eventually stopped
by the self-immolation of the monk Telemachus, two
Cyme philosophers had thrown themselves into the
arena in the same spirit. Its weakness lies in a false
psychology, common to all the world at that time,
which imagined that salvation or freedom consists in
living utterly without desire or fear, that such a life is
biologically possible, and that Diogenes lived it. To
a subtler critic it is obvious that Diogenes was a man
of very strong and successful ambitions, though his
ambitions were different from those of most men. He
solved the problem of his own life by following with
all the force and courage of his genius a line of conduct
which made him, next to Alexander, the most famous
man in Greece. To be really without fear or desire
would mean death, and to die is not to solve the riddle
of living.

The difference between the Cynic view of life and
that of Plato's Republic is interesting. Plato also
rejected the most fundamental conventions of existing
society, the accepted methods of government, the laws
of property and of marriage, the traditional religion
and even the poetry which was a second religion tpjhe
Greeks, But he rejected the existing cultureTonly
because he wanted it to be better. He condemned the
concrete existing city in order to build a more perfect
city, to proceed in infinite searching and longing
towards the Idea of Good, the Sun of the spiritual

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 95

universe. Diogenes rejected the civilization which he
saw, and admitted the reality of no other. His crude
realistic attitude of mind had no use for Plato's
' Ideas'. ' I can see a table/ he said; ' I cannot
see Tabularity ' (TPOTO^TT)?). ' I know Athens and
Corinth and other cities, and can see that they are all
bad. As for the Ideal Society, show it me and I will
say what I think.'

In spite of its false psychology the Cynic conception
of life had a great effect in Greece. It came almost as
a revelation to both men and women l and profoundly
influenced all the Schools. Here indeed, it seemed, was
a way to baffle Fortune and to make one's own soul
unafraid. What men wanted was T& OappeTv ' to be of
good cheer ' ; as we say now, to regain their morale
after bewildering defeats. Jhe Cynic answer, after-
wards corrected and humanized by the Stoics, 'was to
look at life as a long and arduous campaign. The loyal
soldier does not trouble about his comfort or his
rewards or his pleasures. He obeys his commander's
orders without fear or failing, whether they lead to
easy victories or merely to wounds, captivity or death.
Only Goodness is good, and for the soldier Goodness

1 There were women among the Cynics. ' The doctrine
also captured Metrocles' sister, Hipparchia. She loved
Crates, his words, and his way of life, and paid no attention
to any of her suitors, however rich or highborn or handsome.
Crates was everything to her. She threatened her parents
that she would commit suicide unless she were given to him.
They asked Crates to try to change the girl's mind, and he
did all he could to no effect, till at last he put all his possessions
on the floor and stood up in front of her. ' Here is your
bridegroom ; there, is his fortune ; now think t ' The girl made
her choice, put on the beggar's garb, and went her ways with
Crates. She lived with him openly and went like him to beg
food at dinners.' Diorg. Laert. vi. 96 ff . ,

96 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

is the doing of Duty, That is his true
prize, which no external power can take away from
him.

But after all, what is Duty ? Diogenes preached
' virtue ' and assumed that his way of life was ' virtue '.
But was it really so ? And, if so, on what evidence ?
To live like a beast, to be indifferent to art, beauty,
letters, science, philosophy, to the amenities of civic
life, to all that raised Hellenic Man above the beast
or the savage ? How could this be the true end of
man? The Stoic School, whose founder, Zeno, was
a disciple of old Antisthenes, gradually built up a
theory of moral life which has on the whole weathered
the storms of time with great success. It largely
dominated later antiquity by its imaginative and
emotional power. It gaye form to the aspirations of
early Christianity. It lasts now as the nearest ap-
proach to an acceptable system of conduct for those
who do not accept revelation, but still keep some
faith in the Purpose of Things.

The problem is to combine the absolute value of that
Goodness which, as we say, ' saves the soul ' with the
relative values of the various good things that soothe
or beautify life. For, if there is any value at all I will
^not say in health and happiness, but in art, poetry,
knowledge, refinement, public esteem, or human
affection, and if their claims do clash, as in common
opinion they sometimes do, with the demands of abso-
lute sanctity, how is the balance to be struck ? Are
we to be content with the principle of accepting a
little moral wrong for the sake of much material or
artistic or intellectual advantage? That is the rule
which the practical world follows, though without

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 97

talking about it ; but the Stoics would have none of
any such compromise.

Zeno first, like Antisthenes, denied any value what-
ever to these earthly things that are not virtue to
health or sickness, riches or poverty, beauty or ugli-
ness, pain or pleasure ; who would ever mention tfeem
when the soul stood naked before God? All that
would then matter, and consequently all that can ever
matter, is the goodness of the man's self, that is, of his
free and living will. The Stoics improved on the mili-
tary metaphor; for to the soldier, after all, it does
matter whether in his part of the field he wins or loses.
Life is not like a battle but like a play, in which God
has handed each man his part unread, and the good
man proceeds to act it to the best of his power, not
knowing what may happen in the last scene. He may
become a crowned king, he may be a slave dying in
torment. What matters it? The good actor can play
either part. All that matters is that he shall act his
best, accept the order of the Cosmos and obey the
Purpose of the great Dramaturge.

The answer seems absolute and unyielding, with no
concession to the weakness of the flesh. Yet, in truth,
it contains in itself the germ of a sublime practical
compromise which makes Stoicism human. It accepts
the Cosmos and it obeys the Purpose ; therefore there
is a Cosmos, and there is a purpose in the world.
Stoicism, like much of ancient thought at this period,
was permeated by the new discoveries of astronomy
and their formation into a coherent scientific system,
which remained unshaken till the days of Copernicus.
The stars, which had always moved men's wonder and
even worship, were now seen and proved to. be no

98 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

wandering fires but parts of an immense and appar-
ently eternal order. One star might differ from
another star in glory, but they were all alike in their
obedience to law. They had their fixed courses,
divine though they were, which had been laid down for
them by a Being greater than they. The Order, or
Cosmos, was a proven fact; therefore, the Purpose
was a proven fact ; and, though in its completeness
inscrutable, it could at least in part be divined from
the fact that all these varied and eternal splendours
had for their centre our Earth and its ephemeral
master. The Purpose, though it is not our Purpose,
is especially concerned with us and circles round us.
It is the purpose of a God who loves Man.

Let us forget that this system of astronomy has been
overthrown, and that we now know that Man is not
the centre of the universe. Let us forget that the
majestic order which reigns, or seems to reign, among
the stars, is matched by a brutal conflict and a chaos
of jarring purposes in the realms of those sciences
which deal with life. 1 If we can recover the imagina-
tive outlook of the generations which stretched from,
say, Meton in the fifth century before Christ to Coper-
nicus in the sixteenth after, we shall be able to
understand the spiritual exaltation with which men
like Zeno or Poseidonius regarded the world.

* e. g. che struggle for existence among animals and plants ;
the aAATjAo^ayia, or ' mutual devouring ', of animals ; and
such points as the various advances in evolution which seem
self-destructive. Thus, Man has learnt to stand on two
feet and use his hands ; a great advantage but one which has
led to numerous diseases. ' Again, physiologists say that the
increasing size of the human head, especially when combined
with the diminishing size of the pelvis, tends to make normal
birth impossible.

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 99

We are part of an Order, a Cosmos, which we see to
be infinitely above our comprehension but which we
know to be an expression of love for Man ; what can
we do but accept it, not with resignation but with
enthusiasm, and offer to it with pride any sacrifice
which it may demand of us. It is a glory to suffer for
such an end.

And there is more. For the Stars show only what
may be called a stationary purpose, an Order which is
and remains for ever. But in the rest of the world, we
can see a moving Purpose. It is Phusis, the word
which the Romans unfortunately translated ' Natura ',
but which means ' Growing ' or ' the way things grow '
almost what we call Evolution. But to the Stoic it
is a .living and conscious evolution, a forethought or
np6voia in the mind of God, what the Romans called
providentia, guiding all things that grow in a direction
which accords with the divine will. And the direction,
the Stoic pointed out, was not towards mere happiness
but towards Arett, or the perfection of each thing or
each species after its kind. Phusis shapes the acorn to
grow into the perfect oak, the blind puppy into the
good hound ; it makes the deer grow in swiftness to
perform the function of a deer, and man grow in power
and wisdom to perform the function of a man. If a
man is an artist it is his function to produce beauty ;
is he a governor, it is his function to produce a flourish-
ing and virtuous city. True, the things that he pro-
duces are but shadows and in themselves utterly
valueless ; it matters not one straw whether the deer
goes at ten miles an hour or twenty, whether the
population of a city die this year of famine and sickness
or twenty years hence of old age. But it belongs to the

ioo THE KSREAT SCHOOLS

good governor to avert famine and to produce healthy
condiiiions, as it belongs to the deer to run its best.
So it is the part of a friend, if need arise, to give his
comfort or his life for a friend; of a mother to love
and defend her children ; though it is true that in the
Kght of eternity these * creatnrely ' affections -shrivel
into their native worthlessness. If the will of God is
done, and done willingly, all is well. You may, if it
brings you great suffering, fed the pain. You may
even, through human weakness, weep or groan ; that
can be forgiven. "Eaco6ev fi^vroi \t)} arevd^s, ' But in
the centre of your being groan not 1 ' Acceipt the
Cosmos. Will joyously that which God wills and
make the eternal Purpose your own.

I will say no more of this great body of teaching, as
I have dealt with it in a separate publication. 1 But
I would point out two. special advantages of a psycho-
logical kind which distinguish Stoicism from many
systems of philosophy. First, though it never con-
sciously faced the psychological problem of instinct, it
did see clearly that man does not necessarily pursue
what pleases him most, or what is most profitable to
> him, or even his ' good '. It saw that man can deter-
mine his end, and may well choose pain in preference
to pleasure. This saved the school from a great deal
of that false schematization which besets most forms
of rationalistic psychology. Secondly, it did build up
a system of thought on which, both in good days and
evil, a life can be lived which is not only saintly, but
practically wise and human and beneficent. It did for

1 The Stoic Philosophy (1915). See also Arnold's Roman
Stoicism (19 * if; Sevan's Stoics and Sceptics (1913); an4
especially Stotcorum Vetenw* Fragment* by von Arnim

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 101

practical purposes solve the problem oi living, without
despair and without grave, or at least without gross,
illusion.

The other great school of the fourth century, a school
which, in the matter of ethics, jnay be called the only
true rival of Stoicism, was also rooted in defeat. But
it met defeat in a different spirit. 1 Epicurus, son of
Neocles, of the old Athenian clan of the Philaidae, was
born on a colony in Samos in 341 B. c. His father was
evidently poor ; else he would hardly have left Athens
to live on a colonial farm, nor have had to eke out his
farming by teaching an elementary school. We do not
know how much the small boy learned from his father.
But for older students there was a famous school on the
neighbouring island of Teos, where a certain Nausi-
phanes taught the Ionian tradition of Mathematics and
Physics as well as rhetoric and literary subjects.
Epicurus went to this school when he was fourteen,
and seems, among other things, to have imbibed the
Atomic Theory of Democritus without realizing that
it was anything peculiar. He felt afterwards as if his
school-days had been merely a waste of time. At the
age of eighteen he went to Athens, the centre of the
philosophic world, but he only went, as Athenian
citizens were in duty bound, to perform his year of
military service as ephtbus. Study was to come later.
The next year, however, 322, Perefccas of Thrace
made an attack on Samos and drove out the Athenian

* l The chief authorities on Epicurus are Usemer's Epicurea,
containing the Life from Diog. Laert., fragments and intro-
dfliction : the papWas fragments of Philodemus la Vtbuitina
Herculantnsi* ; Diogenes of Qenoanda {text by William,
Teubner, 1907); the commentaries on Lucretius (Munro,

102 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

colonists. Neocles had by then lived on his bit of land
for thirty years, and was old to begin life again. The
ruined family took refuge in Colophon, and there
Epicurus joined them. They were now too poor for
the boy to go abroad to study philosophy. He could
only make the best of a hard time and puzzle alone
over the problems of life.

Recent years have taught us that there are few
forms of misery harder than that endured by a family
of refugees, and it is not likely to have been easier in
ancient conditions. Epicurus built up his philosophy,
it would seem, while helping his parents and brothers
through this bad time. The problem was how to make
the life of their little colony tolerable, and he some-
how solved it. It was not the kind of problem which
Stoicism and the great religions specially set them-
selves; it was at once too unpretending and too
practical. One can easily imagine the condition for
which he had to prescribe. For one thing, the un-
fortunate refugees all about him would torment
themselves with unnecessary terrors. The Thracians
were pursuing them. The Gods hated them; they
must obviously have committed some offence or
impiety. (It is always easy for disheartened men to
(discover in themselves some sin that deserves punish-
f ment.) It would surely be better to die at once;
[except that, with that sin upon them, they would only
suffer more dreadfully beyond the grave ! In their
distress they jarred, doubtless, on one another's
nerves ; and mutual bitterness doubled their miseries.

Epicurus is said to have had poor health, and the
situation was one where even the best health would be
sorely tried. But he had superhuman courage, and

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 103

what does not always go witty such courage a very
affectionate and gentle nature. In later life all his
three brothers were his devoted disciples a testi-
monial accorded to few prophets or founders of
religions. And he is the first man in the record of
European history whose mother was an important
element in his life. Some of his letters to her have
been preserved, and show a touch of intimate affection
which of course must have existed between human
beings from the remotest times, but of which we
possess no earlier record. And fragments of his letters
to his friends strike the same note. 1

His first discovery was that men torture themselves
with unnecessary fears. He must teach them courage,
6appctv TC& TCOV Occov, OappsTv arci avOpcoTCcov, to fear no
evil from either man or God. God is a blessed being;
and no blessed being either suffers evil or inflicts evil on
others. And as for men, most of the evils you fear from
them can be avoided by Justice ; and if they do come,
they can be borne. Death is like sleep, an unconscious
state, nowise to be feared. Pain when it comes can
be endured; it is the anticipation that makes ftien
miserable and saps their courage. The refugees were
forgotten by the world, and had no hope of any great

1 Epicurus is the one philosopher who protests with real
indignation against that inhuman superiority to natural
sorrows which is. so much prized by most of the ancient
schools. To him such ' apathy ' argues either a hard Heart
or a morbid vanity (Fr. 120) . His letters are full of affection-
ate expressions which rather shock the stern reserve of
antique philosophy. He waits for one .friend's ' heavenly
presence* (Fr. 165). He ' melts with a peculiar joy mingled
with tears in remembering the last words ' of one who is dead
(Fr . 1 86 ; cf . 213). He is enthusiastic about an act of kindness
performed by another, who walked some five miles to help
a barbarian prisoner (Fr. 194).

u>4 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

change in their condition. Well, he argued, so much
the better ! Let them till the earth and love one
another, and they would find that they had already in
them that Natural Happiness which is man's posses-
sion until he throws it away. And of all things that
contribute to happiness the greatest is Affection, ^iXtct.
Like the Cynics and Stoics, he rejected the world and
all its conventions and prizes, its desires and passions
and futility. But where the Stoic and Cynic pro-
claimed that in spite of all the pain and suffering of
a wicked world, man can by the force of his own will
be virtuous, Epicurus brought the more surprising
good news that man can after all be happy.

But to make this good news credible he had to
construct a system of thought * He had to answer the
temple authorities and their adherents among the
vulgar, who threatened his followers with the torments
of Hades for their impiety. He had to answer the
Stoics and Cynics, preaching that all is worthless
except Arete ; and the Sceptics, who dwelt on the
fallibility of the senses, and the logical impossibility
of knowledge.

He met the last of these by the traditional Ionian
doctrine of sense-impressions, ingeniously developed.
We can, he argued, know the outer world, because our
sense impressions are literally ' impressions ' or stamps
made by external objects upon our organs. To see, for
instance, is to be struck by an infinitely tenuous stream
of images, Sowing from the object and directly imping-
ing upon the retina. Such streams are flowing from
all objects in every direction an idea which seexoed
incredible until the modern discoveries about light,
sound, and radiation. Thus there is direct contact
with reality, and consequently knowledge. Besides

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 105

direct vision, however, we have 'anticipations', or
TtpoX^ti?, sometimes called ' common conceptions ',
e. g. the general conception which we have of a horse
when we are not seeing one. These are merely the re-
sult of repeated acts of vision. A curious result of this
doctrine was that all our ' anticipations ' or ' common
ideas ' are true ; mistakes occur through some inter-
pretation of our own which we add to the simple
sensation.

We can know the world. How then are we to under-
stand it ? Here again Epicurus found refuge in the
old Ionian theory of Atoms and the Void, which is
supposed to have originated with Democritus and
Leucippus, a century before. But Epicurus seems to
have worked out the Atomic Theory more in detail,
as we have it expounded in Lucretius' magnificent
poem. In particular it was possibly he who first
combined the Atomic Theory with hylozoism ; i. e. he
conceived of the Atoms as possessing some rudimen-
tary power of movement and therefore able to swerve
slightly in their regular downward 'course. That
explains how they have become infinitely tangled and
mingkd, how plants atid animals are alive, and how
men have Free Will. It also enables Epicurus to build
up a world without the assistance of a god. He set
man free, as Lucretius says, from the ' burden of Re-
ligion ', though his doctrine of the ' blessed Being *
which neither has pain nor gives pain, enables him to
elude the dangerous accusation of atheism. He can
leave people believing in all their traditional gods,
including even, if so they wish, ' the Jxsarded Zeus and
the helmed Athena ' which they seelxTSreams and in
tKeiF 'Common ideas ', while at the same time having
no fear of them.

io6 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

There remains the foolish fancy of the Cynics and
Stoics that ' Aret ' is the only good. Of course, he
answers, Aretfc is good ; but that is because it produces
happy life, or blessedness or pleasure or whatever you
call it. He used normally the word fjSovT) ' sweetness ',
and counted the Good as that which makes life sweet.
He seems never to have entered into small disputes as
to the difference between ' sweetness ', or ' pleasure ',
and ' happiness ' and ' well-being ' (^OVTQ, e^Satjjtovia,
eoe<mo, xrX.), though sometimes, instead of ' sweet-
ness ' he spoke of ' blessedness ' (^axapt6TY]c). Ulti-
mately the dispute between him and the Stoics seems,
to resolve itself into a question whether the Good lies
in frdtoxetv or TTOICIV, in Experience or in Action ; and
average human beings seem generally to think that
the Good for a conscious being must be something of
which he is conscious.

Thus the great system is built, simple, intelligible,
dogmatic, and as such systems go remarkably
water-tight. It enables man to be unafraid, and it
helps him to be happy. The strange thing is that,
although on more than one point it seems to antici-
pate most surprisingly the discoveries of modern
science, it was accepted in a spirit more religious than
scientific. As we can see from Lucretius it was taken
almost as a revelation, from one who had saved man-
kind ; whose intellect had pierced beyond the * flam-
ing walls of Heaven ' and brought back to man the
gospel of an intelligible universe. 1

1 Lucretius, i. 62-79, actually speaks of the great atheist
in language taken from the Saviour Religions (see below,
p. 162) :

When Man's life upon earth in base dismay, .

Crushed by the burthen of Religion, lay,

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 107

In 310 B. c., when Epicurus was thirty-two, things
had so far improved that he left Colophon and set up
a school of philosophy in Mytilene, but soon moved to
Lampsacus, on the Sea of Marmora, where he had
friends. Disciples gathered about him. Among them
were some of the leading men of the city, like Leonteus
and Idomeneus. The doctrine thrilled them and
seemed to bring freedom with it. They felt "that such
a teacher must be set up in Athens, the home of the
great philosophers. They bought by subscription a
house and garden in Athens for 80 minae (about 320) 1
and presented it to the Master. He crossed to Athens
in 306 and, though he four times revisited Lampsacus
arid has left letters addressed To Friends in Lampsacus,
he lived in the famous Garden for the rest of his life.

Friends from Lampsacus and elsewhere came and
lived with him or near him. The Garden was not only

Whose face, from all the regions of the sky,
Hung, glaring hate upon mortality,
First one Greek man against her dared to raise
His eyes, against her strive through all his days ;
Him noise of Gods nor lightnings nor the roar
Of raging heaven subdued, but pricked the more
His spirit's valiance, till he longed the Gate
To burst of this low prison of man's fate.
And thus the living ardour of his mind
Conquered, and clove its way ; he passed behind
The world's last flaming wall, and through the whole
Of space uncharted ranged his mind and soul.
Whence, conquering, he returned to make Man see
At last what can, what cannot, come to be ;
By what law to each Thing its power hath been
Assigned, and what deep boundary set between ;
Till underfoot is tamed Religion trod,
And, by His victory, Man ascends to God.
1 That is, 8,000 drachmae. Rents had risen Violently in
314 and so presumably had land prices. Else one would say
the Garden was about the value of a good farm. See Tarn in
Th9 Hellenistic Age (1923) , p. 1 16.

io8 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

a philosophical school ; it was also a sort of retreat or
religious community. There lived 4here not only
philosophers like Metrod6rus, Col6tes, Hermarchus, and
others ; there were slaves, like Mys, and free women,
like Tfaemista, the wife of Leonteus, to both of whom
the Master, as the extant fragments testify, wrote
letters of intimate friendship. And not only free
women, but women with names that show that they
were slaves, Leontion, Nikidion, Mammarion. They
were httairae ; perhaps victims of war, like many of
the unfortunate heroines in the New Comedy; free
women from conquered cities, who had been sold in
the slave market or reduced to misery as refugees, and
to whom now the Garden afforded a true and spiritual
refuge. For, almost as much as Diogenes, Epicurus
had obliterated the stamp on the conventional cur-
rency. The values of the world no longer held good
after you had passed the wicket gate of the Garden,
and spoken with the Deliverer.
\ The Epicureans lived simply. They took neither
/flesh nor wing, and there is a letter extant, asking
j some one to send them a present of ' potted cheese ' l
as a special luxury. Their enemies, who were numer-
ous and lively, make the obvious accusations about the
hetairae, and cite ail alleged letter of the Master to
Leontion. * Lord Paean, my dear little Leontion, your
note fills me with such a bubble of excitement ! ' 2
The problem of this letter well illustrates the difficulty

1 rvplv KvOpiStov, Fr. 182.

8 Fr. I A$. Hatay &a, tf>iXov Aeovrdiptov, oiov KpQToQopvfiov
jfiGs MnA^oas, avayvovras oov TO cVtordAtov. Fr. 121 (from
an enemy) implies that the Hetairae were expected to reform
when they entered the Garden. Cf . Fr. 62 <rwow6j wrt)Q* ph
c, ayairijTov & ct ^ 0Aa^c : cf . Fr. 574.

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 109

of forming clear judgements about the details of
ancient life. Probably the letter is a forgery : we are
definitely informed that there was a collection of such
forgeries, made in order to damage Epicurus. But, if
genuine, would it have seemed to a fair-minded con-
temporary a permissible or an impermissible letter for
a philosopher to write ? By modern standards it would
be about the border-line. And again, suppose it is a
definite love-letter, what means have we of deciding
whether Epicurus or for that matter Zfeno or Plato
or any unconventional philosopher of this period
would have thought it blameworthy, or would merely
have called our attention to the legal difficulties of
contracting marriage with one who had been a Hetaira,
and asked us how we expect men and women to live*
Curiously enough, we happen to have the recorded
sayings of Epicurus himself : ' The wise man will not
fall in love ', and ' Physical union of the sexes never
did good; it is much if it does not do harm.'

This philosophy is often unjustly criticized. It is
called selfish ; but that it is certainly not. It is always
aiming at the deliverance of mankind l and it bases its
happiness on ^iXCa, Friendship or Affection, just as the
early Christians based it on dtydciw}, a word no whit
stronger than ^tXla, though it is conventionally trans-
lated ' Love '. By this conception it becomes at once
more human than the Stoa, to which, as to a Christian
monk, human affection was merely a weakness of the
flesh which might often conflict with the soul's duty
towards God. Epicurus passionately protested against
this unnatural ' apathy '. It was also human in that
it recognized degrees of good or bad, of virtue or error..
1 See p. 169 below on Diogenes of Oenoanda.

no THE GREAT SCHOOLS

To the Stoic that which was not right was wrong.
A calculator who says that seven sevens make forty-
eight is just as wrong as one who says they make a
thousand, and a sailor one inch below the surface of the
water drowns just as surely as one who is a furlong deep.
Justso in human life, wrong is wrong, falsehood is false-
hood, and to talk of degrees is childish. Epicureanism
had an easy and natural answer to these arguments,
since pleasure and pain obviously admit of degrees. 1

The school is blamed also for pursuing pleasure, on
the ground that the direct pursuit of pleasure is self-
defeating. But Epicurus never makes that mistake.
He says that pleasure, or ' sweetness of life ', is the
good ; but he never counsels the direct pursuit of it.
\ Quite the reverse. He says that if you conquer your
f desires and fears, and live simply and love those about
you, the natural sweetness of life will reveal itself.

A truer criticism is one which appears dimly in
Plutarch and Cicero. 2 There is a strange shadtfw of
sadness hanging over this wise and kindly faith, which
proceeds from the essential distrust of life that lies at
its heart. The best that Epicurus has really to say of
the world is that if you are very wise and do not
attract its notice AdtOe pukaa<; it will not hurt you.
It is a philosophy not of conquest but of escape. This
was a weakness from which few of the fourth-century
thinkers completely escaped. To aim at what we
should call positive happiness was, to the Epicureans,
only to court disappointment ; better make it your aim

1 Pleasures and pains may be greater or less, but the
complete ' removal of pain and fear ' is a perfect end, not to
be surpassed.* Fr. 408-48, Ep. iii. 129-31.

* e. g. Plut. Ne suaviter quidem vivi, esp. chap. 17 (p.
10980).

THE GREAT SCHOOLS in

to live without strong passion or desire, without high
hopes or ambitions. Their professed ideals rom&c
TOO dt\YOuvTO? &7rs5alpe<nc, dcTapa^la, etfpoia, ' the re-
moval of all active suffering ', ' undisturbedness ', ' a
smooth flow ' seem to result in rather a low tension,
in a life that is only half alive. We know that, as
a matter of fact, this was not so. The Epicureans felt
their doctrine to bring not mere comfort but inspiration
and blessedness. The young Colotes, on first hearing
the master speak, fell on his knees with tears and
hailed him as a god. 1 We may compare the rapturous
phrases of Lucretius. What can be the explanation
of this?

Perhaps it is that a deep distrust of the world pro-
duces its own inward reaction, as starving men dream
of rich banquets, and persecuted sects have apocalyptic
visions of paradise. The hopes and desires that are
starved of their natural sustenance project themselves
on to some plane of the imagination. The martyr,
even the most heretical martyr, sees the vision of his
crown in the skies, the lover sees in obvious defects only
rare and esoteric beauties. Epicurus avoided sedulously
the transcendental optimism of the Stoics. He
avoided mysticism, avoided allegory, avoided faith^ he
tried to set the feet of his philosophy on solid ground.
He can make a strong case for the probable happiness
of a man of kindly affections and few desires, who asks
little from the outside world. But after all it is only
probable; misfortunes and miseries may come to
any man. ' Most of the evils you fear are false/
he answers, still reasonably. ' Death does not hurt.

1 Cf. Ff . 141 when Epicurus writes to Colotes : ' Think of
me as immortal, and go your ways as immortal too. 1

H2 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

Poverty need never make a man less happy.' And
actual pain ? ' Yes, pain may come* But you can
endure it. Intense pains are brief; long-drawn pains
are not excruciating ; or seldom so.' Is that common-
sense comfort not enough? The doctrine becomes
more intense both in its promises and its demands.
If intense suffering comes, he enjoins, turn away
your mind and conquer the pain by the ' sweetness '
of memory. There are in every wise man's life
moments of intense beauty and delight; if he has
strength of mind he will call them back to him at frill
and live in the blessedness of the past, not in the mere
dull agony of the moment. Nay, can he not actually
enjoy the intellectual interest of this or that pang ?
Has he not that within him which can make the
quality of its own life ? On hearing of the death of
a friend he will call back the sweetness of that friend's
converse ; in the burning Bull of Phalaris he will think
his thoughts and be glad. Illusion, the old Siren with
whom man cannot live in peace, nor yet without her,
has crept back unseen to the centre of the citadel.
It was Epicurus, and not a Stoic or Cynic, who asserts
that a Wise Man will be happy on the rack. 1

Strangely obliging, ironic Fortune gave to him also
a chance of testing of his own doctrine. There is
extant a letter written on his death-bed. ' I write to
you on this blissful day which is the last of my life.
The obstruction of my bladder and internal pains have
reached the extreme point, but there is marshalled
against them the delight of my mind in thinking over
our talks together. Take care of the children of
Metrodorus'in a way worthy of your life-long devotion
1 Fr.6ox;

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 113

to me arid to philosophy.' x At least his courage, and
his kindness, did not fail.

Epicureanism had certainly its sublime side; and
from this very sublimity perhaps arose the greatest
flaw in the system, regarded as a rational philosophy.
It was accepted too much as a Revelation, too little as
a mere step in the search for truth. It was based no
doubt on careful and even profound scientific studies,
and was expounded by the master in a vast array of
volumes. But the result so attained was considered
sufficient. Further research was not encouraged.
Heterodoxy was condemned as something almost
approaching ' parricide '. a The pursuit of ' needless
knowledge ' was deliberately frowned upon. 8 When
other philosophers were working out calculations about
the size of the Sun and the commensurability of the
sun-cycle and the moon-cycle, Epicurus contemptu-
ously remarked that the Sun was probably about as big
as it looked, or perhaps smaller ; since fires at a dis-
tance generally look bigger than they are. The Various
theories of learned men were all possible but none
certain. And as for the cycles, how did any one know
that there was not a new sun shot off and extinguished
every day? 4 It is not surprising to fiitd that none of

1 Fr. 138; cf* 177.

* ' ol roifroiff dvTvypdfovrcs ov irdvv rt, patcpav rijs ratv TrarpoAotcDv
fearaSffcn? <tyc0ri}fcacrty ', Fr. 49. Usenet, from Philodemus, De
Rhet. This may be only a playful reference to Plato's phrase
about being a irarpaAotas of his father, Parmenides, Soph.,
p. 241 D.

* Epicurus congratulated himself (erroneously) that he came
to Philosophy Ka6apos *ra<n?? iratScla?, ' undented by education '.
Cf. Fr. 163 to Pythocles, iratSclav Si Traaav, paicapic, ^WOyc TO
jcaartov apa/ivo?, ' From- education in every shape, my son,
spread sail and fly ! '

* Fr. 343-6.

H4 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

the great discoveries of the Hellenistic Age were due
to the Epicurean school. Lucretius, writing 250 years
later, appears to vary hardly in any detail from the
doctrines of the Master, and Diogenes of Oenoanda,
500 years later, actually repeats his letters and sayings
word for word.

It is sad, this. It is un-Hellenic; it is a clear
symptom of decadence from the free intellectual move-
ment and the high hopes which had made the fifth
century glorious. Only in one great school does the
true Hellenic S6phrosyn& continue flourishing, a school
whose modesty of pretension and quietness of language
form a curious contrast with the rapt ecstasies of Stoic
and Cynic and even, as we have seen, of Epicurean,
just as its immense richness of scientific achievement
contrasts with their comparative sterility. The Porch
and the Garden offered new religions to raise from the
dust men and women whose spirits were broken;
Aristotle in his Open Walk, or Peripatos, brought
philosophy and science and literature to guide the feet
and. interest the minds of those who still saw life
steadily and tried their best to see it whole. .

Aristotle was not lacking in religious insight and
imagination, ad he certainly was not without profound
influence on the future history of religion. His com-
plete rejection of mythology and of anthropomorph-
ism; his resolute attempt to combine religion and
science, not by sacrificing one to the other but by build-
ing the highest spiritual aspirations on ascertained
truth and the probable conclusions to which it pointed ;
his splendid imaginative conception of the Divine Being
or First Cause as unmoved itself while moving all the
universe ' as the beloved moves the lover ' ; all these

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 115

are high services to religious speculation, and justify
the position he held, even when known only through a
distorting Arabic translation, in medieval Christianity.
If he had not written his other books he might well
be famous now as a great religious teacher. But his
theology is dwarfed by the magnificence and mass of
his other work. And as a philosopher and man of
science he does not belong to our present subject.

He is only mentioned here as a standard of that
characteristic quality in Hellenism from which the
rest of this book records a downfall. One variant of
a well-known story tells how a certain philosopher,
after frequenting the Peripatetic School, went to hear
Chrysippus, the Stoic, and was transfixed. ' It was
like turning from men to Gods/ It was really turning
from Greeks to Semites, from philosophy to religion,
from a school of very sober professions and high per-
formance to one whose professions dazzled the reason.
' Cpme unto me/ cried the Stoic, ' all ye who are in
storm or delusion ; I will show you the truth and the
world will never grieve you more/

Aristotle made no such profession. He merely
thought and worked and taught better than other men,
Aristqtle is always surprising us not merely by the
immense volume of clear thinking arid coordinated
Hnpwledge of which he was master, but by the stq&dy
S6phrosyn& of his temper. Son of the court physician
, of Philip, tutor for some years to Alexander the Great,
| he never throughout his extant writings utters one
syllable of flattery to his royal and world-conquering
employers; nor yet one syllable ivWcb suggests &
grievance. He saw, at close quarters and from the
winning side, the conquest of the Greek city states by

n6 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

the Macedonian ethnos or nation ; but he judges dis-
passionately that the city is the higher social form.

It seems characteristic that in his will, which is
extant, after providing a dowry for his widow, Herpyl-
lis, to facilitate her getting a second husband, and
thanking her for her goodness to him, he directs that
his bones are to be laid in the same grave with those
of his first wife, Pythias, whom he had rescued from
robbers more than twenty years before. 1

Other philosophers disliked him because he wore no
long beard, dressed neatly and had good normal
manners, and they despised his philosophy for very
similar reasons. It was a school which took the
existing world and tried to understand it instead of
inventing some intense ecstatic doctrine which should
transform it or reduce it to nothingness.

It possessed no Open Sesame to unlock the prison
of mankind ; yet it is not haunted by that Oim6g& of
Kynoskephalai. While armies sweep Greece this way
and that, while the old gods are vanquished and the
cities lose their freedom and their meaning, the
Peripatetics ugteadjol passionately saving souls^dili-
gently pursued knowledge, ancTin generation after
generation produced scientific results which put all
their rivals into the shade. 2 In mathematics, astro-
nomy, physics, botany, zoology, and biology, as well

1 Pythias was the niece, or ward, of Aristotle's friend/
Hermias, an extraordinary man who rose from slavery to be
first a free man and a philosopher, and later Prince or ' Dynast '
of Assos and Atarneus. m the end he was treacherously
entrapped by the Persian General, Mentor, and crucified by
the long. Aristotle's ' Ode to Virtue ' is addressed to him.
To his second wife, Herpyllis, Aristotle' was only united by a
civil marriage like the Roman usus.

1 See note on Dicaearchus at end of chapter.

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 117

as the human sciences of literature and history, the
Hellenistic Age was one of the most creative known to
our record. And it is not only that among the savants
responsible for these advances the proportion of
Peripatetics is overwhelming; one may also notice
that in this school alone it is assumed as natural that
further research will take place and will probably
correct as well as increase our knowledge, and that,
when such corrections or differences of opinion do
take place, there is no cry raised of Heresy.

It is the old difference between Philosophy and
Religion, between the search of the intellect for truth
and the cry of the heart for salvation. As the interest
in truth for its own sake gradually abated in the ancient
world, the works of Aristotle might still find com-
mentators, but his example was forgotten and his
influence confined to a small circle. The Porch and the
Garden, for the most part, divided between them the
allegiance of thoughtful men. Both systems Had begun
in days of discomfiture, and aimed originally more at
providing a refuge for the soul than at ordering the
course of society. But after the turmoil of the fourth
century had subsided, when governments began again
to approach more nearly to peace and consequently to
justice, and public life once more to be attractive to
decent men, both philosophies showed themselves
adaptable to the needs of prosperity as well as adver-
sity. Many kings and great Roman governors pro-
fessed Stoicism. It held before them the ideal of uni-
versal Brotherhood, and of duty to the ' Great Society
of Gods and Men ' ; it enabled them to work, indifferent
to mere pain and pleasure, as servants of the divine
purpose and ' fellow-workers with God ' in building up

n8 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

a human Cosmos within the eternal Cosmos. It is
perhaps at first sight strange that many kings and
governors also followed Epicurus. Yet after all the
work of a public man is not hindered by a slight irony
as to the value of worldly greatness and a conviction
that a dinner of bread and water with love to season
it ' is better than all the crowns of the Greeks '. To
hate cruelty and superstition, to avoid passion and
luxury, to regard human ' pleasure ' or ' sweetness of
life ' as the goal to be aimed at, and ' friendship ' or
' kindliness ' as the principal element in that pleasure,
are by no means doctrines incompatible with wise and
effective administration. Both systems were good and
both in a way complementary one to another. They
still divide between them the practical philosophy of
western mankind. At times to most of us it seems as
though nothing in life had value except to do right and
to fear not ; at others that the only true aim is to make
mankind fiappy. At times man's best hope seems to
lie in that part of him which is prepared to defy or
condemn the world of fact if it diverges from the ideal ;
in that intensity of reverence which will accept many
impossibilities rather than ever reject a holy thing;
above all in that uncompromising moral sensitiveness
to? which not merely the corruptions at society but the
fundamental and necessary facts of animal existence
seem both nauseous and wicked, links and chains in
a system which can never be the true home of the
human spirit. At .other times men feel the need to
adapt their beliefs and actions to the world as it is 7
to brush themselves free from cobwebs ; to face plain
facts with common sense and as much kindliness as fife
meeting the ordinary needs of a perishable

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 119

and imperfect species without illusion and without
make-believe. At one time we are Stoics, at another
Epicureans, *Jl *

But amid their differences there is one faith which
was held by both schools in common. It is the great
characteristic faith of the ancient world, revealing
itself in many divergent guises and seldom fully intelli-
gible to modern men ; faith in the absolute supremacy
of the inward life over things external. These men
really believed that wisdom is more precious than
jewels, that poverty and ill health are things of no
import, that the good man is happy whatever befall
him, and all the rest. And in generation after genera-
tion many of the ablest men, and women also, acted
upon the belief. They lived by free choice lives whose
simplicity and privation would horrify a modern
labourer, and the world about them seems to have
respected rather than despised their poverty. To the
Middle Age, with its monks and mendicants expectant
of reward in heaven, such an attitude, except for its
disinterestedness, would be easily understood. To
some eastern nations, with their cults of asceticism and
contemplation, the same doctrines have appealed
almost like a physical passion or a dangerous drug
running riot in their veins. But modern western man
cannot believe them, nor believe seriously that others
believe them. On us the power of the material world
has, through our very mastery of it and the depend-
ence which results from that mastery, both inwardly
and outwardly increased its hold. Capla fcrum vie-
tor em cepit* We have taken possession of it, and now
we cannot move without it.

The material element in modern life is far greater

120 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

than in ancient; but it does not follow that the
spiritual' element is correspondingly less. No doubt
it is true that a naval officer in a conning-tower in
a modern battle does not need less courage and
character than a naked savage who meets his enemy
with a stick and a spear. Yet probably in the first case
the battle is mainly decided by the weight and accuracy
of the guns, in the second by the qualities of the
fighter. Consequently the modern world thinks more
incessantly and anxiously about the guns, that is,
about money and mechanism ; the ancient devotes its
thought more to human character and duty. And it is
curious to observe how, in general, each tries to remedy
what is wrong with the world by the method that is
habitually in its thoughts. Speaking broadly, apart
from certain religious movements, the enlightened
modern reformer, if confronted with some ordinary
complex of misery and wickedness, instinctively
proposes to cure it by higher wages, better food, more
comfort and leisure ; to make people comfortable and
trust to their becoming good. The typical ancient
reformer would appeal to us to care for none of those
things (since riches notoriously do not make men
virtuous), but, with all our powers to pursue wisdom
or righteousness and the life of the spirit ; to be good
men, as we can be if we will, and to know that all
else will follow.

This is one of the regions in which the ancients
might have learned much from us, and in which we
still have much to learn from them, if once we can
shake off our* temporal obsessions and listen,,

NOTE
As an example it is worth noticing, even in a bare catalogue,

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 121

of the second rank, Dicaearchus of Messene. His floruit is
given as 310 B. c. Dorian by birth, when Theophrastus was
made head of the school he retired to the Peloponnese, and
shows a certain prejudice against Athens.

One of the discoveries of the time was biography. And, by
a brilliant stroke of imagination Dicaearchus termed one of
his books 8/0; ' EAAoSos, The Life of Hellas. He saw civilization
as the biography of the world. First, the Age of Cronos,
when man as a simple savage made no effort after higher
things; next, the ancient river-civilizations of the orient;
third,* the Hellenic system. Among his scanty fragments
we find notes on such ideas as ndrpa, foarpta, <f>v\ij, as Greek
institutions. The Life of Hellas was much used by late
writers. It formed the model for another Bios 'EAAaSos by a
certain Jason, and for Varro's Vita Populi Romani.

Then, like his great master, Dicaearchus made studies of
the Constitutions of various states (e. g. Pellene, Athens, and
Corinth) ; his treatise on the Constitution of Sparta was read
aloud annually in that city by order of the Ephors. It was
evidently appreciative.

A more speculative work was his Tripoliticus, arguing that
the best constitution ought to be compounded of the three
species, monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic, as in
Sparta. Only then would it be sure to last. Polybius
accepted the principle of the Mixed Constitution, but found
his ideal in the constitution of Rome, which later history 'was
to prove so violently unstable. Cicero, De Republica, takes
the same line (Polyb. vi. 2-10; Cic. De Rep. i. 45; ii. 65).
Dicaearchus treated of similar political subjects in his public
addresses at Olympia and at the Panathenaea.

We hear more apout his work on the history of literature,
though his generation was almost the first to realize that such
a subject had any existence. He wrote Lives of Philosophers
a subject hitherto not considered worth recording giving the
biographical facts followed by philosophic and aesthetic
criticism. We hear, for example, of his life of Plato; of
Pythagoras (in. which he laid emphasis on the philosopher's
practical work), of Xenophanes, and of the Seven Wise Men.

He also wrote Lives of Poets. We hear of books on Alcaeus
and on Homer, in which latter he is said to have made the
startling remark that the poems ' should be pronounced in
the Aeolic dialect '. Whatever this remark exactly meant,
and we cannot tell without the context, it seems an extra-
ordinary anticipation of modern philological discoveries-
He wrote on the Hypotheses i. e. the subject matter of
Sophocles and Euripides ; also on Musical Contests, ircpi Mououe&v
ayd>*av, carrying further Aristotle's own collection of the
Didascaliae, or official notices of the production of Tragedies

120 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

than in ancient; but it does not follow that the
spiritual' element is correspondingly less. No doubt
it is true that a naval officer in a conning-tower in
a modern bat.tle does not need less courage and
character than a naked savage who meets his enemy
with a stick and a spear. Yet probably in the first case
the battle is mainly decided by the weight and accuracy
of the guns, in the second by the qualities of the
fighter. Consequently the modern world thinks more
incessantly and anxiously about the guns, that is,
about money and mechanism ; the ancient devotes its
thought more to human character and duty. And it is
curious to observe how, in general, each tries to remedy
what is wrong with the world by the method that is
habitually in its thoughts. Speaking broadly, apart
from certain religious movements, the enlightened
modern reformer, if confronted with some ordinary
complex of misery and wickedness, instinctively
proposes to cure it by higher wages, better food, more
comfort and leisure ; to make people comfortable and
trust to their becoming good. The typical ancient
reformer would appeal to us to care for none of those
things (since riches notoriously do not make men
virtuous), buiLwith all our powers to pursue wisdom
or righteousness and the life of the spirit ; to be good
men, as we can be if we will, and to know that all
else will follow.

This is one of the regions in which the ancients
might have learned much from us, and in which we
still have much to learn from them, if once we can
shake off our temporal obsessions and listen.

NOTE

As an example it is worth noticing, even in a bare catalogue,
the work done by one of Aristotle's own pupils, a Peripatetic

THE GREAT SCHOOLS 121

of the second rank, Dicaearchus of Messene. His floruit is
given as 310 B. c. Dorian by birth, when Theophrastus was
made head of the school he retired to the Peloponnese, and
shows a certain prejudice against Athens.

One of the discoveries of the time was biography. And, by
a brilliant stroke of imagination Dicaearchus termed one of
his books Bios 'EAAoBos, The Life of Hellas. He saw civilization
as the biography of the world. First, the Age of Cronos,
when man as a simple savage made no effort after higher
things; next, the ancient river-civilizations of the orient;
third,* the Hellenic system. Among his scanty fragments
we find notes on such ideas as warpa, foarpla, <f>v\TJ, as Greek
institutions. The Life of Hellas was much used by late
writers. It formed the model for another Bios 'EAAoSos by a
certain Jason, and for Varro's Vita Populi Romani.

Then, like his great master, Dicaearchus made studies of
the Constitutions of various states (e. g. Pellene, Athens, and
Corinth) ; his treatise on the Constitution of Sparta was read
aloud annually in that city by order of the Ephors. It was
evidently appreciative.

A more speculative work was his Tripoliticus, arguing that
the best constitution ought to be compounded of the three
species, monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic, as in
Sparta. Only then would it be sure to last. Polybius
accepted the principle of the Mixed Constitution, but found
his ideal in the constitution of Rome, which later history was
to prove so violently unstable. Cicero, De Republica, takes
the same line (Polyb. vi. 2-10; Cic. De Rep. i. 45; ii. 65).
Dicaearchus treated of similar political subjects in his public
addresses at Olympia and at the Panathenaea.

We hear more about his work on the history of literature,
though his generation was almost the first to realize that such
a subject had any existence. He wrote Lives of Philosophers
a subject hitherto not considered worth recording giving the
biographical facts followed by philosophic and aesthetic
criticism. We hear, for example, of his life of Plato; of
Pythagoras (in. which he laid emphasis on the philosopher's
practical work), of Xenophanes, and of the Seven Wise Men.

He also wrote Lives of Poets. We hear of books on Alcaeus
and on Homer, in which latter he is said to have made the
startling remark that the poems ' should be pronounced in
the Aeolic dialect '. Whatever this remark exactly meant,
and we cannot tell without the context, it seems an extra-
ordinary anticipation of modern philological discoveries.
He wrote on the Hypotheses i. e. the subject matter of
Sophocles and Euripides i QlaoonMusicalContests.nfpiMownie&v
aywvwv, carrying further Aristotle's own collection oi the
Didascaliae, or official notices of the production of Tragedies
in Athens. The book dealt both with dates and with customs ;

122 THE GREAT SCHOOLS

it told how Skolia were sung, with a laurel or myrtle twig in
the hand, how Sophocles introduced a third actor, and the
like.

In philosophy proper he wrote On the Soul, wepi ^wro?. His
first book, thb Corinthiacus, proved that the Soul was a
' harmony ' or ' right blending ' of the four elements, and
was identical with the force of the living body. The second,
the Ltsbiacus, drew the conclusion that, if a compound, it
was destructible. (Hence a great controversy with his
master.)

He wrote wepi <j>6opds av0pco7ra>v, on the Perishing of Mankind ;
i. e. on the way in which large masses of men have perished
off the earth, through famine, pestilence, wild beasts, war,
and the like. He decides that Man's most destructive enemy
is Man. (The subject may have been suggested to him by a
fine imaginative passage in Aristotle's Meteorology (i. 14, 7)
dealing with the vast changes that have taken place on the
earth's surface and the unrecorded perishings of races and
communities.)

He wrote a treatise against Divination, and a (satirical ?)
Descent to the Cave of Trophonius. He seems, however, to have
allowed some importance to dreams and to the phenomena of
' possession '.

And, with all this, we have not touched on his greatest
work, which was in the sphere of geography. "He wrote a
n/io6o? XT/S-, a Journey Round the Earth, accompanied with a
map. He used for this map the greatly increased stores of
knowledge gained by the Macedonian expeditions over all
Asia as far as the Ganges. He also seems to have devised
the method of denoting the position of a place by means of
two co-ordinates, the method soon after developed by Eratos-
thenes into Latitude and Longitude. He attempted calcu-
lations of the measurements of large geographical distances,
for which of course both his data and his instruments were
inadequate. Nevertheless his measurements remained a
well-known standard; we find them quoted and criticized
by Strabo and Polybius. And, lastly, he published Measure*
rnents of the Heights of Mountains in the Peloponnese ; but the
title seems to have been unduly modest, for we find in the
fragments statements about mountains far outside that
area ; about Pelion and Olympus in Thessaly and of Atabyrioa
in Rhodes, He had a subvention, Pliny tells us (N. H. ii. 162,
L cura perxnensus momte* '), from the king of Macedon,
ly either Cassander or, OB one would like to believe,
inlosophic Antigonus Gonatas. And he calculated the

_ fits, so we are told, by trigonometry, using the ftfarrpa, an
instrument of hollow reeds without leases winch served for
his primitive theodotttei It is an extraordinary record, and
illustrates the true Peripatetic spirit;

IV

THE FAILURE OF NERVE

ANY one who turns from the great writers of classical
Athens, say Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the
Christian era must be conscious of a great difference
in tone. There is a change in the whole relation of
the writer to the world about him. The new quality
is not specifically Christian : it is just as marked in the
Gnostics and Mithras-worshippers as in the Gospels
and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus as in
Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a j
rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessim- (
ism ; a loss of self-confidence, of hope in this life and |
of faith in normal human effort ; a despair of patient
inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation ; an indifference i
to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to
God. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good
man is not so much to live justly, to help the society to
which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow
creatures ; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by
contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy,
suffering, and martyrdom, to be granted pardon for
his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sins.
There is an intensifying of certain spiritual emotions ;
an increase of sensitiveness, ajailure of nerve. .

Now this antithesis is ofteiT^exafgerated by the
admirers of one side or the other. A hundred people
write as if Sophocles had no mysticism and practically
speaking no conscience. Half a dozen retort as if

124 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

St. Paul had no public spirit and no common sense.
I have protested often against this exaggeration ; but,
stated reasonably, as a change of proportion and not
a creation of new hearts, the antithesis is certainly
based on fact. The historical reasons for it are sug-
gested above, in the first of these essays.

My description of this complicated change is,
of course, inadequate, but not, I hope, one-sided.
t l do not depreciate the religions that followed on
this movement by describing the movement itself as
a ' failure of nerve '. Mankind has not yet decided
which of two opposite methods leads to the fuller and
deeper knowledge of the world : the patient and
sympathetic study of the good citizen who- lives in it,
OP the ecstatic vision of the saint who rejects it. But
probably most Christians are inclined to believe that
without some failure and sense of failure, without a
contrite heart and conviction of sin, man can hardly
attain the religious life. I can imagine an historian of
this temper believing that the period we are about
to discuss was a necessary softening of human pride,
a Praeparatio Evangelica. 1

1 Mr, Marett has pointed out that this conception has its
roots deep in primitive human nature : The Birth of Humility,
Oxford, 1910, p. 17. ' It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say
that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to
cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as
tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three
negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corre-
sponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind.
Psychologists class the feelings bound up with flight, cower-
ing, and prostration under the common head of " asthenic
emotion ". In ^plain English they are all forms of heart-
sinking, of feeling unstrung. This general type of innate
disposition would seem to be the psychological basis of
Humility. Taken in its social setting, the emotion will, of
course, show endless shades of complexity; for it will be

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 125

I am concerned in this paper with the lower country
lying between two great ranges. The one range is
Greek Philosophy, culminating in Plato, Aristotle, the
Porch, and the Garden; the other is Christianity,
culminating in St. Paul and his successors. The one
is the work of Hellas, using some few foreign elements ;
the second .is the work of Hellenistic culture on a
Hebrew stock. The books of Christianity are Greek,
the philosophical background is Hellenistic, the result
of the interplay, in the free atmosphere of Greek
philosophy, of religious ideas derived from Egypt,
Anatolia, Syria, and Babylon. The preaching is
carried on in Greek among the Greek-speaking work-
men of the great manufacturing and commercial cities.
The first preachers are Jews : the central scene is
set in Jerusalem. I wish in this essay to indicate how
a period of religious history, which seems broken, is
really continuous, and to trace the lie of the main
valleys which lead from the one range to the other,
through a large and imperfectly explored territory.

The territory in question is the so-called Hellenistic
Age, the period during which the Schools of Greece
were ' hellenizing ' the world. It is a time of great

excited, and again will find practical expression, in all sorts
of ways. Under these varying conditions, however, it is
reasonable to suppose that what Mr. McDougall would call
the " central part of the experience remains very much the
same. In face of the sacred the normal man is visited by a
heart-sinking, a wave of asthenic emotion.' Mr. Marett
continues : ' If that were all, however. Religion would be a
matter of pure fear. But it is not all. There is yet the
positive side of the sacred to be taken into account.' It is
worth remarking also that Schleiermacher (1767-1834) placed
the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence
without , attempting to define the object towards which it
was directed.

126 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

enlightenment, of vigorous propaganda, of high im-
portance to history. It is a time full of great names :
in 'one school of philosophy alone we have Zeno,
Cleanlhes, Chrysippus, Panaetius, Posidonius. Yet,
curiously enough, it is represented in our tradition by
something very like a mere void. There are practically
no complete books preserved, only fragments and in-
direct quotations. Consequently in the search for
information about this age we must throw our nets
wide. Beside books and inscriptions of the Hellenistic
period proper I hstve drawn on Cicero, Pliny, Seneca,
and the like for evidence about their teachers and
masters. I have used many Christian and Gnostic
documents and works like the Corpus of Hermetic
writings and the Mithras Liturgy. Among modern
writers I must acknowledge a special debt to the re-
searches of Dieterich, Cumont, Bousset, Wendlan$,
and Reitzenstein.

The Hellenistic Age seems at first sight to have
entered on an inheritance such as our speculative
Anarchists sometimes long for, a tabula rasa, on which
a new and highly gifted generation of thinkers might
write dean and certain the book of their discoveries
about life what Herodotus would call their
4 Hi$tori6 '. For, as we have seeji in the last essay,
it is clear that by the time of Plato the traditional
religion of the Qreek states was, if taken at its face
value, a bankrupt concern. There was hardly one
aspect in which it could bear criticism; and in the
kind of test that chiefly matters, the satisfaction of
men's ethical requiremeuts an<J aspirations, it was if
anything weaker than elsewhere. Now a religious

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 127

belief that is scientifically preposterous may still
have a long and comfortable life before it. Any
worshipper can suspend the scientific part of his
mind while worshipping. But a religious belief that
is morally contemptible is in serious danger, because
when the religiouj emotions surge up the moral
emotions are not far away. And the clash cannot be
hidden.

This collapse of the traditional religion of Greece
might not have mattered so much if the form of Greek
social life had remained. If a good Greek had his
Polls, he had an adequate substitute in most respects
for any mythological gods. But the Polis too, as we
have seen in the last essay, fell with the rise of Macedon.
It fell, perhaps, not from any special spiritual fault of
its own ; it had few faults except its fatal narrowness ;
but simply because there now existed another social
whole, which, whether higher or lower in civilization,
was at any rate utterly superior in brute force and in
money. Devotion to the Polis lost its reality when the
Polis, with all that it represented of rights and laws and
ideals of Life, lay at th$ mercy of a military despot,
who might, of course, be a hero, but might equaDy
well be a vulgar sot or a corrupt adventurer.

What the succeeding ages built upon the ruins of the
Polis is not our immediate concern. In the realm of
thought, on the whole, the Polis triumphed. Aristotle
based his social theory on the Polis, not the nation.
Dicaearchus, Didymus, and Posidonius followed him,
and we still use his language* Rome herself was a
Polis, as well as an Enlpire. And Professor Haver-
field has pointed out that a City has more chance of
taking in the whole world to its freedoms and privileges

128 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

than a Nation has of making men of alien birth its
compatriots. A Jew of Tarsus could easily be granted
the civic rights of Rome : he could never have been
made an Italian or a Frenchman. The Stoic ideal
of the World as ' one great City of Gods and Men '
has not been surpassed by any^deal based on the
Nation.

What we have to consider is the general trend of
religious thought from, say, the Peripatetics to the
Gnostics. It is a fairly clear history. A soil once
teeming with wild weeds was to all appearance swept
bare and made ready for newsowing : skilled gardeners
chose carefully the best of herbs and plants and tended
the garden sedulously. But the bounds of the
garden kept spreading all the while into strange un-
tencjed ground, and even within the original walls the
weeding had been hasty and incomplete. At the
end of a few generations all was a wilderness of weeds
again, weeds rank and luxuriant and sometimes
extremely beautiful, with a half-strangled garden
flower or two gleaming here and there in the tangle of
them. Does that comparison seem disrespectful to
religion? Is philosophy all -flowers and traditional
belief all weeds ? Well, think what a weed is. It is
only a name for all the natural wild vegetation
which the earth sends up of herself; which lives and
will live without the conscious labour of man. The
flowers are what we keep alive with difficulty ; the
weeds are what conquer us.

It has been Well observed by Zeller that the great
weakness of all ancient thought, not excepting
Socratic thpught, was that instead of appealing to
objective experiment it appealed to some subjective

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 129

sense of fitness. There were exceptions, of course : j
Democritus, Eratosthenes, Hippocrates, and to a great?
extent Aristotle. But in general there was a strong j
tendency to follow Plato in supposing that people could ;
really solve questions by an appeal to their inner
consciousness. One result of this, no doubt, was a*
tendency to lay too much stress on mere agreement.
It is obvious, when one thinks about it, that quite
often a large number of people who know nothing
about a subject will all agree and all be wrong. Yet
we find the most radical of ancient philosophers un-
consciously dominated by the argument ex consensu
gentium. It is hard to find two jnore uncompromising
thinkers than Zeno and Epicurus. Yet both of them,
when they are almost free from the popular super-
stitions, when they have constructed complete
systems which, if not absolutely logic-proof, are
calculated at least to keep out the weather for a
century or so, open curious side-doors at the last
moment and let in all the gods of mythology. 1 True,
they are admitted as suspicious characters, and under
promise of good behaviour. Epicurus explains that
they do not and cannpt do anything whatever to
anybody; Zeno explains that they are not anthro-
pomorphic, and are only symbols or emanations or
subordinates of the all-ruling Unity ; both parties
get rid of the myths. But the two great reformers
have admitted a dangerous principle. The general
consensus. of humanity, they say, shows that there
are gods, and gods which in mind, if not also ia visual

1 Usener, Epicurea (1887), pp. 232 ff. ; Dieis, Doxogr&phi
Graeci (1879), . 306; Arnim, Stoicorwn Vetentm Fragment*
(1903-5), Chrysippus 1014, 1019.

130 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

appearance, resemble man. Epicurus succeeded in
barring the door, and admitted nothing more. But
the Stoics presently found themselves admitting or
insisting that the same consensus proved the existence
of daemons, of witchcraft, of divination, and when
they combined with the Platonic school, of more
dangerous elements still.

I take the Stoics and Epicureans as the two most
radical schools. On the whole both of them fought
steadily and strongly against the growth of super-
stition, or, if you like to put it in other language,
against the dumb demands of man's infra-rational
nature. The glory of the Stoics is to have built up a
religion of extraordinary nobleness ; the glory of the
Epicureans is to have upheld an ideal of sanity and
humanity stark upright amid a reeling world, and,
like the old Spartans, never to have yielded one inch
of ground to the common foe

The great thing to remember is that the mind of
man cannot be enlightened permanently by merely
teaching him to reject some particular set of super-
stitions. There is an infinite supply of other super-
stitions always at hand; and the mind that desires
such things that is, the mind that has not trained
itself to the hard discipline of reasonableness and
honesty, will, as soon as its devils are cast out, proceed
to fill itself with their relations.

Let us first consider the result of the mere denial
of the Olympian religion. The essential postulate of
that religion was that the world is governed by a
number of definite personal gods, possessed of a human
sense of justice and fairness and capable of being in-

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 131

fluenced by normal human motives. In general, they
helped the good and punished the bad, though doubt-
less they tended too much to regard as good those who j
paid them proper attention and as bad those who did)
not.

Speaking broadly, what was left when this concep-
tion proved inadequate ? If it was not these personal
gods who made things happen, what was it ? If the
Tower of Siloam was not deliberately thrown down
by the gods so as to kill and hurt a carefully collected
number of wicked people, while letting the good
escape, what was the explanation of its falling ? The
answer is obvious, but it can be put in two ways. You
can either say : ' It was just chance that the Tower
fell at that particular moment when So-and-so was
tinder it.' Or you can say, with rather more reflection
but not any more common sense : ' It fell because of
a definitechain of causes, a certain degree of progressive
decay to the building, a certain definite pressure, &c.
It was bound to fall.'

There is no real difference in these statements, at
least in the meaning of those who ordinarily utter them.
Both are compatible with a reasonable and scientific
view of the world. But in the Hellenistic Age, when
Greek thought was spreading rapidly and superficially
over vast semi-barbarous populations whose minds
were not ripe {or it, both views turned back instinct-
ively into a theology as personal as that of the Olym-
pians. It was not, of course, Zeus or Apollo who
willed this ; every one knew so much : it happened
by Chance. That is, Chance or Fortune willed it.
And TUXTJ became a goddess like the rest. The great
catastrophes, the great transformations of the

132 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

mediterranean world which marked the Hellenistic
period, had a strong influence here. If Alexander and
his generals had practised some severely orthodox
Macedonian religion, it would have been easy to see
that the Gods of Macedon were the real rulers of the
world. But they most markedly did not. They
accepted hospitably all the religions that crossed their
path. Some power or other was disturbing the world,
that was clear. It was not exactly the work of man,
because sometimes the good were exalted, sometimes
the bad ; there was no consistent purpose in the story.
It was just Fortune. Happy is the man who knows
how to placate Fortune and make her smile upon
him !

I It is worth remembering that the best seed-ground
[ for superstition is a society in which the fortunes of
men seem to bear practically no relation to their
merits and efforts. A stable and well-governed
society does tend, speaking roughly, to ensure that
the Virtuous and Industrious Apprentice shall succeed
in life, while the Wicked and Idle Apprentice fails.
And in such a society people tend to lay stress on the
reasonable or visible chains of causation. But in a
country suffering from earthquakes or pestilences, in
a court governed by the whim of a despot, in a district
which is habitually the seat of a war between alien
armies, the ordinary virtues of diligence, honesty,
and kindliness seem to be of little avail. The only
way to escape destruction is to win the favour of, the
prevailing powers, take the side of the strpngest
invader, flatter the despot, placate the Fate or Fortune
or angry g<5d that is sending the earthquake or the
pestilence. The Hellenistic period pretty certainly

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 133

falls in some degree under all of these categories.
And one result is the sudden and enormous spread
of the worship of Fortune. Of course, there was
always a protest. There is the famous

Nullum numen habes si sit prudentia : nos te,
Nosfacimus, Fortuna, deam,

taken by Juvenal from the Greek. There are many
unguarded phrases and at least three corrections in
Polybius. 1 Most interesting of all perhaps, there is
the first oration of Plutarch on the Fortune of Alex-
ander. 2 A sentence in Pliny's Natural Histdry, ii. 22,
seems to go back to Hellenistic sources :

' Throughout the whole world, at every place and

1 Juv. x. 365 f. ; Polyb. ii. 38, 5; x. 5, 8; xviii. u, 5.

* Of. also his Consolatio ad Apollonium. The earliest text
is perhaps the interesting fragment of Demetrius of Phalerum
(fr. 19, in F. H. G. ii. 368), written about 317 B. c. It is
quoted with admiration by Polybius xxix. 21, with reference
to the defeat of Perseus of Macedon by the Romans :

' One must often remember the saying of Demetrius of
Phalerum ... in his Treatise on Fortune. ..." If you
were to take not an indefinite time, nor many generations,
but just the fifty years before this, you could see in them the
violence of Fortune. Fifty years ago do you suppose that
either the Macedonians or the King of Macedon, or the
Persians or the King of Persia, if some God had foretold
them what was to come, would ever have believed that by
the present time the Persians, who were then masters of
ahflost all the inhabited world, would have ceased to be even
a geographical name, while the Macedonians, who were then
not even a name, would be rulers of all ? Yet this Fortune,
who bears no relation to our method of life, but transforms
everything in the way we do not expect and displays her
power by surprises, is at the present moment- showing all
the world that, wen she puts the Macedonians into the rich
inheritance of the Persian, she has only lent them these good
things until she changes her mind about them." Which has
now happened in the case of Perseus. The words of Deme-
trius were a prophecy uttered, as it were, by inspired lips.'

134 T#E FAILURE OF NERVE

hour, by -every voice Fortune alone is invoked and her
name spoken : she is the one defendant, the one
culprit, the one thought in men's minds, the one object
of praise, the one cause. She is worshipped with
insults, counted as fickle and often as blind, wander-
ing, inconsistent, elusive, changeful, and friend of the
unworthy. . . . We are so much at the mercy of
chance that Chance is our god/

The word used is first Fortune and then Sors. This
shows how little real difference there is between the
two apparently contradictory conceptions. ' Chance
would have it so.' ' It was fated to be.' The sting
of both phrases their pleasant bitterness when
played with, their quality of poison when believed
lies in their denial of the value of human
endeavour.

Yet on the whole, as one might expect, the believers

in Destiny are a more respectable congregation than

the worshippers of Chance. It requires a certain

Amount of thoughtfulness to rise to the conception

' that nothing really happens without a cause. It is the

^beginning, perhaps, of science. Ionic philosophers

of the fifth century had laid stress on the '&viyxq

^<S0io$,i what we should call the Chain of causes in

Nature. After the rise of Stoici3ro Fate becomes

something less physical, more related to conscious

purpose. It is not AnankA but Hetmarmeni. Heim-

annenfc, in the striking simile of Zeno, 2 is like a fine

thread running through the whole of existence-^the

world* we must renumber, was to ttye Stoics a live

* Eur., Tfo. $86. Literally it means ' The Compulsion in
th* way Thing* grow '.
D, fo 37*

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 13;

thing like that invisible thread of life which, ir
heredity, passes on from generation to generation o:
living species and keeps the type alive; it runs
causing, causing for ever, both the infiiiitesimal . ajid
the infinite. It is the A6yo<; ToSTSqiou, x "the NoO<;
2K6cTtSeTReason of the World or the mind of Zeus,
rather difficult to distinguish from the Pronoia 01
Providence which is the work of God and indeed the
very essence of God. Thus it is not really an external
and alien force. For the human soul itself is a frag-
ment or effluence of the divine, and this Law of God
is also the law of man's own Phusis. As long as you
act in accordance with your true self you are com-
plying with that divine El|i,apjivT) or np6voia, whose
service is perfect freedom. Only when you are false
to your own nature and become a rebel against the
kingdom of God which is within you, are you dragged
perforce behind the chariot-wheels. The doctrine is
implied in Cleanthes* celebrated Hymn to Destiny
and is explained clearly by Plotinus. 2

That is a noble conception. But the vulgar of
course can turn Kismet into a stupid idol, as easily as
they can Fortune. And Epicurus may have had
some excuse for exclaiming that he would sooner be a
slave to the old gods of the vulgar, than to the Destiny
of the philosophers. 8

So much for the result in superstitious minds of the
denial, or rather the removal, of the Olympian Gods.
It landed men in the worship of Fortune or of Fate.

1 Chrysippus, fr. 913, Arnim.

1 Cleanthes, 537, Arnim. "Ayov 84 p', 5 Zc, *a! ot? / 1}
Il7rpcofj.fa), jrrA. Plotinus, Enn. in. i. 10.

9 Epicurus, Third Letter. Usenet, p. 65, 12 = Diag. La.
x. 134.

136 THE FAILURE OF NERVE.

Next, let us consider what happened when, instead
of merely rejecting the Gods en masse, people tried
carefully to collect what remained of religion after
the Olympian system fell.

Aristotle himself gives us a fairly clear answer. He
held that the origins of man's idea (Ifwoia) of the
Divine were twofold, 1 the phenomena of the sky and
the phenomena of the human soul. It is very much
what Kant iound two thousand years later. The
spectacle of the vast and ordered movements of the
heavenly bodies are compared by him in a famous
fragment with the marching forth of Homer's armies
before Troy. Behind such various order and strength
there must surely be a conscious t mind capable

To order steeds of war and mailed men.

It is only a step from this to regarding the sun, moon,
and stars as themselves divine, and it is a step which
both Plato and Aristotle, following Pythagoras and
followed by the Stoics, take with confidence. Chrysip-
pus gives practically the same list of gods : ' the Sun,
Moon, and Stars ; and Law : and men who have
become Gods. 1 * Both the wandering stars and the
fixed stars are ' animate beings, divine and eternal ',
self-acting subordinate gods. As to the divinity of
the soul or the mind of man, the earlier generations
are shy about it. But in the later Stoics it is itself a
portion of the divine life. It shows this ordinarily
by its power of reason, and iriorfc conspicuously by
becoming ftfoo;, or ' filled with God ', in its exalted

^Aristotle, fr. 12 ff.

1 e. g. Chrysippus, fr. 1076, Arnim.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 137

moments of prevision, ecstasy, and prophetic dreams.
If reason itself is divine, there is something else in
the soul which is even higher than reason or at least
more surprisingly divine.

Let us follow the history of both these remaining
substitutes for the Olympian gods.

First for the Heavenly bodies. If they are to be
made divine, we can hardly stop there. The Earth
is also a divine being. Old tradition has always
said so, and Plato has repeated it. And if Earth is
divine, so surely are the other elements, the Stoicheia,
Water, Air, and above all, Fire. For the Gods them-
selves are said by Plato to be made of fire, and the
Stars visibly are so. Though perhaps the heavenly
Fire is really not our Fire at all, but a TT^TTTOV <xefy,a, a
' Fifth Body ', seeing that it seems not to burn nor
the Stars to be consumed.

This is persuasive enough and philosophic; but
* whither has it led us ? Back to the Olympians, or
rather behind the Olympians; as St. Paul puts it
(Gal. iv. 9), to ' the beggarly elements '. The old
Kor6, or Earth Maiden and Mother, seems to have
held her own unshaken by the changes of time all
over the Aegean area. She is there in prehistoric
Crete with her two lions; with the same lions
orientalized in Olympia and Ephesus ; in Sparta with
her great marsh birds; in Boeotia with her horse.
She runs riot in a number of the Gnostic systems both
pre-Christian and post-Christian. She forms a divine
triad with the Father and the Son : that is ancient
and natural. But she also becomes the Divine
Wisdom, Sophia, the Divine Truth, Aletheia, the
Holy Breath or Spirit, the Pneuma. Since the word

138 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

for ' spirit ' is neuter in Greek and masculine in Latin,
this last is rather a surprise. It is explained when
we remember that in Hebrew the word for Spirit,
' Ruah ', is mostly feminine. In the meantime let us
notice one curious development in the life of this god-
dess. In the old religion of Greece and Western
Asia, she begins as a Maiden, then in fullness of time
becomes a mother. There is evidence also for a third
stage, the widowhood of withering autumn. 1 To the
classical Greek this motherhood was quite as it should
be, a due fulfilment of normal functions. But to the
Gnostic and his kind it connoted a ' fall ', a passage
from the glory of Virginity to a state of Sin. 2 The
Kor becomes a fallen Virgin, sometimes a temptress
or even a female devil ; sometimes she has to be saved
by her Son the Redeemer. 3 As far as I have observed,
she loses most of her earthly agricultural quality,
though as Selene or even Helen she keeps up her
affinity with the Moon.

Almost all the writers of the Hellenistic Age agree
in regarding the Sun, Moon, and Stars as gods. The
rationalists Hecataeus and Euhemerus, before going
on to their deified men, always start with the heavenly
bodies. When Plutarch explains in his beautiful and
kindly way that all religions are really attempts
towards the same goal, he clinches his argument by

1 Themis, p. 180, n. i.

1 Not to Plotinus : Enn. it. ix against the Valentinians.
Cf. Porphyry, 'Ajopitat, 28.

1 Bousset, Hauptprobletnc der Gnosis, 1907, pp. 13, 21, 26,
81, <fcc.; pp. 332 ff. She becomes Helen in the beautiful
myth of the Simonian Gnostics a Helen who has forgotten
her name and race, and is a slave in a brothel in Tyre. Simon
discovers her, gradually brings back her memory and redeems
her. Irenaeus, i. 23, a.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 139

observing that we all see the same Sun and Moon
though we call them by different names in all
languages. 1 But the belief does not seem to have had
much religious intensity in it, until it was reinforced
by two alien influences.

First, we have the ancient worship of the Sun,
implicit, if not explicit, in a great part of the oldest
Greek rituals, and then idealized by Plato in the
Republic , where the Sun is the author of all light and
life in the material world, as the Idea of Good is in the
ideal world. . This worship came gradually into con-
tact with the traditional and definite Sun-worship of
Persia. The final combination took place curiously
late. It was the Roman conquests of Cilicia, Cappa-
docia, Commagene, and Armenia that gave the de-
cisive moment. 8 To men who had wearied of the
myths of the poets, who could draw no more inspiration
from their Apollo and Hyperion, but still had the
habits and the craving left by their old Gods, a fresh
breath of reality came with the entrance of "HXtoc
AVIXTJTOC MtOpac, ' Mithras, the Uncpnquered gun '.
But long before ffie "triumph of Mthraism as the
military religion of the Roman frontier, Greek
literature is permeated with a kind of intense language
about the Sun, which seems derived from Plato. 9
In later times, in the fourth century A. D. for instance,
it has absorbed some more full-blooded and less
critical element as well.

1 D* Iside 0t Osiride. 67. (He distinguishes them from the
real God, however* just as Sailustius would.)

9 Mithras was worshipped by the Cilician Pirates con*
quered by Pompey. Plut., Vit. Pomp. 24.

3 &yovor ro0 vpvrov 6<ov. Plato (Diels, 305) ; Stoics, ib.
547* 1- 8.

140 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

Secondly, all the seven planets. These had a
curious history. The planets were of course divine
and living bodies, so much Plato gave us. Then
come arguments and questions scattered through the
Stoic and eclectic literature. Is it the planet itself that
is divine, or is the planet under the guidance of a divine
spirit? The latter seems to win the day. Anthro-
pomorphism has stolen back upon us : we can use
the old language and speak simply of the planet
Mercury as 'Ep^ou dt<rry)p. It is the star of Hermes,
and Hermes is the spirit who guides it. 1 Even Plato
in his old age had much to say about the souls *of the
seven planets. Further, each planet has its sphere.
The Earth is in the centre, then comes the sphere of
the Moon, then that of the Sun, and so on through a
range of seven spheres. If all things are full of gods,
as the wise ancients have said, what about those parts
of the sphere in which the shining planet for the
moment is not ? Are they without god ?. Obviously
not. The whole sphere is filled with innumerable
spirits everywhere. It is all Hermes, all Aphrodite.
(We are more familiar with the Latin names, Mercury
and Venus.) But one part only is visible. The
voice of one school, as usual, is raised in opposition.
One veteran had seen clearly from the beginning
whither all this sort of thing was sure to lead.
' Epicurus approves none of these things/ 2 It was no

1 Aristotle (Diels, 450) . oas S etvai raj ofaipas, roaourovs
dirapxciv *ai rotte Kivotfvras 0coi&. Chrysippus (Diels, 466);
Posidonius, ib. (cf. Plato, Laws, 898 ff.). See Epicurus's
Second Letter, especially Usener, pp. 36-47 Diog. La. x.
86-104. On the food reqpired by the heavenly bodies cf.
Chrysippus, fr. 658-61, Arnim.

* <* M 'Eirlttotpoff ottev rotfrwv tyKptvti. Diels, 307* 15. Cf.
432* 10.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 141

good his having destroyed the old traditional supersti-
tion, if people by deifying the stars were to fill the sky
with seven times seven as many objects of worship
as had been there before. He allows no Schw&rmcrci
about the stars. They are not divine animate beings,
or guided by Gods. Why cannot the astrologers leave
God in peace ? When their orbits are irregular it is
not because they are looking for food. They are just
conglomerations of ordinary atoms of air or fire it
does not matter which. They are not even very
large only about as large as they look, or perhaps
smaller, since most fires tend to look bigger at a dis-
tance. They are not at all certainly everlasting. It is
quite likely that the sun comes to an end every day,
and a new one rises in the morning. All kinds* of
explanations are possible, and none certain. M6vov 6
fi50o<; dnr&rrco. In any case, as you value your life and
your reason, do not begin making myths about them !

On other lines came what might have been the
effective protest of real Science, when Aristarchus of
Samos (250 B. c.) argued that the earth was not really
the centre of the universe, but revolved round the
Sun. But his hypothesis did not account for the
phenomena as completely as the current theory with
its ' Epicycles ' ; his fellow astronomers were against
him ; Qeanlhes the Stoic denounced him for ' dis-
turbing the Hearth of the Universe ', and his heresy
made little headway. 1

The planets in their seven spheres surrounding the

earth continued to be objects of adoration. They had

their special gods or guiding spirits assigned them.

Their ordered movements through space, it was held,

1 Heath, Aristarchos of Santos, pp. 301-10.

142 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

produce a vast and eternal harmony. It is beautiful
beyond all earthly music, this Music of the Spheres,
beyond all human dreams of what music might be.
The only pity is that except for a few individuals in
trances nobody has ever heard it. Circumstances
seem always to be unfavourable. It may be that we
are too far off, though, considering the vastness of the
orchestra, this seems improbable. More likely we are
merely deaf to it because it never stops and we have
been in the middle of it since we first drew breath. 1

The planets also become Elements in the Kosmos,
Stoicheia. It is significant that in Hellenistic theology
the word Stoicheion, Element, gets to mean a Daemon
as Megathos, Greatness, means an Angel. 8 But
befcold a mystery ! The word Stoichaia, ' etementa ',
had long been used for the Greek ABC, and in
particular for the seven vowels a * ij i o u a>. That is
no chance, no mere coincidence. The vowels are the
mystic signs of the Planets ; they have control over
the plaaets. Hence strange prayers and magic
formulae innumerable.

Evan the way of reckoning time changed under the
influence of the Planets, Instead of the old division
of the month into three periods of nine days, we find
gradually estabU3hing itself the week of seven days
with each day named after its planet, Sun, Moon,
Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, Kronos. The history
of the Planet week is given by Dio Cassius, xxxvii. 18,

1 Pythagoras in Diels, p. 555, 20 ; the best criticism is in
Aristotle, De Caelo, chap. 9 (p. 290 b), the fullest account in
Maqrobius, Comm. in Sqmn. Scipionis, ii.

* See Diets* Elementum, 1899, p. 17. These magic letters
are still used in the Roman ritual lor the consecration of
churches.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 143

in his account of the Jewish campaign of Pompeius.
But it was not the Jewish week. The Jews scorned
such idolatrous and polytheistic proceedings. It was
the old week of Babylon, the original home of
astronomy and planet-worship. 1

For here again a great foreign religion came like
water in the desert to minds reluctantly and super-
ficially enlightened, but secretly longing for the old
terrors and raptures from which they had been set free.
Even in the old days Aeschylus had called the planets
'bright potentates, shining. in the fire of heaven',
and Euripides had spoken of the ' shaft hurled from a
star/. 2 But we are told that the first teaching of
astrology in Hellenic lands was in the time of Alex-
ander, when Br6ssos the Chaldaean set up a school in
Cos and, according to Seneca, Bdum interpretatu* est.
This must mean that he translated into Greek -the
' Eye of Bel ', a treatise in seventy tablets found in the
library of As$ur-bani-pal (686-626 B. c.) but composed
for Sargon I in the third millennium B. c. Even the
philosopher Theophrastus is reported by Proclus 3
as saying that ' the most extraordinary thing of his
age was the lore of the Chaldaeans, who foretold
not only events of public interest but even the lives
and deaths of individuals*. One wonders slightly
whether Theophrastus spoke with as much implicit
faith as Proclus suggests. But the chief account is
given by Diodorus, ii. 30 (perhaps from Hecataeusj.

1 A seven-day week was known to Pseudo-Hippocrates
srepi aapK&v ad fin., but the date of that treatise is very
uncertain.

8 Aesch., Ag. 6; Eur., Hip. 530. Also Ag. 365, where
dorpwv p&os goes together and ft^re irpA /eatpoti ju$0* vwp.

8 Proclus, In Timaevm, 285 F ; Seneca, Nat. Quacst. iii.
29, i.

144 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

' Other nations despise the philosophy of Greece.
It is so recent and so constantly changing. They have
traditions which come from vast antiquity and never
change. Notably the Chaldaeans have collected obser-
vations of the Stars through long ages, and teach how
every event in the heavens has its meaning, as part of
the eternal scheme of divine forethought. Especially
the seven Wanderers, or Planets, are called by them
HermSneis, Interpreters : and among them the Inter-
preter in chief is Saturn. Their work is to interpret
beforehand T^V T&V Oe&v gwoiav, the thought that is
in the mind of the Gods. By their risings and settings,
and by the colours they "assume, the Chaldaeans pre-
dict great winds and storms and waves of excessive
heat, comets, and earthquakes, and in general all
changes fraught with weal or woe not only to nations
and regions of the world, but to kings and to ordinary
men and women. Beneath the Seven are thirty Gods
of Counsel, half below and half above the Earth;
every ten days a Messenger or Angel star passes from
above below and another from below above. Above
these gods are twelve Masters, who are the twelve
signs of the Zodiac ; and the planets pass through all
the Houses of these twelve in turn. The Chaldaeans
have made prophecies for various kings, such as Alex-
ander who conquered Darius, and Antigonus and
Seleucus Nikator; and have always been right. And
private persons who have consulted them consider
their wisdom as marvellous and above human power/

Astrology fell upon the Hellenistic mind as a new
disease falls upon some remote island people. The
tomb of Ozymandias, as described by Diodorus
(i. 49, 5), was covered with astrological symbols, and
that of Antiochus I, which has been discovered in
Commagene, is of the same character. It was
natural for monarchs to believe that the stars watched

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 145

over them. But every one was ready to receive the
germ. The Epicureans, of course, held out, and so did
Panaetius, the coolest head among the Stoics. But
the Stoics as a whole gave way. They formed with
good reason the leading school of philosophy, and it
would have been a service to mankind if they had
resisted. But they were already committed to a belief
in the deity of the stars and to the doctrine of Heimar-
men, or Destiny. They believed in the pervading
Pronoia, 1 or Forethought, of the divine mind, and in
the LufjtTcdcOeta TOW 6Xcov the Sympathy of all Crea-
tion, 2 whereby whatever happens to any one part,
however remote or insignificant, affects all the rest.
It seemed only a natural and beautiful illustration of
this Sympathy that the movements of the Stars should
be bound up with the sufferings of man. They also
appealed to the general belief in prophecy and divina-
tion. 3 If a prophet can foretell that such and such an
event will happen, then it is obviously fated to happen.
Foreknowledge implies Predestination. This belief in
prophecy was, in reality, a sort of appeal to fact and to
common sense. People could produce then, as they
can now, a large number of striking cases of second
sight, presentiment, clairvoyance, actual prophecy and
the like ; 4 and it was more difficult then to test them.

1 Chrysippus, 1187-95. Esse divinationem si di sint et
providentia.

1 Cicero, De Nat. De. iii. n, 28 ; especially De Divinatione,
ii. 14, 34; 60, 124; 69, 142. ~* Qua ex coniunctione naturae
et quasi concentu atque consensu, quam avpirdBnav Graeci
.appellant, convenire potest aut fissum iecoris cum lucello
meo aut meus quaesticulus cum caelo, terra rerumque
natura ? ' asks the sceptic in the second of these passages.

9 Chrysippus, 939-44. Vaticinatio probat lati necessi-
tatem.

4 Chrysippus, 1214, 1 200-6.
F

146 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

The argument involved Stoicism with some question-
able allies. Epicureans and sceptics of the Academy
might well mock at the sight of a great man like Chry-
sippus or Posidonius resting an important part of his
religion on the undetected frauds of a shady Levantine
' medium '. Still the Stoics could not but welcome
the arrival of a system of prophecy and predestination
which, however the incredulous might rail at it, pos-
sessed at least great antiquity and great stores of
learning, which was respectable, recondite, and in
a way sublime.

In all the religious systems of later antiquity, if
I mistake not, the Seven Planets play some lordly or
terrifying part. The great Mithras Liturgy, unearthed
by Dieterich from a magical papyrus in Paris, 1 repeat-
edly confronts the worshipper with the seven vowels
as names of ' the Seven Deathless Kosmokratdres ', or
Lords of the Universe, and seems, under their influence,
to go off into its ' Seven Maidens with heads of
serpents, in white raiment ', and its divers other
Sevens. The various Hermetic and Mithraic com-
munities, the Naassenes described by Hippolytus, 2
and other Gnostic bodies, authors like Macrobius
and even Cicero in his Somnium Sdpionis, are full
of the influence of the seven planets and of the longing
to escape beyond them. For by some simple psycho-
logical law the stars which have inexorably pro-
nounced our fate, and decreed, or at least registered

1 Eine Mithrasliturgie, 1903. The MS. is 574 Supplement
grec de la Bibl. Nationale. The formulae of various religions '
were used as instruments of magic, as our own witches used
the Lord's Prayer backwards.

1 Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, v. 7. They worshipped the
Serpent, Ndhdsh

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 147

the decree, that in spite of all striving we must needs
tread their prescribed path; still more perhaps, the
Stars who know in the midst of our laughter how that
laughter will end, become inevitably powers of evil
rather than good, beings malignant as well as pitiless,
making life a vain thing. And Saturn, the chief of
them, becomes the most malignant. To some of the
Gnostics he becomes Jaldabaoth, the Lion-headed
God, the evil Jehovah. 1 The religion of later antiquity
is overpoweringly absorbed in plans of escape from
the prison of the seven planets.

In author after author, in one community after
another, the subject recurs. And on the whole there
is the same answer. Here on the earth we are the
sport of Fate; nay, on the earth itself we are worse
off still. We are beneath the Moon, and beneath the
Moon there is not only Fate but something more
unworthy and equally xnalignant, Chance to say
nothing of damp and the ills of earth and bad daemons.
Above the Moon there is no chance, only Necessity;
there is the will of the other six Kosmokratores,
Rulers of the Universe. But above them all there is art
Eighth region they call it simply the Ogdoas the
home* of the ultimate God, 2 whatever He is named,
whose being was before the Kosmos. In this Sphere
is true Being and Freedom. And more than freedom,
thereis the ultimate Union with God. For that spark
of divine life which is man's soul is not merely, as some
have said, an dbr6ppout TCOV totpcov, an effluence of the*
stars 1 :: it comes direct from the first and ultimate

1 Bousset, p. 351. The hostility of Zoroastrianism to ttte
old Babylonian planet gods was doubtless at work also.
Ib. pp. 37-46.

* Or, in some Gnostic systems, of the Mother.

148 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

God, the Alpha and Omega, who is beyond the
Planets. Though the Kosmokratores cast us to and
fro like their slaves or dead chattels, in soul at least
we are of equal birth with them. The Mithraic
votary, when their wrathful and tremendous faces
break in upon his vision, answers them unterrified :
lY<*> ety-i aii(ji7rXavo<; fy? v *crc^P> ' I am your fellow
wanderer, your fellow Star.' The Orphic carried to
the grave on his golden scroll the same boast : first,
' I am the child of Earth and of the starry Heaven ' ;
then later, ' I too am become God '.* The Gnostic
writings consist largely of charms to be uttered by the
Soul to each of the Planets in turn, as it pursues its
perilous path past all of them to its ultimate home.

That journey awaits us after death; but in the
meantime? In the meantime there are initiations,
sacraments, mystic ways of communion with God.
To see God face to face is, to the ordinary unprepared
man, sheer death. But to see Him after due purifica-
tion, to be led to Him along the true Way by an
initiating Priest, is the ultimate blessing of human life.
It is to die and be born again. There were regular
official initiations. We have one in the Mithras-
Liturgy, more than one in the Corpus Hermeticum.
Apuleius 2 tells us at some length, though in guarded
language, how he was initiated to Isis and became ' her
image '. After much fasting, clad in holy garments
and led by the High Priest, he crossed the threshold
of Death and passed through all the Elements. The
Sun shone upon him at midnight, and he saw the Gods
of Heaven and of Hades. In the morning he was clad

1 Harrison, Prolegomena, Appendix on the Orphic tablets.
1 Ap. Metamorphoses, xi.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 149

in the Robe of Heaven, set up on a pedestal in front of
the Goddess and worshipped by the congregation as.
a God. He had been made one with Osiris or Horus
or whatever name it pleased that Sun-God to be
called. Apuleius does not reveal it.

There were also, of course, the irregular personal
initiations and visions of god vouchsafed to persons
of special prophetic powers. St. Paul, we may re-
meniber, knew personally a man who had actually
been snatched up into the Third Heaven, and another
who was similarly rapt into Paradise, where he heard
unspeakable words ; x whether in the body or not, the
apostle leaves undecided. He himself on the road to
Damascus had seen the Christ in glory, not after the
flesh. The philosopher Plotinus, so his disciple tells us,
was united with God in trance four times in five years. 2

We seem to have travelled far from the simplicity

1 2 Cor. xii. 2 and 3 (he may be referring in vetted language
to himself) ; Gal. i. 12 ff.; Acts ix. 1-22. On the difference
of tone and fidelity between the Epistles and the Acts see
the interesting remarks of Prof. P. Gardner, The Religious
Experience of St. Paul, pp. 5 fi.

" Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 23. ' We have explained that
he was good and gentle, mild and merciful; we who lived
with him could feel it. We have said that he was vigilant
and pure of soul, and always striving towards the Divine,
which with all his soul he loved. . . . And thus it happened
to this extraordinary man, constantly lifting himself up
towards the first and transcendent God by thought and the
ways explained by Plato in the Symposium, that there
actually came a vision of that God who is without shape or
form, established above the understanding and all the intel-
ligible world. To whom I, Porphyry, being now in my
sixty-eighth year, profess that I once drew near and was
made one with him. At any rate he. appeared to Plotinus
" a goal close at hand ". For his whole end and goal was
to t?tt made One and draw near to the supreme God. And
he attained that goal four times, I think, while I was living
with him- not potentially but in actuality, though an
actuality which surpasses speech.'

ISO THE FAILURE OF NERVE

of early Greek religion. Yet, apart always from Plo-
jtinus, who is singularly aloof, most of the movement
has been a reaction under Oriental and barbarous in-
fluences towards the most primitive pre-Hellenic cults.
The union of man with God came regularly through
Ekstasis the soul must get clear of its body and
Entkousiasmos the God must enter and dwell inside
the worshipper. But the means to this union, while
sometimes allegorized and spiritualized to the last
degree, are sometimes of the most primitive sort.
The vagaries of religious emotion are apt to reach
very low as wefl as very high in the scale oi human
nature. Certainly the primitive Thracian savages, who
drank themselves mad with the hot blood of their
God-beast, would have been quite at home in some of
these rituals, though in others they would have been
put off with some substitute for the actual blood.
The primitive priestesses who waited in a bridal
chamber for the Divine Bridegroom, even the Cretan
Kourtes with their Zeus Kours l and those strange
hierophants of the ' Men's House ' whose initiations
are written on th rocks of Thera, would have found
rites very like their own reblossoming on earth after the
fafl of Hellenism. ' Prepare thyself as a bride to
receive her bridegroom/ says Markos the Gnostic,*
' that thou mayst be what I am and I what thou art/
' I in thee, and thou in me 1 ' is the ecstatic cry of one
of the Hermes liturgies. Before that the prayer has
been * Enter into me as a babe into the womb of a
woman '.*

1 C. I. .,.voL Jdi, fosc. 3; aad Bethe ia Rhtin. Mus.,
N, P.. xlii. 433-75. * Irenaews, i. 15, 3^

* Bouaset, chap, vii; Reiteenstein, Mystofienreltfionen,
pp. 20 ff.. with excursus; Poimandfvs, 226 ff.; Dieterich,
Mithrasliturgie, pp. 121 ff.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 15*

In almost all the liturgies that I have read need is
felt for a mediator between the seeker after God and
his goal. Mithras himself saw a MesitSs, a Mediator,
between Ormuzd and Ahriman, but the ordinary
mediator is more like an interpreter or an adept with
inner knowledge which he reveals to the outsider.
The circumstances out of which these systems grew
have left their mark on the new gods themselves.
As usual, the social structure of the worshippers is
reflected in their objects of worship. When the
Chaldaeans came to Cos, when the Thracians in the
Piraeus set up their national worship of Bendis, when
the Egyptians in the same port bounded their society
for the Egyptian ritual of Isis, when the Jews at
Assuan in the fifth century B. c. established their own
temple, in each case there would come proselytes to
whom the truth must be explained and interpreted,
sometimes perhaps softened. And in each case
there is behind the particular priest or initiator there
present some greater authority in the land he comes
from. Behind any explanation that can be made in
the Piraeus, there is a deeper and higher explanation
known only to the great master in Jerusalem, in
Egypt, in Babylon, or perhaps in some unexplored
and ever-receding region of the east. This series of
revelations, one behind the other, is a characteristic
of all these mixed Graeoo-Oriental religions.

Most of the Hermetic treatises are put in the form ot
initiations or lessons revealed by a ' father ' to a
' son ', by Ptah to Hermes, by Hermes to Thoth or
Asclepios, and by one of them to us. It was aa
ancient formula, a natural Vehicle lor traditional
wisdom in Egypt, where the young priest became
regularly the ' son ' of the old priest. It is a form

152 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

that we find in Greece itself as early as Euripides,
whose Melanippe says of her cosmological doctrines,

' It is not my word but my Mother's word '. 1

It was doubtless the language of the old Medicine-
Man to his disciple. In one fine liturgy Thoth
wrestles with Hermes in agony of spirit, till Hermes
is forced to reveal to him the path to union with God
which he himself has trodden before. At the end of
the Mithras liturgy the devotee who has passed through
the mystic ordeals and seen his god face to face, is
told : ' After this you can show the way to others/

But this leads us to the second great division of our
subject. We turn from the phenomena of the sky to
those of the soul.

If what I have written elsewhere is right, one of the
greatest works of the Hellenic spirit, and especially of
fifth-century Athens, was to insist on what seems to
us such a commonplace truism, the difference between
Man and God. SophrosynS in religion was the mes-
sage of the classical age. But the ages before and
after had no belief in such a lesson. The old Medicine-
Man was perhaps himself the first Theos. At any rate
the primeval kings and queens were treated as d|vine. a
Just for a few great generations, it would seem,
humanity rose to a sufficient height of self-criticism

1 Eur. fr. 484.

1 R. G. E.*, pp. 135-40. I do not touch on the political
side of this apotheosis of Hellenistic kings ; it is well Drought
out in Ferguson's Hellenistic Athens, e. g. p. 108 f., also
p. ii f. and note. Antigonus Gonatas refused to be wor-
shipped (Tarn, p. 250 f.). For Sallustius's opinion, see below,
p. 223, chap, xviii ad fin.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 153

and self-restraint to reject these dreams of self-
abasement or megalomania. But the effort was too
great for the average world ; and in a later age nearly
all the kings and rulers all people in fact who can
command an adequate number of flatterers become
divine beings again. Let us consider how it came about.

First there was the explicit recognition by the
soberest philosophers of the divine element in man's
soul. 1 Aristotle himself built an altar to Plato. He
did nothing superstitious ; he did not call Plato a god,
but we can see from his beautiful elegy to Eudemus,
that he naturally and easily used language of worship
which would seem a little strange to us. It is the same
emotion a noble and just emotion on the whole
which led the philosophic schools to treat their founders
as ' heroes ', and which has peopled most of Europe
and Asia with the memories and the worship of saints.
But we should remember that only a rare mind will
make its divine man of such material as Plato. The
common way to dazzle men's eyes is a more brutal
and obvious one.

To people who were at all accustomed to the
conception of a God-Man it was difficult not to feel
that the conception was realized in Alexander. His
'tremendous power, his brilliant personality, his
achievements beggaring the fables of the poets, put
people in the right mind for worship. Then came the
fact that the kings whom he conquered were, as a
matter of fact, mostly regarded by their subjects as

1 Of. i/nnfi ouenr^ptov Salpovos, Democr. 171, Diels, and
Alcmaeon is said by Cicero to have attributed divinity to the
Stars and the Soul. Melissus and Zeno Betas otcrcu rag ifa>%*s.
The phrase rwfc r V ^>*V Wra/aw ant T&V aarpajv plovoav, Diels
651, must refer to some Gnostic sect.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE

divine beings. 1 It was easy, it was almost inevitable,
for those who worshipped the ' God ' * Darius to feel
that it was no man but a greater god who had over-
thrown Darius. The incense which had been burned
before those conquered gods was naturally offered to
their conqueror. He did not refuse it. It was not
good policy to do so, and self-depreciation is not apt
to be one of the weaknesses of the born ruler. 8 But
besides all this, if you are to judge a God by his fruits,
what God could product better credentials? Men
had often seen Zeus defied with impunity ; they had
seen faithful servants of Apollo come to bad ends.
But those who defied Alexander, however great they
might be, always rued their defiance, and those who
were faithful to him always received their reward.
With his successors the worship became more official.
Seleucus, Ptolemaeus, Antigonus, Demetrius, all in
different degrees and different styles are deified by the
acclamations of adoring subjects. Ptolemy Phila-
delphus seems to have been the first to claim definite
divine honours during his own life. On the death of his
wife in 271 he proclaimed her deity and his own as
well in the worship of the Theoi Adelphoi, the ' Gods
Brethren '. Of course there was flattery in aU this,
ordinary self-interested lying flattery, and its in-*

1 See for instance Frazer, Golden Bough*, part I, i. 417-19.

1 Aesch. Pers. 157, 644 W<b), 642 (Jo^v). Mr. Bevan
however suspects that Aeschylus misunderstood his Persian
sources : see his article on ' Deification ' in Hastings's
Dictionary of Religion.

^ * Cf. Aristotle on the McyaAo^ux ^ ** N * c * II2 3 *> 15.
ct 4 ^ pevaAa*' ^avrop afcoi jfto? ah>, teal paAtarra r&v pcyttrrai' >
rrepi (v jftaAtora a* jf. . . . pJytvrov 54 ra&r' 3r Icfipsev o rot;
feofe diroW/iopey. But these kings clearly transgressed the
mean. For the satirical comments of various public men ia
Athens see Ed. Meyer, Kfcine Schriften, 301 ff., 350.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 155

evitahle accompaniment, megalomania. Any read-
ing of the personal history of the Ptolemies, the
Seleucidae or the Caesars shows it. But that is not
the whole explanation.

One of the characteristics of the period xrf the
Diadochi is the accumulation of capital and military
force in the hands of individuals. The Ptolemies and
Seleucidae had at any moment at their disposal
powers very much greater than any Pericles or Nicias
or Lysander. 1 The folk of the small cities of the
Aegean hinterlands must have felt towards these
great strangers almost as poor Indian peasants in
time of flood and famine feel towards an English
official. There were men now on earth who comld do
the things that had hitherto been beyond the power
of man. Were several cities thrown down by earth-
quake; here was one who by his nod could build
them again. Famines had always occurred and been
mostly incurable. Here was one who could without
effort allay a famine. Provinces were harried and
wasted by habitual wars : the eventual conqueror
had destroyed wl^ole provinces in making the wars;
now, as he had destroyed, he could also save. ' What
do you mean by a god,' the simple man might say,
' if these men are not gods ? The only difference is
that these gods are visible, and the old gods no man
has seen/

The titles assumed by all the divine kings tell the
story clearly. Antiochus Epiphands ' the <gad made
manifest ' ; Ptolemaios Euergetfe, Ptolemaios S6ter.
Occasionally we have a Keraunos or a Nikator, a

1 Lysaader too had alters raised to him by scwae Asiatic
cities.

156 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

' Thunderbolt ' or a ' God of Mana ', but mostly it is
S6tr, Euerget6s and Epiphanes, the Saviour, the
Benefactor, the God made manifest, in constant alter-
nation. In the honorific inscriptions and in the
writings of the learned, philanthropy (^iXavOpcoTtCa) is
by far the most prominent characteristic of the God
upon earth. Was it that people really felt that to
save or benefit mankind was a more godlike thing
than to blast and destroy them ? Philosophers have
generally said that, and the vulgar pretended to
believe them. It was at least politic, when minister-
ing to the half -insane pride of one of these princes, to
remind him of his mercy rather than of his wrath.

Wendland in his brilliant book, Hettenistisch-
rdmische Kultur, calls attention to an inscription of
the year 196 B. c. in honour of the young Ptolemaios
Epiphanes, who was made manifest at the age of
twelve years. 1 It is a typical document of Graeco-
Egyptian king-worship :

' In the reign of the young king by inheritance
from his Father, Lord of the Diadems, great in glory,
pacificator of Egypt and pious towards the gods,
superior over his adversaries, Restorer of the life
of man, Lord of the Periods of Thirty Years, like
Hephaistos the Great, King like the Sun, the Great
King of the Upper and Lower Lands ; offspring of the
Gods of the Love of the Father, whom Hephaistos
has approved, to whom the Sun has given victory;
living image of Zeus; Son of the Sun, Ptolemaios
the ever-living, beloved by Phtha ; in the ninth year
of A&tos son of Aetos, Priest of Alexander and the
Gods Saviours and the Gods Brethren and the Gods

1 Dittenb*rger, Inscr. Orientis tiraeci, 90; Wendland, Hel-
Unistisch-rlhnische Kultur, 1907, p. 74 f. and notes.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 157

Benefactors and the Gods of the Love of the Father
and the God Manifest for whom thanks be given : '

The Priests who came to his coronation ceremony
at Memphis proclaim :

' Seeing that King Ptolemaios ever-living, beloved
of Phtha, God Manifest for whom Thanks be given,
born of King Ptolemaios and Queen Arsinoe, the
Gods of the Love of the Father, has done many bene-
factions to the Temples and those in them and all
those beneath his rule, being from the beginning God
born of God and Goddess, like Horus son of Isis and
Osiris, who came to the help of his father Osiris
(and?) in his benevolent disposition towards the
Gods has consecrated to the temples revenues of
silver and of corn, and has undergone many expenses
in order to lead Egypt into the sunlight and give
peace to the Temples, and has with all his powers
shown love of mankind.'

When the people of Lycopolis revolted, we hear :

' in a short time he took the city by storm and slew
all the Impious- who dwelt in it, even as Hermes and
Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, conquered those who
of old revolted in the same rffl8oa&=^to return
for which the Gods have
Power and aU other
remaining to him and 1

1 Several of the phrases,
the heavenly gods to this Tt
Hesiod it was Kopro? re B
never away from the King \
and Bia who subdue Proml
Kal Kdros. In other ins

teal Kim? or Zairnola
Christian liturgies it is 'the

158 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

The conclusion which the Priests draw from these
facts is that the young king's titles and honours are
insufficient and should be increased. It is a typical
and terribly un-Hellenic document of the Hellenistic
God-man in his appearance as King.

Now the early successors of Alexander mostly pro-
fessed themselves members df the Stoic school, and
in the mouth of a Stoic this doctrine of the potential
divinity of man was an inspiring one. To them
virtue was the really divine thing in man; and the
most divine kind of virtue was that of helping
humanity. To love and help humanity is, accord-
ing to Stoic doctrine, the work and the very essence
of God. If you take away Pronoia from God, says
! Chrysippus, 1 it is like taking away light and heat
from fire. This doctrine is magnificently expressed
by Pliny in a phrase that is probably translated from
Posidonius : ' God^js jthe ( helping of man by man;
and that is the way~to eternal glory.' 2

The conception took root in the minds of many
Romans. A great Roman governor often had the
chance of thus helping humanity on a vast stale,
and liked to think that such a life opened the way to
heaven. " One should conceive ', says Cicero (Tusc. i.

Glory', R. <?. JE. 8 , p. 135, n. The new conception, as
always, is footed in the old. ' The Gods Saviours, Brethren ',
&c., are of course Ptolemy Soter, Ptolemy Philadelphia, &c,
and their Queens. The phrases CIKUV J<Saa rod Aufc, vlts rov
'RMov, i}ya*rtyLt&o? tW rod 4#, are characteristic of the xeli-
gidus language of this period* Ci also Col. i. 14,
5to0 r^tf <iop4rt>u; 2 Cor. iv. 4; Epfces. i. 5, 6.
v < * Fr. 1118, Arniia. Cf. Antipatfer, fr. 33, 34, ri
itwrt of the, definition of Deity.

* Plin-, Nat. Hist. ii. 7, 18. Deus est mortal! iuvare mor-
talem t haec ad aetemam gioriam via. Cf. also the striking
postages from Cicero and othej in "Wendland, p. 85, n. 2,

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 159

32), ' the gods as like men who feel themselves born
for the work of helping, defending, and saving
humanity. Hercules has passed into the number of
the gods. He would never have so passed if he had
not built up that road for himself while he was among
mankind/

I have been using some rather late authors, though
the ideas seem largely to come from Posidonius. 1
But before Posidonius the sort of fact on which we
have been dwelling had had its influence on religious
speculation. When Alexander made his conquering j
journey to India and afterwards was created a god, it
was impossible not to reflect that almost exactly the :
same story was related in myth about Dionysus.
Dionysus had started from India and travelled in the :
other direction : that was the only difference. A
flood of light seemed to be thrown on all the traditional
mythology, which, of course, had always been a
puzzle to thoughtful men. It was impossible to
believe it as it stood, and yet hard in an age which
had not the conception of any science of mythology
to think it was all a mass of falsehood, and the
great Homer and Hesiod no better than liars. But
the generation which witnessed the official deification
of the various Seleucidae and Ptolemies seemed
suddenly to see light. The traditional gods, from
Heracles and Dionysus up to Zeus and Cronos and
even Ouranos, were simply old-world rulers and
benefactors of mankind, who had, by their own

1 The Stoic philosopher, teaching at Rhodes, c. 100 B. c.
A man of immense knowledge and strong religious emotions,
lie moved the Stoa in the direction of Oriental mysticism.
See Schwart*'* sketch in CfonKferA $/*, pp. 89-98. Also
Norden's Commentary on Aeneid vi.

160 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

insistence or the gratitude of their subjects, been
transferred to the ranks of heaven. For that is the
exact meaning of making them divine : they are classed
among the true immortals, the Sun and Moon and
Stars and Corn and Wine, and the everlasting elements.

The philosophic romance of Euhemerus, published
early in the third century *B. c., had instantaneous
success and enormous influence. 1 It was one of the
first Greek books translated into Latin, and became
long afterwards a favourite weapon of the Chris-
tian fathers in their polemics against polytheism.
' Euhemerism ' was, on the face of it, a very brilliant
theory; and it had, as we have noticed, a special
appeal for the Romans.

Yet, if such a conception might please the leisure
of a statesman, it could hardly satisfy the serious
thought of a philosopher or a religious man. If
man's soul really holds a fragment of God and is
itself a divine being, its godhead cannot depend on
the possession of great riches and armies and organ-
ized subordinates. If ' the helping of man by man
is God ', the help in question cannot be material help.
'The religion which ends in deifying only kings and
; millionaires may be vulgarly popular but is self-
! condemned.

As a matter of fact the whole tendency of Greek
philosophy after Plato, with some illustrious excep-
tions, especially among the Romanizing Stoics, was
away from the outer world towards the world of the
soul. We find in the religious writings of this period
that the real Saviour of men is not he who protects

* Jacoby in Pauly-Wissowa's Realtncyclopddie, vi. 954. It
was called 'Ic/wi '

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 161

them against earthquake and famine, but he who in
some sense saves their souls. He reveals to them
the Gndsis Theou, the Knowledge of God. The
' knowledge ' in question is not a mere intellectual
knowledge. It is a complete union, a merging of
beings. And, as we have always to keep reminding
our cold modern intelligence, he who has ' known '
God is himself thereby deified. He is the Image of
God, the Son of God, in a sense he is God. 1 The
stratum of ideas described in the first of the studies
will explain the ease with which transition took
place. The worshipper of Bacchos became Bacchos
simply enough, because in reality the God Bacchos
was originally only the projection rf the human
Bacchoi. And in the Hellenistic age the notion of
these secondary mediating gods was made easier by
the analogy of the human interpreters. Of course,
we have abundant instances of actual preachers and
miracle-workers who on their own authority posed,
and were accepted, as gods. The adventure of Paul
and Barnabas at Lystra 2 shows how easily such
things could happen. But as a rule, I suspect, the
most zealous priest or preacher preferred to have his
God in the background. He preaches, he heals the
sick and casts out devils, not in his own name but in
the name of One who sent him. This actual present
priest who initiates you or me is himself already an
Image of God ; but above him there are greater and

1 Cf . Plotin. Enn. i. ii. 6 dttA* 1} <nrou3i) orfic #o> a/taprlar cfca*,
aAAA fa&v thai.

* Acts xiv. 12. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul
Hermes, because' he was 4 ihW/*cvos T o Arfyov. Paul also
writes to the Galatians (iv. 14) : ' Ye received me as
messenger of God, as Jesus Christ.'

i6a THE FAILURE OF NERVE

wiser* priests, above them others, and above all there
is the one eternal Divine Mediator, who being in per-
fection both man and God can alone fully reveal
God to man, and lead man's soul up the heavenly
path, beyond. Change and Fate and the Houses of the
Seven Rulers, to its ultimate peace, I have seen
somewhere a Gnostic or early Christian emblem
which indicates this doctrine. Some Shepherd or
Saviour stands, his feet on the earth, his head tower-
ing above the planets, lifting his follower in his
outstretched arms.

The Gnostics are still commonly thought of as a
body of Christian heretics. In reality there were
Gnostic sects scattered over the Hellenistic world
before Christianity as well as after. They must have
been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus
well before the days of Paul or Apollos. Then-
Saviour, like the Jewish Messiah, was established in
men's minds before the Saviour of the Christians.
' If we look close ', says Professor Bousset, ' the result
emerges with great clearness, that the figure of the
Redeemer as such did not wait for Christianity to
force its way into the religion of Gn&sis, but was
already present there under various forms/ l He
9ccurs notably in two pre-Christian documents, dis-
covered by the keen analysis and profound learning
o Dr. Reitzenstein : the Poimandres revelation
printed in the Corpus Hermeticum, and the sermon
of the Naassenes in Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium
Haeresiwm, which is combined with Attis-worship.*
The violent anti- Jewish bias of most of the sects

'. * Bousset r p. 23$.

9 Hippolytus, 134, 90 ., text in Rei&ensiein'a Poimandrcs*
pp. 83-98.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 163

they speak of ' the accursed God of the Jews ' and
identify him with Saturn and the Devil points on
the whole to pre-Christian conditions; and a com-
pletely non-Christian standpoint is still visible in the
Mandaean and Manichean systems.

Their Redeemer is descended by a fairly clear
genealogy from the ' Tritos S6tr ' of early Greece,
contaminated with similar figures, like Attis and
Adonis from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and
the special Jewish conception of the Messiah of the
Chosen people. He has various names, whkh the
name of Jesus or 'Christos', 'the Anointed', tends
gradually to supersede. Above all he is, in some
sense, Man, or ' the Second Man ' or ' the Son of
Man '. The origin of this phrase needs a word of
explanation. Since the ultimate unseen God, spirit
though He is, made Man in His image, since holy
men (and divine kings) are images of God, it follows
that He is Himself Man. He is the real, the ultimate,
the perfect and eternal Man, of whom all bodily men
are feeble copies. He is also the Father ; the Saviour
is his Son, 'the Image of the Father', 'the Second
Man ', ' the Son of Man '. The method in which he
performs his mystery of Redemption varies. It is
haunted fey the memory of the old Suffering and
Dying God, of whom we spoke in the first of thefee
studies. It is vividly affected by the ideal ' Righteous
Man ' of Plato, who ' shall be scourged, tortured,
bound, his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering
every evil, sfhaill be impaled or crucified '. * But in

1 Republic, 362 A. 'Avaaxt^-Wco is said to * d*aa:oAoir#o,
which is used both ior ' impale ' and ' crucify '. The
two were alternative form* of the most slavish and cruel
capital punishment, impalement being mainly Persian,
crucifixion Roman.

164 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

the main he descends, of his free will or by the eternal
purpose of the Father, from Heaven through the
spheres of all the Archontes or Kosmokratores, the
planets, to save mankind, or sometimes to save the
fallen Virgin, the Soul, Wisdom, or ' the Pearl '.*
The Archontes let him pass because he is disguised ;
they do not know him (cf. i Cor. ii. 7 ff.). When his
work is done he ascends to Heaven to sit by the side
of the Father in glory; he conquers the Archontes,
leads them captive in his triumph, strips them of
their armour (Col. ii. 15; cf. the previous verse),
sometimes even crucifies them for ever in their places
in the sky. 2 The epistles to the Colossians and the
Ephesians are much influenced by these doctrines.
Paul himself constantly uses the language of them,
but in the main we find him discouraging the excesses
of superstition, reforming, ignoring, rejecting. His
Jewish blood was perhaps enough to keep him to
strict monotheism. Though he admits Angels and
Archontes, Principalities and Powers, he scorns the
Elements and he seems deliberately to reverse the
doctrine of the first and second Man. 8 He says
nothing about the Trinity of Divine Beings that was
usual in Gnosticism, nothing about the Divine
Mother. His mind, for all its vehement mysticism,
has something of that dean antiseptic quality that
makes such early Christian works as the Octavius of
Minucius Felix and the Epistle to Diognetus so
infinitely refreshing. He is certainly one of the
great figures in Greek literature, but his system lies

1 See The Hymn of the Soul, attributed to the Gnostic
Bardesanes, edited by A. A. Bevan, Cambridge, 1897.

1 Bousset cites Acta Archelai 8, and Epiphanius, Haeres.
66, 32.

* n.ai_ iv. o? i Cor. xv. 21 f.. A7: Rom. v. 12-18.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 165

outside the subject of this essay. We are concerned
only with those last manifestations of Hellenistic
religion which probably formed the background of
his philosophy. It is a strange experience, and it
shows what queer stuff we humans are made of, to
study these obscure congregations, drawn from the
proletariate of the Levant, superstitious, charlatan-
ridden, and helplessly ignorant, who still believed in
Gods begetting children of mortal mothers, who took
the ' Word ' the ' Spirit ', and the ' Divine Wisdom ',
to be persons called by those names, and turned the
Immortality of the Soul into ' the standing up of
the corpses ' ; * and to -reflect that it was these who
held the main road of advance towards the greatest
religion of the western world.

I have tried to sketch in outline the main forms
of belief to which Hellenistic philosophy moved or
drifted. Let me dwell for a few pages more upon the
characteristic method by which it reached them. It
may be summed up in one word, Allegory. All
Hellenistic philosophy from the first Stoics onward
is permeated by allegory. It is applied to Homer, to
the religious traditions, to the ancient rituals, to the
whole world. To Sallustius after the end of our
period the whole material world is only a great myth,
a thing whose value lies not in itself but in the
spiritual meaning which it hides and reveals. To
Cleanthes at the beginning of it the Universe was a
mystic pageant, in which the immortal stars were
the dancers and the Sun the priestly torch-bearer. 1

1 1} amtnatns rwv vctcpaw. Cf. Acts xvii. 32.
1 Cleanthes, 538, Arnim; Diels, p. 592, 30. Cf. Philolaus,
Diels, p. 336 f.

r66 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

Ghrysippus reduced the Homeric gods to physical or
. ethical principles ; and Crates, the great critic,
applied allegory in detail to his interpretation of the
all-wise poet. 1 We possess two small but complete
treatises which ilhastrate well the results of this
tendency, Comutus rapl 6swv and the Homeric
Allegories of HeracKtus, a brilliant little work of the
first century B. c. I will not dwell upon details : they
are abundantly accessible and individually often
ridiculous. A by-product of the same activity is the
mystic treatment of language : a certain Titan in
Hesiod is named Koios, Why ? Because the Titans
are the elements and one of them is naturally the
element of Koi6TY)c, the Ionic Greek for 'Quality'.
The Egyptian Isis is derived from the root of the
Greek el8vat, Knowledge, and the Egyptian Osiris
from the Greek 6o*o<; and Jp6<; ('holy* and sacred',
or perhaps more exactly ' lawful ' and ' tabu '), Is
this iotally absurd? I think not. If all human
language is, as most of these thinkers believed, a
divine institution, a cup filled to the brim with
divine meaning, so that by reflecting deeply upon a
word a pious philosopher can reach the secret that it
holds, then there is no difficulty whatever in supposing
that the special secret held by an Egyptian word
may be found in Greek, or the secret <rf a Greek word
in Babylonian. Language is One. The Gods who
made all these languages equally could use them all,
and wind them all intricately in, and out, fear the
building up of their divine enigma.

We must make a certain effort of imagination to
understand this method of allegory. It is not the

1 ^ee especially the interpretation of Kestor's Cup, Athe-
naeus, pp. 489 c. ff.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 167

frigid thing that it seems to us. In the first place,
we should remember that, as applied to the ancient
literature and religious ritual, allegory was at least
a vera causa it was a phenomenon which actually
existed. Heraclitus of Ephesus is an obvious instance.
He deliberately expressed himself in language which
should not be understood of the vulgar, and which
bore a hidden meaning to his disciples. Pythagoras
did the same. The prophets and religious'writers must
have done so to an even greater extent. 1 And we
know enough of the history of ritual to be sure that a
great deal of it is<kfinitely allegorical. The Hellenistic
Age did not wantonly invent the theory of allegory.

And secondly, we must remember what states <srf
mind tend especially to produce this kind of belief.
They are not contemptible states of mind. It needs
only a strong idealism with Which the facts of experi-
ence clash, and allegory follows almost of necessity.
The facts cannot be accepted as they are. They mudt
needs be explained as meaning something different.

Take an earnest Stoic or Platonist, a man of fervid
mind, who is possessed by the ideals of his philosophy
and at the same time feels his heart thrilled by the
beauty of the old poetry. What is he to do? (ftn
one side he can find Zoilus, or Plato himself, j or thfe
Cynic preachers, condemning Homer and the poets
without remorse, as teachers of foolishness. H)e can
treat poetry as the English Puritans treated the
stage. But is that a satisfactory solution? 'Re-
member that these f enerations were trained habitually
to give great weight to the voice of their inner cow-

1 I may refer to the learned and interesting remarks on
the Esoteric Style in Prof. Margolionth's edition of Aristotte's
Poetics. It is ttot, of course, the same as AOlegory.

i68 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

sciousness, and the inner consciousness of a sensitive
man cries out that any such solution is false : that
Homer is not a liar, but noble and great, as our
fathers have always taught us. On the other side
comes Heraclitus the allegorist. ' If Homer used
no allegories he committed all impieties/ On this
theory the words can be allowed to possess all their
old beauty and magic, but an inner meaning is added
quite different from that which they bear on the
surface. It may, very likely, be a duller and less
poetic meaning; but I am not sure that the -verses
will not gain by the mere process of brooding study
fully as much as they lose by the ultimate badness
of the interpretation. Anyhow, that was the road
followed. The men of whom I speak were not likely
to give up any experience that seemed to make the
world more godlike or to feed their spiritual and
emotional cravings. They left that to the bare-
footed cynics. They craved poetry and they craved
I philosophy ; if the two spoke like enemies, their words
imust needs be explained away by one who loved both.
The same process was applied to the world itself.
Something like it is habitually applied by the religious
idealists of all ages. A fundamental doctrine of
Stoicism and most of the idealist creeds was the
perfection and utter blessedness of the world, and
the absolute fulfilment of the purpose of God. Now
obviously this belief was not based on experience.
The* poor world, to do it justice amid all its mis*
doings, has never lent itself to any such barefaced
deception as that. No doubt it shrieked against the
doctrine then, as loud as it* has always shrieked, so
that even a Posidonian or a Pythagorean, his ears
straining for the musk of the spheres, was some-

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 169

times forced to listen. And what was his answer?
It is repeated in all the literature of these sects.
' Our human experience is so small : the things of
the earth may be bad and more than bad, but, ah !
if you only went beyond the Moon ! That is where
the true Kosmos begins.' And, of course, if we did
ever go there, we all know they would say it began
beyond the Sun. Idealism of a certain type will
have its way; if hard life produces an ounce or a
pound or a million tons of fact in the scale against it,J
it merely dreams of infinite millions in its own scale,
and the enemy is outweighed and smothered. I do
not wish to mock at these Posidonian Stoics and
Hermetics and Gnostics and Neo-Pythagoreans. They
loved goodness, and their faith is strong and even
terrible. One feels rather inclined to bow down
before their altars and cry: Magna est Delusio et
praevalebit.

Yet on the whole one rises from these books with
the impression that all this allegory and mysticism is
bad for men. It may make the emotions sensitive,
it certainly weakens the understanding. And, of
course, in this paper I have left out of account many
of the grosser forms of superstition. In any consider-
ation of the balance, they should not be forgotten.

If a* reader of Proclus and the Corpus Hermeticum
wants relief, he will find it, perhaps, best in the
writings of a gentle old Epicurean who lived at Oeno-
anda in Cappadocia about A. D. 200. His name was
Diogenes. 1 His works are preserved, in a frag-
mentary state, not on papyrus or parchment, but on
the wall of a large portico where he engraved them
for passers-by to read. He lived in a world of super-
1 Published in the Teubner series by William, 1907.

170 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

stition and foolish terror, and he wrote up the great
doctrines of Epicurus for the saving of mankind.

' Being brought by age to the sunset of my life,
and expecting at any moment to take my depart-rare
from the world with a glad song for the fullness of
my happiness, I have resolved, lest I be taken too
soon, to give help to those of good temperament.
If one person or two or three or four, or any small
number you choose, were in distress, and I were
summoned out to help one after another, I would do
all in my power to give the best counsel to each.
But now, as I have said, the most of men lie sick, as
it were of a pestilence, in their false beliefs about the
world, and the tale of them increases ; for by imita-
tion they take the disease from one another, like
sheep. And further it is only just to bring help to
those who shall come after us for they too are ours,
though they be yet unborn ; and love for man com-
mands us also to help strangers who may pass by.
Since therefore the good message of the Book has
gone forth to many, I have resolved to make use of
this wall and to set forth in public the medicine of
the healing of mankind/

The people of his time and neighbourhood seem to
have fancied that the old man must have some bad
motive. They understood mysteries and redemp-
tions and revelations. They understood magic and
curses. But they were puzzled, apparently, by this
simple message, which only told them to use their
reason, their courage, and their sympathy, and not to
te ^afeaid of death or of angry gods. The doctrine
was condensed into four sentences of a concentrated
eloquence that make a translator despair : * ' Nothing

.

T3 ayaOov CVKT^TOV. To tei

I regret to say that I cannot track this Epicurean
* tetractys ' to its source.

THE FAILURE OF NERVE 171

to fear in God : Nothing to feel in Death : Good can
be attained : Evil can be endured. 1

Of course, the doctrines of this good old man do
not represent the whole truth. To be guided by -one's
aversions is always a sign of weakness or defeat ; and
it is as much a failure of nerve to reject blindly for
fear of being a iool, as to believe blindly for fear of
missing some emotional stimulus.

There is no royal road in these matters. I confess
it seems strange to me f as I write here, to reflect that
at this moment many of my friends and most of my
fellow creatures are, as far as one can judge, quite
confident that they possess supernatural knowledge.
As a rule, each individual belongs to some body
which has received in writing the results of a divine
revelation. I cannot share in any such feeling. The
Uncharted surrounds us on every side and we must
needs have some relation towards it, a relation which
will depend on the general discipline of a man's mind
and the bias of his whole character. As far as know-
ledge and conscious reason will go, we should follow
resolutely their austere guidance. When they cease,
as cease they must, we must use as best we can those
fainter powers of apprehension and surmise and
sensitiveness by which, after all, most high truth has
been reached as well as most high art and poetry :
careful always really to seek for truth and net for
our own emotional satisfaction, careful not to neglect
the real needs of men and women through basing our
life on dreams ; and remembering above all to walk
gently in a world where the lights are dim and the
very stars wander.

172 THE FAILURE OF NERVE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

It is not my purpose to make anything like a systematic
bibliography, but a few recommendations may be useful to
some students who approach this subject, as I have done,
from the side of classical Greek. .

For Greek Philosophy I have used besides Plato and
Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius and Philodemus, Diels, Frag-
ment* der Vorsokratiker; Diels, Doxographi Graeci; von
Amim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta; Usener, Epicurea;
also the old Fragmenta Philosophorum of Mullach.

For later Paganism and Gnosticism, Reitzenstein, Poi-
mandres; Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreli-
gionen; Dieterich, Fine Mithrasliturgie (also Abraxas, Nekyia,
Mutter erde, &c.); P. Wendland, Hellenistisch-Rdmische Kultur:
Cumont, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mysteres de Mithra
(also The Mysteries of Mithra, Chicago, 1903), and. Les
Religions Orientates dans V Empire Romain ; Seeck, Untergang
der antiken Welt, vol. iii; Philo, de Vita Contemplativa.
Conybeare ; Gruppe, Griechische Religion and Mythologie, pp.
1458-1676; Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, 1907,, with
good bibliography in the introduction ; articles by E. Bevan
in the Quarterly Review', No, 424 (June 1910), and the Hibbert
Journal, xi. i (October 1912). Dokumente der Gnosis, by
W. Schultz (Jena, 1910), gives a highly subjective translation
and reconstruction of most of the Gnostic documents : the
Corpus Hermeticum is translated into English by G. R. S.
Meade, Thrice Greatest Hermes, 1906. The first volume of
Dr. Scott's monumental edition of the Hermetica (Clarendon
Press, 1924) has appeared just too late to be used in the
present volume.

For Jewish thought before the Christian era Dr. Charles's
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs ; also the same writer's
Book of Enoch, and the Religionsgeschichtliche Erkldrung des
Neuen Testaments by Carl Clemen, Giessen, 1909.

Of Christian writers apart from the New Testament those
that come most into account are Hippolytis (t A. D. 250),
Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, Epiphanius (367-403), Pana-
rion, and Irenaeus (f A. D. 202), Contra Haereses, i, ii. For a
simple introduction to the problems presented by the New
Testament literature I would venture to recommend Prof.
Bacon's New Testament, in the Home University Library,
and Dr. Estlin Carpenter's First Three Gospels. In such a
vast literature I dare not make any further recommenda-
tions, but for a general introduction to the History of
Religions with a good and brief bibliography I would refer
the reader to Salomon Reinach's Orpheus (Paris, 1909;
English translation the same year), a book of wide learning
and vigorous thought. ~~ ^~~ f *

THE LAST PROTEST

IN the last essay we have followed Greek popular
religion to the very threshold of Christianity, till we
found not only a soil ready for the seed of Christian
metaphysic, but a large number of the plants already
in full and exuberant growth. A complete history
of Greek religion ought, without doubt, to include at
least the rise of Christianity and the growth of the
Orthodox Church, but, of course, the present series
of studies does not aim at completeness. We will
take the Christian theology for granted as we took
the classical Greek philosophy, and will finish with a
brief glance at the Pagan reaction of the fourth
century, when the old religion, already full of allegory,
mysticism, asceticism, and Oriental influences, raised
itself for a last indignant stand against the all-
prevailing deniers of the gods.

This period, however, admits a rather simpler treat-
ment than the others. It so happens that for the^
last period of paganism we actually possess an authori-
tative statement of doctrine, something between a.
creed and a catechism. It seWns to me a document
so singularly important and, as far as I can make
out, so little known, that I shall venture to print it*
entire.

A creed or catechism is, of course, not at all the
same thing as the real religion of those who subscribe -

173

174 THE LAST PROTEST

to it. The rules of metre are not the same thing as
poetry; the rules of cricket, if the analogy may be
excused, are not the same thing as good play. Nay,
more. A man states in his creed only the articles
which he thinks it right to assert positively against
those who think otherwise. His deepest and most
practical beliefs are those on which he acts without
question, which have never occurred to him as being
open to doubt. If you take on the one hand a
number of persons who have accepted the same creed
but lived in markedly different ages and societies,
with markedly different standards of thought and
conduct, and on the other an equal number who
profess different creeds but live in the same general
environment, I think there will probably be more
real identity of religion in the latter group. Take
three orthodox Christians, enlightened according to
the standards of their time, in the fourth, the six-
teenth, and the twentieth centuries respectively, I
think you will find more profound differences of re-
ligion between them than between a Methodist, a
Catholic, a Freethinker, and even perhaps a well-
educated Buddhist or Brahmin at the present day,
provided you take the most generally enlightened
representatives of each class. Still, when a student
is, trying to understand the inner religion of the:
ancients, he realizes how immensely valuable a creed
or even a regular liturgy would be.

Literature enables us sometimes to approach pretty
close, in various ways, to the minds of certain of the
great men of antiquity, and understand how they
thought and felt about a gpod many subjects. At
times one of these subjects is the accepted religion of

THE LAST PROTEST 175

their society; we can see how they criticized it or
rejected it. But it is very hard to know from their
reactions against it what that accepted religion really
was. Who, for instance, knows Herodotus's re-
ligion? He talks in his penetrating and garrulous
way, 'sometimes for children and sometimes for,
philosophers, 1 as Gibbon puts.it, about everything in,'
the world; but at the end of his book you find th&ti
he has not opened his heart on this subject. No doubt
his profession as a reciter and story-teller prevented
him. We can see that Thucydides was sceptical;
but can we fully see what his scepticism was directed
against, or where, for instance, Nikias would have
disagreed with him, and where he and Nikias both
agreed against us ?

We have, of course, the systems of the great phil-
osophers especially of Plato and Aristotle. Better
than either, perhaps, we can make out the religion of
M. Aurelius. Amid all the harshness and plainness
of his literary style, Marcus possessed a gift which has
been granted to few, the power of writing down what
was in his heart just as it was, not obscured by
any consciousness of the presence of witnesses or any
striving after effect. He does not seem to have tried
deliberately to reveal himself, yet he has revealed
himself in that short personal note-book almost as
much as the great inspired egotists, Rousseau and
St. Augustine. True, there are some passages in the
book which are unintelligible to us; that is natural
in a work which was not meant to be read by the
public; broken flames of the white passion that|
consumed him bursting through the armour of hi$|
habitual accuracy and self-restraint.

176 THE LAST PROTEST

People fail to understand Marcus, not because of
his lack of self-expression, but because it is hard for
most men to breathe at that intense height of spiritual
life, or, at least, to breathe soberly. They can do it
if they are allowed to abandon themselves to floods
of emotion, and to lose self-judgement and self-control.
I am often rather surprised at good critics speaking
of Marcus as ' cold '. There is as much intensity of
feeling in T& el? oa>r6v as in most of the nobler modern
books of religion, only there is a sterner power con-
trolling it. The feeling never amounts to complete
self-abandonment. ' The Guiding Power ' never
trembles upon its throne, and the emotion is severely
purged of earthly dross. That being so, we children
of earth respond to it less readily.

Still, whether or no we can share Marcus's religion,
we can at any rate understand most of it. But even
then we reach only the personal religion of a very
extraordinary man ; we arfe not much nearer to the
religion of the average educated person the back-
ground against which Marcus, like Plato, ought to
stand out. I believe that our conceptions of it are
really very vague and various. Our great-grand-
fathers who read ' Tully's Offices and Ends ' were
better informed than we. But there are many large
and apparently simple questions about which, even
after reading Cicero's philosophical translations,
scholars probably feel quite uncertain. Were the
morals of Epictetus or the morals of Part V of the
Anthology most near to those of real life among
respectable persons? Are there not subjects on
which Plato himself sometimes makes our flesh creep ?
What are we to feel about slavery, about the exposing

THE LAST PROTEST 177

of children? True, slavery was not peculiar to
antiquity ; it flourished in a civiMzed and peculiarly
humane people of English blood till a generation
ago. And the history of infanticide among the finest
modern nations is such as to make one reluctant to
throw stones, and even doubtful in which direction
to throw them. Still, these great facts and others
like them have to be understood, and are rather hard
to sunderstand, in their bearing on the reBgious life
of the ancients.

Points of minor morals again are apt to surprise a
reader of ancient literature. We must remember,
of course, that they always do surprise one, in every
age of history, as soon as its manners are studied
in detail. One need not go beyond Sattnifoene's
Chronicle, one meed hardly go beyond Macaulay's
History, or any of the famous French memoirs, to
realize that. Was it really an ordinary thing in the
first century, as Phik> seems to say, -for gentlemen at
dinner-parties & black one another's eyes or bite
one another's ears off? x Or were such practices
confined to some Smart Set ? Or was Philq, for Iris
own purposes, using some particular scandalous
occurrence as if it was typical?

St. Augustine mentions among the virtues of ids
mother her unusual meekness and tact. Although
her husband had a fiery temper, she never had
bruises on her face, which made her a ram avis
among the matrons of her circle. 2 Her circte, pre-
sumably, included Christians as well as Pagans and
Manicheans. And Philo's ciucle cam scarcely he
considered Pagan. Indeed, as for the difference of
1 De Vit. Contempt., p. 477 M. Con/, ix. 9.

178 THE LAST PROTEST

religion, we should bear in mind that, just at the
time we are about to consider, the middle of the
fourth century, the conduct of the Christians, either
to the rest of the world or to one another, was very
far from evangelical. Ammianus says that no savage
beasts could equal its cruelty; Ammianus was a
pagan ; but St. Gregory himself says it was like Hell. 1
I have expressed elsewhere my own general answer
to this puzzle. 2 Not only in early Greek times, but
! throughout the whole of antiquity the possibility of
'all sorts of absurd and atrocious things lay much
nearer, the protective forces of society were much
weaker, the strain on personal character, the need
{ for real ' wisdom and virtue ', was much greater than
; it is at the present day. That is one of the causes
that make antiquity so interesting. Of course,
different periods of antiquity varied greatly, both in
the conventional standard demanded and in the
spiritual force which answered or surpassed the de-
mand. But, in general, the strong governments and
orderly societies of modern Europe have made it
infinitely easier for men of no particular virtue to
live a decent life, infinitely easier also for men of no
particular reasoning power or scientific knowledge to
have a more or less scientific or sane view of the
world.

That, however, does not carry us far toward^
solving the main problem : it brings us no nearer to
knowledge of anything that we may call typically a
religious creed or an authorized code of morals, in
any age from Hesiod to M. Aurelius.

1 Gibbon, chap, xxi, notes i6z, 162.
1 Rise of the Greek Epic, chap. i.

THE LAST PROTEST 179

The book which I have ventured to cpll a Creed or
Catechism is the work of Sallustius About the Gods
and the World,*, book, I should say, about the length
of the Scottish Shorter Catechism. It is printed in
the third volume of Mullach's Fragmentq Philo-
sophorum ; apart from that, the only edition generally
accessible and that is rare is a duodecimo pub-
lished by AUatius in 1539. Orelli's brochure of 1821
seems to be unprocurable.

The author was in all probability that Sallustius
who is known to us as a close friend of Julian before
his accession, and a backer or inspirer of the emperor's
efforts to restore the old religion. He was concerned
in an educational edition of Sophocles the seven
selected plays now extant with a commentary. He
was given the rank of prefect in 362, that of consul
in 363. One must remember, of course, that in that
rigorous and ascetic court high rank connoted no
pomp or luxury. Julian had dismissed the thousand
hairdressers, the innumerable cooks and eunuchs of
his Christian predecessor. It probably brought with
it only an increased obligation to live on pulse and to
do without such pamperings of the body as fine
clothes or warmth or washing.

Julian's fourth oration, a prose hymn To King
Sun, np&c "HXiov pooiXta, is dedicated to Sallustius;
his eighth is a ' Consolation to Himself upon the
Departure of Sallustius '. (He had been with Julian
in the wars in Gaul, and was recalled by the jealousy
of the emperor Constantius.) It is a touching and
even a noble treatise. The nervous self-distrust
which was habitual in Julian makes him write always
with a certain affectation, but no one could mistake

i8o THE LAST PROTEST

the realfeelii^g of loss and loneliness that runs through
the consolation. He has lost his 'comrade in the
ranks ', and now is * Odysseus left alone*. So he
writes, quoting the Iliad; Sallustius has been carried
by God outside the spears and arrows : ' which
malignant men were always aiming at you, or rather
at ine, trying to wound me through you, and believing
that the ofcly way to beat me down was by depriving
me of the fellowship of my true 'friend and fellow-
soldier, the comrade who never flinched from sharing
my dangers.'

One note recurs four times; he has lost the one
man to whom he could talk as a brother ; the man of
' guileless and clean free-speech ', x who was honest
and unafraid and able to contradict the emperor
freely because of their mutual trust. If one thinks
of it, Julian, for all his gentleness, must have been an
alarming emperor to converse with. His standard
of conduct was not only uncomfortably high, it was
also a little unaccountable. The most correct and
blameless court officials must often have suspected
that their master looked upon them as simply wallow-
ing in sin. And that feeling does not promote ease
or truthfulness. Julian compares his friendship with
Sallustius to that of Scipdo and Laelius. People said
of Scipdo that he only carried out what Laelius told
him. ' Is that true of me? ' Julian asks himself.
' Have I only done what Sallustius told me? ' His
answer is sincere and beautiful: jtotvat & <(Xwv. It
little matters who suggested, and Who agreed to the
suggestion ; his thoughts, and any credit that came
from the thoughts, are his friend's as much as his

THE LAST PROTEST 181

own. We happen to hear from the Christian Theo-
doret (Hist. iii. u) that on one occasion when Julian
was nearly goaded into persecution of the Christians*
it was Saliastius who recalled him to their fixed
policy of toleration.

Sallustius then may be taken to represent in the
most authoritative way the Pagan reaction of Julian's
time, in its final struggle against Christianity.

He was, roughly speaking, a Neo-Platonist. But it
is not as a professed philosopher that he writes. It
is only that Neo-Platonism had permeated the whole
atmosphere of the age. 1 The strife of the philo-
sophical sects had almost ceased. Just as Julian's
mysticism made all gods and almost all forms of
worship into one, so his enthusiasm for Hellenism
revered, nay, idolized, almost all the great philos-
ophers of the past. They were all trying to say the
same ineffable thing; all lifting mankind towards the
knowledge of God. I say ' almost ' in both cases;
for the Christians are outside the pale in one domain
and the Epicureans and a few Cynics in the other.
Both had committed the cardinal sin; they had
denied the gods. They are sometimes lumped together
as Atheoi. L'athtisme, voilfi Fennemi.

This may surprise us stt first sight, but the explana-*
tion is easy. To Julian the one great truth that
matters is the presence and glory of the gods. No

1 ' Many of his sections come straight from Plotinus : xiv
and xv perhaps from Porphyry's Letter to Marcella t an
invaluable document for 'the religious side of Neo-Platonism.
A few things {prayer to the souls of the dead in iv, to the
Cosmos in xvii, the doctrine of rv^rj in ix) are definitely
ttn-Flotxaian : probably concessions to popular religion/

182 THE LAST PROTEST

doubt, they are all ultimately one ; they are
* forces/ not persons, but for reasons above our com-
prehension they are manifest only under conditions
of form, time, and personality, and have so been
revealed and worshipped and partly Joiown by the
great minds of the past. In Julian's mind the re-
ligious emotion itself becomes the thing to live for.
Every object that has been touched by that emotion
is thereby glorified and made sacred. Every shrine
where men have worshipped in truth of heart is
thereby a house of God. The worship may be mixed
up with all sorts of folly, all sorts of unedifying
practice. Such things must be purged away, or,
still better, must be properly understood. For to
the pure all things are pure; and the myths that
shock the vulgar are noble allegories to the wise and
reverent. Purge religion from dross, if you like;
but remember that you do so at your peril. One
false step, one self-confident rejection of a thing
which is merely too high for you to grasp, and you
are darkening the Sun, casting God out of the world.
And that, was just what the Christians deliberately
did. In many of the early Christian writings denial
is a much greater element than assertion. The
'beautiful Octavius of Minucius Felix (about A. D. 130-
60) is an example. Such denial was, of course, to
our judgement, eminently needed, and rendered a
great service to the world. But to Julian it seemed
impiety. In other Christian writings the misrepre-
sentation of pagan rites and beliefs is decidedly foul-
mouthed, and malicious. Quite apart from his
personal wrongs and his contempt for the character
of Constantius, Julian could have no sympathy for

THE LAST PROTEST 183

men who overturned altars and heaped blasphemy
on old deserted shrines, defilers of every sacred
object that was not protected by popularity. The
most that such people could expect from him was.
that they should not be proscribed by law.

But meantime what were the multitudes of the
god-fearing to believe? The arm of the state was
not very strong or effective. Labour as he might ta
supply good teaching to all provincial towns, Julian
could not hope to educate the poor and ignorant ta
understand Plato and M. Aurelius. For them, he
seems to say, all that is necessary is that they should
be pious and god-fearing in their own way. But for
more or less educated people, not blankly ignorant,
and yet not professed students of philosophy, there
might be some simple and authoritative treatise
issued a sort of reasoned creed, to lay down in a
convincing manner the outlines of the old Hellenic
religion, before the Christians and Atheists should
have swept all fear of the gods from off the earth.

The treatise is this work of Sallustius.

The Christian fathers from Minucius Felix onward
have shown us what was the most vulnerable point of
Paganism : the traditional mythology. * Sallustius
deals with it at once. The Akrodtis, or pupil, he says
in Section I, needs some preliminary training. He
should have been well brought up, should not be
incurably stupid, and should not have been familiar*
ized with foolish fables. Evidently the mythology
was not to be taught to children. He enunciates
certain postulates of religious thought, viz. that God
is always good and not subject to passion or to

i4 THE LAST PROTEST

change, and then proceeds straight to the traditional
myths. In the first place, he insists that they are
what be calls f divine '. That is, they are inspired
or have some touch of divine truth in them. This is
proved by the fact that they have been uttered, and
sometimes invented, by the most inspired poets and
philosophers and by the gods themselves in oracles
a very characteristic argument.

The myths are all expressions of God and of the
goodness of God ; but they follow the usual method
of divine revelation, to wit, mystery and allegory.
The myths state clearly the one tremendous fact
that the Gods are; that is what Julian cared about
and the Christians denied : what they are the myths
reveal only to those who have understanding. ' The
world itself is a great myth, in which bodies and
inanimate things are visible, souls and minds in-
visible.'

' But, admitting all this, how conies it that the
myths are so often absurd and even immoral ? '
For the usual purpose of mystery and allegory; in
order to make people think. The soul that wishes
to know God must make its own effort; it cannot
expect simply to lie still and be told. The myths
by their obvious falsity and absurdity on the sur-
face stimulate the mind capable of religion to probe
deeper.

He proceeds to give instances, and chooses at once
myths that had been for generations the mock oi
the sceptic, and m his own day famished abundant
ammunition for ike artillery of Christian polemic.
He takes' first Hesiod's story of Kronos swallowing
his children ; then the Judgement of Paris ; then comes

THE LAST PROTEST 185

a long and earnest explanation of the myth of Attis
and the Mother of the Gods. It is on the face of it a
story highly discreditable both to the heart and the
head of those august beings, and though the rites
themselves do not seem to have been in any way
improper, the Christians naturally attacked the
Pagans and Julian personally for countenancing the
worship. Sallustius's explanation is taken directly
from Julian's fifth oration in praise of the Great
Mother, and reduces the myth and the ritual to an
expression of the adventures of the Soul seeking God.

So much for the whole traditional mythology. It
has been explained completely away and made sub-
servient to philosophy and edification, while it can
still be used as a great well-spring of religious emotion.
For the explanations given by Sallustius and Julian
are never rationalistic. They never stimulate a spirit
of scepticism, always a spirit of mysticism and rever-
ence. And, lest by chance even this reverent theor-
izing should have been somehow lacking in insight or
true piety, Sallustius ends with the prayer : ' When
I say these things concerning the myths, may the
gods themselves and the spirits of those who wrote
the myths be gracious to me.'

He now leaves mythology and turns to the First
Cause. It must be one, and it must be present in all
things. Thus, it cannot be Life, for, if it were, all
things would be alive. By a Platonic argument in
which he will still find some philosophers to follow
him, be proves that everything which exists, exists
because of some goodness in it ; and thms arrives at
the conclusion that the First Cause is T& &ya$6v, the
Good,

186 THE LAST PROTEST

The gods are emanations or forces issuing from the
Good ; the makers of this world are secondary gods ;
above them are the makers of the makers, above all
the One.

Next comes a proof that the world is eternal a
very important point of doctrine; next that the
soul is immortal; next a definition of the wordings
of Divine Providence, Fate, and Fortune a fairly
skilful piece of dialectic dealing with a hopeless
difficulty. Next come Virtue and Vice, and, in a
dead and perfunctory echo of Plato's Republic, an
enumeration of the good and bad forms of human
society. The questions which vibrated with life in
free Athens had become meaningless to a despot-
governed world. Then follows more adventurous
matter.

First a chapter headed: 'Whence Evil things
come, and that there is no Phusis Kakou Evil is
not a real thing/ ' It is perhaps best ', he says, ' to
observe at once that, since the gods are good and
make everything, there is no positive evil; there is
only absence of good; just as there is no positive
darkness, only absence of light/

What we call ' evils ' arise only in the activities of
men, and even here no one ever does evil for the sake
of evil. ' One who indulges in some pleasant vice
thinks the vice bad but his pleasure good ; a murderer
thinks the murder bad, but the money he will get
by it, good; one who injures an enemy thinks the
injury bad, but the being quits with his enemy,
good '; and so on. The evil acts are all done for
the sake of some good, but human souls, being very
far removed from the original flawless divine nature,

THE LAST PROTEST 187

make mistakes or sins. One of the great objects of
the world, he goes on to explain, of gods, men, and
spirits, of religious institutions and human laws alike,
is to keep the souls from these errors and to purge
them again when they have fallen.

Next comes a speculative difficulty. Sallustius
has called the world 'eternal in the fullest sense '
that is, it always has been and always will be. And
yet it is ' made ' by the gods. How are these state-
ments compatible ? If it was made, there must have
been a time before it was made. The answer is
ingenious. It is not made by handicraft as a table
is ; it is not begotten as a son by a father. It is the
result of a quality of God just as" light is the result
of a quality of the sun. The sun causes light, but
the light is there as soon as the sun is there. The
world is simply the other side, as it were, of the good-
ness of God, and has existed as long as that goodness
has existed.

Next come some simpler questions about man's
relation to the gods. In what sense can we say that
the gods are angry with the wicked or are appeased
by repentance? Sallustius is quite firm. The gods
cannot ever be glad for that which is glad is also
sorry ; cannot be angry for anger is a passion ; and
obviously they cannot be appeased by gifts or prayers.
Even men, if they are honest, require higher motives
than that. God is unchangeable, always good,
always doing good. If we are good, t we are nearer
to the gods, and we feel it; if we are evil, we are
separated further from them. It is not they that
are angry, it is our sins that hide them from us and
prevent the goodness of God from shining into us.

288 THE LAST PROTEST

If we repent, again, we do not make any change in
God ; we only, by the conversion of our soul towards
the divine, heal our own badness and enjoy again
the goodness of the gods. To say that the gods turn
away from the wicked, would be like saying that the
sun turns away from a blind man.

Why then do we make offerings and sacrifices to
the gods, when the gods need nothing and can have
nothing added to them ? We do so in order to have
more communion with the gods. The whole temple
service, in fact, is an elaborate allegory, a represen-
tation of the divine government of the world.

The custom of sacrificing animals had died out
some time before this. The Jews of the Dispersion
had given it up long since because the Law forbade
any such sacrifice outside the Temple. 1 When Jeru-
salem was destroyed Jewish sacrifice ceased altogether.
The Christians seem from the beginning to have
generally followed the Jewish practice. But sacrifice
was in itseU not likely to continue in a society of
large towns. It meant turning your temples into
very ill-conducted slaughter-houses, and was also
associated with a great deal of muddled and indis-
criminate charity.* One might have hoped that
men so high-minded and spiritual as Julian and
Sallustius would have considered this practice un-
necessary or even have reformed it away. But no.
It was pact of the genuine Hellenic tradition ; and

1 S. Reinach, Ofpheits, p. 273 (Engl. trans,, p. 185).

* Sa* Arnmianus, xxii. 12, on the bad effect of Julian's
sacrifices.. Sacrifice was finally forbidden by the j emperor
Theodoeras in 391. It was condemned by Theophrastus,
and i said by Porphyry (> Abstintntia, if. ir) simply

THE LAST PROTEST 189

no jot or tittle of that tradition should, if they could
help it, be allowed to die. Sacrifice is desirable,
argues Sallustius, because it is a gift of life. God
has given us life, as He has given us all else. We
must therefore pay to Him some emblematic tithe of
life. Again, prayers in themselves are merely words ;
but with sacrifice they are words plus life, Living
Words. Lastly, we are Life of a sort, and God is
life of an infinitely higher sort. To approach Him
we need always a medium or a mediator ; the medium
between life and life must needs be life. We find
that life in the sacrificed animal. 1

The argument shows what ingenuity these religious
men had at their command, and what trouble they
wduld take to avoid having to face a fact and reform
a bad system.

There follows a long and rather difficult argument
to show that the world is, in itself, eternal. The
former discussion on this point had only shown that
the gods would not destroy it. This shows 1ihat its
own nature is indestructible. The arguments are
very i&ccxBclusive* though clever, and one wonders
why the author is at so much pains, Indeed,, he is
so earnest that at the end of the chapter he finds it
necessary to apologize to the Kosmos in case his
language should have been indiscreet. The reason,
I think, is that the Christians were still, as in apostotk
times, pinning their faith to the approaching -end of

1 Sallastius'sviewoi sacrifice is curiously like tbe illuminat-
ing theory of MM, Hubert and Mauss, in which, they define
primitive sacrifice as a medium, a bridge or lightning-
conductor, between the profane and the aacxad. ' Easai *ur
la Nature et la Fonction du Sacrifice ' (Atmi*

U. 1807-8), .since repubMahed in the Mtt**&* J&iatotn d*s
1 1009*

igo THE LAST PROTEST

the world by fire. 1 They announced the end of the
world as near, and they rejoiced in the prospect of its
destruction. History has shown more than once what
terrible results can be produced by such beliefs as
these in the minds of excitable and suffering popula-
tions, especially those of eastern blood. It was
widely believed that Christian fanatics had from time
to time actually tried to light fires which should
consume the accursed world and thus hasten the
coming of the kingdom which should bring such
incalculable rewards to their own organization and
plunge the rest of mankind in everlasting torment.
To any respectable Pagan such action was an insane
crime made worse by a diabolical motive. The
destruction of the world, therefore, seems to have
become a subject of profound irritation, if not actually
of terror. At any rate the doctrine lay at the very
heart of the permctosa superstitio, and Sallustius uses
his best dialectic against it.

The title of Chapter XVIII has a somewhat pathetic
ring : ' Why are Athelai 'Atheisms or rejections
of God 'permitted, and that God is not injured
thereby ? ' 0e&c oti pxdwrrrrai. ' If over certain parts
of the world there have occurred (and will occur more
hereafter) rejections of the gods, a wise man need not
be disturbed at that/ We have always known that
the human soul was prone to error. God's providence
is there ; but we cannot expect all men at all times

1 Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius, p. 96, Ouzel (chap, xi,
Boenig). ' Quid quod toti orbi et ipsi mundo cum sioeribus
suis minantur incendiuxn, ruinam xnoliuntur? ' The doc*
trine in their mouths became a very different thing from the
Stoic theory of the periodic re-absorption of the universe in
the Divine Element. Ibid., pp. 322 n. (34 Boenig}.

THE LAST PROTEST 191

and places to eiijoy it equally. In the human body
it is only the eye that sees the light, the rest of the
body is ignorant of the light. So are many parts of
the earth ignorant of God.

Very likely, also, this rejection of God is a punish-
ment. Persons who in a previous life have known
the gods but disregarded them, are perhaps now
born, as it were, blind, unable to see God; persons
who have committed the blasphemy of worshipping
their own kings as gods may perhaps now be cast out
from the knowledge of God.

Philosophy had always rejected the Man-God, |
especially in the form of King-worship ; but opposition f
to Christianity no doubt intensifies the protest.

The last chapter is very short. ' Souls that have
lived in virtue, being otherwise blessed and especially
separated from their irrational part and purged of all
body, are joined with the gods and sway the whole
world together with them.' So far triumphant faith :
then the after-thought of the brave man who means
to live his best life even if faith fail him. * But even
if none of these rewards came to them, still Virtue
itself and the Joy and Glory of Virtue, and the Life
that is subject to no grief and no master, would be
enough to make blessed those who have set them-
selves to live in Virtue and have succeeded.'

There the book ends. It ends upon that well-worn
paradox which, from the second book of the Republic
onwards, seems to have brought so much comfort to
the nobler spirits of the ancient world. Strange how
we moderns cannot rise to it I We seem simply ta
lack the intensity of moral enthusiasm. When we

192 THE LAST PROTEST

speak of martyrs being happy on the rack; in the
first place we rarely believe it, and in the second we
are usually supposing that the rack will soon be over
and that harps and golden crowns will presently
follow. The ancient moralist believed that the good
man was happy then and there, because the joy,
being in his soul, was not affected by the torture of
his body. 1

Not being able .fully to feel this conviction, we
naturally incline to think it affected or unreal. But,
taking the conditions of the ancient world into
account, we must admit that the men who uttered
this belief at least understood better than most of us
what suffering was. Many of them were slaves,
many had been captives of war. They knew what
they were talking about. I think, on a careful study
of M. Aurelius, Epictetus, and some of these Neo-
Platonic philosophers, that we shall be forced to realize
that these men could rise to much the Same heights
of religious heroism as the Catholic saints of the
' Middle Age, and (that they often did so if I may
use such a phrase on a purer and thinner diet of
sensuous emotion, with less wallowing in the dust and
less delirium.

Be that as it may, we have now seen in outline the
kind of religion which ancient Paganism had become
at the time of its final reaction against Christianity.
It is a more or less intelligible whole, and succeeds
better than most religions in combining two great
appeals. It appeals to the philosopher and the
thoughtful man as a fairly complete and rational

1 Even Epicurus Mmself hdd *3v <rr/x0A<600 4 atxfa, tfvtu
*Mv cttalftova. Diog. La. x. 1 18. See above, end of chap. UL

THE LAST PROTEST 193

system of thought, which speculative and enlightened
minds in any age might believe without disgrace.
I do not mean that it is probably true ; to me all
these overpowering optimisms which, by means of JSL
fewjmtesfrgdji Ljfejort postulates, affect triumphantly
to disprove the most obvious facts of life, seem very
soon to become meaningless. I conceive it to be no
comfort at all, to a man suffering agonies of frost-
bite, to be told by science that cold is merely negative
and does not exist. So far as the statement is true
it is irrelevant ; so far as it pretends to be relevant
it is false. I only mean that a system like that of
Sallustius is, judged by any standard, high, civilized,
and enlightened.

At the same time this religion appeals to the
ignorant and the humble-minded. It tabes from the
pious villager no single object of worship that has
turned his thoughts heavenwards. It may explain
and purge; it never condemns or ridicules. In its
own eyes that, was its great glory, in the -eyes of
history perhaps its most fatal weakness. Christi-
anity, apart from its positive doctrines, had inherited
from Judaism the noble courage <rf its disbeliefs.

To compare this Paganism in detail with its great
rival would be, even if I possessed the necessary
learning, a laborious and unsatisfactory task. But if
a student with very imperfect knowledge may venture
a personal opinion oil this obscure subject, it seems
to me that we often look at such problems from &
wrong angk. Harnadk somewhere, in discussing the
comparative success or failure of various early Chris-
tian sects, makes the illuminating remark that the
main determining cause in each case was not

194 THE LAST PROTEST

comparative reasonableness of doctrine or skill in
controversy for they ifractically never converted
one another but simply the comparative increase
or decrease of the birth-rate in the respective popula-
tions. On somewhat similar lines it always appears
to me that, historically speaking, the character of
Christianity in these early centuries is to be sought
not so much in the doctrines which it professed,
nearly all of which had their roots and their close
parallels in older Hellenistic or Hebrew thought, but
in the organization on which it rested. For my own
part, when I try to understand Christianity as a
mass of doctrines, Gnostic, Trinitarian, Monophysite,
Arian and the rest, I get no further. When I try to
realize it as a sort of semi-secret society for mutual
help with a mystical religious basis, resting first on
the proletariate^ of Antioch and the great com-
mercial and manufacturing towns of the Levant,
then spreading by instinctive sympathy to similar
classes in Rome and the West, and rising in influence,
like certain other mystical cults, by the special
appeal it made to women, the various historical
puzzles begin to fall into place. Among other things
this explains the strange subterranean power by
which the emperor Diocletian was baffled, and to
which the pretender Constantine had to capitulate;
it explains its humanity, its intense feeling of brother-
hood within its own bounds, its incessant care for
the poor, and also its comparative indifference to the
virtues which are specially incumbent on a governing
class, such as statesmanship, moderation, truthful-
ness, active courage, learning, culture, and public
spirit. Of course, such indifference was only com-

THE LAST PROTEST 195

parative. After the time of Constantino the govern-
ing classes come into the fold, bringing with them
their normal qualities, and thereafter it is Paganism,
not Christianity, that must uphold the flag of a desper-
ate fidelity in the face of a hostile world a task to
which, naturally enough, Paganism was not equal.
But I never wished to pit the two systems against
one another. The battle is over, and it is poor work
to jeer at the wounded and the dead. If we read the
literature of the time, especially some records of the
martyrs under Diocletian, we shall at first perhaps
imagine that, apart from some startling exceptions,
the conquered party were all vicious and hateful,
the conquerors, all wise and saintly. Then, looking
a little deeper, we shall see that this great controversy
does not stand altogether by itself. As in other
wars, each side had its wise men and its foolish, its
good men and its evil. Like other conquerors these
conquerors were often treacherous and brutal; like
other vanquished these vanquished have been tried
at the bar of history without benefit of counsel, have
been condemned in their absence and died with their
lips sealed. The polemic literature of Christianity
is loud and triumphant, the books of the Pagans
have been destroyed.

Only an ignorant man will pronounce a violent
or bitter judgement here. The minds that are now
tender, timid, and reverent in their orthodoxy would
probably in the third or fourth century have sided
with the old gbds,; those of more daring and puritan
temper with the Christians. The historian will only
try to have sympathy and understanding for both.
'They are all dead now, Diocletian and Ignatius,

196 THE LAST PROTEST

Cyril and Hypatia, Julian and Basil, Athanasras and
Arias : every party has yielded up its persecutors
and its martyrs, its hates and slanders and aspira-
tions and heroisms, to the arms of that great Silence
whose secrets they all claimed so loudly to have
read. Even the dogmas for which they f ought might
seem to be dead too. For if Julian and Sallustius,
Gregory and John Chrysostom, were to rise again
and see the world as it now is, they woudd probably
fed their personal differences melt away in com*
parison with the vast difference between their world
and this. They fought to the death about this credo
and that, but the same spirit was in all of them. In
the words of one who speaks with greater knowledge
than mine, 'the most inward man in these four
contemporaries is the same. It is the Spirit of the
Fourth Century.' l >

'Dieselbe Seelenstimmung, dersdbe Spiritual-
ismus'; also the same passionate asceticism. All
through antiquity the fight against luxury was a
fiercer and stronger fight than comes into our modem
experience. There was not more objective luxury in
any period of ancient history than there is now;
there was never anything like so much. But there
does seem to have been mere subjective abandon-
ment to physical pleasure and concomdtantly a
stronger protest against it. From some lame before
the Christian^ era it seems as if -the subconscious
instinct of humanky was slowly rousing itself for *
gtfeat revolt ag&an&t ike long intolerable tyranny of
the senses over the soul, land -by the fourth century
* Gdffckenla the Afo* JwMOdh^, *xi. 162 i.

THE LAST PROTEST 197

the revolt threatened to become all-absorbing. The
Emperor Julian was probably as proud of his fireless
cell and the crowding lice in his beard and cassock
as an average Egyptian monk. The ascetic move-
ment grew, as we all know, to be measureless and
insane. It seemed to be almost another form of lust,
and to have the same affinities with cruelty. But it
has probably rendered priceless help to us who come
afterwards. The insane ages have often done service
for the sane, the harsh and suffering ages for the
gentle and well-to-do.

Sophrosyn&t however we try to translate it, temper-
ance, gentleness, the spirit that in any trouble thinks
and is patient, that saves and not destroys, is the
right spirit. And it is to be feared that none of these
fourth-century leaders, neither the fierce bishops with
their homilies on Charity, nor Julian and Sallustius
with their worship of Hellenism, came very near to
that classic ideal. To bring back that note of
SophrosynS I will venture, before proceeding to the
fourth-century Pagan creed, to give some sentences
from an earlier Pagan prayer. It is cited by Stobaeus
from a certain Eusebius, a late Ionic Platonist of
whom almost nothing is known, not even the date
at which he lived. 1 But the voice sounds like that
of a stronger and more sober age.

' May I be BO man's enemy/ it begins, ' and may
I be the friend of that whkh is eternal and abides.
May I never quarrel with those nearest to me ; ancj
if I do, may 1 be reconciled quickly* May I never
devise evil against any man; if any devise evil

1 Mullach, Fra$menia Philosophorum, iii 7, from Stob.
ftor. i. 85.

198 THE LAST PROTEST

against me, may I escape uninjured and without the
need of hurting him. May I love, seek, and attain
only that which is good. May I wish for all meji's
happiness and envy none. May I never rejoice in
the ill-fortune of one who has wronged me. . . .
When I have done or said what is wrong, may I
never wait for the rebuke of others, but always
rebuke myself until I make amends. . . . May I win
no victory that harms either me or my opponent.
. . . May I reconcile friends who are wroth with one
another. May I, to the extent of my power, give all
needful help* to my friends and to all who are in
want. May I never fail a friend in danger. When
visiting those in grief may I be able by gentle and
healing words to soften their pain. . . . May I re-
spect myself. . . . May I always keep. tame that
which rages within me. . . . May I accustom myself
to be gentle, and never be angry with people because
of circumstances. May I never discuss who is wicked
and what wicked things he has done, but know good
men and follow in their footsteps.'

There is more of it. How unpretending it is and
yet how searching 1 And in the whole there is no
petition for any material blessing, and most striking
of all it is addressed to no personal god. It is pure
prayer. Of course, to some it will feel thin and cold.
Most men demand of their religion more outward and
personal help, more physical ecstasy, a more heady
atmosphere of illusion. No one man's attitude
towards the Uncharted can be quite the same as his
neighbour's. In part instinctively, in part super-
ficially arid self-consciously, each generation of man-
kind reacts against the last. The grown man turns
from the lights that were thrust upon his eyes in

THE LAST PROTEST 199

childhood. The son shrugs his shoulders at the
watchwords that thrilled his father, and with varying
degrees of sensitiveness or dullness, of fuller or more
fragmentary experience, writes out for himself the
manuscript of his creed. Yet, even for the wildest or
bravest rebel, that manuscript is only a palimpsest.
On the surface all is new writing, clean and self-
assertive. Underneath, dim but indelible in the very
fibres of the parchment, lie the characters of many
ancient aspirations and raptures and battles which
his conscious mind has rejected or utteHy forgotten.
And forgotten things, if there be real life in them,
will sometimes return out of the dust, vivid to help
still in the forward groping of humanity. A religious
system like that of Eusebius or Marcus, or even Sal-
lustius, was not built up without much noble life
and strenuous thought and a steady passion for the
knowledge of God. Things of that make do not, as
a rule, die for ever.

SALLUSTIUS
' ON THE GODS AND THE WORLD ' *

I. What the Disciple should be ; and concerning

Common Conceptions.

THOSE who wish to hear about the Gods should have
been weE guided from childhood, and not habituated
to foolish beliefs. They should also be in disposition
good and sensible, that they may properly attend to
the teaching.

They otght also to know the Common Conceptions.
Common Conceptions are those to which all men agree
as soon as they are asked ; for instance, that all God
is good, free from passion* free from change. For
whatever suffers change does so for the worse or the
better : if for the worse, it is made bad; if for the
better, it must, have been bad at first.

II. That God is unchanging, unbegotten, eternal,

incorporeal, and not in space.

Let the disciple be thus. Let the teachings be of
the following sort. The essences of the Gpds never
came into existence (for that which always is never
comes into existence ; and that exists for ever which
possesses primary force and by nature suffers nothing):

1 I translate tc6a^os generally as ' World ', sometimes as
' Cosmos '. It* always has the connotation of ' divine order ' ;
ibvyti always ' Soul ', to keep it distinct from {coif, ' physical
life , though often ' Life ' would be a more natural English
equivalent ; ^i^oifr ' to animate ' ; oMa sometimes 'essence ',
sometimes ' being ' (never ' substance ' or ' nature *) ; <f>vois
' nature ' ; awfia sometimes ' body ', sometimes ' matter '.

APPENDIX 201

neither do they consist of bodies ; for even in bodies
the powers are incorporeal. Neither are they con-
tained by space; for that is a property of bodies.
Neither are they separate from the First Cause nor
from one another, just as thoughts are not separate
from mind nor acts of knowledge from the soul.

III. Concerning myths ; that they are divine, and why.,

We may well inquire, then, why the ancients forsook
these doctrines and made use of myths. There is this
first benefit from myths, that we have to search and
do not have our minds idle.

That the myths are divine can be seen from those
who have used them. Myths have been used by
inspired poets, by the best of philosophers, by those
who established the mysteries, an*d by the Gods
themselves in oracles. But why the myths are divine
it is the duty of Philosophy to inquire. Since all
existing things rejoice in that which is like them and
reject that which is unlike, the stories about the Gods
ought to be like the Gods, so that they may both be
worthy of the divine essence and make the Gods well
disposed to those who speak of them : which could
only be done by means of myths.

Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and
the goodness of the Gods subject always to the
distinction of the speakable and the unspeakable, the
revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear and
that which is hidden : since, just as the God& have
made the goods of sense common to all, but those of
intellect only to the xwse, so the myths state the exist-
ence of Gods to all, bat who and what they are only
to those who can understand.

202 APPENDIX

They also represent the activities of the Gods. For
one may call the World a Myth, in which bodies
and things are visible, but souls and minds hidden.
Besides, to wish to teach the whole truth about the
Gods to all produces contempt in the foolish, because
they cannot understand, and lack of zeal in the good ;
whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the
contempt of the foolish, and compels the good to
practise philosophy. -

But why have they put in the myths stories of
adultery, robbery, father-binding, and all the other
absurdity? Is not that perhaps a thing worthy of
admiration, done so that by means of the visible
absurdity the Soul may immediately feel that the
words are veils and believe the truth to be a mystery ?

IV. That the species of Myth are five, with
examples of each.

Of myths some are theological, some physical, some
psychic, and again some material, and some mixed from
these last two. The theological are those myths which
use no bodily form but contemplate the very essences
of the Gods : e. g. Kronos swallowing his children.
Since God is intellectual, and all intellect returns
into itself, this myth expresses in allegory the essence
of God.

Myths may be regarded physically when they
express the activities of the Gods in the world : e. g.
people before now have regarded Kronos as Time,
and calling the divisions of Time his sons say that the
sons are, swallowed by the father.

The psychic way is to regard the activities of the
Soul itself : the Soul's acts of thought, though they

APPENDIX 203

pass on to other objects, nevertheless remain inside
their begetters.

The material and last is that which the Egyptians
have mostly used, owing to their ignorance, believing
material objects actually to be Gods, and so calling
them : e. g. they call the Earth Isis, moisture Osiris,
heat Typhon, or again, water Kronos, the fruits of the
earth Adonis, and wine Dionysus.

To say that these objects are sacred to the Gods,
like various herbs and stones and animals, is possible to
sensible men, but to say that they are gods is the
notion of madmen except, perhaps, in the sense in
which both the orb of the sun and the ray which comes
from the orb are colloquially called ' the Son *. 1

The mixed kind of myth may be seen in many
instances : for example they say that in a banquet of
the Gods Discord threw down a golden apple; the
goddesses contended for it, and were sent by Zeus to
Paris to be judged ; Paris saw Aphrodite to be beautiful
and gave her the apple. Here the banquet signifies the
hyper-cosmic powers of the Gods ; that is why they
are all together. The golden apple is the world, which,
being formed out of opposites, is naturally said to
be ' thrown by Discord '. The different Gods bestow
different gifts upon the world and are thus said to
' contend for the apple '. And the soul which lives

1 e. g. when we say ' The sun is coming in through the
window ', or in Greek Ifatynpr ij*aw IK roO iJAAw, Hat. Rep.
516 B. This appears to mean that you can loosely apply
the term ' Osiris ' both to (i) the real Osiris and (ii) the corn
which conies from him, as you can apply the name ' Sun '
both to (i) the real orb and (ii) the ray that comes from the
orb. However, Julian, Or. v, on the Sun suggests a different
view that both the orb and the ray are mere effects and
symbols of the true spiritual Sun, as corn is of Osiris.

204 APPENDIX

according to sense for that is what Paris is not
seeing the other powers in the world but only beauty,
dedares that the apple belongs to Aphrodite.

Theological myths suit philosophers, physical and
psychic suit poets, mixed suit religious initiations,
since every initiation aims at uniting us with the
World and the Gods.

To take another myth, they say that the Mother
of the Gods seeing Attis lying by the river GaHus
fell in love with him, took him, crowned him with
her cap of stars, and thereafter kept him with her.
He fell in love with a nymph and left the Mother to
live with her. For this the Mother of the Gods jnade
Attis go rhad and cut off his genital organs and leave
them with the Nymph, and then return and dwell
with her.

Now the Mother of the Gods is the principle that
generates life ; that is why she is called Mother. Attis
is the creator of all things which are born and die ;
that is why he is said to have been found by the river
GaHus. For Gallus signifies the Galaxy, or Milky
Way, the point at which body subject to passion
begins. 1 Now as the primary gods make perfect the
secondary, the Mother loves Attis and gives him
celestial powers. That is what the cap means. Attis
loves a nymph : the nymphs preside over generation,
since all that is generated is fluid. But since the pro-
cess of generation must be stopped somewhere, and
not allowed to generate something worse than the
worst, the Creator who makes these things casts away

Mr. L. W. Hunter, foa0a* MS. Above the
MiHcy Way there is BO snch body, only o&pa d*rAfr. f.
Macrob. m Som*. Srip. i. 12,

APPENDIX 205

his generative powers into the creation and is joined to
the gods again. Now these things never happened,
but always are. And Mind sees all things at once, but
Reason (or Speech) expresses some first and others
after. Thus, as the myth is in accord with the Cosmos,
we for that reason keep a festival imitating the
Cosmos, for how could we attain higher order?

And at first we ourselves, having fallen from heaven
and living with the Nymph, are in despondency, and
abstain from corn and all rich and unclean food, for
both are hostile to the soul. Then comes the cuttipg
of the tree and the fast, as though we also were cutting
off the further process of generation. After that the
feeding on milk, as though we were being born again ;
after which come rejoicings and garlands and, as it
were, a return up to the Gods.

The season of the ritual is evidence to the truth of
these explanations. The rites are performed about
the Vernal Equinox, when the fruits of the earth are
ceasing to be produced, and day is becoming longer
than night, which applies well to Spirits rising higher.
(At least, the other equinox is in mythology the time
of the Rape of Kor, which is the descent of the
souls.)

May these explanations of the myths find favour in
the eyes of the Gods themselves and the souls of those
who wrote the myths.

V. On the First

Next in order comes knowledge of the First Cause
and the subsequent orders of the gods, then the
nature of the world, the essence of intellect and of
soul, them Providence, Fate, and Fortune, then to

206 APPENDIX

see Virtue and Vice and the various forms of social
constitution good and bad that are formed from them,
and from what possible source Evil came into the
world.

Each of these subjects needs many long discussions ;
but there is perhaps no harm in stating them briefly,
so that a disciple may not be completely ignorant
about them.

It is proper to the First Cause to be One for
unity precedes multitude and to surpass all things
in power and goodness. Consequently all things must
partake of it. For owing to its power nothing else
can hinder it, and owing to its goodness it will not
hold itself apart.

If the First Cause were Soul, all things would possess
Soul. If it were Mind, all things would possess Mind.
If it were Being, all things would partake of Being.
And seeing this quality (i. e. Being) in all things, some
men have thought that it was Being. Now if things
simply were, without being good, this argument would
be true, but if things that are are because of their
goodness, and partake in the good, the First thing must
needs be both beyond-Being and good. It is strong
evidence of this that noble souls despise Being for the
sake of the good, when they face death for their
country or friends or for the sake of virtue. Af ter this
inexpressible power come the orders of the Gods.

VI. On Gods Cosmic and Hypercosmic.

Of the Gods some are of the world, Cosmic, and
some above the world, Hypercosmic. By the Cosmic
I mean those who make the Cosmos. Of the Hyper-
cosmic Gods some create Essence, some Mind, and

. APPENDIX 207

some Soul. Thus they have three orders; all of
which may be found in treatises on the subject.

Of the Cosmic Gods some make the World be, others
animate it, others harmonize it, consisting as it does
of different elements ; the fourth class keep it when
harmonized.

These are four actions, each of which has a beginning,
middle, and end, consequently there must be twelve
gods governing the world.

Those who make the world are Zeus, Poseidon, and
Hephaistos ; those who Animate it are Demeter, Hera,
and Artemis; those who harmonize it are Apollo,
Aphrodite, and Hermes ; those who watch over it are
Hestia, Athena, and Ares.

One can see secret suggestions of this in their images.
Apollo tunes a lyre ; Athena is armed ; Aphrodite is
naked (because harmony creates beauty, and beauty
in things seen is not covered).

While these twelve in the primary sense possess the
world, we should consider that the other gods are
contained in these. Dionysus in Zeus, for instance,
Asklepios in Apollo, the Charites in Aphrodite.
% We can also discern their various spheres : to Hestia
belongs the Earth, to Poseidon water, to Hera air, to
Hephaistos fire. And the six superior spheres to the
gods to whom they are usually attributed. For
Apollo and Artemis are to be taken for the Sun and
Moon, the sphere of Kronos should be attributed to
Demeter, the ether to Athena, while the heaven is
common to all. Thus the orders, powers, and spheres
of the Twelve Gods have been explained and celebrated
in hymns.

208 APPENDIX

VII. On the Nature of the World and its
Eternity.

The Cosmos itself must of necessity be indestructible
and uncreated. Indestructible because, suppose it
destroyed : the only possibility is to make one better
than this or worse or the same or a chaos. If worse,
the power which out of the better makes the worse
must be bad. If better, the maker who did not make
the better at first must be imperfect in power. If the
same, there will be no use in making it ; if a chaos . . .
it is impious even to hear such a thing suggested. These
reasons would suffice to show that the World is also
uncreated : for if not destroyed, neither is it created.
Everything that is created is subject to destruction.
And further, since the Cosmos exists by the goodness
of God it follows that God must always be good and
the world exist. Just as light coexists with the
Sun and with fire, aad shadow coexists with a
body.

Of the .bodies in the Cosmos, some imitate Mind
and move in orbits ; some imitate Soul and move in
a straight line, fire and air upward, earth and water
downward. Of those that move in orbits the fixed'
sphere goes from tbe east, the Seven from the west
{This is so for various causes, especially lest tbe
creation should ibe imperfect owing to the rapid circuit
of the spheres. 1 )

The movement being different, the nature of the
bodies must also be different; hence tbe celestial

1 i. e. if the Firmament or Fixed Sphere moved in the
same direction as the seven Planets, the speed would become
too great. On the circular movement cf . Plot. Eun. ii. 2.

APPENDIX 209

body does not burn or freeze what it touches, or do
anything else that pertains to the four elements. 1

And since the Cosmos is a sphere the zodiac proves
that and in every sphere ' down ' means ' towards
the centre ', for the centre is farthest distant from
every point, and heavy things fall ' down ' and,fali to
the earth <it follows that the Earth is in the centre
of the Cosmos).

All these things are made by the Gods, ordered by
Mind, moved by SouL About the Gods we have
spoken already.

VIII. On Mind and Soul, and that the latter
is immortal.

There is a certain force, 2 less primary than Being
but more primary than the Soul, which draws its
existence from Being and completes the Soul as the
Sun completes the eyes. Of Souls some are rational
and immortal, some irrational and mortal. The
former are derived from the first Gods, the latter
from the secondary.

First, we must consider what soul is. It is, then,
that by which the animate differs from the inanimate.
The difference lies in motion, sensation, imagination,
intelligence. Soul, therefore, when irrational, is the lif e
of sense and imagination ; when rational, it is the life
which controls sense and imagination and uses reason.

The irrational soul depends on the affections of

1 The fire of which the heavenly bodies are made is the
, matter, but different from earthly matter. See

P "Proclus, EUm. THeol. xx, calls it ^ rocpA
Intettectuetiis, There are four degrees of existence: lowest
of all, Bodies; above that. Soul; above all Souls, this
' Intellectual Nature ' ; above that, The One.
H

210 APPENDIX

the body ; it feels desire and anger irrationally. The
rational soul both, with the help of reason, despises the
body, and, fighting against the irrational soul, pro-
duces either virtue or vice, according as it is victorious
or defeated.

It must be immortal, both because it knows the
gods (and nothing mortal knows 1 what is immortal),
it looks down upon human affairs as though it stood
outside them, and, like an unbodied thing, it is affected
in the opposite way to the body. For while the body is
young and fine, the soul blunders, but as the body
grows old it attains its highest power. Again, every
good soul uses mind ; but no body can produce mind :
for how should -that which is without mind produce
mind ? Again, while Soul uses the body as an instru-
ment, it is not in it ; just as the engineer is not in his
engines (although many engines move without being
touched by any one). And if the Soul is often made to
err by the body, that is not surprising. For the arts
cannot perform their work when their instruments
are spoilt.

IX. On Providence, Fate, and Fortune.

This is enough to show the Providence of the Gods.
For whence comes the ordering of the world, if there
is no ordering power? And whence comes the fact
that all things are for a purpose : e. g. irrational soul
that there may be sensation, and rational that the
earth may be set in order ?

But one can deduce the same result from the evi-
dences of Providence in nature : e. g. the eyes have
been made transparent with a view to seeing; the
1 i. e. in the full sense of Gnosis.

APPENDIX 211

nostrils are above the mouth to distinguish bad-smelling
foods ; the front teeth are sharp to cut food, the back
teeth broad to grind it. And we find every part of
every object arranged on a similar principle. It is
impossible that there should be so much providence in
the last details, and none in the first principles. Then
the arts of prophecy and of healing, which are part of
the Cosmos, come of the good providence of the Gods.

All this care for the world, we must believe, is taken
by the Gods without any act of will or labour. As
bodies which possess some power produce their effects
by merely existing : e. g. the sun gives light and heat
by merely existing; so, and far more so, the Provi-
dence of the Gods acts without effort to itself and for
the good of the objects of its forethought. This
solves the problems of the Epicureans, who argue
that what is Divine neither has trouble itself nor gives
trouble to others.

The incorporeal providence of the Gods, both for
bodies and for souls, is of this sort ; but that which
is of bodies and in bodies is different from this, and is
called Fate, HeimarmenS, because the chain of causes
(Heirmos) is more visible in the case of bodies ; and
it is for dealing with this Fate that the science of
' Mathematic ' has been discovered. 1

Therefore, to believe that human things, especially
their material constitution, are ordered not only by
celestial beings but by the Celestial "Bodies, is a
reasonable and true belief. Reason shows that health
and sickness, good fortune and bad fortune, arise
according to our deserts from that source. But to
attribute men's acts of injustice and lust to Fate, is
1 i. e. Astrology, dealing with the ' Celestial Bodies '.

212 APPENDIX

to make ourselves good and the Gods bad. Unless by
chance a man meant by such a statement that in
general all things are for the good of the world and for
those who are in a natural state, but that bad educa-
tion or weakness of nature changes the goods of Fate
far the worse. Just as it happens that the Sun, which
is good for all, may be injurious to persons with
ophthalmia or fever. Else why do the Massagetae eat
their fathers, the Hebrews practise circumcision, and
the Persians preserve rules of rank? l Why do
astrologers, while calling Saturn and Mars ' malig-
nant ', proceed to make them good, attributing to
them philosophy and royalty, generalships and
treasures ? And if they are going to talk of triangles
and squares, it is absurd that gods should change their
natures according to their position in space, while
human virtue remains the same everywhere. Also the
fact that the stars predict high or low rank for the
father of the person whose horoscope is taken, teaches
that they do not always make things happen but
sometimes only indicate things. For how oould
things which preceded the birth depend upon the
birth?

Further, as there is Providence and Fate concerned
with nations and cities, and also concerned with each
individual, so there is also Fortune, which should
next be treated. That power of the gods which orders
for the good things which are not uniform, and which
happen contrary to expectation, is commonly called
Fortune, and it is for this reason that the goddess is
especially worshipped; in public by cities;, for every
city consists of elements which are not uniform. For*
* Cf. Hit. i* 134.

APPENDIX 213

tune has power beneath the moon, since above the
moon no single thing can happen by fortune.

If Fortune makes a wicked man prosperous and
a good man poor, there is no need to wonder. For
the wicked regard wealth as everything, the good as
nothing. And the good fortune of the bad cannot
take away their badness, while virtue alone will be
enough for the good.

X. Concerning Virtue and Vice.

The doctrine of Virtue and Vice depends on that of
the Soul. When the irrational soul enters into the
body and immediately produces Fight and Desire,
the rational soul, put in authority over all these, makes
the soul tripartite, composed of Reason, Fight, and
Desire. Virtue in the region of Reason is Wisdom,
in the region of Fight is Courage, in the region of
Desire it is Temperance; the virtue of the whole
Soul is Righteousness. It is for Reason to judge
what is right, for Fight in obedience to Reason to
despise things that appear terrible, for Desire to
pursue not the apparently desirable, but, that which
is with Reason desirable. When these things are so, we
have a righteous life ; for righteousness in matters of
property is but a small part of virtue. And thus we
shall find all four virtues in properly trained men, but
among the untrained one may be brave and unjust,
another temperate and stupid, another prudent and
unprincipled. Indeed these qualities should not be
called Virtues when they are devoid of Reason and
imperfect and found in irrational beings. Vice should
be regarded as consisting of the opposite elements. In

214 APPENDIX

Reason it is Folly, in Fight, Cowardice, in Desire,
Intemperance, in the whole soul, Unrighteousness.

'The virtues are produced by the right social organi-
zation and by good rearing and education, the vices by
the opposite.

XI. Concerning right and wrong Social Organization*

Constitutions also depend on the tripartite nature of
the Soul. The rulers are analogous to Reason, the
soldiers to Fight, the common folk to Desires.

Where all things are done according to Reason and
the best man in the nation rules, it is a Kingdom;
where more than one rule according to Reason and
Fight, it is an Aristocracy ; where the government is
according to Desire and offices depend on money, that
constitution is called a Timocracy. The contraries
are : to Kingdom tyranny, for Kingdom does all
things with the guidance of reason and tyranny
nothing ; to Aristocracy oligarchy, when not the best
people but a few of the worst are rulers ; to Timocracy
democracy, when not the rich but the common folk
possess the whole power.

XII. The origin of evil things ; and that there
is no positive evil.

The Gods being good and making all things, how do
evils exist in the world ? Or perhaps it is better first
to state the fact that, the Gods being good and making
all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by

1 [This section is a meagre reminiscence of Plato's dis-
cussion in Repub. viii. The interest in politics and govern-
ment had died out with the loss of political freedom.]

APPENDIX 215

absence of good ; just as darkness itself does not exist,
but only comes about by absence of light.

If Evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds
or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any god, for
all god is good. If any one speaks of a ' bad mind '
he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he
will make soul inferior to body, for no body in itself
is evil. If he says that Evil is made up of soul and
body together, it is absurd that separately they should
not be evil, but joined should create evil.

Suppose it is said that there are evil spirits : if they
have their power from the gods, they cannot be evil ;
if from elsewhere, the gods do not make all things.
If they do not make all things, then either they wish
to and cannot, or they can and do not wish ; neither
of which is consistent with the idea of God. We may
see, therefore, from these arguments, that there is no
positive evil in the world.

It is in the activities of men that the evils appear, and
that not of all men nor always. And as to these, if
men sinned for the sake of evil, Nature itself would be
evil. But if the adulterer thinks his adultery bad but
his pleasure good, and the murderer thinks the murder
bad but the money he gets by it good, and the man
who does evil to an enemy thinks that to do evil is bad
but to punish his enemy good, and if the soul commits
all its sins in that way, then the evils are done for the
sake of goodness. (In the same way, because in a
given place light does not exist, there comes darkness,
which has no positive existence.) The soul sins there-
fore because; while aiming at good, it makes mistakes
about the good, because it is not Primary Essence.
And we see many things done by the Gods to prevent

216 APPENDIX

it from making mistakes and to heal it when it has
made them. Arts and sciences, curses and prayers,
sacrifices and initiations, laws and constitutions,
judgements and punishments, all came into existence
for the sake of preventing souls from sinning; and
when they are gone forth from the body gods and
spirits of purification cleanse them of their sins.

XIIL How things eternal are said to ' be made '

Concerning the Gods and the World and human
things this account will suffice for those who are not
able to go through the whole course of philosophy but
yet have not souls beyond help.

It remains to explain how these objects were never
made and are never separated one from another, since
we ourselves have said above that the secondary sub-
stances were ' made ' by the first.

Everything made is made either by art or by a
physkal process or according to some power. 1 Now in
art or nature the maker must needs be prior to the
made : but the maker, according to power, constitutes
the made absolutely together with itself, since its
power is inseparable from it ; as the sun makes light,
fire makes heat, snow makes cold.

Now if the Gods make the world by art, they do
not make it be, they make it be such as it is. For all
art makes the form of the object. What therefore
makes it to be?

If by a physical process, how in that case can the
maker help giving part of himself to the made ? As

secnndum potentiam. quondam; i.e. in
accordance with some indwelling ' virtue ' or quality.

APPENDIX 217

the Gods are incorporeal, the World ought to be
incorporeal too. If it were argued that the Gods were
bodies, then where would the power of incorporeal
things come from ? And if we were to admit it, it would
follow that when the world decays, its maker must be
decaying too, if he is a maker by physical process.

If the Gods make the world neither by art nor by
physical process, it only remains that they make it
by power. Everything so made subsists together with
that which possesses the power. Neither can things
so made be destroyed, except the power of the maker
be taken away : so that those who believe in the
destruction of the world, either deny the existence
of the gods, or, while admitting it, deny God's power.

Therefore he who makes all things by his own
power makes all things subsist together with himself.
And since his power is the greatest power he must
needs be the maker not only of men and animals, but
of Gods, men, and spirits. 1 And the further removed
the First God is from our nature, the more powers
there must be between us and him. For all things that
are very far apart have many intermediate points
between them.

XIV. In what sense, though the Gods never change,
they are said to be made angry and appeased.
If any one thinks the doctrine of the unchangeable-
ness of the Gods is reasonable and true, and then
wonders bow it is that they rejoice in the good and
reject the bad, are angry with sinners and becooie
propitious when appeased, the answer is as follows:

1 The wpetftkm of Mptfaovs in this sentence seems to be a
mistake.

218 APPENDIX

God does not rejoice for that which rejoices also
grieves; nor is he angered for to be angered is a
passion ; nor is he appeased by gifts if he were, he
would be conquered by pleasure.

It is impious to suppose that the Divine is affected
for good or ill by human things. The Gods are always
good and always do good and never harm, being always
in the same state and like themselves. The truth
simply is that, when we are good, we are joined to the
Gods by our likeness to them; when bad, we are
separated from them by our unlikeness. And when
we live according to virtue we cling to the gods, and
when we become evil we make the gods our enemies
not because they are angered against us, but because
our sins prevent the light of the gods from shining
upon us, and put us in communion with spirits of
punishment. And if by prayers and sacrifices we find
forgiveness of sins, we do not appease or change the
gods, but by what we do and by our turning towards
the Divine we heal our own badness and so enjoy again
the goodness of the gods. To say that God turns
away from the evil is like saying that the sun hides
himself from the blind.

XV. Why we give worship to the Gods when
they need nothing.

This solves the question about sacrifices and other
rites performed to the Gods. The Divine itself is
without needs, and the worship is paid for our own
benefit. The providence of the Gods reaches every-
where and needs only some congruity r for its recep-
tion. All congruity comes about by representation

APPENDIX 219

and likeness; for which reason the temples are made
in representation of heaven, the altar of earth, the
images of life (that is why they are made like living
things), the prayers of the element of thought, the
mystic letters * of the unspeakable celestial forces, the
herbs and stones of matter, and the sacrificial animals
of the irrational life in us.

From all these things the Gods gain nothing ; what
gain could there be to God ? It is we who gain some
communion with them.

XVI. Concerning sacrifices and other worships, that we
benefit man by them, but not the gods.

I think it well to add some remarks about sacrifices.
In the first place, since we have received everything
from the gods, and it is right to pay the giver some
tithe of his gifts, we pay such a tithe of possessions
in votive offerings, of bodies in gifts of <hair and)
adornment, and of life in sacrifices. Then secondly,
prayers without sacrifices are only words, with sacri-
fices they are live words; the word gives meaning
to the life, while the life animates the word. Thirdly,
the happiness of every object is its own perfection;
and perfection for each is communion with its own
cause. For this reason we pray for communion with
the Gods. Since, therefore, the first life is the life of
the gods, but human life is also life of a kind, and
human life wishes for communion with divine life,
a mean term is needed. For things very far apart
cannot have communion without a mean term, and the
mean term must be like the things joined; therefore
1 On the mystic letters see above, p. 142.

220 APPENDIX

the mean term between life and life must be life.
That is why men sacrifice animals ; only the rich do
so now, but in old days everybody did, and that not
indiscriminately, but giving the suitable offerings to
each god together with a great deal of other worship.
Enough of this subject.

XVII, That the World is by nature Eternal.

We have shown above that the gods will not destroy
the world. It remains to show that its nature is
indestructible.

Everything that is destroyed is either destroyed by
itself or by something else. If the world is destroyed
by itself, fire must needs burn itself and water dry
itself. If by something else, it must be either by a
body or by something incorporeal. By something
incorporeal is impossible; for incorporeal things
preserve bodies nature, for instance, and soul and
nothing is destroyed by a cause whose nature is to
preserve it. If it is destroyed by some body, it must
be either by those which exist or by others.

If by those which exist : then either those moving
in a straight line must be destroyed by those that
revolve, or vice versa. But those that revolve have
no destructive nature; else, why do we never see
anything destroyed from that cause? Nor yet can
those which are moving straight touch the others;
else, why have they never been able to do so yet ?

But neither can those moving straight be destroyed
by one another : for the destruction of one is the
creation of another; and that is not to be destroyed
but to change.

But if the World is to be destroyed by other bodies

APPENDIX 221

than these it is impossible to say where such bodies
are or whence they are to arise.

Again, everything destroyed is destroyed either in
form or matter. (Form is the shape of a thing, matter
the body.) Now if the form is destroyed and the
matter remains, we see other things come into being.
If matter is destroyed, how is it that the supply has
not failed in aH these years?

If when matter is destroyed other matter takes its
placs, ths new matter must come either from some-
thing that is or from something that is not. If from
th^t-wkich-is, as long ad that-which-is always remains,
inatter always remains. But if that-which-i& is de-
stroyed such a theory means that not the World only
but everything in the universe is destroyed.

If j^gain matter comes from that-whkh-is-not : in
the first place, it is impossible for anything to come
from that which is not ; but suppose it to happen, and
that matter did arise from that which is not ; then,
as long as there are things which are not, matter will
exist. For I presume there can never be an end o
things which are not.

If they say that matter <will become) formless, : in
the first place, why does this happen to the world as a
whole when it does not happen to any part ? Secondly,
by this hypothesis they do not destroy the being of
bodies, but only their beauty.

Further, everything destroyed is ek&er resolved into
the elements from which it came, or else vanishes into
not-being. If things are resolved into the elements
from which they came, then there will be others : dse
how, 4$ tl#y copae.iato rbe^at.all ? If thafc^hicMs
is to depart into not-being, what prevents that happen-

222 APPENDIX

ing to God himself ? (Which is absurd.) Or if God's
power prevents that, it is not a mark of power to be
able to save nothing but oneself. And it is equally
impossible for that-which-is to come out of nothing
and to depart into nothing.

Again/if the World is destroyed, it must needs either
be destroyed according to Nature or against Nature.
Against Nature is impossible, for that which is against
Nature is not stronger than Nature. 1 If according to
Nature, there must be another Nature which changes
the Nature of the World : which does not appear.

Again, anything that is naturally destructible we
can ourselves destroy. But no one has ever destroyed
or altered the round body of the World. And the
elements, though they can be changed, cannot be
destroyed. Again, everything destructible is changed
by time and grows old. But the world through all
these years has remained utterly unchanged.

Having said so much for the help of those who feel
the need of very strong demonstrations, I pray the
World himself to be gracious to me.

XVIII. Why there are rejections of God, and that
God is not injured.

Nor need the fact that rejections of God have taken
place in certain parts of the earth and will often
take place hereafter, disturb the mind of the wise :
both because these things do not affect the gods, just
as we saw that worship did not benefit them; and
because the .soul, being of middle essence, cannot be

* The text here is imperfect : I have followed Mullach's
correction.

APPENDIX 223

always right; and because the whole world cannot
enjoy the providence of the gods equally, but some
parts may partake of it eternally, some at certain
times, some in the primal manner, some in the secon-
dary. Just as the head enjoys all the senses, but the
rest of the body only one.

For this reason, it seems, those who ordained
Festivals ordained also Forbidden Days, in which
some temples lay idle, some were shut, some had their
adornment removed, in expiation of the weakness of
our nature.

It is not unlikely, too, that the rejection of God is
a kind of punishment : we may well believe that those
who knew the gods and neglected them in one life may
in another life be deprived of the knowledge of them
altogether. Also those who have worshipped their
own kings as gods have deserved as their punishment
to lose all knowledge of God.

XIX. Why sinners are not punished at once.

There is no need to be surprised if neither these
sins nor yet others bring immediate punishment upon
shiners. For it is not only Spirits x who punish the
soul, the Soul brings itself to judgement : and also it
is not right for those who endure for ever to attain
everything in a short time : and also, there is need of
human virtue. If punishment followed instantly upon
sin, men would act justly from fear and have no virtue.

Souls are punished when they have gone forth from
the body, some wandering among us, some going to
hot or cold places of the earth, some harassed by
Spirits. Under all circumstances they suffer with the

1 Sofjtow.

224 APPENDIX

irrational part of their nature, with which they also
sinned. For its sake l there subsists that shadowy
body which is seen about graves, especially the graves
of evil livers.

XX. On Transmigration of Souls, and how Souls are
said to migrate into brute beasts.

If the transmigration of a .soul takes place into a
rational being, it simply becomes the soul of that body.
But if the soul migrates into a brute beast, it follows
the body outside, as a guardian spirit follows a man.
For there could never be a rational soul in an irrational
being.

The transmigration of souls can be proved from the
congenital afflictions of persons. For why are some
born blind, others paralytic, others with some sickness
in the soul itself? Again, it is the natural duty of
Souls to do their work in the body ; are we to suppose
that when once they leave the body they spend all
eternity in idleness ?

Again, if the souls did not again enter into bodies,
they must either be infinite in number or God must
constantly be making new ones. But there is nothing
infinite in the world ; for in a finite whole there cannot
be an infinite part. Neither can others be made ; for
everything in which something new goes on being
created, must be imperfect. And the World, being
made by a perfect author, ought naturally to be perfect.

XXI. That the Good me happy, both living and dead.
Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy,*

1 i. e. that it may continue to exist and satisfy justice.

1

APPENDIX 225

and when separated from the irrational part of their
nature, and made clean from all matter, have com-
munion with the gods and join them in the governing
of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness
fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of
virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no
master are enough to make happy those who have set
themselves to live according to virtue and have
achieved it.

INDEX

Achaioi, 45, 49
Acropolis, 71, 72
Aeschylus, 12*, 43
Affection, 104, 109
Agesilaus, 86

Agriculture, Religion in, 5 f .
Alexander the Great, 92, 93,

94. H5. 159

Allegory, in Hellenistic philo-
sophy. 165 ff. ; in Olym-
pian religion, 74

oAAnAo^ayta, 98*

Alpha and Omega, God as,
148

Anaximander, 33*

Angel = Megethos, 142 ; star,
144

Animal sacrifice, 188 f.

Anthesteria, 16-18, 34

Anthister, i8

Anthropomorphism , i o ff . , 1 40

Antigonus Gonatus, I52 1

Antiochus I, 144

Anti-semitism, 162

Antisthenes, 87, 89 f., 96

Apathy, 103*, 109

Apelldn = Apolldn, 51

Aphikior, 28

Aphrodite, 57

Apollo, 50, 72

Apotheosis of Hellenistic

Apparitions, primitive belief

in, 27

Apuleius, 148
Aquinas, 3
Archontes, 164
Ares, 57

AretS, 89, 9<*. 99. 104 f.
Aristarchus of Samos, 141

Aristophanes, 20*, 22 1 , 62*
Aristotle, 3, 114 f., 117, 120,

127, 136, 153* 154*
Ark of Israel, 68
Arnim, von, I29 1 , 172
Arnold, Professor E. V., loo 1
Asceticism in antiquity, 196
Astrology, 143 f., 211 l
Astronomy, 97

72, 74;
6, 52 ; Pal-

Atheism, 181 f.
Athena, 53 1 ,

= Athenaia

las, 52
Athens, eflEect of defeat of,

79 f.
Atomic Theory of Demo-

critus, 101 ; of Ionia, 105
Attis, 185

' Attributes ', animals as, 20
Augustine, St., 175, 177
Aurelius, Marcus, religion of,
'175*.

Bacchos, 161

Bacon, Professor, -172

' Barbaroi ' as opposed to

Hellenes, 39 ; jJopjSa/x^owoi,

42*

Bardesanes, I64 1
Barnabas, St., 161
Beast-mask, 23-5
Bendis, 151
Bethe, E., iso 1
Bevan, E., xiv, 39*, loo 1 ,

I54 1 , 172
Birth-rate, its effect on early

Christian sects, 194
Blessedness, Epicurus on, 106
Body, Fifth, 137

228

INDEX

Bo&ms, 24

Bousset, W., xiii, 126, 150',

162, 172
Buddhism, 10
Bull, blood of, 20; in pre*

Hellenic ritual, 19-21
Bury, Professor J. B., xiii

Carpenter, Dr, E., 172

Cauer. P., 49*

Centaurs, 60

Chad wick, H. M. f x;iii, 46 ft.,

deans, 144, 151
Chance, 131, 147
Charles, Dr., 172

XP> 37

ypcta, 90

Christianity, 88, 90, 9$, 109,

115, 119*123-5, I73,.x8if.,

192-5

Christinas, Father, 15
Christos, 163
Cafysippus. 1 15, 145*. 8 , *,

146, 166

Chthonioi, as oracles, 37
Cicero, 27*

Circular movement, 3p8 l
Circumcollionfs, 36 n.
City of gods and men, woifld

as, 76; of Refuge, in the

Laws, 83; of Righteous,-

ness, in the Republic, 83 :

see Polia

Qeanthes, 133* *4L ^5
Clemen, Carl, 172
Coinage, deface pf , 99
Collective Desire ', God de-

fined as the, 26, 39
Colotes, in 1
Comitatus, 46
Coi^magwie, $44
Conceptions, Common, 290,
Cpu^^aAti^, 194
Coostantius, 179,
Qqjivejfttiop^ 9^1
Conybearei T?, Q., 17^

Cook, A. B., i6 l , 23, 24 l ,

49 f., 5 6, 66 n.
Copernicus, 97
Corinna, 43
Cornford, F. M., 33 x
Cornutus, 166
Cosmopolites, 92
Cosmos, 97-100, 208
Crates, 95^ 166
Creeds, 173 f., 178, i$$
Crucifixion, 163*.
Cumont, F., 35 1 , 126, 172
Cynics, 3, oor*. 93-5 104;

women among, 95 1
Cyropaedeia, 85
Cynw, 85

Daemon a* Stoicheipa, 142

Dance, religious, 27 3f.

Dsavenport, F. M., a6 x

Davy, G., 7 n.

Dead, worship o{, 62

Deification, E. Bev^n on, 154*

Deliverer, the, 108

Delos, 51

Delusio, 169,

Demeter, 72

Deoaocritua, Atomic Tt^pry

of, 10 J
Demos, 82
Demosthenes. 82
Destiay, Hymn to, 135 : sfto

Fate

Dharma, 10
Diadochi, 155
Diasia, 14-15
Siarpt^, 90
DJcaeaircbus, 121 f .
Didascaliae, 121

giete, 33S W 1 , W. ,
i)ieterich, A., 17*, 2^, *9,

126, 146, 150% 172
Dio Cassms, 142
Diocletian, 194 {.
Diodorus, 144 f.
Diogen^ 9?-^ 9^; his ' tub,;'

9*.

INDEX

229

Diogenes of Oenoanda, ioi l ,

114, 169 f.
Dione, 56
Dioaysius, 17, 20, 72, 84, 759

3/OTTTpa, 122

Disciples, qualifications and
conduct of, 200

Discouragement due to col-
lapse of the Polls, 8 1

Dittenberger, W., i6 l , 156*

Divine Mother, 164 ; ' Divine
Wisdom ', personified, 165

Dodds, E. R., i8i l

Doutte, E., 26 f.

Dramaturge, 97

Drdmenon, spring, 32 f.

Dummler, 87*

Durkheim, Professor lmile,
6 1

Earth, divinity of, 137;

Earth-mother, 29
wSowf, 106
Education, 113*
Ekstasis, 150
Elements, Apuleius on, 148;

divinity of, 137; in the

Kosmos, 142

CjMlftVXOfy, 200 *

Enthousiasmos, 150

E6s,53

Epictetus, morals of, 176

Epicureans. 3, nof., 113,

119, 130, 145 f., 181
Epicurus, loi-ii, 113, 129 f.,

135, 140 f., 170, 192*
Epip hangs, 155
Epiphanius, 172

W**s> 37
EuergeUs, 156
Euhemerus, 160
Euripides, 12*. 54', passim,

143,. 152 ,
Eusebius, 27 4 < 197
Evans, Sir A., 20, 66 n.
Evil, existence 01,215; origin

of, 186, 214-16

Expurgation of mythology,
75 f . ; Olympian, 61 f., 67 f.
Eye of Bel, 143

Failure, Great, 82

Faraell, Dr. L. R., i8 l , 20 l , 44

Fate, 132, 134, 145, 146 f.,

211 f.

Federations, 80
Ferguson, W. S., i52 l
First Cause, 185, 205 f.
Fortune, 91, 131 f,, 212 f.
Fourth Century, Movements

of, 3. 79-122
Frazer, Sir J. G., I6 1 . iS 1 ,

35 l . I54 l

Gaertringen, Killer, v., 18*
Galaxy, 204

Games, Roman gladiatorial, 94
Garden, 107 f., 114
Gardner, P., 57', 149*
Gennep, A. Van., 31 *

^

Gerontes, 36

Ghosts, 221

Giants, 60

yfyveofat, forms of, 216 f.

yAawe&trtff, 24

Gnostics, 3, 123, 128, 137 f.,
148, 162

God, as the 'collective de-
sire', 26, 29; conception
of, in savage tribes, 9; does
not rejoice, nor is angered,
2x8; essence of , 158 ; home
of, 148; of the Jews, 163;
rejections of, 222 f . ; un-
changeable, 187;. Union
with, 147

God-Man, as Kong, 152 f.

Goda, communion with, 188;
Cosmic and Hypercosmic,
206 f,; men a*, 1 36; nature
of, 200 f.; Twelve, 207;
unchangeable, 217; why
worshipped, 218

23

INDEX

Good, the, 88 f., no, 185 f.,
206 ; happiness of, 224 f . ;
Idea of, as Sun of the
spiritual universe, 94

YpaCs, 31

Gruppe, Dr., 18*, so, 52 l ,
50*. 172

Hagia Triada, sarcophagus of,

HaUiday, W. R., 32

Happiness, Natural, 104

Harnack, A., 193

Harrison, Miss J. ., xii, 13-
30, passim, I48 1

Hartland, . S., 9

Haverfield, Professor F. J.,
127

Heath, Sir T., 1411

Heaven, Third, 149

Hebrews, 125

Hecataeus, 143

Heimarmcnt, 134, 145, 211

Helen, Kor6 as, 138

Hellenes, conquered tribes
took name of, 42 ; no tribe
of, existing in ancient times,
41 ; same as Achaioi, 40

Hellenism, as standard of
culture, 41

Hellenistic Age, 3 f ., 1 14, 117,
125, 131, 144, x6x, 167 ; cul-
ture, 125; philosophy, 165;
revival, 40 f . ; spirit, 152

Hera, 56 .

Heraclitus of Ephesus, 167

Herakles, 56, 89

Hermes, 55, 151

Hermetica, 148, 151

Hermetic communities, 146

Hermias, n6 l

Herodotus, 27*, 39, 41, 42 x ,
44; religion of, 175

Heroes, philosophers as, 153

Heroic Age, ^8 f., 57

Heroism, religious, of an-
tiquity, 192

Hesiod, 44, 64 f.
Hipparchia, 95 l
Hippolytus, 172
Hoffmann, Dr. O., 43*, 52*
Hogarth, D. G., 24*
Holocaust, 14 k

Homer, 9, 4* f., 48!., 54 8 ,

passim, 64 i.
HosititSr, bull as, 20 f .
Hubert and Mauss, MM., 189*

Idealists, 82

Idols, defence of, 77 1

Illusion, 112, 119

Impalement, 163*

Infanticide, 177

Initiations, Hellenistic, 148-

52

Instinct, 100
Interpreters, Planets as,

T x * 4 *
Ionia, 59 f .

Ionian tradition, 101, 104
lonians, 51
Iphigenia, 6I 1
Iranes, 32
Irenaeus, 172
Iris, 55
Isis, 151, 166
Isocrates, 81

acoby, x6o l

aldabaoth => Saturn, 147
javan, sons of, 42
Jews, 125, 151, 188; God of,
163

}udaism, 193
ulian, xiv, 4, 179 ff., 184 f.,
197
Justin, 64*

Kaibel, 6I 1
Kant, 136
Keraunos, 155
Kir es, 34
Kern, O., 2x f
King, L, 29*

INDEX

231

Kings, as gods, 191 ; divine,
titles of, i55ff.; predic-
tions concerning, by Plan-
ets, 144; worship of, 156

Koios, 166

KOI*. 63 f.; as fallen Virgin,
138; Earth, 30; Earth
Maiden and Mother, 137

Kosmokratores, 146, 148, 164

Kosmos, 147, 200 1 ; Moon as
origin of, 169; planets as
Elements in, 142

Kour6, Zeus, 150

Kourttes, 150; Spring-song
of, 30

Kouroi, 30 ; dance of, a8

Kouros, 63 f., 71 ; Megistos,
28; Sun as, 30; Year-
Daemon, 32

Kourotrophos, Earth, 30

KPOLTOS and Bla, 25, I57 1

Kronos, 43*

KTtoavra, 23

imW, 23

Kynosarges, 89

Lampsacus, 107

Lang, Andrew, xi, i6 f , 23 1

A<0 /?IOK7<1?, IIO

Leaf, W., 4 oS 4 9 l

Leagues, 80

Leontion, 108

Life, inward, 119 f.

Arfyoff, 135

Lucian, Icaro-Menippos, 15*

Lucretius, 38, 105, 106*,

114

Lysander, 155
Lysias, 81

McDougall, W., 125 n.
Macedon. 81, 127
Macedonians, 93, ix6 f 122
Mackail, Professor}. W., 42
Man, First, 164; Righteous,
of Plato, 163; Second,
163 f. ; Son of Man, 163

Man-God, worship of, 156 ff.

Mana, 19, ax. 24, 34, 157*

Marett, R. R., 124*

Margoliouth, Professor, 167*

Markos the Gnostic, 150

Marriage, Sacred, 17 f.

Maximus of Tyre, 77 1

Mayer, M., 46 n.

Meade, G. R. S., 172

Mediator between God and
worshipper. 189; Mithras
as, 151 ; Saviour as, 162

Medicine-king, as Of6s, 25,
152 ; powers of, 25

Megethps, 142

Meilichios, in the Diasia, 14-

I5 19

Meister, R., 53 1

Meyer, Ed., 15^*

Mind, nature of, 209

Mithraic communities, 146

Mithraism, 148

Mithras, 123, 139, 152; as
Mediator, 151 ; Liturgy,
146, 148 ; religion of,
21

Mommsen, August, I4 1 , I7 1 ,
i8 l

Monotheism, 69 f.

Moon, as Kourotrophos, 30;
as origin of Kosmos, 169;
divinity of, 136 ff .

Morals, minor. 177; of an-
tiquity, 177 f.; of Chris-
tians, 178

Moret, 23*

Mother, Divine, 164; Great.

Mfildir, D., 53 1 * 57 l
Mullach. 172
Muller. H. D,. 57*
Music of the Spheres, 142
Myres, J. L., 40
Mysteries, 93
Mystic letters. 219
Mysticism, 169
Mythology, Olympian, 75

232

INDEX

Myths, Sallustius' treatment
of ,22 if,; why divine, 201;
ve species, 202 ; explana-
tion of examples, 203-5

Naassenes, 146, 162

Nature, the return to, as sal-
vation for man, 91

Nausiphanes, 101

Neo-Platonism, 181

Nerve, failure of, chap. iv.

Nikator, 155 . .

Nilsson, M. P., i8, 2i, 31 1 >
32 i

Nilus, St., 21
Norden, IJ9 1

Octavius, 164, 182, 190*
Odin, 59
Ogdoas, 147

Oim4f4. 79. "6 . _ .

Olympian expurgation, 01 1.,
67 &. ; fatnily, n ; reform-
ation, 58, 61 ff. ; stage, 2;
theology, 4 , .

Olympian Gods, brought by
Northern invaders, 45;
character of, 46-58 ; . com-
ing of, 43; why so called,

Olympian religion, achieve-
ments of , 72 ff. ; beauty of,
73; conception of, 131;
failure of, 07-72
Olympians, origin of, 39 ff
Olympus, Mount, 46
Optimism, 193
Oracles, 37-8
Oreibasius, 27
Oreibates, 27

tion,social,2i4
UPO, Religions, j
uc Hymns, y> 1 ;
ure, 64 1
^.nism, 148
Orthia, 32
Osiris, 166

Othin, 50*
ovda, 200*
Ovid, 52
Ozymandia, 144

Pagan prayer, a, 197 f . ; re-

action, 173 f.
Paganism, final development

of, 192 f . ; struggle with

Christianity. 195 f .
Palimpsest, manuscript of

man's creed as, 199
Palladion, 52
Pallas. Athena as, 52, 71
Panaetius, 145
Paribeni, R., 20*
Parker, Mrs. Langloh, 12
Pannenides, 12, 113*
, 37

Paul, St.. 2 1, 7, 23, 33, 60,

124, 137, 149, 158 f., 161,

164

Pauly-Wissowa, 1A 1
Pausanias, 27*, 54', passim.
Pavne, E. J., 29 l , 3^
Pelasgians, 42, 44
W/MTTOV awfia, 137
Periclean Age, 87, 89
Peripatetic School, 114!.

116; spirit, 122
Peripatos, 114
Persecution of the Christians,

181
Persephone, 74 f .

Fhewlias, y>
^Aeu^pawia, 156, 158
4tAla, 104, 109
Philo, 172, 177
Phusis, 99, 134, 200 l
Pindar, 3i , 43. 52*
Pisistratus, 43, 53
irtorts, 7 .

Planets, seven, history and

worship of, 1410 fi.
Plato, 3. 13

126, 129* l6 3

INDEX

233

Pleasure, pursuit of, no
Plotinus, 2, 4, 10*, 135; his

union with God, 149
Plutarch, 27", 32*, 34 f , 54*,

passim. t$9'
Poimandres, 162
TloXids. i}, or UoXitvc, o, 72
Poliouchoi, 67
Polis, collapse of, 80, 127 f. ;

projection of, 71 ; religion

of, 71, 75 f. ; replaces Tribe,

66 f .

Polybius, 80
Porch, 114
Porphyry, 149*. i88 a
Poseidon, 54
Posidonius, 146, 159
Predestination, 145
Preuss, Dr., 2
Proclus, 209'
Proletariates, 194
Pronoia or Providence, Stoic

belief in, 90, 135
Providence, 210 f.
ijwxtf, 200 l

Ptolemaios EpipbanSs, 156 f.
Punishment, eternal, 9 ; why

not immediate, 223
Purpose of Dramaturge, 97-

100

Pythagoras, 167
Pythias, 116

Rack, martyrs happy on the,
192

Reason, as combatant of pas-
sion, 91

Redeemer, of the Gnostics,
162 f. ; Son of the Korg,
138

Redemption, mystery of,
163

Reformation, Olympian, 61 ff.

Refuge, City of, in the Laws,

83
Refugees, sufferings of, 102

Reinach, A. J., 25*

Reinach, S., 25*, 68 1 , 172

Reisch, E., u 1

Reitzenstein, xiii, 126, 150*,
172

Religion, description of, 5-9;
eternal punishment for
error in, 9 ; falseness of, 7
ff . ; Greek, extensive study
of, xi; traditional, 127;
significance of, i

Religious Origins, i

Republic, 94*

Retribution, 33

Reuterskiold, 21*

Revelations, divine, 171 ;
series of, to worshippers,
151

Revival, Hellenistic, 40 ff.

Ridgeway, Professor, 40*, 54 l

Righteousness, City of, in the
Republic, 83

Rivers, Dr., 31*

Robertson Smith, Dr., 21 f.

Rome, a Polis, 127

Ruah, 138

Sacraments, 148

Sacrifice, human, 35, 6i l ;
condemned by Theophras-
tus, i88 8 ; Porphyry on,
i88; reason for, 219!

Sallustius, xiv, 165, 179-81,
183-5, 193

Saturn, 147

Saviour, as Son of God and
Mediator, 161 f . ; dying,
35 fi; Third One, 33

Sceptics, ;>w* d'esprit of. 87

Schultr, W., 172

Schurtz, Ed., 31 l

Schwartz, I59 1

Scott, W., 172

Seeck, O., 33*. 7

Sky, phenomena of, as origin
of man's idea, 136

Snake, supernatural, 19

234

INDEX

Social structure of worship-
pers, 151

Solon, 43

crd/ia, 2OO 1

Sophocles, 123

SophrosynS, 73, 83, 114, 152,
197

Sots : see Fortune.

Sdtfcr, 155

Soul, divinity of, 153-65;
human, as origin of man's
idea, 136- immortal, 186;
nature of, 209 f . ; salva-
tion of, 164

Sparta, Athens defeated by,
80; constitution of, 87;
power of, 8 1

Spirit, Holy, 137; personi-
fied, 165

Stars, divinity of, 136 ff.,

I.53 1

Steiner, von H., Mutaziliten,
ip

Stoicism, 117, 146

Stoics, 3, 76, 95-7, i4. i9 *
119, 128, 13o ; 145/160, 165

vftira0eia ratv oAcw, '145

Sun, 187; as Kouros, 30;
= both orb and ray, 203 x ;
divinity ot 1375.; wor-
ship of, 139

Sunotkismos, 63

Superstition, 130

Sweetness, Epicurus on, 106

Swine, sacred, 19

Tab*. 34 ff .

Tarn, W. W.. So 1 , 152"
Tclttai, 32
Thales, 2
Oappttv, 95, 103 f.
Themis, 36, 37
Theodoret, 181
Theoi Adelphoi, 154
Theophrastus, 143, 188*
0co? mm 0co&; 24 ; use of the
word by poets, 12

Thera, 18'

0*<r/M>l, derivation of, I6 1

Thesmophoria, 16

Thespis, 43
Third O

One or Saviour, 33
Thomson, J. A. K., 46 n.
Thoth, 151

Thought, subjective, 128
Thracians, 150 f.
Thucydides, 41 ; religion of,

!75

Thumb, A., 43*. 45
Transmigration of souls, 224
Trigonometry, 122
Trinity, 164
Tritos S6teT, 163
T^viy : see Fortune
' Tyrants, Thirty ', 84

Uncharted region of experi-

ence, 5 ff., 171, 198
Urdummheit 2, 44, 72
Usener, ioi l , 113*, 129*, 172
Uzzah, 68

Vandal, 40*
Vegetarianism, 8 l

Verrall, A. W., i6 l
Vice, definition of, 213 f.
Virgin, fallen, Korg as, 138
Virtue, definition of, 213 f.
Vision, 104

Warde Fowler, W., I7 1

Webster, H., 31 l

Week of seven days estab-

lished, 142 f.
Wendland, P., xiv, 126, 156,

172

Wide, S., 72*
Wilamowitx-Moellendorff, U.

von, 43 l , 59
Wisdom, Divine,personified,

165 ; Wisdom-Teachers, 2
Woodward, A. M., 32 *
Word, the, personified, 165

INDEX 235

World, ancient and modern, Year-Daemon, 32 f.
120; blessedness of, 168;

end of, by fire, Christian Zeller, ., 128

belief in, 190; eternal and Zeno, 96 f., 98, 109, 128

indestructible, i86f., 189, Zeus, Aphiktor, 28; in Mag-

208-9,220-2 f nesia bull-ritual, 21 ; Kou-

rs, 150; Meilichios, 14-

Xenophanes, 12 15; origin and character

Xenophon, 79, 85, 86 of, 49 f . ; watchdog of, 93

SiWat?, 73 Zodiac, 144

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