The Idea of God in Homer

Table of contents :
Gods and men i ..............1
The power of the gods ..............11

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A ■ *- *
c2 Cf. II. 21.568 sq.; Od. 6. 149 sq., 7. 199 sq.; Herodotus I. 60, cf. Aristoteles Ad-, n. c. 14; Weinreich, Menekrates Zeus 82 sq.

II.

THE POWER OF THE GODS.

If the distinctive attribute of the gods is power, this power must possess some specifically divine quality. Otherwise the same difficulty reappears, for even man has some power, however inferior it may be to that of the gods. The criterion of divine power is its supernatural character. Ajax says: “Ay me, now may any man, even though he be a very fool, know that Father Zeus himself is helping the Trojans.

For

the darts of all of them strike, whosoever hurleth them, be he good man or bad — Zeus guideth them notwithstanding home, but all our darts only fall idle to the earth” (II. 17. 629 sq.). This involves the assumption that an arrow generally hits is target through what we call ‘natural causes , e. g. man s skill, if the normally expected thing does not happen the onlooker is surprised and infers that divine, i. e. supernatural, forces are at work.

Another case in point is the following.

Pandarus has

hit Diomede with his arrow in such a way as to be convinced that the latter must die.

When Diomede nevertheless does not

fall Pandarus accounts for this by assuming that if it was really Diomede that he hit, not a god, one of the immortals must have intervened: “Some immortal standeth beside him with a cloud wrapped about his shoulders (i. e. invisible) and turned aside from him my swift dart even as it lighted.

For already have I shot my

dart at him and smote his right shoulder right through the breast¬ plate of his corslet, yea and I thought to hurl him headlong to Hades, yet I vanquished him not; surely it is some wrathful god (II. 5. 185 sq., cf. 95 sq.).1 Again, in Od. 16. 181 sq. (cf. 172 sq.), when Athene has touched Odysseus with her wand and increased his bulk and bloom, Telemachus says to him: “Even now, stranger, thou art other in my sight than that thou wert a moment since, 1 It should

be

noted that on this occasion Diomede is filled with divine

power (ib. 121 sq.; cf. also 280 sq.).

10 he reconciled with the descriptions of his fights with the gods and similar exploits. The power that produces the likeness to the gods is evidently the principal divine quality, that which constitutes divine nature. Divine nature is power and power is the essential attribute of the gods. ^

12

and other garments thou hast, and the colour of thy skin is no longer the same. Surely thou art a god of those that keep the wide heaven.

Nay then, be gracious, that we may offer to thee well¬

pleasing sacrifices and golden gifts, beautifully wrought, and spare us, I pray thee.”

And when Odysseus has assured him that he

is ’a man and his father, Telemachus adds: “Thou art not Odysseus my father, but some god beguiles me . . .

For it cannot be that

a mortal man should contrive this by .the aid of his own wit, unless a god were himself to visit him, and lightly of his own will to make him young or old.

For truly, but a moment gone, thou

wert old and foully clad, but now thou art like the gods who keep the wide heaven” (194 sq.).

Odysseus answers:

Behold, this is

the work of Athene, driver of the spoil, who makes me such manner of man as she will, — for with her it is possible,

now like a

beggar, and now again like a young man, and one clad about in rich raiment.

Easy it is for the gods who keep the wide heaven to

glorify or to abase a mortal man” (207 sq-)-1 With these instances we may compare Nestor’s advice to Agamemnon to make the people fight divided into tribes and clans.

So wilt thou know ,

he savs, “whether it is even by divine command that thou shalt not take the city, or by the baseness of thy warriors and their ill skill in battle” (II. 2. 367 sq.). Evidently a clear distinction is drawn between the normal order of things and the results of divine intervention, a distinction closely corresponding to our differentiation between the natural and the supernatural.2 It seems obvious that the supernatural is really identical with the unusual. Unexpected and strange events, which interrupt the ordinary routine of life, are especially liable to be regarded as supernatural and to be put down to the intervention of higher powers.

Sudden changes, unexpected help or unforeseen mis¬

fortunes, invulnerability or incredible luck in war and similar phenomena are generally ascribed to supernatural causes.

In¬

stances abound and need not be given here; some have been dis¬ cussed above. 1 Cf. Od. 2. 12 sq., 23. 156 sq., 24.367 sq. 2 In ses

this respect

discussed

summarized

in

by

the

Homeric material offers a direct parallel to the ca¬

Arbman

Seele

und

in an unpublished paper, whose chief results are Mana

p. 302 (cf. the note ib. p. 322b

debted to Dr. Arbman for permission to see his MS.

I am 'n_

13 Such a definition would however be too narrow.

Even the

most common and trivial incidents may occasionally assume a supernatural significance. The breaking of a spear in close combat cannot have been an unusual or sensational event and yet it caused Ajax to withdraw shuddering from the battle: “And Ajax knew in his noble heart, and shuddered at the deeds of the gods, even how Zeus that thundereth on high did utterly cut off from him avail in war, and desired victory for the Trojans. gave back out of the darts” (II. 16. 119 sq.).1 supernatural is not identical with the unusual.

Then Ajax

Consequently the It cannot be a

quality inherent in things or events, otherwise the same thing could not be interpreted sometimes as natural, sometimes as supernatural. Meriones met with a similar accident, when his spear broke before it had pierced the enemy’s shield; and here, when the spear breaks of itself, it would seem more natural to assume the operation of a supernatural force than in the former case, when Hector broke it.

Meriones however regards it as a natural thing: he chafes at

his bad luck but it does not occur to him that a continuation of the combat might be in vain. Indeed he makes directly for his tent to fetch a new weapon (II. 13. 159 sq.). Thus there is nothing in the events themselves that makes them supernatural.

Sometimes the signs of divine intervention

are seen in what happens, sometimes not; it is impossible to ascertain from the nature of an event whether it is supernatural or not.2 What constitutes the supernatural is the fact of divine inter¬ vention.

In Arbman’s phrase a supernatural event is one which

“auf rein mystische Weise, direkt und unabhangig von aller empirischen Kausalitat einem Willen- oder einer Kraft, wo es als Moglichkeit vorhanden gedacht wird, entspringt”.3

The power

which lies behind the supernatural must again be defined as 1 Cf. 11. 3. 355 sq., 365 sq.;- 15. 286 sq.; 458 sq.,467 sq., 472 sq., 488 sq. Cf. also II. ces

6.305 sq.;

13.554 sq., 562 sq.; 20.290 sq., 344 sq., 445 sq.

are given in 2 Cf.

Boas

ordinary to

one

Nagelsbach

in

Enc.

I. 47 sq.,

Hed£n,

Other instan¬

Gotterstudien n sq., 39 sq.

of Soc. Sciences s. v. Anthropology p. 94: »What is

person or to one cultural group is extraordinary to another.

Thus it is difficult to circumscribe the field of religion in a satisfactory way, because the same ethnic phenomena may have a religious connotation or may lack it entirely*. KERMANN,

Cf. also

Weinreich,

Rel. d. Naturvolker 147 sq.

3 Seele und Mana 302.

Antike Heilungswunder p. VII. sq.; An-

M supernatural.

The

expression

‘supernatural

force’

is

strictly

speaking redundant, for every assumption of a force as the cause of something necessarily implies the existence of the supernatural, which again can only be conceived as the effect of a force.

Any

attempt to define the supernatural thus leads to a vicious circle: the power by which it is defined is in itself supernatural and the concepts of power and cause both presuppose a supernaturalistic way of thinking. A force is an actual or potential cause.1 The power is determined by its effect.

In the same way a cause is determined by that of

which it is cause.

This implies that in the conception of a cause

the effect is already conceived. The effect, then, is inherent in the cause and consequently cause and effect coincide.

What we seek

to explain as the result of the operation of a certain force is thus postulated in that by which it is explained.2 In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the process of causation itself, the manner in which the cause produces its effect, remains inexplicable and that the relation between the two elements is of a purely mystical nature. Logical analysis has no function here except to show that con¬ ceptions of this kind cannot be coordinated into a rational whole. The view of the universe based upon them reflects a mentality in which emotion largely although not completely controls thought. What is important here is to attempt an analysis of the psycho¬ logical factors underlying the conception of power.

As this con¬

ception is bound up with the notion of the supernatural and power moreover constitutes the essential attribute of the gods, the method

1 For the stellungen

following cf.

der primitiven

in Hastings Kraftbegriff 2 sq.

Tennant

Hagerstrom,

und

der

Vergleich zwischen den Kraftvor-

modernen

Kulturvolker 63 sq.

Cf. also

Enc. s. v. »Cause» and »Force»; Rohr, Der okkulte

Hagerstrom, op. cit. 63: »Indes erscheint der Gedanke einer —- poten-

tieHen

oder aktuellen — Kraft sinnlos.

gendwie soil auf.

Das, wozu die Kraft ist, muss ja ir-

bei ihr vorhanden sein, d. h. das seiner Natur nach zeitlich folgende

existieren, Alles

ehe es existiert.

fallt in

Damit lost sich der ganze gedachte Verlauf

eins zusammen ... Die

‘Erkliirung’ z. B. des Wachstums

des einzelnen Organisnuis oder der Entstehung der Arten aus der Lebenskraft des

Organismus resp. aus differenzierten schopferischen Naturkraften bedeutet

eine Isolierung des im besonderen Falle vorliegenden Verlaufs, womit er aus sich selber erklart wird.»

i5 in question should enable us to throw some light on the origin of the gods. The notion of an active force as the cause of something presents itself only rarely in normal everyday conditions and ordinary ‘natural’ events.

The supernatural is always held to be caused

by some agency actively interfering in the normal course of events, which is conceived as comparatively stationary and passive and as a state of things where everything happens ’of itself’.

In most

cases man confines himself to recording the events without at¬ tempting to discover any hidden forces behind them. If a bow is drawn the arrow flies off. That has been observed so often that the two phases of the event have become inseparably associated with each other and the general idea of the procedure of shooting an arrow only contains these two elements succeeding each other in irreversible chronological order.

It need not be suggested that

there might be lodged in the bow a force which is released and rend¬ ered active by certain manipulations and then in some way which cannot be clearly defined sets the arrow in motion. — Someone is taken ill and dies; death is often preceded by illness in the or¬ dinary course of nature, but we cannot explain exactly how it comes about. To this way of reasoning man will cling as long as he has no occasion to reflect more closely on what happens.

As

far as trivial incidents of frequent occurrence are concerned there is nothing to make us inquire into their hidden aspects. When on the other hand an unexpected event breaks in upon the normal order of things we are often led to ask for its cause.

Once this

question has been raised — it should be pointed out that it is generally prompted by some emotion, like wonder, curiosity, fear, and dread — the answer must be: someone or something has caused it, i. e. the cause is an active force.

Every attempt to

understand and account for an event involves a reference to causes and consequently leads to the assumption of forces. The cause is conceived as a free agent.

Illness ‘steals upon’

and ‘kills’ its victim much in the same way as a man slays his enemy.

Inanimate things are thus imagined to act more or less

like human beings.

The conception of active causes involves an

anthropomorphization or an animation of nature.1 1 Cf. Tennant in Hastings Enc. s. v. Cause p. 261; Hagerstrom, op. cit. 69 sq. and infra ch. IV.

i6 Power is not an observable quality.

What can be observed

in an event is only the order in which the various phases succeed each

other, not the connecting link.

It cannot be empirically

ascertained in what way the effect is produced by the cause or proceeds from it.

Hence the conception of power like that of the

supernatural must be derived from some subjective factor in the mind of the percipient.

This subjective element, as it may con¬

veniently be termed, seems to be to a great extent, if not exclusively, built up of emotions.1 The emotion of the individual can be projected on to the object or the event that he perceives2, and the emotion that accompanies the perception is objectivated by being interpreted as a quality of the object perceived. As such the emotion is further supposed to cause the emotional reaction in question, i. e. itself. An instance will serve to make this clear. The beauty of an object is evidently not a quality inherent in it but a psychological condition of the observer.

The aesthetic impression received by the latter is pro¬

jected on to the object and conceived as a quality present in it. The beauty of the object is further supposed to produce the emotion in the observer. But then it becomes its own cause; cause and effect merge into one.

It is clearly the same case with the concept of

force; the subjective reaction is objectivated and regarded as a quality of the object; and this fact seems to prove that the concept has an emotional foundation.

If this is right, it was Ajax’s own

fear that made him believe that a supernatural force had caused his spear to break. The psychological situation is here evidently quite different from the ordinary perception of an event. There the various phases of the event are obviously linked together by the sole factor of sequence in time and space and this process is effected through mere association of ideas. altogether absent.

The conception of an active force is

Since the relative strength of an association

depends on the number of times it has been repeated, it is especially common incidents of frequent occurrence that are regarded as natural. In order that the conception of power may arise, it is then ne' Hagerstrom, op. cit. 64 sq.

Cf. Marett in Hastings Enc. s. v. Super¬

naturalism. Hagerstrom, op. cit. 69 sq.

Cf. also Marett, Threshold 11.

17 cessary for the norma] formation of associations to be disturbed in one way or another, and this is effected by some emotional reaction. This naturally happens most easily in the case of strange, terrible or puzzling events; but, as has been pointed out above, an event need not be unusual in order to be interpreted as super¬ natural, provided that the perception is tinged with emotion. This emotional colouring may result from a variety of causes. The fact that an event is unusual constitutes a powerful emotional incentive but it is certainly not the only one. Even the emotions with which we are here concerned differ widely in nature.

We

must reckon with the whole gamut of human emotions from awe to ordinary curiosity and take account of both external and in¬ ternal causes.

The expression ‘deos fecit timor’ does not contain

the whole truth; inspiration, for instance, is not due to fear.1 The importance of the subjective element for the conception of the supernatural is clearly shown by man’s attitude towards the gods, more especially in the case of an epiphany. During the great battle in the 20th book of the Iliad in which the gods take an active part Hera fears for Achilles and wishes to help him against the other gods by giving him strength and courage.

She

says (129 sq.): “If Achilles learn not this from voice divine, then shall he be afraid when some god shall come against him in the battle; for gods revealed are hard to look upon”. confirmed by other passages.

This idea is

When Apollo “looked face to face

on the Danaans of the swift steeds, and shook the aegis, and himself shouted mightily, he quelled their heart in their breast, and they forgot

their impetuous valour”

(II. 15. 320 sq.).

Of

the aegis it is said that Hephaestus gave it to Zeus,” to bear for the terror of men” (II. 15. 310, cf. Od. 22. 297 sq.).

The warriors

are scared by the shouts of Ares just as the suitors are terrified by the sudden apparition of Athene (II. 5. 859 sq., Od. 24. 445 sq.). Amazement and terror are caused by the thunderbolt of Zeus and also by prodigies and portents.2 When Athene came to Achilles to comfort him at Hera’s com¬ mand she stood behind him and touched his hair (II. 1. 197 sq.); Achilles turned round in surprise and immediately recognized the 1 Cf. Marett, op. cit. 13. 2 II. 8.75 sq., Od. 2.155. phanie p. 316 sq. 2 — 35259.

E. Ehnmark.

PFISTER in R.-E. Suppl. Bd. IV s. v. Epi-

i8 goddess by her terribly shining eyes.1 The word for surprise used here (thambos) often recurs in connection with the epiphany of a god. It seems to refer to any sudden amazement which may some¬ times border on terror but at other times may be little more than mere surprise.

When Athene, who has accompanied Telemachus

in the semblance of Mentor, suddenly disappears in the shape of a sea-eagle, the effect of this on the onlookers is described thus: “Amazement fell on all that saw it” (Od. 3. 371 sq.).

likewise

men are struck with amazement when Athene sent by Zeus falls down upon earth like a shooting star and many regard the incident as

an omen from Zeus portending peace or war (II. 4. 79 sq.).

When Aphrodite, in the guise of an old woman, rouses Helen’s desire to meet Paris after his single combat with Menelaus, Helen happens to notice the supposed old woman’s “fair neck and lovely breast and sparkling eyes”.

She marvels realizing that this is

really Aphrodite (II. 3. 396 sq.). It might be said that emotion creates the god: affectus facit deum. The miracle and the supernatural cause the same emotions as the presence of the god and thus give rise to the belief in some divine agency behind the event.2

The same emotions may be

produced by a human being and in that case the individual in question becomes godlike.

He is held to possess the same active

power as that which constitutes divine nature and consequently he himself becomes divine.3

Telemachus offered to sacrifice to

Odysseus when the latter had been changed by Athene (Od. 16. 184 sq.); the sincerity of his words “surely thou art a god” is thus proved.4

Athene hung the aegis round Achilles’ shoulders and

enveloped his head in a burning cloud and though unarmed he put the attacking Trojans to flight merely by his terrifying aspect and his war-cry.

“There stood he and shouted aloud, and afar

1 Cf. II. 2.182 (Odysseus recognizes Athene by her voice); 13.70 sq. (Ajax knows a god

from behind by his stride and his legs; he says that the gods

are easy to discern). 2 Williger,

Hagios

6

sq.

denies

that

die Scheu vor der Gottheit als

ubernatiirliches Wesen* is characteristic of Homeric religion.

He defines this

sensation as "die natiirliche Furcht, die dem mythischen Gott entgegengebracht wird».

The

awe

inspired

other than "natural fear».

by

3 Cf. PFISTER, 1. c. 318 sq. 4 Cf. ib. 179.

the

miracle

Cf. supra.

seems, however, to be something

i9 off Pallas Athene uttered her voice, and spread terror unspeakable among the men of Troy . . .

And when they heard the brazen

voice of Aeacides, the souls of all of them were dismayed, and the horses of goodly manes were fain to'turn the chariots backward, for they boded anguish in their hearts” (II. 18. 217 sq.).1 Trojans were scattered in panic (229 sq.).

The

It is significant that the emotional element in the conception of the god, the subjective factor, is particularly prominent in the case of vivid religious experiences, in which man is put in direct communication with the god and is made the object of the god’s activity or at least a witness of it. The impressions produced by such experiences are of fundamental importance for the conception of the god. Whilst ready to rescue man in distress the god is also dangerous to approach.2 His power is formidable as well as useful, and man’s dealings with the divine may bring down punishment as well as help. While unable to do without the help of the gods man must at the same time always beware of their often incalculable wrath. Indeed, this uncertainty often leads to a very matter-of-fact attitude towards the gods. It is not always out of love or for senfimental reasons that man obeys their will: his only concern is often to take as much advantage of them as possible.

Thus not

seldom the only thing that keeps man from setting himself against a godds the fear of punishment. The punishment exacted in such cases resembles in some respects the reaction entailed by the violation of a tabu. The dangerous character of this offence is due to the fact that unless special precautions are taken the supernatural power is liable to become dangerous to man.3 The average man has not, as it were, sufficient power of resistance.

It is not themis to touch Poseidon’s sword4

and fear keeps men off it (II. 14. 386 sq.). As will be shown later on, not themis seems to be the Greek equivalent of tabu.5 The 1 Cf. the popular belief in the power of animals, especially horses, of seeing supernatural beings.

Cf. Od. 16. 160.

PICARD, ©sol eiucpavetc; 80.

2 Even the sight of the god can be hard to endure.

II. 20. 131.

X. 32, 18 sq.; VII. 19. 7. 3 Marett in Hastings Enc. s. v. Tabu; Nilsson, History 82. 4 For the interpretation of this passage cf. Leaf ad loc.

3 infra ch. VII.

Cf. Paus.

20 sword of the god as belonging to him and accordingly in a sense part of him partakes of his power and is thus dangerous to ap¬ proach.

Another instance is the story of Diomede’s combat with

Apollo.

Diomede "leapt upon Aeneas, knowing full well that

Apollo himself had spread his arms over him; yet reverenced he not even the great god ... So khrice he leapt on him, fain to slay him, and thrice Apollo beat back his glittering shield. And when the fourth time he sprang at him like a god, then Apollo the Fardarter spake to him with terrible shout: ‘Think, Tydeides, and shrink, nor desire to match thy spirit with gods; seeing there is no comparison of the race of immortal gods and of men that walk upon the earth’ ” (II. 5. 432 sq.). To attack Aeneas when he is under the protection of the god is to attack the god himself; the situation is thus exactly parallel to those cases in which a mortal is directly filled with divine power.

The description of

Apollo standing behind Aeneas and holding his hands over him is perhaps an anthropomorphic recasting of the original idea that Aeneas himself was invulnerable, i. e. possessed of a special power. As a rule, the punishment for such offences consists in death. Diomede refused to fight Glaucus until he was told whether the latter was a god or a man. ’’But if thou art some immortal come down from heaven, then will not I fight with heavenly gods. Nay moreover even Dry as’ son mighty Lycurgus was not for long when he strove with heavenly gods . . .

Cronos’ son made him

blind, and he was not for long, because he was hated of all the im¬ mortal gods”

(II. 6. 128 sq.).

Dione comforts Aphrodite, when

she had been wounded by Diomede, by telling her that "he of a surety is not longlived that fighteth with immortals, nor ever do his children prattle upon his knees at his returning from war and terrible fray” (II. 5. 407 sq.).

Exceptions to this rule may

be explained on the analogy of some cases in which a tabu does not apply to everybody.

Certain happily endowed individuals

may infringe the prohibitions, those, namely, who are themselves possessed of supernatural power, priests, medicine-men, kings, and others.1

In a similar manner a man who has been endowed

with divine power may, as we have seen, encounter even gods. Diomede could attack Aphrodite when Athene had given him 1

Cf. Lehmann, Mana 50; SODERBLOM in Hastings Enc. s. v. Holiness p. 739.

21 power, but he could not resist Apollo, because the power that Athene had granted him did not enable him to conquer any god he met.1

This is clearly seen from Athene’s injunction to him

(supra p. 8 sq.) and from Dione’s words, that Diomede would be defeated if he met one of the stronger gods (II. 5. 410 sq.). The above discussion will have shown that what constitutes the specifically divine is the supernatural power of the gods. It is only by acquiring such power that man becomes really god¬ like. 1 Cf. 11. 11.543.

III.

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL.

It is of course only in exceptional cases that man receives such great divine power as to be able to bear comparison with the gods and thus to become really godlike.

But even the normal power

of man may be regarded as supernatural.

In fact supernatural

power is found not only in the gods but in everything that is active. Here we are not concerned with such supernatural power as is directly transmitted by the gods to a person or a thing, as when a man becomes godlike, or some object is regarded as potent in virtue of its close connection with a god. In those cases, it is true, the power is detached from the gods and its effects are brought about without any active cooperation on the part of the god, but it is nevertheless regarded as the power of the god, temporarily or permanently lodged in the person or the object in question. It is also transmitted from one definite god. But power may be found in human beings and in things without being associated with or owing its origin to any particular godi On the contrary it forms an inherent and essential quality of its owner and is consequently the cause of the effects produced by him.

In other words we are here concerned with a supernatural

mode of happening in which the gods take no direct part.

The

divine power influences things from without, but this power works within the thing. The occurrence in Greece of the conception of supernatural forces at work in things1 has naturally been noted by several scho¬ lars. The limits commonly assigned to the spread of this conception seem, however, much too narrow.

In Greece it is held to linger

on mainly as a mere survival of a primitive stage of religious thought which has in the main been left behind. Relegated to the domain of popular superstition it did not regain its importance 1

For convenience sake ’thing’ is here and in the following used to denote

anything non-divine, material objects as well as men and animals.

23 until the general revival in the Hellenistic period of popular and superstitious beliefs after the collapse of the official religion.1 In Hellenistic times supernatural power is denoted by the terms arete and dynamis among others.

If the theory outlined above

is correct these words must have acquired a new connotation in the Hellenistic period, being then used of the supernatural.

Dy¬

namis, at least, always denotes power, and the change of meaning would thus imply that the power had previously been regarded as natural.2 If the power may be regarded as natural, the distinction between natural and supernatural discussed above seems to break down. This distinction, it will be remembered, might be summed up as follows.

An event is supernatural if it is conceived to be caused ^

by a force, natural if no active force is held to be behind it.

Now

if the force itself can be natural, it is obviously impossible to make the conception of force the basis of the supernatural.

Further it

has been said that in the idea of power itself the supernatural is virtually contained. The solution of this dilemma lies in the fact that we often refer to forces without actually thinking of a force. If a person is said to have strength and this statement is taken to imply that strength is a natural quality, no clear conception of a real force can have been present.

If the expression ‘someone has

strength’ is to be interpreted literally, then strength must be a quality. As such it is, however, not observable; we infer its exist¬ ence from its supposed effects.

It is thus an inner, spiritual

quality, to which may be applied everything that has been said about power; its nature is wholly mystical, it can only be defined by its effects, with which it must, however, be identical.

It is

thus ultimately a causa sui. Now this is obviously not what was meant by natural power. The expression cited above need imply no more than that the person in question, if he were asked, let us say, to lift a heavy burden, would be able to do so. The notion of power does not present itself in this connection; the force is 1

Nilsson,

History

S i;

Rohr,

Der

okkulte

Kraftbegriff.

Cf.

however

Pfister in R.-E. s. v. Kultus.

2 Cf.

Rohr,

op. cit. passim, e. g. 5 sq., 77, 96.

Weinreich in Dittenberger’s Sylloge3 III: 1172;

For the

use

of arete cf.

Reinach in BCH IX (1885)

261 sq.; Picard, 6sol liutpavsig 81; Wilamovitz, Glaube II. 130, 1.; Pfister,

1. c. 2116 sq.; KEYSSNER, Gottesvorstellung 49 sq.; Gernet, Pensee juridique 281

sq.

24 not conceived as an active cause, nor is it used to explain the phenomenon.

The same is also true of the concept of cause, ex¬

pressions denoting causality being used as “shorthand-expressions”1 for hypothetical clauses. The natural is thus spoken of in the same terms as the super¬ natural. Events which have once suggested a force as their cause may become so commonplace and familiar that when the sub¬ jective element is lost the conception of a force no longer enters into the perception of them.

They are no longer regarded with

wonder or amazement and accordingly lose their supernatural significance. The loss of the subjective element robs the conception of its essential constituent, that is, its emotional contents.2 But the term force continues in use in these cases, possibly owing to the inadequacy of language.

In this way the origin of the hybrid

concept ‘natural force’ becomes intelligible. The term natural is thus used in two different senses: without power and without supernatural power.

The unstable character

of the concept is clearly shown by the fact that as soon as an attempt is made to define natural power more precisely, it is in¬ vested with attributes that make it supernatural.

When the

conception of power is made the object of conscious reflection it is seen to involve the idea of the supernatural. It is impossible to form a clear idea of a natural force. In individual cases, therefore, it is often difficult to decide whether we are concerned with natural or supernatural power. No clear distinction has ever been drawn between the two cate¬ gories, which merge into each other without intermediate stages and are even denoted by the same word. As regards the occurrence of these beliefs in Greek religion, it has been shown that the power of the gods was really regarded as supernatural. As to the power residing in things, it is more difficult to draw the line between the natural and the supernatural.

Dynamis denotes “das einer

Person oder einem Gegenstande innewohnende Vermogen zu irgend einer Wirkung im

Allgemeinen,

mittelbar oder unmittelbar”.3

1 Cf. Tennant in Hastings Enc. s. v. Force p. 70 b.

2

Cf. Marett in Hastings Enc. s. v. Supranaturalism p. 120 b.

3 Schmidt,

Synonymik III. 663.

For the following cf. Stephanus, The¬

saurus s. v. Suvaptg, apsxY), and dyaFog.

25 We read of the dynamis of the earth, the power of engendering crops1, the power or strength of wine2, and the power of natural products in general to cause beneficial or injurious effects.3 Owing to these qualities they may be used as medicine; and medicines themselves have power, and are sometimes even called powers (dynameis),4

In medical writers dynamis means ‘an active force

or substance’.5

The dynamis of a coin is its purchasing power,

value, and valid currency.6 The dynamis of a word is its meaning.7 8 Arete is used in a sense that closely corresponds to that of dynamis. The two words bear the same relation to each other as capacity to power.

The soil that possesses dynamis can also be

said to have arete*, i. e. fertility, and if so it is good9 (agathos). Instead of speaking of the arete of the warrior one may use the expression strategike dynamis10 and so on. In cases like those mentioned above we may be concerned with references to natural capacity.

A similar usage occurs, it

is seen, in modern languages without implying the notion of anything supernatural, although we generally prefer to qualify the power by adjectives. Very often, however, the only difference between this and an admittedly supernatural and occult force seems to be merely that in the latter case the objects are invested with qualities that they do not in reality possess.11 It is impossible to discover any conceptual difference as far as the notion of power is concerned between e. g. the strength of wine and the occult power of a stone.

In both cases we are concerned with a power

which is not capable of exact definition and whose existence can be inferred only from its effects. A survey of the use of the word arete in the philosophers shows, as has been suggested above, that whenever they attempt to define 1 Geopon. IV. 1,4; Xenoph. Oeconom. 16.4; cf. Geopon. II. 21, 5. 2 Geopon. VII, i, 5. 3 Xenoph. Inst. Cyri VIII. 8, 14. 4 Rohr, op. cit. 8.

Plato, Cratylus 394 B.

5 Cf. Stephanus s. v. 6 Xenoph. Exped. Cyri I. 5, 6; Lucianus De luctu 10. 7 Plato, Cratylus I. c. 8 Thuc. I. 2, 4. 9 Xenoph. Inst. Cyri III. 2, 18; Geopon. II. 21, 1. 10 Polyb. I. 84, 6. 11 Cf. Rohr, op. cit. 9.

26 power more accurately, it dissolves into something supernatural. Many instances from Plato and Aristotle might be adduced in support of this view.

Starting from the popular conception1

Plato defines arete thus (Rep. 352 E sq.)2: "Tell me then — would you say that a horse has a specific work or function? — I would. — Would you'be willing to define the work of a horse or of anything else to be that which one can do only with it or best with it? — I don’t understand, he replied. — Well, take it this way: is there any¬ thing else with which you can see except the eyes? — Certainly not. — Again, could you hear with anything but ears? — By no means. — Would you not rightly say that these are the functions of these (organs)? — By all means. — Once more, you could use a dirk to trim vine branches and a knife and many other instruments? — Certainly. •— But nothing so well, I take it, as a pruning-knife fashioned for this purpose. — That is true. — Must we not then assume this to be the work or function of that? — We must. — You will now, then, I fancy, better apprehend the meaning of my question when I asked whether that is not the work of a thing which it only or it better than anything else can perform. — Well, he said, I do un¬ derstand and I agree that the work of anything is ijaat. — Very good, said I. — Do you not also think that there is a specific virtue or excellence {arete) of everything for which a specific work or function is appointed? Let us return to the same example.

The eyes we say have a function? — They have. —

Is there also a virtue of the eyes? — There is. — And was there not a function of the ears? — Yes. — And so a virtue? — Also a virtue. — And what of all other things? note now.

Is the case not the same? — The same. — Take

Could the eyes possibly fulfil their function well if they lacked

their own proper excellence and had in its stead the defect? — How could they?, he said; for I presume you meant blindness instead of vision. — Whatever, said I, the excellence may be.

For I have not yet come to that

question, but am only asking wdiether whatever operates will not do its own work well by its own virtue and badly by its own defect. — That much, he said, you may safely affirm to be true. — Then the ears, too, if deprived of their own virtue will do their work ill? —- Assuredly. — And do we then apply the same principle to all things? — I think so.”

Aristotle has the same view and it is evident that he too, as is his habit, takes the popular way of thinking as his point of departure (Eth. Nic.

E 7. p. 1097 b. 24 sq.)3;

“This (= a definition of happiness) will be best gained, I think, by asking,

what is the function of man?

For as the goodness and the ex-

1 Smith, Dydsbegrepet i den asldre graeske literatur, Edda 1 (1914) p. 243; cf. Schmidt, Ethik I. 298 sq.

2 Transl. by P. Shorley (The Loeb Class. Library'. 3 Transl. by F. H. Peters (London 1881).

27 cellence of a piper and a sculptor, or the practiser of any art, and generally of those who have any function or business to do, lies in that function, so man’s good would seem to lie in his function, if he has any. But can we suppose that, while a carpenter and a cobbler has a function and a business of his own, man has no business and no function assigned to him by nature?

Nay, surely as his several members, eye and hand and

foot, plainly have each his own function, so we must suppose that man also has some function over and above all these.”

Arete, as the power of performing a task well, involves the con¬ ception of end, the power being defined by reference to the end it serves.1 As this end is not just any sort of activity but a particular function characteristic of its owner, arete must clearly refer to different qualities in different cases. Horses and dogs have distinct kinds of arete, and so has man.2

This way of thinking further

presupposes a process of evaluation. Arete was the power of per¬ forming a work well and anyone who does that is good in his particular sphere.

The standard by which anything is judged

is the idea of that thing, which is also an ideal; the man who has arete and is agathos is thus perfect in his own line. perfection, says Aristotle.3

Arete implies

Just as a physician or a fluteplayer

is perfect when there is no flaw in his professional skill {arete), so one may also speak of a perfect sycophant or a perfect thief “since we may call them good, too’'.4 A good horse is as a horse should be and similarly everything that fulfils the demands made upon it may be called good. Arete thus causes the ideal conception which it contains to be realized, but it is at the same time the result of this realization, viz. the perfection of the thing.

On the other

hand the concept, the idea, causes the thing to be determined. To Aristotle the conception is the essence of the thing and at the Phys.

246 b 3.: ext 8s xat cpapev dxdaas ehou iag dpsxas sv xco

7cpog xi Titos §X£[V-

1 Arist.

Eth. Nic. 1106 a 22: Y) too dv^ptOTtoo dpsxy] sI'y) av egtg dtp’

Yjs dyaftos dv{fpto7iog ytvexat xai dtp’ yjs su to eaoxoo epyov drco8tbaet. Cf. Plato, Rep. 601 D:

Ouxoov

dpsiY) xai xaXXos xai SpfroiYjs sxdaxoo axsooug xai £q)0U

•xai xpagecos 00 npog aXAo it, ft xyjv xP£^av £ot£, ^pos rjv av exaaxov fj Tce7iotYjpsvov Y| xstfoxos; 2 Plato, Rep. 335 B.

Cf. Ps. Plato, uspi dpsiYjs I A.; Aristoteles Pol. 1276 b

16 sq. 3 Metaph. 1021 b 20 sq. (dpsxY] xe/UCcoats xts); cf. Phys. 246 a 13 sq. 4 Metaph. 1021 b 12 sq.

Cf. Plato, Rep. 333 E sq.

28

same time a force which realizes this essence.1 In other words arete is a power.2 Thus cause and effect merge into one. From the point of view of end the essential quality of the thing is the power that effects the fulfilment of the end. The end is an activity but at the same time identical with the concept contained in it. Thus the concept becomes a power immanent in the thing and realizing itself. This way of thinking may well be ultimately derived from the wide¬ spread and primitive tendency to treat everything as in some sense animate.3 It seems evident, then, that arete and agathos may imply a real conception of power involving the assumption of the super¬ natural. In Homer we find the same general view of arete as that which forms the starting-point of discussion in Plato and Aristotle. Consequently the same argument may be applied here. Arete means efficiency.4 Efficiency is defined by its purpose, which is identical with the concept. Homer speaks of the arete of horses (II. 23. 276), of feet (II. 20. 411), of arete in fighting (II. 15. 642), and similarly of good physicians (II. 2. 732), of a good king (II. 3.179), good advice (II. 2. 273), a good helper (II. 23. 770), good tendance (Od. 24. 249). In these cases good obviously means efficient and useful. Applied in a general way to a person arete refers to the qualities demanded of a man, i. e. masculine virtue, and agathos means 'such as he ought to be’. Ebeling5 expresses it as follows: “ein Mann wie er sein soil, un homme comme il faut. Sicut enim medicum, sic bonum virum eum dicit Homerus, cui nihil deest eorum quae virum decent.” The terms arete and agathos therefore imply both excellence and 1 Hagerstrom, Rom. Obligationsbegriff 241 sq., 280; Zeller, Phil. d.. Griechen II. 2 p. 328, 480; cf. II. 1 p. 687 sq. - Arist. Rhet. 1366 a 36 sq.; Paideia 26.

cf. Plato,

Rep.

477 C sq.; cf. also Jaeger,

3 Hagerstrom, op. cit. 278 sq.; Zeller, op. cit. II. 1 p. 663 f. 4 Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lex. s. v.; Smith, 1. c. 242 sq. Cf. further Jaeger, op. cit. 26 sq.; Wilamovitz, Platon I. 59; id. Sappho und Simonides 169 sq.; Koch, Quae fuerit ante Socratem vocabuli apexf) notio; Ludwig, Quae fuerit vocis apsxrj vis ac natura; Hoffmann, Die ethische Terminologie 71 sq., 92 sq.; Schmidt, Ethik I. 295 sq.; Gerlach, ’Avvjp dy 3 Lex. Homer, s. v. dyaD-dj.

29

perfection; it is significant that agathos has no comparative or super¬ lative.

Arete has here clearly the same general sense as in Plato.

In both cases we are concerned with a conception of power. Only on this assumption can it be explained why arete is a power and at the same time the result produced by the action of this power, good reputation and fame.1 Logically speaking arete ought thus to be a supernatural quality and sometimes it was no doubt conceived as such. In many cases, it is true, epithets such as “godlike” etc. probably did not retain much of their original meaning, but on the other hand the view of the king as endowed with supernatural power is still traceable in Homer and such power is sometimes also attributed to other men.2 It is, however, characteristic that, as we have seen, human superiority is usually regarded as in the last resort coming from the gods and not as an original part of man’s equipment.

The

supernatural element sometimes found in men and things must be identical in kind with that which constitutes divine nature. There can only exist one kind of supernatural power, for its only quality is that of being supernatural.

This was expressed in the

belief that the gods were the sources of all power.

They possess

arete themselves, and Zeus increases and diminishes man’s arete at will3.

Their works are immortal and of surpassing value, and

conversely everything that has such exceeding value can be called divine.

Achilles’ horses, which his father had received from Po¬

seidon, surpassed all others in arete, being immortal, and his armour, forged by Hephaestus, could not without danger be borne by another man.4

That human perfection was conceived to be of

divine origin is further seen from the fact that the descendants of the gods were usually regarded as eminent persons.5 1

Schmidt, Ethik I. 295; Jaeger, op. cit. 26, 3; Gernet, op. cit. 281.

2 Cf. Weinreich, Menekrates Zeus 84 sq.; Pfister in R.-E. s. v. Kultus 2126 sq., s. v. Epiphanie (Suppl. IV) 319 sq.; Glotz, Cite grecque 46 sq.; Wilamowitz,

Glaube

I. 21 sq.,

II. 262. — Cf. Od. 19. 109 sq.; II. 2. 79 sq. (Aga¬

memnon’s dream must be true, for he is aptaxog).

Cf. also II. 12. 312, 13. 218,

16. 605, 22. 434; Od. 5. 36, 8. 173, 11. 484 and II. 11. 761, 22. 394; Od. 8. 467 (worship as a god). 3 II. 9. 498; 20. 242.

Hesychius translates &pery| by 3-eCa Suvap-tg.

4 II. 23. 276, cf. 17. 443 sq., 475 sq. and 20. 259 sq. — II. 17. 201 sq. 5 E. g. 4. 27.

II.

5.635 sq.,

cf. 6. 191; 16. 521 sq.;

20. 105 sq.; 21. 190 sq.; Od.

30 On the other hand arete is also conceived as a normal human faculty.

In the light of what has been said above this statement

will need no further elucidation. Here it need only be added that in so far as arete was part of man’s moira it tended to become a natural capacity; that which belongs to fate is, as will be shown later on, often regarded as something natural as distinct from the effects of the activity of the gods. For the same reason occasionally heightened power is liable to be regarded as supernatural and hence as due to divine influence. In relation to the divine power the powers lodged in things thus become secondary; the power if conceived as such is always some¬ thing divine and the gods are set apart from everything else in virtue of their supernatural character. In this conception of power as the essential characteristic of the gods and of all power as something ultimately divine the Homeric view is in complete agreement with Greek thought in general.

So far there is conse¬

quently no reason to doubt that Homer’s description of the gods actually reflects a living faith.

IV.

PRE-ANIMISM,. ANIMISM AND ANIMATISM.

According to a well-known theory, the conception of super¬ natural power forms the basis of religious development. It is the raw-material of religion, out of which personal gcds are made. It forms the background of religious belief, but in advanced re¬ ligions only faint traces of it are left.1 This theory has of late been subjected to criticism from various quarters.2

This is not the place for a survey of the discussion,

still less for a pronouncement on the general question in full. The theory has, however, been applied in a more or less modified form to Greek religion and, what especially concerns us here, it has supplied the general principles by the aid of which some scholars have endeavoured to explain the growth and development of the Homeric gods.3

It will probably be admitted that this

application of the theory may reasonably be discussed without going very far into the general question of the fundamentals of religion. The starting-point, then, is the belief in undefined, impersonal powers or one all-pervading, undefined and impersonal power. ^Personal gods were evolved by the gradual attribution to the im¬ personal power of mental and personal qualities.! Here several stages are distinguished. The belief in impersonal powers is called pre-animism or, in the terminology of Pfister, orendism.4 According 1 For a general survey see Schmidt, Handbuch H4sq.; Lehmann, Mana 60

sq.

Cf.

NlLSSOX,

History

81

sq.,

104

sq.,

166 sq.;

Gotter

380 sq.;

Pfister, Religion der Griechen 105 sq.; id. Griech. und rom. Rel. 172 sq. and

in

R.-E.

mism

XI

s. v.

Kultus

2112 sq.

In the following I use the term pre-ani¬

of the belief in impersonal power as distinguished from animatism, or

the view of nature as animated. 2 See

Schmidt,

op.

cit.

144

Cf. Nilsson, Primitiv religion 15, 29 sq. sq.;

28 (1930). 343 sq.

3

Especially Nilsson and Pfister.

4 Cf. Rel. d. Griechen 108.

Lehmann,

1. c.;

Weinreich, ARW

32 to Pfister the development "from orendism to the epic Pantheon' has proceeded on the following lines.1 2

Orendism is defined as a

belief in impersonal forces that may be lodged in any object. Now there exists an infinite variety of impersonal, nameless ob¬ jects endowed with orenda which are worshipped and paid attention to in the cult, and these Pfister identifies with Usener’s Augenblicksgoiter.2 As a result of the coordination of this infinite variety of separate phenomena under one concept, the orenda inherent in them becomes a Sondergott.

A Sondergott is characterised by

the fact that he has no proper name but is referred to merely by an epithet indicating his function.3 The Sondergotter are no longer mere impersonal powers, but neither are they fully developed personalities; they have as yet no proper names and no mythology. When at length a Sondergott acquires a proper name and definite personal characteristics a god arises. come gods proper;

All Sondergotter do not be¬

those whose names remained transparent,

like Uranos, Helios, and Hestia, never grew into fully developed personalities with many myths and with cults of their own.4 The general idea underlying this evolutionist theory of religion may perhaps be summed up as follows.

Anthropomorphism re¬

presents a comparatively late stage of development.

The an¬

thropomorphic deities possess fully developed personalities, but their supernatural qualities are less pronounced.

The most pri¬

mitive deities on the other hand have supernatural power but their personal qualities are only rudimentary. Accordingly the ge¬ neral tendency must have been to make them anthropomorphic and natural, the personal and definite qualities gradually super¬ seding the impersonal and mysterious ones.

The most primitive

stage is clearly the one at which the objects of faith are un¬ defined, impersonal and supernatural forces, or one single force conceived as an all-pervading essence. If the conclusions arrived at in the preceding sections are 1 R.-E. Rel. 185.

XI

2186

sq.;

Rel.

d.

Griechen

123,

cf.

106; Griech. und rom.

2 Griech. und rom. Rel. 185. 3 1. c.:

»also

konnte

man die Vielheit der Erscheinungen je unter einem

einheitlichen Begriff zusammenfassen, die heilende Kraft als Iatros bezeichnen, die Sturm zios.»

beschworende als

4 lb. 187.

Eudanemos,

die

hagelabwehrende

als

Chala-

33 correct, supernatural# power is the essential attribute even of anthropomorphic gods. This need not however be of decisive im¬ portance.

If the anthropomorphic gods are essentially forces

it seems still more probable that there exists some connection between them and the forces inherent in things. In support of the theory it may be pointed out that the per¬ sonality of the gods seems to have been developed gradually: the anthropomorphization is not complete in Homer. As has already been shown, the gods have certain defects in their personal equipmeniAThis limitation is closely bound up with the fact that they often have a special sphere where they reign supreme and cannot be emulated, but outside which their power is restricted. Athene has a special power of granting artistic talent and Apollo inspires poets and seers.f These gods also possess fully developed per¬ sonalities and their special power is only one aspect of their cha¬ racter. Other gods, however, have nothing but their special power, and their activities are confined within the limits assigned to that C power.

When Aphrodite threatens to desert Helen if she does

not obey her command, it is evident that the goddess can intervene in Helen’s life only by granting or denying her those gifts which she can bestow in her capacity of goddess of Love.

Her sphere

of activity is restricted to this function, apart from certain general faculties, common to all gods, such as the power of rendering a person invisible.

“Then in wrath bright Aphrodite spoke to her:

‘Provoke me not, rash woman, lest in mine anger I desert thee, and hate thee even as now I love thee beyond measure, and lest I devise grievous enmities between both, even betwixt Trojans and Achaeans, and so thou perish in evil wise’ ” (II. 3. 414 sq.). With this threat, says Ameis, “iiberschreitet Aphrodite ihren eigentlichen Machtbereich’’.1 He refers to the words of Zeus (II. 5. 428): “Not unto thee, my child, are given the works of war; but follow thou after the loving tasks of wedlock, and to all these things shall fleet Ares and Athene look’’. It should, however, be remem¬ bered that Helen’s whole position in Troy was due to Aphrodite’s patronage.

Through her help she won Paris, and it was without

doubt owing to the charm granted her by the goddess that the 1

Ameis-Hentze-Cauer, Homers Ilias (Lpz. 1913) ad loc.

3 — 35259-

E- Ehnmark.

34 Trojans did not resent her presence in Troy,1 The story of her re¬ conciliation with Menelaus points in the same direction.2 Helios is a personal god, endowed with human qualities; he has descendants, speaks with other gods and resents personal attacks.

Nevertheless, he was clearly incapable of avenging him¬

self personally on Odysseus’ comrades.

He could only call upon

the other gods to wreak vengeance on his enemy, threatening, if they refused, to hide in Hades and shine for the dead (Od. 12. 377 sq.).3 As a personification of the sun Helios can only act in a certain way in spite of his human characteristics. Like Aphrodite he can compel others to obey only if they are dependent on his activity. A partly analogous case is the struggle between the river Xanthus

(Scamander)

and

Hephaestus

(II. 21.331 sq.).

Hera

cannot check the rage of the river, which threatens to become dangerous to Achilles. The river is here represented as an anthropo¬ morphic god (213) but against the power of this god only He¬ phaestus can prevail.

Hephaestus is here conceived both as fire

itself and as its master.

He is said to light and put out a fire

(342, 381); on the other hand his menos is clearly that of the fire,, and the combat between the two gods is represented as a struggle between two natural forces.4 The closer the relationship between a god and a natural or psychological phenomenon the less developed his personality seems. Those gods in particular whose names are understood as denoting a natural object or phenomenon can scarcely ever attain to a fully developed personality.

Helios, for example, cannot be di¬

stinguished from the sun, whose name he bears, and the same naturally holds good of all personifications of things. Personified abstractions, e. g. Eris and Eros, are more apt to be regarded as real persons. When the Phaeacians save Odysseus from the revenge of Poseidon by bringing him home to Ithaca, it is but natural that the god should punish them (Od. 13. 128 sq.).

Here Poseidon is.

1 II. 3. 156 sq. 2 Ilias Parva, fr. 17; cf. Quint. Smyrn. XIII. 385 sq. 3 In Od. 12.349 Helios is credited with the power of destroying Odysseus’ ships.

Cf. Nagelsbach I. 97.

4 Cf. Nilsson, History 144.

35 represented as a wholly anthropomorphic god and the only in¬ dication that he has ever been anything else is the fact that his vengeance must evidently be carried out at sea; the sea-god has no power on land.

In Homer, however, there is another explanation

of the punishment of the Phaeacians which has been allowed to remain although it clashes with this one.

The coming disaster

was, it is said, foretold in' an old prophecy from the time of king Alcinous’

father.

According to this prediction Poseidon would

be angry with his people, because they gave “safe escort to all men” (Od. 13. 172 sq.).

The Phaeacians who lived in an island

had no doubt numerous opportunities of helping ship-wrecked seafarers and they seem to have made good use of them. Odysseus is not mentioned at all in this version.

Evidently Poseidon, who

does not share the altruistic attitude of the Phaeacians, grudges that anybody should cross the sea in safety. His anger represents the rage of the sea, a notion that has parallels in popular beliefs from other parts of the world.1 There are also certain indications that the gods are not always free agents. When the gods are called to witness an oath it is un¬ derstood that they cannot refuse to fulfil this function.

Aga¬

memnon commands rather than begs the gods when invoking them as witnesses to the oath to be sworn before the single combat between Paris and Menelaus (II. 3. 276 sq.): “Father Zeus, that rulest from Ida, most glorious, most great, and thou Sun that seest all things and hearest all things, and ye Rivers and thou Earth,

and ye that in the underworld punish men outworn,

whosoever sweareth falsely; be ye witnesses, and watch over the faithful oath.

If Alexander slay Menelaus, then let him have

Helen to himself and all her possessions; and we will depart on our seafaring ships. But if golden-haired Menelaus slay Alexander, then let the Trojans give back Helen and all her possessions and pay the Argives the recompense that is seemly, such as shall live among men that shall be hereafter. But if so be that Priam and Priam’s sons will not pay the recompense unto me when Alexander falleth, then will I fight on thereafter for the price of sin, and abide here till I compass the end of war.’’ 1

Cf. Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament II. 4i6sq.;J. Macdonald

in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland vol. XX (1891) p. 125 sq.; Handworterb. des deutschen Aberglaubens s. v. Meergeister.

It is taken for granted that the gods are to act as witnesses and avengers to any oath, or any agreement confirmed by oath without questioning the stipulations.1 To sum up, the full personal equipment of the gods is due to a later development.

But what is the starting-point of that de¬

velopment? The evidence adduced shows only that the gods were probably not always, and, some of them, never became, personal gods in the full sense of the word; .that they sometimes lacked free will, and that their sphere of action may have been and may still be in some respects restricted. Yet it does not follow from these and similar instances that the gods ever completely lacked per¬ sonality or that gods properly so called originated from impersonal f0rCeSIt certainly cannot be proved that pre-animism is to be fegarded as a specific stage, and still less that it is original — that during a certain period there were no gods, the sole objects of faith being impersonal forces.

This is true not only of Greece.

A pure pre¬

animism has not been found in any primitive community, and the conception of an impersonal power does not seem particularly primitive. forces.

It is more nearly related to the modern notion of natural

The supposed belief that the world is governed by such

agencies savours too strongly of modern scientific theory.2 In reply to objections of this kind certain adherents of a preanimistic theory would no doubt answer that the priority of the belief in power is not necessarily chronological; but that the idea of impersonal power is psychologically antecedent to that of per¬ sonal gods because it forms the basis of that conception.

Power

is so to speak a special category in which things are conceived. “Without the general, however unconscious, conception of a power the detached conception of the expression of power is impossible.”3 1 Cf.

Pfister in R.-E. XI. 2164 sq.

Threshold

RETT,

77

sq.

The

of anthropomorphism is shown by 1. 302: Zeus did not grant their re¬

ence quest.

Cf. HedIsn, Gotterstudien 12 sq.

2 Cf. Schmidt, Handbuch

3

Nilsson,

gieuses des

Cf. here also II. 3.298 sq. and Ma-

gradual sapping of the belief under the influ¬

1930. 124 sq.

religions

149 sq.,

153 sq.; Weinreich, ARW 28. 349.

History 166; cf. id. in Revue d’histoire et de philosophic relih Lund

and

in

Actes du V:e Congres internationale d’histoire

p. 98 sq.: »Das Mana aussert sich in Einzelfallen, bei

einzelnen Personen und Gegenstanden, man weiss aber, dass die vielen Einzel-

37 Power certainly forms the essential element of the conception of the gods. But this does not prove that the existence of impersonal power is assumed. If power is a category it must have been regarded in the same way as other categories.

There were names for different colours

and perhaps even a generic term “colour”, but there is no proof that the colour itself was thought to exist independently of co¬ loured objects. Nor were the objects regarded as having “imper¬ sonal” colours. In the same manner the gods have not been thought of as possessing impersonal power and still less were impersonal powers held to have any separate existence.

In fact, it should

be borne in mind that the expression impersonal power has no meaning until the power is hypostasized and dissociated from the object in which it resides. If the power is thought of as a quality or faculty we can no more call it personal or impersonal than any other quality or faculty.

If the characteristic element of pre¬

animism, whether defined as a stage of evolution or as a logical or psychological postulate, is the belief in impersonal powers this belief must accordingly refer to independently existing powers. There can be no doubt that power was actually regarded as a quality.* 1 Power is the capacity to act and capacity necessarily presupposes

somebody or something that

is the quality of the man who is agathos.

possesses it.

Arete

Ability in itself does

not exist, but on the other hand there may be able persons. In partial contradiction to his general theory Pfister says that the “gods” of “orendism”, i. e. pre-animism, were “krafterfullte Gegenstande oder Menschen oder Tiere oder Pflanzen”, for which he uses the general term fetishes.2 This actually amounts to the ad¬ mission that the powers were not believed to have any separate existence outside their bearers. For it is not the power of the fetish that acts, but the fetish itself in virtue of its power.3

ausserungen gleichartig lichen

gleichartig sind, sind.

Ausdruck

So

entsteht

erhalt

und

weil

die

sich daran kniipfenden Assoziationen

eine allgemeine Vorstellung, die auch sprachdadurch weiter ausgebildet und gefestigt wird» ;

cf. Arbman, Seele und Mana 338. 1 Cf. Marett in Enc. Brit. s. v. Animatism p. 974. 2 Griech. und rom. Rel. 185. 3 Cf. ANKERMANN, Religion der Naturvolker 147; 280; Arbman, Seele und Mana 304 sq.

USENER, Gotternamen

»

3

The evidence supplied by cult points in the same direction It is not the powers themselves that are the objects of cult but things and beings that possess power, i. e. are strong and active. This fact is the more important as the cult shows the attitude of the average man. Not until comparatively late is the power of the god hypostasized in the cult. ' The fact that power can be transmitted proves nothing to the contrary. A god can grant power just as he can change a person’s outward appearance. In a case like this there is no need to suppose that the appearance existed before it was bestowed upon the person in question.

Such a suggestion would presuppose the existence

at an early stage of realism in the scholastic sense of the word. The idea that contact with or proximity to a god results in the transmission of power is not more difficult to understand than that a coloured object stains, though colour nevertheless exists only as a quality. Since the power may reside either in an animate being or in a thing, the distinction between the personal and the impersonal could perhaps be applied to the owners of the power even if the power is neither personal nor impersonal. Pre-animism could then be defined not as a belief in impersonal forces but as a belief in objects filled with power as distinguished from the belief in living divine beings.

Even in this modified form, however, the

pre-animistic theory presents difficulties.

The difference between

the animate and the inanimate, though it seems natural to us, was apparently, at any rate in its modern form, strange to a more primitive way of thinking. The primitive mind draws a different line of demarcation between the personal and the impersonal. Objects in which power is lodged cannot simply be described as impersonal. As has been pointed out above, the way in which the powers residing in the objects, or rather the objects them¬ selves, act is governed by a definite purpose.1

This presupposes

that the object has a will of its own, that it is animated, if we may take that term to imply not the existence of a substantial soul, detached from the object, but the presence in the object of certain mental qualities, such as will, consciousness however vague, etc.2 1 Supra p. 27 sq. 2 Cf.

Hagerstrom,

rett, Threshold

138.

Vergleich

70; Rom. Obligationsbegriff 278 sq.; Ma-

39 Certain linguistic facts seem to afford additional proof that this theory is correct and that accordingly animatism as defined by Marett1 must be preferred to pre-animism, at any rate where Greek religion is concerned. It seems nowadays to be a generally accepted view that the classification of the nouns into various genders, at least in the Indo-Germanic languages, was originally based not on a difference of gender but on a distinction between the animate and the inanimate.2 The three genders are not com¬ mensurable categories: the masculine and feminine genders form the genus animatum which represents the personal and individual, the active and mobile, as distinct from the neuter gender, the genus inanimatum, designating the passive and inanimate.

The

Indo-Germanic neuter gender is almost exclusively made up of words denoting objects or abstract ideas.

Some things belonging

to this semantic category, however, are not neuter; the objects they denote were apparently thought of as living beings.

The

names of rivers are masculine or feminine; the running water is alive but the sea is a dead thing except when stormy.3 Trees are feminine because they grow and consequently live, but their fruits are neuter. »Der Baum wurde als die Gebarerin, die Frucht dagegen als das Geborene betrachtet.»4 Here we are concerned with an original semi-personification; it is no mere chance that in later times personified objects regularly preserve their original gender, and that neuter nouns are compara¬ tively rarely personified.5

Wilamowitz has expressed a similar

idea: »Man konnte sagen, die Sprache selbst hatte mit der Personifikation angefangen, als sie den Abstrakta mannliches und weibliches Geschlecht gab».6 This is seen to be equally true of things. 1

in

Marett

dency

of the

Enc.

Brit. s. v. Animatism p. 973: »Animatism is the ten¬

primitive mind to regard and treat the inanimate, in so far as

it is held to be sacred, as if it were animated — that is, alive and endowed with feelings and a will of its own». 2 Meillet,

Linguistique historique 211 sq.; WackernageL, Vorlesungen

iiber Syntax II. 1 sq.; Josselin de Jong, De waardeeringsonderscheiding van »levend»

en

»levenloos».

Cf.

however Wundt, Volkerpsych. 1:2 p. 19 sq.;

Schmidt, Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde 334 sq. 3 Meillet, op. cit. 216 sq., Wackernagel, op. cit. 16, 31. 4 Wackernagel, op. cit. 32; cf. Meillet, op. cit. 217.

3 Cf. Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 20. 6 Glaube I. 26; cf. Usener, Gotternamen 375.

40 Life is here synonymous with the power of action.1

The distinc¬

tion between the animate and the inanimate is parallel to that drawn between objects with power and objects without power. As this differentiation of the genders can be traced back to primitive Indo-Germanic it no doubt reflects a relatively primitive way of thinking. It is not difficult to suggest a psychological explanation of this. To the primitive mind it must -be much easier to conceive a phenomenon as caused by a being which, like man, is endowed with a will and power of its own than by an impersonal force. Child psychology offers instructive parallels.

It must have been

natural to think of a tree that grows, bears fruit, withers, and dies, as a living being.

We still use expressions that embody similar

ideas; and poetical language, which as a rule reflects a more ancient way of thinking, is especially full of similar expressions. The poet animates the universe, as did ancient man. As Usener has pointed out, it can sometimes be proved that objects were regarded as persons.2

The verses sung when the

Eiresione, a branch of olive or laurel hung with a variety of fruits, the Greek counterpart of the Harvest-May, was fastened over the door of the house3, indicate that it was conceived as a person. In some cases the cult of arms affords indubitable evidence of a similar view.

Alexander of Pherae is said to have sacrificed to

his spear and given it the name of Tychon (the Hitter).4 The sceptre inherited by Agamemnon was the object of worship.

Pausanias

describes the practice as follows: "The god whom the Chaeroneans

1 Cf. also Marett, Threshold 68; id. in Enc. Brit. s. v. Animatism p. 974 (the

power-life-will

Enc.

formula);

s. v. Personification

p.

Otto, 782;

Das Heilige 158; FOUCART in Hastings

Boas

in Enc. of Social Sciences s. v. An¬

thropology p. 94 sq. 2 Gotternamen 284 Kern,

Religion

der

referentibus

speciem

Mythologie

772

sq.,

cf.

Griechen

no. 2

humanam;

—

sq.;

For DE

Pfister,

the

cult

Visser,

De

of objects see further Graecorum diis non

Reliquienkultus; Gruppe, Griech.

sq.; Farnell, Cults I. 4; id. Sondergotter 90 sq.; WlLAMO-

witz, Glaube I. 34; Maas, Heilige Steine (Rheinisches Museum 1929.

1 sq.);

Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion 207 sq.

3 Cf. Mannhardt II. 224, 256; Harrison, Prolegomena 80. 4 Plutarchus,

Vita

Pelop. 29.

an instance of a personal further infra p. 60 sq.

god

According to Usener, op. cit. 286, this is as

distinct from an »Augenblicksgott».

Cf.

41 honour most is the sceptre which Homer says Hephaestus made for Zeus and Zeus gave to Hermes, and Hermes to Pelops . . . This sceptre they worship naming it a spear; and that there is something divine about it is proved especially by the distinction it confers on its owners . . . sacrifices are offered to it daily, and a table is set beside it covered with all sorts of flesh and cakes”.1 In Aeschylus’ Septem the scout says about Parthenopaeus [529 (516) sq.]: “He swears by a spear he holds — in his assurance honouring it beyond a god and more dearly than his eyes”.2 Other circumstances also point to the conclusion that the objects by which oaths were sworn were regarded as persons.3 In some cases objects as well as gods are called upon to witness an oath, evidently with a view to ensuring that they shall punish the perjurer, like the gods who are summoned as witnesses.4 That this was the object of the practice may be inferred from the prevalent custom of treating the objects in the same way as the gods, and from the fact that things and natural objects are actually reported to have in¬ flicted punishment on perjurers.5

If the objects are witnesses to

the oath they must naturally have been conceived as persons; they hear the conditions attaching to the oath, and are expected to act accordingly.6 Now the usual word for oath, horkos, also denotes the object by which the oath is sworn.7

Some scholars have attempted to

1 IX. 40, n (transl. by Frazer).

Cf. the commentary by Frazer on this

passage; Berthold, Unverwundbarkeit 18; Deubner in ARW 8 (1905) Beiheft p. 71; PFISTER, Reliquienkultus I. 331 sq. 2 Cf. the commentary by TUCKER, whose translation is used here. (T. G. Tucker, The Seven ... of Aeschylus, Cambr. 1908.)

3 Cf. Marot,

Der Eid als Tat 3 sq.; Handworterb. des deutschen Aber-

glaubens s. v. Eid p. 659 sq. 4 Cf. Eurip. Phoen. 1677: taxon a£5rjpos opxtov re pot gfcpog; Apoll. Rhod. I.466:

taxon vuv

dopo ak/ijpov;

258 sq.; Od. 5. 184 sq.

Polyb. VII. g. Cf. II. 1. 234 sq.; 15.36 s9d 79-

Schwenn, Gebet und Opfer 32.

Cf. however Wila-

mowitz, Glaube I. 32.

5 Meyer in ARW 15 (1912). 444 sq.; Hirzel, Der Eid 161 sq.; Frazer ad

Pausanias

VIII. 18,

4.

Cf. Old

German imprecations, Grimm, Deutsche

Mythol. I. 149 (»so slahe mich ein donerstein»); Blinkenberg, Ihe Ihunderweapon 97. 6 Cf. Marett, Threshold 78 sq.

According to Marett even magic implies

a quasi-personal representation of the power (Threshold 56, 67 sq., cf. SCHMID1, Ursprung I. 509 sq.).

SCHWENN, op. cit. 62 sq.

7 Cf. Buttmann, Lexilogus II § 73; Stengel, Kultusaltert. 85.

42

account for this usage, to which there are parallels in many lan¬ guages1, by the theory that the oath was originally only a self¬ imprecation, which punished perjurers by the mere power of the words, without reference to gods or things. Thus it has been sug¬ gested that the object by which the oath was sworn was held to embody “the words and powefs of the curse, ready to act with mechanical precision if the swearer has lied”.2 Consequently the object in question might be said to be the oath itself since it em¬ bodied its power.

This interpretation may be correct for those

cases in which at the moment when the oath is taken a symbolical act is performed, but it is not applicable to ceremonies involving the summoning of objects as witnesses.

In these cases the oath

is not intended to increase the power of the object and make it fitter to fulfil its function; the rite serves to make the oath binding by associating it with an object acting as witness. Only thus can we account for the personification of the objects in question.3 The transition from object to person is easily accomplished in this sphere of religious thought. A case in point is the conception of the divine horkos, the Styx, which is viewed both as a real river and as a river-god.4 Since the function of the god Horkos is ex¬ clusively confined to the punishment of perjurers we may further conclude that it is a personification, not of the oath, as Ara is the personified curse, but of the witness to the oath.5 A crucial point of the pre-animistic theory is the transition from impersonal power to personal beings.

According to Pfister

the transition from the impersonal Augenblicksgott to the Sondergott, endowed with a sort of rudimentary personality, took place in the remote past6 in connection with the rise of the con1 Cf. Crawley, in Hastings Enc. s. v. Oath p. 432s.

2

Crawley 1. c. 432; cf. Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 31 sq.; Hirzel, Der Eid 137; Lasch, Der Eid 4 sq. J Cf. also such cases where the object sworn by is to be eaten.

Crawley

1. c. 431. 4 Cf. Buttmann cf. 775 sq., 397 sq. 3 Hes. opxov;

Theog.

Soph.

Oed.

II

p.

53

sq.

II.

2.755;

15-37 sq.; Hes. Theog. 784;

231; Op. 219, 804: cf. Pind. Nem. 11.30 (24): vat, pa yap Col.

1767:

6

TtdvV dtov Acos "Opxog; Paus. II. 2, 1: 81a-

cpuyslv xou opxou; Herodotus VI. 86, 3. — Buttmann, op. cit. II. p. 55 sq. Cf. also Hirzel, Der Eid 142 sq., 149 sq. 6 Griech. und rom. Rel. 185.

43 ception of soul. When objects were also endowed with souls this process entailed the personification of the orendistic powers and their separation from the objects in which they had resided.1 Pfister thus assumes that pre-animism was succeeded by animism. According to Pfister wholly primitive man has no conception of his own personality. mistic stage.2

This notion does not emerge until the ani¬

But if so the idea of the impersonal cannot be

supposed to have existed prior to the period of animism, for it can convey no meaning until contrasted with the conception of the personal. Since it is inconceivable that ‘wholly primitive man’ should have thought of himself as something impersonal, we must assume that if animism has played the part indicated above the distinction between the personal and the impersonal did not emerge until this stage. Since a conception of personality, however vague, is evidently inherent in the notion of will, man must have conceived himself and everything that was thought to possess will or consciousness, as a person. Hence the idea of the personal would seem to furnish a more natural starting-point for the de¬ velopment than the conception of the impersonal. The introduction of an intermediate animistic stage is subject to criticism on two other grounds. In the first place it presupposes an identification of life (power), soul, and spirit, which, however self-evident it may seem to the modern mind, must not be postu¬ lated without further inquiry where origins are concerned. Sec¬ ondly, if we start from the theory of animatism, the transition from objects to personal gods can be explained without having recourse to animism. The pre-animistic theory holds that when the power was per¬ sonified and separated from the object in which it resided under 1 Rel. evolution stage

d. Griechen 107; differs

also,

cf.

from

that

History

cf. Nilsson,

History 105 sq. Nilsson’s theory of

of Pfister in so far as he assumes an animatistic

119 sq.; Primitiv religion 15, 29 sq., 41 sq.

Cf. also

Kern, Religion der Griechen 8, 20.

2 Rel. d. Griechen 107: »Die Erkenntnis der Personlichkeit, das Ichbewusstsein,

tritt

beim

ganz

primitiven

Menschen noch nicht hervor... die Person-

lichkeit ist immer etwas Korperliches, wie auch das Orenda stoffgebunden ist. Daraus geht schon hervor, dass der Animismus nicht am Anfang der Religion stehen kann, wie man vielfach geglaubt hat. Entwicklung:

Erst

musste

Er ist das Resultat einer langen

der BegrifT der Personlichkeit und der Dualismus

von Leib und Seele erkannt werden».

44 the influence of the new view of reality resulting from the emergence of the conception of the soul, it was conceived as a spirit lodged in the object. This soul possessed or was invested with human form and was regarded as a spirit embodied in the object. spirit was detached from the object, a god arose.

When this

Except for its

different point of departure, th'e conception of impersonal power, this theory is in complete agreement with the doctrine of animism. Hence both theories are open to the same criticism. Tylor’s theory of animism starts from what might, by a slight anachronism, be termed animatism. He says: "First and foremost among the causes which transfigure into myths the facts of daily experience, is the belief in the animation of all nature, rising at its highest pitch to personification.

This, no hypothetical or occasional action of

the mind, is inextricably bound in with that primitive mental state where man recognizes in every detail of his world the operation of personal life and will."1 This animation, again, is said to be due to the presence of a soul, which is conceived as a spirit. In Tylor’s definition animism is "the deep-lying doctrine of spiritual Beings which embodies the very essence of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic philosophy".2 The animistic theory of religious development is based on the postulate that all that has life has a soul.

The soul is the cause

of the life of the body. Further, the soul is a being separate from the body, a spirit. Thus we are concerned with a twofold identi¬ fication whereby the conceptions of life, power, soul, and spirit are fused into one uniform conception of soul.3 Such a conception of the soul is not, however, as the critics of animism have shown, so common as Tylor thought, and consequently it cannot be re¬ garded as a primeval notion.4 On the contrary, wherever it can actually be proved to exist, this uniform conception of the soul

1 Primitive Culture I. 285; cf. 287. Ib.

I.

425.

Cf.

Marett

in Enc. Brit. s. v. Animism and Animatism;

Soderblom, Werden des Gottesglaubens 17; R. Benedict in Enc. of Social

Sciences

s. v.

Animism

p. 66.

Lowie, Primitive Religion 99 sq. — In a si¬

milar way Frazer combines animistic and animatistic explanations, e. g. G. R. II. 12, 45, VII.

211.

Cf.

Wilamowitz, Glaube I.

3

also

Mannhardt,

Wald- und Feldkulte

19, 34.

Tylor, Prim. Cult. I. 428 sq., 436; II.

4 Cf. Tylor, op. cit. I. 429.

no.

I. 3 sq.;

45 seems to be the outcome of a long evolution.

That this was the

case in Greece seems to have been established beyond doubt.1 The form in which the belief in souls generally appears among primitive people, and to which there is a close parallel in Homer, may be characterized as dualism or dualistic pluralism.2 On the one hand there are one or more body-souls or functional souls which are the cause of bodily life. They are, however, not conceived as independent beings in the body, but should rather be described as vital forces. They are often inseparable from the blood or the breath, and frequently cannot be clearly distinguished from the other organs of the body.

They are manifestations of the life of

man, or rather, they are the life of man, conceived in concrete form.3 Life may dwell in a certain part of the body but it may also be a separate entity. In a well-known type of folk-tale we encounter the notion that a man’s life can be hidden in or identical with an object, which is then concealed in a safe place.

If this object is

destroyed the person whose life resides in it, dies.4 This soul or these souls differ from the other kind of soul in that they do not survive after the death of man. They are a ma¬ nifestation of life and exist only while life lasts. Further, they are not spirits.5

The phantom-soul, on the other hand, is a spirit that

survives after death. It is not a life-principle or a vital force, but appears, as a rule, only when life has left the body, either for a time, as in the state of unconsciousness, or for good.

In Homer

this dualistic view is represented by thymos (phrenes) and ■psyche respectively.

Their relationship is most clearly brought out in

an often-quoted passage in the Iliad, the description of the appear¬ ance of the dead Patroclus to Achilles (II. 23. 65 sq.): “then came there unto him the spirit of hapless Patroclus, in all things like his living self, in stature, and fair eyes, and voice, and raiment of his body was the same’’. Achilles wants to embrace his friend and stretches out his arms “but clasped him not; for like a vapour the 1 Cf. Rohde, Psyche II. 140 sq. 2 Arbman,

Seele

und

Mana 297

sq.;

id.

Seelenvorstellung I. 90 sq. et

passim; Soderblom, Werden 10 sq.; Ankermann, Religion der Naturvdlker 135; Bohme, Die Seele und das Ich 115. 3 Cf. Frazer, G. B. XI. 95. 4 Cf. Frazer ib. 96 sq. Hence it is not quite correct to speak of souls here. I. 45'; Schmidt, Handbuch 81.

Cf. Rohde, Psyche

46 spirit was gone beneath the earth with a faint shriek5’ (99 sq.). Achilles says: “Ay me, there remaineth then even in the House of Hades a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the life be not anywise therein: for all night long has the spirit of hapless Patroclus stood over me, wailing and making moan, and charged me every¬ thing that I should do, and won'drous like his living self it seemed’’ (103 sq.).

Psyche is thus a shadowy image of the dead man, like

a living person in all respects, save that phrenes, i. e. the body-soul, has departed. The phantom is in a way the dead man himself, exact¬ ly as he was in life, but life is lacking.1

This is only natural, for

what descends to Hades is that which remains of man after life has departed. Accordingly, no distinction is drawn between the dead person and his surviving soul; sometimes the souls of the murdered are said to revenge themselves on their murderers and sometimes it is the murdered man himself that wreaks vengeance on his slayer.2 Hence we cannot use the fact that the angry dead were conceived as avenging spirits — the Erinyes are perhaps the spirits of murdered people3 — as evidence for a connection between the belief in gods and the belief in souls.

It is the dead themselves

that become gods.4 5 6 This conception of psyche evidently owes its origin to the fact that the self is not contrasted with the body but consists of the entire man without any differentiation between body and soul.5 Psyche can thus be identified with man himself, including his body. It is the memory-image of the dead man; hence it has a visible shape, but at the same time it is a shadow.6 Since it is impossible 1 Cf. Rohde, Psyche I. 4, 46 sq., II. 140 sq.; Arbman, Seelenvorstellung I. 190.

The

phantom-soul

exists

as

a

rule

conscious, that is, when life is extinct.

only

when

man

is

dead

or un¬

Cf. Arbman, op. cit. I. 93 sq.,133 sq.

— For the recent discussion of the Homeric conception of soul see Pfister, Religion der Griechen 141 sq. Prim. Cult. 90 sq. 2 Cf. zeigen

Rohde,

Cf. also Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 371; Rose,

Psyche I. 264s, 27s2.

1926 p. 440;

Bickel,

Cf. also Nilsson

in Gott. gel. An-

Homerischer Seelenglaube 6 sq.;

Schulze in

Berl. Sitzungsber. 1912 p. 701; Rose, Prim. Cult. 101 sq.; PREUSS, Geist. Kultur 17 sq.; Ankermann, op. cit. 136. 3 Rohde,

Psyche I. 270; cf. howewer Farnell, Cults V. 437;

Wilamo¬

witz, Glaube I. 404.

4 Cf. also Rose, Prim. Cult. 95 sq. 5 Cf. Autenrieth in Nagelsbach I. 398. 6 Cic. Tusc. I. 13. 29 Nagelsbach. I. 404. Arbman, Seelenvorstellung I. 201.

47 to conceive of complete annihilation1 a compromise is arrived at.

In popular usage the term 'the dead’ has still a threefold

meaning: it may refer to the bodies in the graves, to the souls, or to the persons themselves as they were in life.2 Normally the phantom-soul does not seem to have been re¬ garded as a life-principle, and the vital force was not held to be a spirit residing in man.

Accordingly the conception of spirits

cannot be derived from the belief in souls.3 It should further be noticed that these spirits are conceived in material form.

Neither psyche nor the tree-spirits represent

an immaterial reality as distinct from the material realities of the body or the tree.

There exists, no doubt, a tendency to conceive

the supernatural in a more or less immaterial form, to spiritualize the power and contrast it with matter, which is dead in itself but may be animated by the power.

The doctrine of souls has

doubtless been the principal factor in this development. According to Father Schmidt the importance of animism for the evolution of religious ideas is that it rendered possible the formation of the concepts of pure spirit, detached from matter, and of pure matter, separated from the spirit.4 This abstract view, however, did not emerge until a comparatively late stage, the more primitive mind being evidently incapable of conceiving anything immaterial. The difficulties with which it had to contend before it was ultimately victorious are clearly indicated by the way in which the free soul was conceived

As Tylor has pointed out, the free soul is generally

thought of as a purely material substance.5

Its tracks may be

followed in the sand and, as we have seen, it is endowed with a definite shape, usually that of the man to whom it belongs. Some¬ times it is identified with the shadow and sometimes conceived of 1 Cf. PFISTER, Rel. d. Griechen 141; Nilsson in Gott. gel. Anz. 1926. 441. 2 According to

Delahaye

in Analecta Bollandiana 28 (1909) p. 166 (cf.

Soderblom, Werden 108 sq.) the expression »inter sanctos» in early Christian

inscriptions referred to the martyrs, not to »l’ame des martyrs dans la gloire», however,

but to deur depouille mortelle reposant dans un cimetiere ou dans

un basilique». 3 Soderblom,

life-principle

cf.

Werden

Rohde,

stellung I. 192 sq. 4 Handbuch 83.

14

sq.

Psyche

I.

For the later conception of psyche as a 46

sq., II. 141 sq.; Arbman, Seelenvor-

Cf. SODERBLOM, Werden 31, 379.

5 Prim. Cult. I. 450, 455 sq.

48 as made of some ethereal substance.1 gods.

The same is true of the

They are on the way to becoming immaterial but the ten¬

dency towards concrete visualization checks that development. They possess material shapes, though made of a finer substance than man. Ichor, not blood, flows in their veins and their food is different from that of man.

That they actually tend to become

immaterialized is best proved by the fact that they are thought to be invisible.

But here, too, the concrete view prevails: the gods

owe their invisibility not to a lack of material shape but to a veil or vapour that conceals them from the eyes of the profane.

He

who has greater gifts than others can however pierce this screen.2 It is, in fact, impossible to conceive of anything immaterial without investing it with a material shape.3 This is also true of the abstract: it is conceived in concrete form.

If a quality is

isolated from the concrete reality of which it forms an integral part, it can only be conceived as existing separately, if it is hypostasized, or transferred to a different subject.

Thus we see

how it comes about that the power is occasionally conceived as something material.

As long as it remains a quality there is no

need to conceive of it as a substance, but if it is detached from its subject, as in the case of transmission of power, it must be thought of as something material. In that case it does not matter whether the power is regarded as a substance in itself, or as a quality in¬ herent

in matter.4

As we have seen, transmission of power is

effected by breathing it into a person.5 Here the power is evidently bound to or identical with the breath. An additional instance of this concrete view is furnished by the observation that direct touch is usually held to be essential in the process of transmission. If the power were something purely spiritual there would be no reason to insist on direct touch. It should however be noted that 1 Cf.

Democritus’ conception

of the soul as fire; Rohde, Psyche II. 189;

Aristoteles De anima A. 2.405 a 5. 2 II. 5. 127 sq. (cf. supra p. 8). 3 Cf. Boas in Enc. of Social Sciences s. v. Anthropology 94 sq. 4 This with

one

is

seen

of the

in the organs

case

of the vital soul.

a quality of this organ or of the body. may be

identified

be personified.

with

Sometimes it is identified

of the body, sometimes it seems to be regarded as See Arbman, Seelenvorst. I. 167 sq.

or conceived as residing in an object and may even

Cf. Ankermann 145 sq.; Arbman, Seele und Mana 378.

5 Supra p. 5 sq.

It

49 we find a different conception in Homer in the case of Zeus, who usually acts from a distance: when he transmits power no material medium is needed.

A curious instance of the materialistic con¬

ception of power is given by Herodotus. When Croesus besieged the city of Ephesus, the Ephesians dedicated their city to Artemis by connecting the town wall with the temple by means of a rope.1 Soderblom adduces another illustrative example.2

In the 7th

century relics were manufactured in Rome by throwing a piece of cloth, which had previously been weighed, on St. Peter’s grave. If the faith and the prayers of the persons concerned were strong enough the cloth was found to be heavier when taken up again.3 A centre of power, from which effects proceed, must accordingly have a concrete material form. As far as the conception of power itself is concerned, it makes no difference whether this concrete form, the vehicle of the power, is an object, a living being, or merely an imaginary entity — a god. In each case the power is a quality or a faculty, and, though the vehicles of power may differ, this does not affect the power itself.4 It is thus, strictly speaking, in¬ correct to talk about a personification of the power, when it is made inherent in a spirit instead of in a material object. But even the practice of classifying the vehicles of power into distinct cate¬ gories, such as objects, spirits, and human beings, proves, from a certain point of view, to be of secondary importance. 1 Herodotus I. 26.

If the

Plutarch (Vita Solonis 12) tells of the members of the

Cylon conspiracy that when the archon Megacles had prevailed upon them to come down from Acropolis for trial they ^attached a spun thread to the temple or image) of the goddess and held on to it. were

passing the temple

of the

Erinyes,

When, on their way down, they the thread broke of itself.

Then

Megacles and his fellow-archons rushed out and seized them, asserting that the goddess had refused their prayer for protection*. 2 Werden no. 3 Gregory of Tours,

Miraculorum

I.

28

(MlGNE,

Patrol. Ser. I. LXXI :

»si fides hominis praevaluerit, a tumulo palliolum elevatum ita imbuitur divina virtute,

ut multo

levaverit,

4

amplius

quam

prius

pensaverat ponderet; et tunc scit qui

cum eius gratia sumpsisse quod petiit».

For this

Cf. Rose, Prim. Cult. 80.

reason I cannot accept the distinction made by Boas between

»the approach to the ’supernatural’ from the viewpoint of power conceived as anthropomorphic and of power conceived as an inherent quality of objects* Enc.

of Soc.

Sc. s.v. Anthropology p. 97).

Boas admits himself that these

conceptions -flow together in so far as the quality of power is ascribed to the anthropomorphic concepts* (ib. 95). 4—35259-

E. Ehtwtark.

5o assumption is correct that what is postulated as the cause of a supernatural event, i. e. as the bearer of supernatural power, must be conceived more or less as a person1, it follows that, as far as the conception of god is concerned, no rigid distinction can be upheld between the worship of an object, of a human being, or of a god, since the object of faith is in each case a concrete personal being endowed with supernatural power. Animism and pre-animism would’ thus seem to have fallen into the same error in attempting to account for the origin of personal gods.

Both theories postulate a differentiation between spiritual

and material, quality and substance, abstract and concrete, but this distinction, in each case fundamentally the same, is apparently the outcome of a long evolution and therefore cannot possibly be taken as the starting-point of religious development.2 The view set forth above agrees with that propounded by Ankermann.

According to him the majority of deities cannot

be derived from animistic conceptions.

Objects are regarded as

demons because they are credited with the power of causing certain effects. Hence there is no fundamental difference between a natural object endowed with mana and a demon or a god.

The idea of

power gradually merges into that of a person. In referring to objects that cause magic effects primitive man naturally tends to employ the same terms as when speaking of active persons, especially as he lacks the power of forming abstract ideas. All these factors work in the same direction and strengthen the tendency towards personification.

It

proximately exact one

is

thus

impossible

to

draw any even ap¬

distinction between deities and demons on

hand and magic objects (fetishes, amulets, talismans) on

the other.3 These observations seem applicable to Greek religion as well. In Greek usage the word god did not necessarily refer to a person or a spirit in the modern sense of the word. could be designated by that term.

Any active force

It was apparently indiscri¬

minately applied to things, persons, and feelings, to anything con¬ crete or abstract.

Any conception, any object, may be raised to

1 Cf. Schmidt, Ursprung I. 500 sq., 594, 776 sq. and supra p. 38. 2 Cf. Schmidt, Ursprung I. 553; Usener in ARW 7 (1904) 6 sq. 3 Op. cit. 173 sq., cf. 176.

5i divine rank, says Usener, who sees in this practice a mode of creating A ugenblicksgotter.1 Referring to this function of the word theos, Wilamowitz says that in Greek usage it is a predicative conception.

What is

predicated is always a power superior to man.2 Hesiod calls rum¬ our a god because he found in it an active force. Every manifesta¬ tion of life and activity was traced back to some agency that possessed life and a will of its own and could thus be called a god.3

This agency was necessarily regarded as a person. Greek

religion views everything that is active and accordingly can become a god, as something personal.4 The border-line between such a conception of god and anthro¬ pomorphism proper is extremely unstable.

We are not justified

in dismissing this use of the word theos as a mere figure of speech, as an occasional personification which a poet might indulge in but which bears no relation to the actual living idea of the gods. The close agreement with primitive views noted above forbids that assumption. To some extent personification may be regarded as a primitive phenomenon.

In many cases it is the anthropo¬

morphic view that presents itself most readily.

Poetic usage,

which operates with allegories and personifications and introduces living objects and talking animals, is evidently much more closely akin to primitive notions than to the ordinary matter-of-fact view of life.

Hence it is often impossible to draw a clear line of

demarcation between that kind of poetic personification which is a survival of primitive beliefs and that which is merely due to the exigencies of traditional rhetorical usage.5 Where abstract phenomena are concerned, the anthropomorphic 1 Gotternamen

291, cf. 284 sq. Esch. Choeph. 58: ^Success is a god and

more than a god»; Eur. Hel. 560: »To recognize friends is also a god»; Soph, fr. 836, 2: »Reason is a great, good god»; Eur. fr. 1018: us a god within us».

NaGELSBACH II. 94 sq.

»Reason is to all of

Cf. however Deubner in Ro-

schers Lex. s. v. Personifikation p. 2094. 2 Glaube I. 17 sq. 3 lb. 19. 4 lb. 28. 3 Cf. Wilamowitz,

Glaube

I.

26;

Lehrs,

Pop. Aufs. 78 sq.; Nilsson,

History 172; Farnell, Cults V. 444. For personifications cf. further Deubner in

Roschers

Lex.

sonification (Greek).

s. v. Personifikation; Gardner in Hastings Enc. s. v. Per¬

52

view seems the most natural one to take.

If something abstract

is conceived as a cause it is, as we have seen above, endowed with concrete form.

Further, it is thought of as a person.

A

concrete person is for obvious reasons preferably conceived in human form. Boas says: “We still feel the force in the use of me¬ taphors based on a concrete form given to a state or attribute. Hunger, courage, love, sin, consciousness, death, are, owing either to traditional usage or to poetic imagination, endowed with qua¬ lities, particularly anthropomorphic qualities, and with concrete form. Sickness is often conceived as a concrete object or a living being that enters a body and may be removed again, or as an enemy who attacks the body and against whom man may be defended.”1 There is evidently little difference between the conception of a disease as an object and as a living being.

Between power

viewed as a substance and power conceived as a person there is no sharp distinction, though now one aspect of the conception, now the other, may be emphasized. That the notion of something abstract acting as a cause may give rise to the conception of a god is clearly seen in the case of such gods as are essentially personifications of emotions or mental phenomena in general.2 Divine power manifests itself in emotions just as in inspiration and in sudden ideas or impulses. If a man com¬ mits an act, which he subsequently repents, he tries to excuse his conduct by urging that at the time of action he was not himself; the blame is laid on Ate, blind folly.

On the other hand Ate is

the divine power that causes blind folly. This shows that we are here actually concerned with a real conception of power, in which cause and effect coalesce.

Blind folly is regarded as the effect of

the operation of a power and this power is the agency that causes blind folly and consequently identical with blind folly itself, which thus becomes its own cause.3 The power has become hypostasized and turned into a personal god. 1 Enc. of Soc. Sc. s. v. Anthropology p. 94 sq.

Similarly Aphrodite

Cf. Rose, Prim. Cult 78 sq.;

Messer, The Dream in Homer 38; Frazer, G. B. IX. 1 sq.

2 Cf.

NILSSON,

Gotter 374 sq.; Ebeling, Lex. Homer, s. v. axYj; Lehrs,

Pop. Aufs. 415 sq.; Farnell, Cults V. 444- — Ares and Aphrodite were once more manifold gods than they afterwards became (Farnell, Sondergotter 89). This

does

not,

however, alter the fact that they were sometimes actually re¬

garded primarily as causes of psychological phenomena. 3 Cf. Nilsson, Gotter 375; Lehrs op. cit. 417.

53 is the goddess of love and the power that causes love, Ares the god of war and war itself, Eris is discord and that which causes discord, etc.1 The anthropomorphic view may be original also in the case of some natural phenomena, more especially when the phenomenon in question has no definite external shape, for instance the wind. “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.’'2 With regard to concrete objects such a view is rendered more difficult

since these objects have a definite non-human shape.

Here animatism seems to be the more natural view.3

But fre¬

quently speculation is pursued further. The wind is a living being rushing through space but its activities may also be conceived as due to the operation of some personal agency. Similarly the con¬ ception of objects as living beings easily develops into the belief that living beings are lodged inside the object. After all a thing does not very much resemble a living being. The effects which proceed from it suggest a personal being as their cause, but on the other hand the object clearly possesses characteristics which effectually forbid any attempt to personify it.

Outwardly it is only an or¬

dinary object but internally it is a person.

What then could be

more natural than to argue as follows: This is an inanimate object, it is true, but inside it or behind it, there lurks a personal being and this being or spirit acts in and through the object.4 The transition from objects to personal gods can thus be ex¬ plained without the assumption of an intermediate animistic stage.5

That such a transition has actually taken place may be

inferred from a number of facts. Zeus was worshipped as the god of thunder under the names of Keraunos and Keraunios.

The

former name proves that Zeus was identified with the thunderbolt, 1 Farnell (Cults I. 46) regards these as intentional metaphors.

Cf. how¬

ever WACKERNAGEL, Vorles. II. 62 sq.

2 Murray, Five stages 26. 3 Cf. Farnell, Cults V. 415 sq. 4 Cf. also Wjlamowitz, Glaube I. 19, 22. 5 Cf. Marett, Threshold 79, 140. For the following cf. Iarnell, Cults I. 4 sq. and id. in Hastings Enc. IX. 221 sq.; DE VlSSER, op. cit. 19 sq., 241 sq.

54 which must accordingly once have been conceived as a living being1 and been given a name. At the same time, however, a distinction was drawn between the god and his attribute: Zeus was after all something other than the thunder and so he is called Keraunios. The god was thus differentiated from the object. The same process is traceable in other cases. Zeus'is called Kataibates and Kappotas, being identified with the lightning and the meteor respectively2, just as Zeus Hiketes is the suppliant himself3, but on the other hand the name Zeus and the forms Hikesios and Xeinios etc. show that a distinction was drawn between the god and his occasional in¬ carnations.

Zeus is not the stranger himself but his protector.

The name Zeus itself may point to an identification between the god and the sky; in that case the god has originated here too through a separation from the material substratum.4 The worship of trees exhibits a similar interchange between anthropomorphism and animatism. On the one hand trees are regarded as living beings: they are given personal names and spoken to and, being of dif¬ ferent sexes, they can even be married to each other.5 If a cut is made in a tree it may happen that blood flows from the wound and that the tree speaks.6 anthropomorphism.

Here the animatistic view is passing into

A tree can also be conceived as a human

being, i. e. a transformed man; either a living man has been changed into a tree or his soul7 has taken up its abode in it after death.8 The dead man may, however, also appear in human form, detached from the tree.9 Here the transition to the belief in tree-spirits is clearly traceable, a belief that is also attested by the epithets of certain gods such as Zeus Dendrites and Endendros, Dionysos

1 Cf.

Farnell, Cults I. 45 sq.;

Cook., Zeus II: i p. ii sq.; Usener,

Gotternamen 286 sq.; the article Zeus in Roscher’s Lex. p. 634.

2 Farnell, Cults I.

15,

46;

Sondergdtter 91; Blinkenberg, Thunder-

weapon no sq.

3 Cook, Zeus II. 2 p. of Greek Epic 275. 4 Cook, Zeus II: 1 p. 1 5 Frazer, G. B. II. 12 9 sq., II. 18 sq. 6 Mannhardt, II. 12.

1096, 1101; Rose, Prim. Cult. 83; Murray, Rise sq., 11 sq. sq., 24 sq.

Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte I.

Frazer II. 20.

7 Or his body or part of the body (e. g. the blood).

8 Mannhardt I. 39 sq.,

II.

20 sq.

9 Mannhardt 1.42 sq., cf. II. 14.

Frazer

II.

29 sq.

55 Endendros etc.1

There is no reason to view the spirit residing in

the tree as a soul.

The soul of a dead person may, it is true, be

embodied in the tree, but it does not follow that it represents the life-force of the tree.

The life of the tree does not depend on

the presence of the spirit; on the contrary, the spirit may leave the tree without causing its death.

The life of the spirit, on the

other hand, is sometimes bound up with that of the tree: it dies if the tree is cut down.2

Furthermore, the spirit has a body of

its own, separate from that of the tree.3 The spirit is usually, though not always, conceived in human form. Further, the tree-spirit itself seems occasionally to be endowed with a soul (■psyche).*

Hence

there is no reason to assume that tree-spirits and vegetationdeities owe their origin to the belief in souls.5 Neither the available material nor the parallels drawn from human psychology justify such a conclusion. A transition from animatism to anthropomorphism is also trace¬ able in the evolution that the images of the gods have undergone. It seems now possible to trace a continuous development from the fetish to the image proper6, in the course of which the fetish was endowed with human attributes, such as legs, a head etc.

The

herm, “forme intermediate entre le pilier et la statue”7, illustrates this development, which may also be observed in the case of menhirs.8

We find, however, that the animatistic view lingered

on long after the anthropomorphic conception had become pre¬ dominant

in

art.

The

clearly marked notion that the image

is the god himself is undoubtedly an animatistic trait.

Picard

has shown that even in the classical period, long after the invention of sculpture, certain xoana were still regarded as actual fetishes.9 —:

*

i-

•

.

• . :« l s« A. -

•

•

1 Cook, Zeus 11:2 p. 946°; Roscher, Lex. s. v. Zeus p. 624. 2 Mannhardt I. 69, 75 sq. 3 Frazer G. B. II. 33 sq. 4 Hymn. Horn, in Ven. 273; Mannhardt II. 5 sq. 3 Cf. also Arbjian, Seele und Mana 378 sq. 6 Picard in Dar. Sagl. Diet. s. v. Statua; id. in Revue Philol. 1933. 341 sq.: Benveniste ib. 1932.

118 sq.

1

Picard s. v. Statua 1470. 8 Cf. PERSSON, The Royal Tombs 110 sq.; PlCARD, in Rev. Phil. 1933- 35°9 S. v. Prim

Statua

1470,

1472.

Cf.

WEISS,

Griech. Privatrerht 15357; ROSE,

Cult. 68 sq.; Persson, Staat und Manufaktur 117 sq.; Weinreich, Hei-

lungswunder 145; Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 34 sq.

56 The images were washed, clothed, and fed. It might even happen that an image was bound with chains lest it should leave the country it protected, for it was believed that it could move.

Sometimes

the image was covered with dust so that it might realize that the country needed rain.

It is significant that in his Cohortatio ad

gentes1 Clemens Alexandrinus,' when denouncing paganism, ad¬ duces the argument that the objects of heathen worship are only dead things.

He quotes Heraclitus-’ well-known saying:

“And

they also pray to these idols like one who holds a conversation with houses”.2 Then he goes on to say: “Are they not strange people who pray to stones, nay, even put them up in front of their doors, as if they were alive.3 They worship Hermes as a god and Aguieus whom they put up as door-keeper.

If they do not shrink from

affronting them as insensible, why do they worship them as gods? If, on the other hand, they believe that they have sensation, why do they raise them up as door-keepers? . . .

But insensible

stone and wood and rich gold do not care for anything, neither for sacrificial fumes, nor for blood, nor for smoke; at most they become black with soot when honoured and smoked with them; verily, they care neither for honour nor for contumely.

As far as I can

see, those who make gods, worship, not gods or demons, but earth and things made by art, for such are their images.” On the whole, animatistic and anthropomorphic views fre¬ quently seem to be so closely related to each other that it is often impossible to decide how to classify a certain notion.4 Hence it is difficult to prove any general theory of religious evolution. As pointed out above we can sometimes trace a development involving the differentiation of an anthropomorphic god from the object or the phenomenon with which he used to be identified. cases

animatism

evidently preceded

In those

anthropomorphism.

This

development seems further to be connected with a general tendency to spiritualize the conception of the bearers of power; the power is hypostasized and transformed into a personal being and the object is deprived of its supernatural character since it is no longer

1 c. IV (Migne, Patrol. 2 fr. 5 (Diels).

Ser. I, VIII: i p. 142 sq.).

Cf. fr. 128.

3 ivspystg. 4 Cf. Farnell, Sondergotter 90 sq.

57 the abode of a force.1 The same tendency is also at work in anthro¬ pomorphism and culminates in the conception of power as something immaterial.

Yet this does not render impossible the fusion

of comparatively heterogeneous notions.2

Helios is represented,

now as the sun itself, now as an anthropomorphic god, whose arrows are the sunbeams. In the case of river-gods this interchange between animatism and anthropomorphism is particularly pro¬ nounced. It is frequently impossible to decide whether the reference is to the river itself or to a god dwelling in it.3 The practice of identifying a god with his image is evidently sometimes due to this ambiguous character of the conception.

When the Trojan

women went to Athene’s temple to pray for victory for Hector they deposited the veil they had brought with them on the lap of “beauteous Athene” with a prayer for victory, but Athene “nodded refusal”.4 Here we cannot be sure whether the image of the goddess was identified with Athene herself -—- if the passage really implies the existence of a cult-image and should not, as Stengel suggests, be interpreted metaphorically. Equally difficult is it to define exactly the relationship between Zeus Meilichios and the snake in whose likeness he is represented5, or between Athene and the snake that lived in her temple on the Acropolis as guardian of the castle and of which Herodotus (VIII. 41) relates that the Athenians were more easily prevailed upon to leave their city when the snake was no longer to be seen, “since it was then inferred that the goddess had left her castle”.6 Animatism may be an original view as seems to be indicated 1 Cf. Frazer, G. B. 2 Nagelsbach,

II. 45, VII. 212.

I. 93 sq.,

cf. II. 95 sq.

For the following cf. also Levy-

Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales 77 sq. 3 Nagelsbach I. 94;

Farnell

in

Hastings Enc. s. v. Nature (Greek) p.

225 sq. Cf. Od. 5.441 sq.; 10.351 sq.; 11.238 sq.; II. 21 passim, e. g. 130 sq., cf. 136 sq., 191, 212 sq., 356 sq. pointed

out (History, p. 144),

The

that

reason

the

arrested the development of anthropomorphism. 314 sq.,

Wilamowitz,

Glaube

evidently,

as NILSSON has

Cf. also Usener, Gotternamen

Glaube I. 33; Plato, Leges XI p. 930 E sq., Apol. 26

D; Xenoph. Mem. IV. 3, 14. 4 II. 6. 301 sq.; cf. Vergil. Aen. I. 482. Wilamowitz,

is

visual form of the object worshipped

I. 34;

Finsler,

STENGEL, Kultusaltertiimer 26 sq.

See on this passage Leaf, ad loc.;

Homer. 186;

Farnell,

Cults I. 14;

Cf. also TYLOR, Prim. Cult. II. 168 sq.

5 Cf. Harrison, Prolegomena 18 sq. 6 Cf. Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion 426 sq.; de VlSSER 140 sq.

58 by the

fact that other forms of religious belief such as anthro¬

pomorphism may be derived from it while the opposite process does not seem to be possible, but this does not prove that anthro¬ pomorphism was everywhere later than animatism.

Both views

may have existed side by side. All gods have not originated from a cult of things, and there seents to be no reason whatever why these gods should be later than others. The cult of the deceased as well as the divinity of kings and magicians points in the opposite direction, not to speak of the Supreme Beings and Creators, who according to some scholars represent the very beginning of religion. /

V.

THE POWERS AND THE GODS.

The above account of the role of anthropomorphism in the development of religion differs from the accepted view particularly in so far as no distinction has been drawn between gods and spirits. For those who regard the belief in personal gods as the final stage in religious development this distinction is of decisive importance. According to Frazer anthropomorphism consists in “the gradual investment of the immanent spirits with more and more of the attributes of humanity.

As men emerge from savagery, the ten¬

dency to humanise their divinities gains strength; and the more human these become the wider is the breach which severs them from the natural objects of which they were at first merely the animating spirits or souls”.1 Now the process of anthropomorphization may be carried out more or less completely. Frazer distinguishes between spirits and gods in the following way. “As distinguished from gods, spirits are restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature. Their names are general, not proper. Their attributes are generic, rather than individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class, and the individuals of a class are all much alike; they have no definitely marked indi¬ viduality; no accepted traditions are current as to their origin, life, adventures, and character.”2 According to Nilsson, a power does not become a god until it has received a name and a definite personality. The undefined power which forms the background of the belief in gods, is split up into various centres and individual manifestations, ‘the powers’, which though endowed with feeling, will and purpose can hardly be called personal and still less anthropomorphic. daimones who are sometimes developed into gods.3

These are the “A god is a

daimon which has acquired importance and fixed form through 1 G.B. VII. 212. 2 ib. 169.

Cf. Gray in Hastings Enc. IV. 566.

3 History 105, cf. 104,

6o the cult. From among the crowd of similar beings the cult chooses one as its object, and this becomes a single god.”1 ‘‘A god is de¬ veloped by religious need and through the cult into a character¬ istic individuality.”

‘‘A daimon has no real individuality; an in¬

dividuality is only conferred on it by the manifestation in which it appears.” To speak about a'daimon is merely ‘‘a mode of ex¬ pressing the belief that a certain effect is produced by a higher power”. “A daimon represents a portion, adapted to the accidental manifestations of the moment, of the supranormal power recog¬ nized by man in phenomena which he believes himself unable to explain from his ordinary experience.”

‘‘The differentiation

of the daimones depends not on the religious phenomena but on the phenomena of nature and of human life.”2 It is interesting to compare Usener’s theory of the origin of the belief in gods.

Sondergotter, Augenblicksgotter, and personal gods

constitute different phases in the formation of religious ideas at the same time as they represent distinct stages of evolution.3 Starting from a psychological theory of the merging of single ideas in general ideas and concepts4, Usener tries to show that the deification of individual objects or phenomena (‘‘Augenblicks¬ gotter”)5 led on to the conception of ‘‘Sondergotter” through a process of abstraction involving the classification of the identical and common elements in a number of separate phenomena under one designation.6

Unlike the ‘‘Augenblicksgott” who represents

the individual, the ‘‘Sondergott”, embodying the concept of species or genus, has one function only but expresses it in terms of general validity.7

As distinct from the personal gods these two classes

1 ib. 112. 2 ib. 166.

The last sentence is difficult to understand.

that the differentiation

It seems to imply

of the gods was dependent on the specific quality of

the religious experience in each case. 3 Gotternamen 302. 4 ib. 3 sq. 5 ib. 280. 6 ib. 279 sq., cf. 75. Welcker, Gotterlehre III. 53: »Die Natur der Nymphen,

eingeschlossen

die

des Meeres, ist nur eine, wie verschieden auch ihr

Aufenthaltsort*. 7 ib. 279 sq.: »Occator ... ist der gott des eggens iiberhaupt; er stellt nur eine einzelne, diese

an

sich vielleicht unbedeutende bauerliche thatigkeit dar, aber

allgemeingiiltig.

Das

ist eine vorstellungsweise,

die bereits einer ver-

6i of gods have no proper names but are referred to by descriptive appellative designations denoting acts, phenomena.* 1

conditions or separate

Only when a special god acquires a proper name

does a personal god arise. A parallel to this development is the emergence of the concept from the general idea.2 Any discussion of this problem based on a subjectivist theory of knowledge or starting from a strictly historical point of view would, however, seem to lead to a confusion of the way in which the gods are spoken of and the names bestowed upon them with the conceptions people actually formed of them.

Since the gods

existed only in the belief of their worshippers it would seem that for our information about them we have to rely exclusively on the data supplied by their votaries themselves. That may be correct and the differentiation of the divine powers into personal gods and undefined beings is therefore quite justified from a modern point of view.

For us only those Greek gods are personal about whose

individual attributes we have traditional knowledge,

whereas

a god whom the Greeks themselves did not name remains nameless for us. We cannot form a concrete idea of him, and thus he remains for us a shadowy figure.

This fact, however, scarcely warrants

the conclusion that the Greeks themselves, when using an indefinite term, such as daimon, ‘a god’, and the like, with reference to a divine power, wished to imply that the power in question was really something undifferentiated, lacking individual attributes. An indefinite mode of expression, for instance the use of an in¬ definite pronoun, or a vaguely defined notion, does not necessarily imply that what is referred to or thought of is actually conceived as something indefinite. Nor does the occurrence of general ideas and concepts and words corresponding to them prove a belief in the existence of objects conceived in an equally vague manner. Since the gods were real they had to be visualized in forms borrowed haltnissmassig vorgeschrittenen isolierenden

betrachtung werden

stufe des geistigen lebens angehort; bei aller doch

schon allgemeingiiltige artbegriffe ge-

bildet» (cf. 75).

1 ib. 752 ib. 330 sq., cf. 316. — For a criticism of Usener’s theory see Gruppe in Bursian’s Jahresbericht Bd. 137, s. v. Momentary Sondergotter;

Gods;

Wundt,

Mac

p.

8

Culloch

sq., 539 sq.; KROLL in Hastings Enc. ib. s. v.

Volkerpsychologie

Nilsson in Gercke-Norden, Einleit.

VI: 3

II: 11 p. 59.

Nameless Gods; Farnell, p.

8

sq., IV: 1

p.

560 sq;

62

from concrete reality.

Their personality was not exhaustively

defined by what was actually known about them.

Even if the

Greeks did not know the name and special chara’cteristics of a power it does not follow that they regarded it as nameless and im¬ personal.

When, to take an instance adduced by Wilamowitz1,

the Athenians said ‘the god rams' it is conceivable that they did not know who he was until they began to call him Zeus. But they may very well have thought of him as a personal god with a name although the only thing they knew for certain was that he could grant them rain.2 Thus it does not follow that if a god represents a generic notion he is nothing but the contents of that notion. What distinguishes the god from the abstract generic notion is the fact that he per¬ sonifies it; it is what is added to the contents of this notion that makes the god a person. Occator is the ‘god of harrowing in general'; being a god and not merely a name for an activity he is a person whose most distinctive and best-known characteristic is that he fulfils the function of harrowing.

He may possess other qualities

too, but these are of no very great importance for the Roman peasant.3

The mere fact that these gods had no proper names

cannot prove that they had no personalities of their own, especially as proper names are often adjectival, like the names of these gods.4 Nor can the spirits discussed by Frazer be said to lack indivi¬ duality.

The Corn-mother who is sitting hidden in the corn and

catches children that pick flowers, certainly does not lack individual 1 Glaube I. 20 sq. 2 Cf. COOK, Zeus II: 1 p. 1 sq. 3 Cf. WiSSOWA Religion der Romer 25 and id. in Hastings Enc. s. v. Indigitamenta.

Cf. also the Roman Catholic saints with restricted functions (Kroll

1. c. 778 b; USENER, Gotternamen 116 sq.). though their sphere is limited.

4

Mac Culloch

1.

by Aeschylus (Agam. name

c. 180 b sq.

They are personal and individual,

According to a popular etymology adopted

1082) and Euripides (fr. 781. 11 sq.) among others, the

Apollo meant 'the Destroyer’ (USENER 304 sq.).

of a personal

god

with

an

In this case the idea

adjectival name does not seem to have offered

difficulties. — »Man ruft in der noth einfach w ’AXegfy.axe oder ’ATtotponats, ohne sich

an

einen personlichen gott namentlich zu wenden» (USENER 313:.

They must, however, have been regarded as persons here. — The development Usener traces is peculiar in so far as it starts from the concrete and individual, goes on to the abstract and general, and ends in the concrete and individual in the shape of the personal god.

Cf. Cook, Zeus II: 1 p. 131.

63 characteristics.1 Even if an exactly identical Corn-mother is sitting in every corn-field, yet we are here concerned with living super¬ natural beings with a definite, though not always known, shape, possessing power of motion and other physical attributes.2 Even if they are exactly alike in every detail they are distinguishable from each other by being differentiated in space.

The fact that

they have collective names does not prevent their being individuals, for a collective group must consist of individuals.

Further, they

have certain personal mental qualities, viz. will and consciousness, which may, it is true, be more or less fully developed, but are never entirely wanting. As a rule, scholars are not inclined to go to the length of asserting that spirits altogether lack personality and individuality. Instead it is usually said that the gods as distinct from the spirits possess a characteristically moulded personality, a definitely marked in¬ dividuality, and a history and mythology of their own.3

These

attributes are said to owe their origin to the cult: it is only through the cult that a demon becomes a god.4 However, the cult alone is not an adequate criterion, for if so not only Dryads and other nymphs that are usually placed on a level with spirits, but also unknown and nameless divine powers, including fetishes, would have to be regarded as gods.5

As has been shown above, the

personal equipment of the gods proper sometimes exhibits cer¬ tain defects, and their sphere of action is also subject to limita¬ tions. The only one of the characteristics of the spirits as surveyed by Frazer that is not shared by the gods is their collective char¬ acter, whereas each of the gods is a distinct individual unique of its kind.6 But on this difference alone no distinction can be based. 1 G.B. VII. Cf.

Nilsson,

132 sq., cf. 150 sq. (»the Primitiv

religion

67

corn-spirit as a child*), 162 sq. etc.

sq.,

History

107

sq.,

Marett,

Thres¬

hold 82. 2 Spirits

leave

footprints;

animals

see

spirits

that are invisible to man.

TYLOR, Prim. Cult. II. 196 sq.

3 See above.

Cf. Usener 316.

4 Cf. also Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 8.

5 Demons enjoy the same cult as gods.

HASTINGS Enc. IV. 568 b.

SODER-

BLOM, who seems to see in the cult the chief distinction between gods and spirits

(Werden 45), regards the saints as gods (ib. 111). 6 There is

a

certain

difference in the extent of their sphere of activity,

but the chief distinction is here drawn between such gods as are confined to

64 Such a distinction would also be at variance with Greek usage, as is shown by the use of theos discussed above. Here too we see that a uniform theory of religious evolution involves great difficulties. A certain development of the personality can be traced in the gods but the salient characteristics of per¬ sonality are also present in the powers. Since the essential element of the conception of god may be found at any stage, it seems better to speak of modifications of a 'conception that remains es¬ sentially the same than of distinct ideas succeeding each other. In Greece at any rate there does not seem to exist any parallel to this supposed polydemonism.* 1 Moreover, there seems to be much evidence for the view that the more detailed development of the personality of the gods was chiefly poetical or theological — in Greek usage these conceptions were often practically syno¬ nymous — which exercised little influence on the living faith. The undogmatic character of Greek religion is clearly brought out here.

In one passage Murray contrasts the “sharp-cut statue

type of god” which is “in Greece directly due to the work of the artists” with the popular view.2

According to him the strictly

religious conception is indicated by the way in which the word theos is used in “the instinctive language of the poets”. Additional evidence on this point is to be found in Homer. It is a well known feature of the Homeric poems that the way in which the intervention of the gods is described varies according as it is reported by the characters of the poem or by the poet him¬ self.3 The poet mentions the gods by name, describes their appear¬ ance, their personal qualities and genealogical relations, their homes and their private lives. He analyses the motives by which they are actuated.

He makes the reader witness the sometimes

stormy sessions of the council of the gods and gives a detailed account of the way in which the divine decrees are put into execu¬ tion, to the benefit or detriment of the poor mortals, who are ena substratum and those who have been completely detached from the objects. Cf. also Ankermann 174 sq.

1

FARNELL,

Cults

I. 13.

Cf. also Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 25 sq., 27 sq.

and PEARSON in Hastings Enc. IV. 592. 2 Five Stages 26 sq. 3 Jorgensen, Das Auftreten der Gotter in den Biichern 1—p der Odyssee

(Hermes 39, 1904, 357 sq.); Heden, Gotterstudien passim, e. g. 16 sq., 33; Nils¬ son Gotter 376 sq.. History 162 sq.; Leitzke, Moira 43 sq., 52 sq.

65 tirely at the mercy of the gods. A human character on the other hand speaks about the gods in quite a different manner.

He

rarely mentions the name of the god whose intervention is to be described.

Only certain gods are mentioned in direct speech and

even then only in special circumstances.

With the exception of

Zeus the gods are here only represented as the rulers of special spheres of activity: Apollo as the god of plague, the oath, or the bow, Athene as the protectress of art. Ares and Aphrodite as exercising their well-known functions.

Tutelary and tribal gods

are also mentioned by name. There is no reference to the Olympian scenes and to the so-called divine apparatus in direct speech except in such cases where past events are narrated, and the mode of description therefore approaches the poet’s own. As a rule vague expressions are used, such as ‘the gods’ or ‘a god’ or daimon. This indefinite way of speaking is consequently used by Homeric characters even when they are relating instances of divine inter¬ vention which have just before been described by the poet in full detail 1 Jorgensen, who was the first scholar to investigate this problem in any great detail, says: “Der Dichter macht also zwischen sich selbst und den Personen, die er als redend einfiihrt, den Unterschied, dass diese die Personlichkeit der eingreifenden Gottheit nicht erkennen, wahrend er selbst stets aufs genaueste weiss, ob etwa Athene oder Here das betreffende Wunder gemacht hat”.2 Here we are no doubt concerned with the conscious use by the poet of a special stylistic device.

Jorgensen supposed it to be a

conventional literary artifice3 4 5, but this theory cannot be upheld. On the contrary, Homer, in order to achieve realism in his cha¬ racterization, has evidently attempted to give a psychologically correct description of the way in which men think and talk. Ac¬ cording to Heden, who was the first to show the importance of Jorgensen’s discovery for the study of Homeric religion, it furnishes us with a means of distinguishing between the purely poetical 1 The The

poet

Achaeans,

(ib. 290).

describes (II. howewer,

of Hector by Apollo.

only that »one of the gods has saved him»

Cf. II. 20.318 sq., 347.

For further instances see JORGENSEN 366;

Heden 22 sq.

4 1. c. 364. 3 ib. 367.

5 — 35259.

15.236 sq.) the healing

know

Ehntnark.

66 treatment of the gods and the living religious faith which the poet took for granted in his audience or, in so far as he was de¬ liberately archaizing, in the Trojan heroes.

"In den angefiihrten

Reden gibt der Dichter den wirklichen Glauben seiner Zeit wieder — oder er versucht sogar zuweilen, durch bewusstes Archaisieren den Glauben der Vorzeit wiedCrzugeben — in seiner eigenen Erzahlung aber schaltet er mit dem freien Recht der Dichterphantasie und des hoheren Wissens weit unabhangiger mit den Gottern. Er wollte ja in seinem Gedichte lebende Menschen vorfiihren, also musste auch die Religiositat, die er ihnen zuschrieb, eine wirkliche, lebende sein.”1 This religious faith, however, is far removed from popular belief. It is the property of a particular social stratum, the higher classes, which constituted the poet’s audience, and whose attitude is reflected in the speeches of the Homeric characters. In the Homeric period as well as in later times the religion of these classes differed considerably from popular belief.

"Auch die oben

besprochene religiose Auffassung, die besonders in den Reden hervortritt, tragt alle Ziige eines aufgeklarten, auf das Rationelle gerichteten, bereits skeptischen Zeitalters . . . die

Gottermachte

mit

allgemeinen

Namen

Dass man so gern bezeichnete,

zeugt

vom Zuriicktreten des alten konkreten, vielgestaltigen Glaubens und von einem beginnenden Abstraktionstrieb, der nach einer mehr einheitlichen Gotterauffassung strebte.”2 It seems questionable, however, whether Heden has interpreted this religious belief correctly. His view is partly based on the fact that the indefinite mode of expression is of more frequent occur¬ rence, both absolutely and relatively, in the Odyssey than in the Iliad.3 According to Heden this indicates a growing tendency to prefer this mode of denoting the divine power to more concrete designations, and since he believes that the indefinite mode of expression implies a more abstract view of the gods he concludes that religious faith was losing its hold. This conclusion is said to be borne out by a comparison with later epic poetry.4 Against this it may be objected that Heden’s statistics, as he 1 op. cit. 16.

Cf. also Nilsson 11. cc.

2 ib. 26. 3 ib. 94 sq. 4 ib. 96 sq., cf. 65 sq.

67 admits himself,1 are not conclusive.

The proportions between

narrative and dialogue are not the same in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, and hence the two poems — let alone the later epics — are not commensurable.

Further, in discussing the later epic

poetry allowance must be made for the influence of literary tra¬ dition. The fact that the -Homeric poems formed the literary ideal which the epic poets constantly strove to imitate renders it wellnigh impossible to decide how far these poems embody the re¬ ligious faith of their authors and how far they are only imitating Homer. It may, however, be doubted whether we are actually concerned here with a more abstract view of the gods and whether the ex¬ pressions referred to indicate a more sceptical conception. Both with regard to this question and in order to be able to distinguish between those elements in Homer’s description of the gods that are merely the creations of the poet’s imagination — whether they were accepted as true or not — and those which actually embody the conception of the gods current among his contemporaries, it is necessary to ascertain if these indefinite expressions refer to definite anthropomorphic beings or to un¬ defined powers. If we are concerned with anthropomorphic beings it is also important to note how far their personal characteristics have been developed. It is not quite clear whether it was Heden’s opinion that these expressions actually referred to indefinite beings or powers, or whether it was merely left undecided what individual god was acting.2

Nilsson

thinks

that

the

divine

powers designated in

this indefinite way are, with some exceptions, not the ordinary 1 ib. 72.

2

Heden (p. 65 sq.) says that it is not possible to draw a sharp border-line

between

the

connotations

»die

Cotter im

Allgemeinen»,

»die olympischen

Gotter», »einige Gotter», and »die betreffenden Gotter» and, further, that it is not

necessary

to attempt this.

»Denn alle diese Bedeutungen sind doch all-

gemeine, unbestimmte Bezeichnungen der Gottheit, und diese allgemeine Unbestimmtheit ist eben das Characteristikon der Bezeichnung». Ib. p. 81 daimon is called »eine Bezeichnung der allgemeinen, unbestimmten gottlichen Macht*. An abstract of an

conception of the gods (p. 96) must, it seems, include the notion

undefined

power.

Cf. ib. 50, 72, 77 and, on the other hand, 66, 155.

Cf. also Jorgensen 364, 380 sq.; Leitzke 51 sq.

68 specialized and anthropomorphized gods.1

According to him the

process of specialization and individualization had set up narrow limits for these gods2 and they were accordingly "incapable of appearing as the causes of all the emotions, all the events in which man feels the working of a higher power”.3

The gods therefore

were obliged to leave one sphere of activity to the powers, especially "the life of man in so far as it is not determined by Nature”.4 5 Though fixed limits do not exist — daimon may also include 'god’ and ‘god’ may denote ‘power’ — there is the difference that daimon "has its centre in the undefined, in power, whereas theos centres in the individual and personal”.3 The first thing to be noted here is that the indefinite mode of expression is not confined to the Homeric poems.

It does not in¬

dicate a more deliberate opinion, nor is it the result of intellectual reasoning or scepticism, for instances of this usage are found every¬ where in the literature of the Attic period.

In some cases the ex¬

pressions in question may have been resorted to by enlightened writers in order to avoid mentioning the divinities of popular belief in which they no longer believed6, but on the other hand for the average Greek and for the unsophisticated, sincere believer, the most natural way of referring to the deities seems to have been to speak about ‘god’, ‘a god’ or ‘the gods’ or a daimon instead of mentioning them by name. Schmidt has proved this from a number of instances. He says: "Es ist beobachtet worden, dass der streng religiose Xenophon in seiner hellenischen Geschichte die Namen einzelner Gotter nur bei Erwahnung des ihnen gewidmeten Cultus nennt,. dagegen iiberall da, wo er das gottliche Walten beriihrt, eine der oben angefuhrten Wendungen (i. e. indefinite expressions) braucht,

eine

gewiss

characteristische

Thatsache”.7

Instances

1 History 161;, cf. 163.

2 ib. 166. 3 ib. 171, cf. 167: »The gods on account of their limitations could not be made responsible for the irrational in life, that very part of it in which human instinct most strongly felt the intervention of a higher power.* 4 ib. 171, cf. id. Gotter 383:

»die Wirkungen,

die

derart

sind, dass das

Eingreifen eines individuellen Gottes in ihnen nicht gedacht sein kann*. 5 History 165; cf. 167, 171. 6 Cf. Hed£n 96.

7 Ethik I. 52 sq. Cf. Joel, Der echte und der Xenophontische Sokrates I. 108 sq.; Nagelsbach II. 138; Rohde, Kl. Schr. II. 321.

69 of this usage occur in passages where the author is evidently using everyday language and referring to well-known facts and condi¬ tions, where he is neither attacking nor defending any special doctrine and does not appear in the capacity of poet or theologian but merely voices the current belief shared by the majority of his contemporaries.

As this observation applies to advanced and

conservative writers alike we may thus safely conclude that the usage in question was a fundamental characteristic of Greek belief. Moreover, real atheism in the modern sense of the word was, as has been shown by Drachmann, a late and rare phenomenon in Ancient Greece.1 It is characteristic that the indefinite mode of expression is throughout chiefly used in reporting instances of divine inter¬ vention in the past or in contexts where divine intervention in general is referred to as possible or desirable.

On the other hand,

in prayer and in the cult generally it is considered extremely important to address the right god and to use his right name when speaking to him.2 The simplest explanation of this practice would seem to be that in many, if not most, cases it was impossible to establish with absolute certainty the exact identity of the god responsible for a certain supernatural event.

In some instances,

of course, there was no room for doubt: none but Zeus sends down thunder and lightning, rain and storm; Artemis and Apollo, Hermes and the Muses have their special spheres of activity and accord¬ ingly all the phenomena that fall within these are attributed to the agency of the gods in question.3 It is in these fairly well de¬ fined cases that gods are mentioned by name in direct speech when a supernatural event is related.4

An illustrative example

is found in Xenophon.5 Xenophon had just concluded an adress to his soldiers by expressing his confident belief that the gods would grant them deliverance. ‘ ‘As he was saying this a man sneezed 1

Atheisme i det antike Hedenskab 6, 16.

Cf. WlLAMOWiTZ, Glaube I. 1.6.

2 Cf. Ausfeld in Jahrb. f. klass. Phil., Suppl.-Bd. 28(1903), 517 sq.; Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 33.

3 It is

also

sometimes

possible to recognize gods during their epiphany.

II. 1. 199 sq.; 3.396 sq.; 17.333 sq. the god is unknown.

Most frequently, however, the identity of

Cf. e. g. II. 5. 177 sq. and Hed£n 23 sq.

4 Heden 19 sq,

'5 Anabasis Library).

III. 2, 9.

Transl.

by. C..L.

Bkow.xsox

. c; ;

(The .'LIT'

Loeb

Class.

70 and when the soldiers heard it, they all with one impulse made obeisance to the god; and Xenophon said, ’I move, gentlemen, since at the moment when we were talking about deliverance an omen from Zeus the Saviour was revealed to us, that we make a vow to sacrifice to that god thank-offerings for deliverance as soon as we reach a friendly land; and that we add a further vow to make sacrifices, to the extent of our ability, to the other gods also”'. To this rule there is however an exception which shows that the vague terms employed by the ordinary man in attempting to describe the gods are due to his limited knowledge of their real nature.

When Homer makes one of his characters relate a tale,

the gods figuring in it are mentioned by name.1 This device was evidently taken over from a version of the tale which had this feature in common with the epic narrative of the Iliad and the Odyssey. For obvious reasons the poet was in quite a different position from that of the ordinary man.2

His knowledge is unlimited

and he has no doubt as to the identity of the intervening god; he can even tell what was the object of the god’s intervention and how it took place.

Whether we assume that Homer believed in

his gods or not, it was his right and duty as a poet to supply de¬ finite information on those points that were left vague and in¬ definite in the popular conception of the gods. In this respect the position of the poet is, mutalis mutandis, similar to that of the oracles. The choice of the god to be invoked in each case depended on various circumstances.

Prayers are offered to special gods for

what lies in their power to grant; if a man is more closely dependent upon a tribal or tutelary god he will naturally invoke his aid when necessary; accidental proximity to the temple or occasional abode of a god is a reason for turning to him in an emergency.3 This practice evidently corresponds to the cases in which Homer and Xenophon make their characters mention individual gods by name. Often it must however have been difficult to ascertain what god was the best helper on a special occasion and then oracles were 1 Hed£n 17, 21. 2 Cf. Le Marchant 57 sq. 3 Schmidt,

Ethik II. 34 sq.; Nagelsbach

altert. 79; AUSFELD op. cit. 510 sq.

I. 216 sq.;

Stengel,

Kultus-

7i consulted. “To what god shall I sacrifice?'’ was one of the questions the oracles were most frequently called upon to answer.1 Actually this question was in the last resort asked of the gods themselves. The oracle could give correct information because it possessed higher wisdom, and thanks to their insight into the true nature of things, seers, who had been inspired by the gods, could tell what god it was that visited his wrath upon the country and what was the reason for it.2 Oracles and seers give their consultants the same information that the poets give their audience. From the above discussion we may conclude that the indefinite expressions should probably be interpreted as a device for indi¬ cating that a supernatural event was caused by a god as to whose exact identity no definite statement was possible or desirable.3 The names of the gods are suppressed for several reasons.4 The name may be so sacred that it must not be pronounced. Sometimes it is kept secret lest an outsider should avail himself of the power residing in it and compel the god to injure his people, or because it is uncertain whether the name in common use is actually the real name of the god. All that is known about the god is that he exists and acts; who can tell if the name by which he is #

invoked is his real name?

Hence a reservation is added to the

prayers addressed to him, in case the name used is not the right one. This view is most clearly brought out in a passage in Plato’s Cratylus5 where Socrates says: "There is one excellent principle which, as men of sense, we must acknow¬ ledge, — that of the Gods we know nothing, either of their natures or of their names wdiich they give themselves; but we are sure that the names by which they call themselves, whatever they may be, are true. And this

1 also

Persson, Exegeten 67 sq.; Stengel 74 sq.; Schmidt, Ethik II. 37 sq. Cf.

the activity of the Delphian oracle for the organization and introduction

of cults.

Schmidt

op.

cit. II 53; Persson

op. cit. 55 sq.; Nagelsbach II.

184 sq.; Dar.-Sagl. Diet. IV: 1 p. 222. 2 II. 1.62 sq., 74 sq.; Soph. Oed. R. 310 sq.; Xenoph. Anab. VII 8. 4. The oracle as well as the seer can tell what god it was that appeared.

Le Mar-

chant 61 sq., Wilamowitz, Glaube II. 37. The oracle can even tell whether

the

gods

VIII. 122;

are satisfied

with

the

sacrifices

they

have

received.

Herodotus

Schmidt, Ethik II 53. — Manticism is according to Plato (Sympos.

188 C) a communion between gods and men. Halliday, Divination 65. 3 Cf. Heden 66;

4

Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 362 sq.

Farnell, Sondergotter 91; Hastings Enc. IX. 179.

s 400 D sq. Transl. by Jowett (The Dialogues of Plato, Oxf. 1892).

72 is the best of all principles; and the next best is to say, as in prayers, that we will call them by any sort or kind of names or patronymics which they like, because we do not know of any other. That also, I think, is a veiy good custom, and one which I should much wish to observe.

Let us then, if

you please, in the first place announce to them that we are not inquiring about them; we do not presume thpt we are able to do so; but we are in¬ quiring about the meaning of men in giving them these names,

in this

there can be small blame.”

The same opinion is also expressed in the Philebusk “Then let us begin with the goddess herself, of whom Philebus says that she is called Aphrodite, but that her real name is Pleasure . . .

The awe

which I always feel about the names of gods is more than human — it exceeds all other fears. And now I would not sin against Aphrodite by naming her amiss; let her be called what she pleases. But Pleasure I know to be mani¬ fold, and with her, as I was just now saying, we must begin, and consider what her nature is.”2

Schmidt compares the famous passage in Aischylus’ Agamemnon

(160 sq.): “Zeus, whosoe’er He be. That be his name for me If he so please.’’3 and adds: “Hierdurch erhalt auch der vielbesprochene Satz des Herodot (2, 53), nach welchem Homer und Hesiodos

die Ab-

stammungsverhaltnisse der griechischen Gotter ausgebildet, denselben ihre Namen gegeben, ihre Funktionen zugewiesen und ihre Gestalten festgesetzt haben, erst sein rechtes Licht.

Gewiss geht

die Behauptung insofern zu weit, als sie jenen Dichtern ausschliesslich zuschreibt, was zum grossen Theile das Resultat eines langen nationalen

Culturprocesses war,

allein

der

Geschichtsschreiber

wurde zu ihr durch die Beobachtung veranlasst, dass der Volksglaube

weder

die

Thatigkeitsspharen

noch

die

Eigenschaften

noch selbst die Benennungen der einzelnen Gotter ebenso klar unterschied wie die Dichtung und sich vollends gegen das, was 1 12 B sq. Transl. by JOWETT. 2 Cf.

Memorab.

IV. 3,

13; Cic. Nat. Deorum I. 12, 31; Lactantius,

Ira Dei c. XI.; Krische,

Theol.

Lehren 216;

Die

Xen.

Gebete

der

Le

Marchant 2; Lasaulx,

Griechen und Rorner 142; Ausfeld, op. cit. 518.

For cult

of unknown gods cf. further Od. 2.262, 5.445 and Norden, Agnostos Theos 56 sq.; Hastings Enc. IX 180.

Cf. also Weinreich in ARW 18(1915) 1 sq.

3 Transl. by J. T. Sheppard (The Oresteia of Aeschylus, Cambr. 1933 .

73 diese von ihren gegenseitigen Familienbeziehungen zu berichten wusste, sehr gleichgiiltig verhielt.”1

The concrete description of

the gods belongs according to Schmidt to poetry, which for its special purposes requires “fest umrissene Gestalten”, and this accounts for the fact "dass uns in denjenigen Zeiten, von denen Glauben und Denken wir.nur durch poetische Uberlieferung Kunde haben, vorwiegend die ganz konkrete Bezeichnungsweise entgegentritt”.2 Without special knowledge granted by the gods themselves it is impossible to penetrate the mysteries of existence and get to know the gods.

But as far as Greek religion is concerned there is no

evidence for the view that the gods were nameless and that there existed indeterminate undifferentiated powers, beings without names and shapes.

If man was actually to a great extent de¬

pendent on such indefinite powers in everything that lies outside the sphere controlled by Nature, why, then, does he never pray to them?

According to Wilamowitz an indefinite god cannot be

the object of cult.3 Hence definite personal gods must have existed ever since the time when cult first arose. The suggestion that the growing specialization

and individualization of the anthropo¬

morphic gods rendered them increasingly unfit to perform the functions attributed to indeterminate powers is thus shown to be erroneous.

Otherwise the personal gods would not be invoked

when their worshippers wished to secure the repetition of similar events in the future. It should not be denied, however, that the expressions under notice may refer to other gods than the Olympians. The number of gods was unlimited and the great gods are only an aristocracy among them.4 Besides, it is evident that the conceptions the average man formed of the Olympian gods differed considerably from the descriptions given of them in the Homeric poems. idea of the gods is often vague and indefinite.

Moreover the

But all this does

not affect our main contention that according to the Greek view the gods who intervened in human life and on whose activities the life of man and Nature alike depended were personal individual gods, each with a proper name of his own. 1 Ethik I. 52.

2 op. cit. 51.

3 Glaube- I. 21.

4 Cf. Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 19 sq., 284.

VI.

THE GODS AND FATE.

Many attempts have been made tcy explain the relationship between the gods and fate in Homer.1 ( While some scholars think that fate is identical with the will of the gods or of Zeus, others hold that the gods are only the instruments of fateD-According to a third theory the belief in fate and the belief in gods are two radi¬ cally distinct religious principles which the poet has endeavoured but failed to reconcile and coordinate into one uniform system. According to this theory the problem is a historical, not a dogmatic one.2

Still another interpretation has been proposed by some

scholars who suggest that fate is merely the poet's own fore-know¬ ledge of what is going to happen (the plot of the poem).

Fate

would thus become a mere literary device.3 The word fate has a twofold meaning: it may refer either to the appointed lot of man or to a determining and ruling power. These two conceptions are not necessarily associated with each other.

Fate may be conceived as administered by the gods, and

in that case the idea of a special power superior to the gods need not arise.

If, however, a special power of fate is-held to exist, it

must be the supreme power.

In such case the power of the gods

becomes illusory, for if they are in the last resort controlled by fate and merely act in order to execute its decrees, they are not the real rulers of the world. A personal power of fate, at any rate a personal power ruling over the gods, is not to be found in Homer.

Here moira always

means ‘allotted portion of life’ as has been shown by Wilamowitz.4 1 See

Eitrem

in

R.-E. s. v. Moira

p. 2459

sq.;

Hed£n,

Gotterstudien

160 sq.; Leitzke, Moira und Gottheit 65 sq.; Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie II. 989s.

2

Nilsson, Gotter 389, History 171.

3 Cf. Eitrem, 1. c. p. 2460.

4 Glaube I. 359 Nilsson,

History

sq.

Cf. also

169,

Gotter 385

Otto,

sq.;

Die

Gotter

Griechenlands 355

Nagelsbach

II.

Leitzke, op. cit. 18 sq.; Eitrem, 1. c. 2458; Hed£n 147 sq.

150.

sq.;

Differently

75 It is occasionally personified just as ate or death, the lot of man being conceived as the cause of the events which constitute his fate1, but this moira is not the power that assigns to each man his destiny, still less a power superior to the gods.

It may even

be doubted whether fate was a power at all. It is characteristic of, the instances where man a speaks of his moira that in the majority of cases the source of the moira is not specified.

He says simply that something was allotted to him,

that something is according to his moira, or that such is his lot2; but no information is furnished as to the manner in which this allotment takes place or the identity of the agency that performs it.

Parallels to this usage are found in other languages, and the

stereotyped character of the expressions proves that this is the normal way of referring to fate.

On the other hand, what is con¬

ceived as belonging to man’s moira is represented in other passages as coming from the gods.3 4 This therefore seems to be another in¬ stance of the indefinite mode of expression. In the case discussed above the indefinite expressions were intended to imply that the speaker was not sure what particular god was acting.

When

speaking of moira he goes still further. He offers no conjectures as to the cause of certain events; he merely states, that such is the portion allotted to him without attempting any inquiry into the origin or cause of the apportionment.

If, however, a definite

agency is to be mentioned, fate is always traced back to the gods! Indeed, the

chief element of

the idea of fate, is not the notion

of power but of a certain order of things. It was the fate of Achilles either to live a short time only but win immortal fame, or to live a lorrgTife in obscurity. His life was not foretold or predetermined in every detail; he was allowed to choose, the course of his life depending-bn his own choice, but once he had made that choice his fate was irrevocable.5

This conditional prediction is typical.

It is extremely common for an oracle to answer: if you act in such 1 Cf. e. g. II. 13.602, 19.86 sq. 2 Moipd

(alaa)

Saxtv,

eppops,

Sipap-co,

y.axd

poipav, y.ax’

alaav, etc.

Cf.

Eitrem, 1. c. p. 2449; Heden, op. cit. 163 sq.

3

Heden, op. cit. 164 sq.; Nagelsbach I. 130 sq.

4 Cf. the expressions »the moira of the gods», polpa S-st&v, pcapa tHou, alaa jltdg etc.; HedIcn, op. cit. 168.

5 II. 9. 410 sq.; cf. 1. 415 sq., 18. 95 sq., 19. 408 sq.

Cf. further II. 16. 685

sq.; Pind. Isthm. 8 (7). 26 sq.; Hes. Theog. 897 sq., and Otto, op. cit. 350 sq.

76 and such a way, the result will be such and such. The same idea underlies the question of what god to sacrifice to in a certain case. The^oracle foretells the future subject to certainjmnditiohsTit can predict the consequences of a cerlainTourse^of^ction.1

Such

praphecies'presuppose the existence of an order, a regularity in what happens, which yet leaves some scope for the free decisions of the individual.

Life is not foreordained except in so' far as its

events are the effects of definite causes. This order is something altogether abstract, being neither power, nor will, nor person. It is a scheme of events, not a power that controls them.

It has

no name and exists only so long as it is maintained.2 The lot of each individual is a certain measure of life with its share of happiness and suffering.

This cannot be altered: the

ghsfqrtune that falls to man’s lot comes through no fault of his own. But apart from that man may, through his own fault, bring down upon himself additional sufferings, imposed by way of punishment for his sins (cf. Od. i. 32 sq.). inflicted ‘beyond fate’ (hyper moron).

These sufferings are

A hyper moron is possible

since the order is not fatalistic; it is not thought of as a plan fixed beforehand, but rather as a law of causality, an aspect of the con¬ tinuity of events. It provides for the infliction of punishment upon anyone who attempts to transgress the bounds fixed by his lot, to claim more than his rightful portion, and to rise beyond his human limitations.3 If fate is not a ruling power it is possible to explain the tendency to interpret what is ordained by it as something natural.

Death

ordained by fate, natural death, is thus often contrasted with premature or violent death.

Poseidon says to Aeneas (II. 20. 332

sq.): “Aeneas, what god is it that biddeth thee fight infatuate against

PeleuS’ vehement son, who is both a better man than

thou and dearer to Immortals? ever thou fallest

Rather withdraw thee whenso¬

in with him, lest even contrary to thy fate

thou enter the house of Hades.

But when Achilles shall have

1 Cf. Hirzel, Themis 7 sq. 2 Cf. Otto, 142 sq.

op.

cit.

356 sq.;

Gruppe,

op.

cit. 989 sq.;

Nagelsbach I.

According to Otto this order is however purely negative; it consists

in the necessity of death (op. cit. 341 sq., 367 sq.).

For a criticism of Otto’s

theory cf. LEITZKE, op. cit. 66 sq. 3 For the question of the hyper moron cf. Otto, op. cit. 350 sq.; Nagels¬ bach I. 140 sq.; HEDliN, op. cit. 174 sq.; NiLSSON,

History

168.

77 met his death and doom, then be thou of good courage to fight among the thee.”1

foremost, for then shall none of the Achaeans slay

Moira may be regarded as the life-force with which man

has been

endowed.

This life-force is necessarily, hmited: other¬

wise man would be a god.

The death that is brought about by

fate results from the exhaustion of the hfe-force and need not be conceived as due to the intervention of a power.

It is, however,

easy to understand that especially in the case of sudden death, the idea of a power that snatches man away, of an active intervention, should readily present itself.

Since man’s fate terminates at his

death, moira is identified with death.2

This view is evidently

parallel to the belief in the^gods as the dispensers of fate. Fate is the definite and ordereddstate ot thinusXand does not involve the notion of a controlling and directing power, but any attempt to ascertain its ultimate origin must lead to the notion of a power, and thus to the gods.

That is how it happens that the gods can

be conceived as the rulers of fate. As an order fate becomes in a sense something superior to the gods.

The gods do not direct the course of events arbitrarily.

When Thetis asks Hephaestus to make a coat of armour for Achilles he replies (II. 28. 464 sq.): ‘Would that so might I avail to hide him far from dolorous death, when dread fate cometh upon him, as surely shall goodly armour be at his need, such as all men afterward shall marvel at, whosoever may behold’.

The

gods can save man even from afar, says Athene to Telemachus, but the very gods cannot avert death even from the man they love, when the moira of death grasps him (Od. 3. 231 sq.). ^Poseidon kqows that it is Odysseus’ fate to be saved and that he .can- do notjririg to prevent it' he can _only defenjiis deliverance (Od. 5. 288 sq.). /Not even Zeus can prevail against fate^ With grief in his heart he must let his own son Sarpedon fall when the latter’s fatal hour has come, and even Hector must die though Zeus wishes to save him (II. 16. 431 sq., 22. 167 sq.).3 1

Cf. ib. 293 sq.

Soph. Oed. Rex 949;

and

II. 6.487 sq.,

7.47

Plato, Leges 873 C.

sq.,

22.279 sq.; Od. 5.436 sq.;

See further Wilamowitz, Glaube

I. 358; W. SCHULZE in Sitz.-Ber. d. Konigl. Preuss. Akad. d. Wissensch. 1912 p. 695 sq., 1918

p. 331;

ROHDE,

Psyche II. 417 sq.; Norden in Hermes 28

(1893) p. 375r; id. Aeneis Buch VI p. 11 sq.; Nagelsbach II. 152.

2 3

Cf. Hed£n, op. cit. 146 sq.; Eitrem, 1. c. 2450, 2457. Cf. also Nilsson, History 151; Heden, op. cit. 177 sq.

7§ In these and similar cases fate is not conceived as a power controlling the gods, as is seen from those passages in the Iliad where Zeus weighs the fates of men (II. 8. 69 sq., 22. 209 sq.).1 This should certainly not be interpreted as an attempt by Zeus to ascertain the will of a fate operating outside his own sphere. If on the other hand we explain'the weighing as a symbol of Zeus’ decisions or power, as a figure of speech denoting that Zeus directs the battle, we miss the point of the- metaphor altogether.

Why

should Zeus, to symbolize his own decisions, employ an instrument which at least when handled in the proper way works quite in¬ dependently of the will of the person who uses it? In fact there is no need to interpret these passages symbolically.

Zeus weighs

the fates, just as other objects are weighed: to ascertain their weight. When the lot containing death sinks, Zeus knows whose fate it is to die.

This by no means implies that he is subject to a power,

but rather that there exists an order to which he conforms.

The

weight of a commodity is not determined by a power, but is con¬ ceived as a quality inherent in the very structure of matter. Ultimately we are concerned here with two distinct beliefs, the belief in gods and the belief in fate, which are in many respects the direct opposites of each other.2 Life may be viewed from two different angles: statically or dynamically.

In the former case

attention is focussed on the events themselves rather than on their effects; ‘it is the way of the world’, ‘cosi e la vita’: what happens must happen~and~there is notilingjto he done, about it

The hap-

piness and suffering that fall to man’s lot both belong to the primary conditions of life. one’s lot.

The proper course is to acquiesce in

It is of no avail to inquire whence the lot comes; since

there is no power behind fate capable of being influenced it is wise to be resigned.3 1 Cf. Heden, op. cit. 172 sq.; Eitrem, 1. c. 2454 sq.; Leitzke, op. cit. 59;

Otto, Gotter 354; Nagelsbach I. 133 sq.; Wilamowitz, Glaube I. 270; Nilsson in Kungl. Human. Vetenskapssamfundets i Lund Arsberatteise (Bulletin de la Societe Royale ter 3893.

des

Lettres

de Lund) 1932—1933 p. 29 sq.;

id.

Got¬

2 This view coincides to some extent with that propounded by Nilsson. Nilsson

however regards

power.

According to him the moira and the gods represent different stages

the tnoira as a manifestation of the supernatural

in religious evolution (History 170). 3 Cf. Nagelsbach I. 222 sq.

The belief in gods on the other hand views life as an interplay of forces: everything that happens is traceable to the agency of gods, and human life is throughout controlled by divine inter¬ vention.

Success depends on the benevolence of the powers, and

misfortune is a punishment imposed by them when angry.

But

the gods may be influenced and their moods changed by man. By prayers and sacrifices, by unqualified obedience to the will of the gods he may win success and happiness. From a strictly dogmatic point of view these two types of belief would seem too far removed from each other to be reconcilable, and yet in the popular view they are not incompatible.1 The angle from which life is viewed varies from time to time.

As we have

seen the same phenomenon is sometimes interpreted as natural, sometimes as supernatural.

Similarly what happens is conceived

now as man’s fate, now as the result of divine intervention.

In

the former case there is a tendency to emphasize the regularity with which the events take place and their universal incidence, whereas in the latter they are more liable to be set down as miracles. However, in the last resort fate and its consequences proceed from the gods. It is only the gods that act. The belief in gods and the belief in fate merge into each other, and from this fusion results the view that fate not only proceeds from the gods but is also controlled by them.2 The death ordained by fate, natural death, is also administered by the gods.3 Thus the gods become fatal powers, and since fate is not a power the latent contradiction is not brought out. During the whole of the Classical period this synthesis held the field in Greek religious thought, and it was not until the Hellenistic epoch that the belief in gods actually clashed with the belief in fate, probably owing to the fact that at this time the Olympian religion

was losing its hold.

scepticism.

The belief in fate easily leads to

If fate or chance governs the universe and the gods

are not in the last resort the supreme rulers there is of course no reason to take any further notice of them. And, conversely, if the belief in gods remains strong fatalism cannot gain a secure footing. 1 Cf. also Schmidt, Ethik I. 54 sq. 2 Cf. Otto, op. cit. 364 sq.; Eitrem, 1. c. 2453 scl3 Od. 16. 445 sq.; cf. II. 14. 464 sq., 16. 693 (cf. 685 sq. , 18. 115 sq., 21. no sq., Od. 14. 357 sq.; NAGELSBACH I. 66 sq.; HEDEN, op. cit. 80.

8o As we have seen, the theory of the relationship between the gods and fate current in Homer, and to some extent in Greek religion generally, represents a compromise between the two main traditional conceptions. Fate is superior to the gods as the principle underlying their activity but it is not a power. On the other hand it is identical with the will and' activity of the gods in so far as it becomes operative only through the agency of the gods. Since the order has no name, being a mere scheme of events and code

governing the

conduct

of the gods, it can, strictly

speaking, be proved to exist only if it is shown that the actions of the gods as well as the succession of events in general exhibit regularity and ordered continuity.

The order exists only in pro¬

portion as it is realized; it is identical with the reality from which it may be deduced. The gods who administer fate and to whose agency everything that is otherwise conceived as due to fate, is attributed, are, with one exception, not individual gods mentioned by name, but are designated by indefinite terms.

Alternatively a general reference

to Zeus serves the same purpose.

Several circumstances point

to the conclusion that though the gods were conceived as mutually independent and sometimes even hostile powers they were also thought of as a united whole ruling the universe and administering fate. As has been pointed out above, an undefined god was never the

object

of cult, but on the other hand all the gods were

sometimes worshipped collectively.1 gods” it

For the formula “all the

is possible to substitute “Zeus”,

apparently without

any appreciable difference of meaning, and also to address to him prayers originally intended for all the gods.2 Here Zeus evidently represents the gods as a collective body, which he may be said to do in virtue of his status as the supreme god. Apart from that, however, we seem to be concerned here with the view of the divine world as a united whole, so that a prayer addressed to one of the gods, naturally in most cases their chief representative, is received 1 e. g. II. 8. 346, 20. 104, 23. 546. Cf. further Heden, op. cit. 63 sq.; Jacobi, ndvxsg D-sof; Schmidt, Ethik II. 38. Nagelsbach I. 217; Usener, Gotterna-

men 344 sq.

2

Hed&n, op. cit. 67 sq.;

Nagelsbach I. 128 sq.; Schmidt, Ethik I. 49.

Cf. also the formula »Zeus, Athene, and Apollo* (II. 2. 371 and passim); Na¬ gelsbach I. no, II. 135 sq.

8i by them all. A case in point is II. 7. 177, where the people prayed to the gods, but when the prayer is reported in oratio recta it is addressed to Zeus. II. 3. 318 sq. is a parallel instance, except that here the prayer is addressed to Zeus Idaios.

A common formula

couples “Zeus” and “the gods”, Zeus being evidently regarded as the representative of 'them all.1

In other cases prayers are

offered to Zeus for the intervention of a god (Od. 21. 200) or in¬ versely to the gods for the intervention of Zeus (Od. 1. 378 sq.). In two instances Zeus is addressed in the 2nd pers. plur.2 Hence it may be safely concluded that in such cases “Zeus” and "the gods”

are practically synonymous terms.3

This identification

does not, however, apply to Zeus only. In Od. 13. 356 sq. Odysseus promises to sacrifice to the Nymphs if Athene comes to his rescue, and in Od. 17. 240 Eumaius vows to do the same if a daimon helps his master.

“And the shrill sad cry of the birds is heard by ears

supreme, by Apollo belike or Pan or Zeus, who to avenge the li¬ censed sojourners of their dwelling-place, sends soon or late on the offenders the ministers of punishment”, sings the chorus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon.4

We cannot escape the conclusion that

two distinct views cross each other here. Sometimes the suppliant takes great care to offer his prayers to the right god, but on other occasions he addresses them to the gods as a collective body or to one or several deities chosen more or less at random.

In the

extreme form of polytheism represented by Greek religion there is an unmistakable tendency if not exactly towards monotheism 1 e. g. II. 3. 298; Od. 3. 346. Cf. STEPHANUS, Thesaurus s. v. d-eog.: Heden, op. cit. 62 sq.

2 Od. 20.98 sq., 24.351 sq. 3 Cf. here also the use of »god" instead of Zeus. Hed£n. op. cit. 72 sq. — In discussing the question whether mana is a hypostasis of power (see below) ARBMAN has drawn attention to a parallel to this use of D-sol (Seele und Mana

343).

The Wakan Tanka of the Oglalas (North America) is described as ident¬

ical with »all of the Wakan beings because they are all as if one». »Mankind is

permitted

to

pray to the Wakan beings.

If their prayer is directed to all

the good Wakan beings, they should pray to Wakan Tanka. Bui if the prayer is offered only to one of these bemgs, then the one addressed should be named”. Cf.

Walker,

The Sun Dance and other ceremonies of the Oglala Division

of the Teton Dakota, American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers vol. 16 (1917) P- lS2 sq.). 4 1 55 s