BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIET OF Henirg m. Sage 1891 .A^^^ffM3. islm^lix.. 5931 CornelJ University Library BL 25.H621911 The higher aspects of Greek religion.Lec 3 1924 007 845 450 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007845450 THE HIBBERT LECTURES SECOND SERIES 1911 THE HIBBERT LECTURES SECOND SERIES THE HIGHER ASPECTS OF GREEK RELIGION LECTURES DELIVERED AT OXFORD AND IN LONDON IN APRIL AND MAY igii BY L. R. FARNELL, D.Litt. WILDE LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE GARDEN, W.C. 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT 1912 CONTENTS Lecture I GENERAL FEATURES AND ORIGINS OF GREEK RELIGION Greek religion mainly a social-political system, 1. In its earliest " period a " theistic creed, that is^ a worship of personal individual deities, ethical personalities rather than mere nature forces, 2. Anthrqgomorphism its predominant bias, 2-3. Yet preserving many primitive features of " animism " or " animatism," 3-5. Its progress gradual without violent break with its distant past, 5-6. The ele- ment of magic fused with the religion but not predominant, 6-7. Hellenism and Hellenic religion a blend of two ethnic strains, one North-Aryan, the other Mediterranean, mainly Minoan-Mycenaean, 7-9. Criteria by which we can distinguish the various influences of these two, 9-1 6. The value of Homeric evidence, 18-20. Sum- mary of results, 21-24. Lecture II THE RELIGIOUS BOND AND MORALITY OF THE FAMILY The earliest type of family in Hellenic society patrilinear, 25-27. Earliest religious phenomena the cult of the hearth and of Zeus the God of the household, 27-30. Marriage a religious ceremony, consecrated to Zeus and Hera, in some sense a sacrament or ' mystery, 30-32. Its connection with the agricultural life, 32-34. Dedication of the bride to the tutelary hero or divinity, 34-35. vi HIGHER ASPECTS OF GREEK RELIGION Marriage a social-religious duty, 35-36. The ethics of the family, 36-37. Adultery and certain sexual offences a social-religious wrong; but no moral exaltation of virginity, 38-43. Family-purity maintained by the Erinyes but mainly by the higher deities, 39-41. The high sense of family duty the master-work of Greek religion, 43-45. Philosophic ethics reflecting popular cult, 45-47. Lecture III FAMILY MORALITY (CONTINUED): TRIBAL AND CIVIC RELIGION Sanctity of the father, 48-50. The power and moral effects of the Curse, 50-53. Influence of family-religion on the position of the slave, religious method of manumission, 54-56. The family a unit of the clan or tribe, 58. The genos and phratria, even the local organisation of the deme, based on the idea of kinship and on the cults of the deities of kinship and ancestral heroes, 58-6 1. Object of this religion to preserve civic purity of blood, 62. Greek religion in relation to the Polls, 63-64. The Greek State sometimes of religious origin, 64-65. The city regarded as a single family, hence the domestic character of many civic cults, 65-68^ The high Gods political powers, especially Zeus, Apollo, and Athena, 68-69. Greek religion unique in respect of its political character, 69-71. The State-deity sometimes the physical ancestor, 71-72. Lectuee IV INFLUENCE OF THE CIVIC SYSTEM OF RELIGION UPON RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, MORALITY AND LAW Worship confined to citizens, the religious tone genial rather than profoundly reverential, 73-74. Importance of the idea of kinship with the deity, 75-76. Clan morality implies collective responsi- bility and vicarious human sacrifice, 76-78. Religious aspect of civic duties, courage, patriotism, 78-83. The alien invader a pollution to the temples, 83-84. Religious origins of the laws concerning homicide, 84-91 CONTENTS Lecture V EXPANSION OF GREEK RELIGION BEYOND THE LIMITS OF THE POLIS Beginnings of a national religion in the Homeric period, 92-93. Cult of Zeus Panhellenios, 94-95. The early AmphictyonieSj the Delphic Oracle, 96-99- Expansion of early Greek morality, 98-99- Universal moral force of the oath, 99-100, The rights of aliens, 100-102. Duties of hospitality, 102-103. Religious sanction of friendship, 103-104. Humanism in religion, readiness to recognise native gods in alien forms of divinity, 104-106. Tolerance and the absence of religious wars, 106-107. The higher divine attributes, 107-124. The idea of divine vengeance early associated with the idea of divine mercy, 107-115. The vindictive theory challenged by poets and philosophers, 1 14-1 1 5. Ethical theory of punishment connected with the doctrine of the perfect goodness of God, 114-116. The problem of evil, 115-116. Association of religion with art and science, 116-124. Lecture VI PERSONAL RELIGION IN GREECE Development of the individual conscience, 125-127. Question of the personal vitality of Greek religion, 127-134. The growth of the idea of purity as a religious ideal, 134-136. The union of the mortal with the divine, 136-137. The ritual of the sacra- ment, 136-137. The value of the mysteries, 137-140. Religion becoming more inward and more spiritual, 141-147. Spread of individualism and humanitarianism, 147-150. HIGHER ASPECTS OF GREEK RELIGION LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY SKETCH There are many salient points of contrast that may guide our classification of religions ; but none is more significant than that which strikes us at first glance in comparing early Hellenic polytheism with, for instance, early Christianity. We have, in the first, a religion that is pre-eminently social-political—one, that is, in which man's attachment to the divine powers is rooted in his corporate life, in the economy of the household, the tribe, the city ; in the second, one whose objective or primary concern is the personal individual soul in its spiritual and mystic relations with God. In selecting, then, the higher social aspects of Greek polytheism as the main subject of this course, I shall not be presenting the whole picture, indeed, but at least the dominant features of this religion, and an aspect which occasionally runs risk of being ignored by some of our English anthropologists. In my concluding lecture I shall give a short estimate of the higher personal, as distinct from the purely 2 HIGHER ASPECTS OF GREEK RELIGION social, religion of the Hellenes ; for the subject is of great interest in itself, and in the study of certain departments of religious morality the one essentially involves the other. As Greek religion is unusually complex, any partial statement of it is apt to be misleading unless accom- panied by clear comprehension of the whole. For this years of study are necessary ; but it may assist the understanding of this special subject that I am going to treat, if I preface it by an outline sketch of the general phenomena and of the conclusions at which I have arrived concerning them. Greek religion is presented to us by its various records mainly as a polytheism of personal divinities, grouped in certain family relationships around and under a supreme god. Theoretically the chief divinity is male in sky, earth, and sea, but in certain localities the goddess-cult is more powerful. The higher beings are rarely recognisable as personifications of physical forces of nature, and it is only of a very few of them that a nature-origin can be posited or proved ; and though many of them have special departments of nature for their peculiar concern, they are chiefly to be regarded as ethical and intellectual personalities, friendly on the whole to man and powerful to aid in all that concerns his physical and social life. These elements in Greek religion belong to theism, and, from the social and political point of view, these are by far the most important. And in these theistic crea- tions of the Hellene the dominant impulse was that which we call anthropomorphism, a mode of feeling INTRODUCTORY SKETCH S and thought to which the average Greek tempera- ment was so attracted that both the artistic and the religious history of the race were mainly deter- mined by it. For instance, it explains the compara- tive absence of mysticism in this religion and the strong bias towards hero-cult which can be traced from the pre-Homeric age onwards. It equally ex- plains the iconic or idolatrous impulse which has left so deep an imprint upon pre-Christian Hellenism and on the Greek Christian Church. But we must also reckon with the lower products and phenomena which it has been the chief function of modern anthropology to explore and explain. Besides the worship of these glorified anthropomor- phic beings called " theoi," we have to deal with facts that seem to point to direct worship, or at least the respectful tendance, of animals, the ritual of certain localities prescribing an offering, for instance, to the flies, to the wolves, or to a pig. And one of the high divinities might at times be imagined as incarnate in the animal, Apollo possibly in the wolf, Poseidon in the horse, Dionysos in the bull and goat. We may regard these beliefs and practices as the deposit of an age, not indeed of pure theriomorphism—for it is very doubtful if such ever existed in the history of religions—but of one when the anthropomorphic imagination was unstable and the divinity might be conceived as embodied now in human now in animal form. Again, though the Greek imagination tended forcibly towards the concrete and definite, it admitted the apprehension of vaguer, more inchoate, forms of — 4 HIGHER ASPECTS OF GREEK RELIGION nameless daimones or " theoi," such as those who pre- side over birth TeueTvX\iSe<;, KtuXtaSes—or over the lower world with its associations of death and of the curse and the miasma of bloodshed, the 'Epivves, IT/jaftSifcat, Qeol Met\i;;(toi, ; such figures showing a far less degree of anthropomorphic personification than the robust personages of the higher polytheism, who were as vividly realised as are the divine figures of modern Mediterranean religion.