Part 9 (1/2)

The colony at Cyrene in Africa was founded according to the express command of the oracle of Apollo. The inhabitants of Thera, who had received this order, did not care to go to an unknown country. They yielded only at the end of seven years since their island was afflicted with dearth; they believed that Apollo had sent misfortune on them as a penalty. Nevertheless the citizens who were sent out attempted to abandon the enterprise, but their fellow-citizens attacked them and forced them to return. After having spent two years on an island where no success came to them, they at last came to settle at Cyrene, which soon became a prosperous city.[50]

=Importance of the Colonies.=--Wherever they settled, the colonists const.i.tuted a new state which in no respect obeyed the mother town from which they had come out. And so the whole Mediterranean found itself surrounded by Greek cities independent one of the others. Of these cities many became richer and more powerful than their mother towns; they had a territory which was larger and more fertile, and in consequence a greater population. Sybaris, it was said, had 300,000 men who were capable of bearing arms. Croton could place in the field an infantry force of 120,000 men. Syracuse in Sicily, Miletus in Asia had greater armies than even Sparta and Athens. South Italy was termed Great Greece. In comparison with this great country fully peopled with Greek colonies the home country was, in fact, only a little Greece.

And so it happened that the Greeks were much more numerous in the neighboring countries than in Greece proper; and among these people of the colonies figure a good share of the most celebrated names: Homer, Alcaeus, Sappho, Thales, Pythagoras, Herac.l.i.tus, Democritus, Empedocles, Aristotle, Archimedes, Theocritus, and many others.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] ”Balmy and clement,” says Euripides, ”is our atmosphere. The cold of winter has no extremes for us, and the shafts of the sun do not wound.”

[47] Autochthones.

[48] The story of the collection of the Homeric poems by Pisistratus is without foundation--”eine blosse Fabel.” Busolt, ”Griechische Geschichte.” Gotha, 1893, i., 127.--ED.

[49] Probably this custom has another origin the recollection of which was lost.--ED.

[50] Herodotus, iv., 150-158.

CHAPTER X

GREEK RELIGION

=The G.o.ds. Polytheism.=--The Greeks, like the ancient Aryans, believed in many G.o.ds. They had neither the sentiment of infinity nor that of eternity; they did not conceive of G.o.d as one for whom the heavens are only a tent and the earth a foot-stool. To the Greeks every force of nature--the air, the sun, the sea--was divine, and as they did not conceive of all these phenomena as produced by one cause, they a.s.signed each to a particular G.o.d. This is the reason that they believed in many G.o.ds. They were polytheists.

=Anthropomorphism.=--Each G.o.d was a force in nature and carried a distinct name. The Greeks, having a lively imagination, figured under this name a living being, of beautiful form and human characteristics.

A G.o.d or G.o.ddess was represented as a beautiful man or woman. When Odysseus or Telemachus met a person peculiarly great and beautiful, they began by asking him if he were not a G.o.d. Homer in describing the army pictured on the s.h.i.+eld of Achilles adds, ”Ares and Athena led the army, both clad in gold, beautiful and great, as becomes the G.o.ds, for men were smaller.” Greek G.o.ds are men; they have clothing, palaces, bodies similar to ours; if they cannot die, they can at least be wounded. Homer relates how Ares, the G.o.d of war, struck by a warrior, fled howling with pain. This fas.h.i.+on of making G.o.ds like men is what is called _Anthropomorphism_.

=Mythology.=--The G.o.ds, being men, have parents, children, property.

Their mothers were G.o.ddesses, their brothers were G.o.ds, and their children other G.o.ds or men who were half divine. This genealogy of the G.o.ds is what is called the _Theogony_. The G.o.ds have also a history; we are told the story of their birth, the adventures of their youth, their exploits. Apollo, for example, was born on the island of Delos to which his mother Latona had fled; he slew a monster which was desolating the country at the foot of Parna.s.sus. Each canton of Greece had thus its tales of the G.o.ds. These are called myths; the sum of them is termed _Mythology_, or the history of the G.o.ds.

=The Local G.o.ds.=--The Greek G.o.ds, even under their human form, remained what they were at first, phenomena of nature. They were thought of both as men and as forces of nature. The Naiad is a young woman, but at the same time a bubbling fountain. Homer represents the river Xanthus as a G.o.d, and yet he says, ”The Xanthus threw itself on Achilles, boiling with fury, full of tumult, foam, and the bodies of the dead.” The people itself continued to say ”Zeus rains” or ”Zeus thunders.” To the Greek the G.o.d was first of all rain, storm, heaven, or sun, and not the heaven, sun, or earth in general, but that corner of the heaven under which he lived, the land of his canton, the river which traversed it. Each city, then, had its divinities, its sun-G.o.d, its earth-G.o.ddess, its sea-G.o.d, and these are not to be confounded with the sun, the earth, and the sea of the neighboring city. The Zeus of Sparta is not the same as the Zeus of Athens; in the same oath one sometimes invokes two Athenas or two Apollos. A traveller who would journey through Greece[51] would therefore meet thousands of local G.o.ds (they called them Poliades, or G.o.ds of the city). No torrent, no wood, no mountain was without its own deity,[52] although often a minor divinity, adored only by the people of the vicinity and whose sanctuary was only a grotto in the rock.

=The Great G.o.ds.=--Above the innumerable legion of local G.o.ds of each canton the Greeks imagined certain great divinities--the heaven, the sun, the earth, and the sea--and these everywhere had the same name, and had their temple or sanctuary in every place. Each represented one of the princ.i.p.al forces of nature. These G.o.ds common to all the Greeks were never numerous; if all are included, we have hardly twenty.[53]

We have the bad habit of calling them by the name of a Latin G.o.d. The following are their true names: Zeus (Jupiter), Hera (Juno), Athena (Minerva), Apollo, Artemis (Diana), Hermes (Mercury), Hephaistos (Vulcan), Hestia (Vesta), Ares (Mars), Aphrodite (Venus), Poseidon (Neptune), Amphitrite, Proteus, Kronos (Saturn), Rhea (Cybele), Demeter (Ceres), Persephone (Proserpina), Hades (Pluto), Dionysos (Bacchus). It is this little group of G.o.ds that men wors.h.i.+pped in all the temples, that men ordinarily invoked in their prayers.

=Attributes of the G.o.ds.=--Each of these great G.o.ds had his form, his costume, his instruments (which we call his attributes); it is thus that the faithful imagined him and that the sculptors represented him.

Each has his character which is well known to his wors.h.i.+ppers. Each has his role in the world, performing his determined functions, ordinarily with the aid of secondary divinities who obey him.

Athena, virgin of clear eye, is represented standing, armed with a lance, a helmet on the head, and gleaming armor on the breast. She is the G.o.ddess of the clear air, of wisdom, and of invention, a G.o.ddess of dignity and majesty.

Hephaistos, the G.o.d of fire, is figured with a hammer and in the form of a lame and ugly blacksmith. It is he who forges the thunderbolt.

Artemis, shy maiden, armed with bow and quiver, courses the forests hunting with a troop of nymphs. She is the G.o.ddess of the woods, of the chase, and of death.

Hermes, represented with winged sandals, is the G.o.d of the fertile showers. But he has other offices; he is the G.o.d of streets and squares, the G.o.d of commerce, of theft, and of eloquence. He it is who guides the souls of the dead, the messenger of the G.o.ds, the deity presiding over the breeding of cattle.

Almost always a Greek G.o.d has several functions, quite dissimilar to our eyes, but to the Greeks bearing some relation to one another.

=Olympus and Zeus.=--Each one of these G.o.ds is like a king in his own domain. Still the Greeks had remarked that all the forces of nature do not operate by chance and that they act in harmony; the same word served them for the idea of order and of universe. They supposed, then, that the G.o.ds were in accord for the administration of the world, and that they, like men, had laws and government among them.