RELIGIOUS
CRISIS IN ANCIENT GREECE
The Greeks of Plato's time and before were unsure about what to do about their
religious traditions. Hints of the problem appear as early as Homer, and it
was never fully resolved.
They had inherited from a distant past a set of religious stories and practices
that were not very appropriate to the nature of Greek society in the 4th and
5th centuries BCE:
Gods. Greek religion was what we can generally call "pagan."
There were many gods and/or goddesses, some of higher rank than others. They
were powerful and immortal, but their powers were limited. For example if one
god cursed a man, the others could not just take the curse away. The division
into definite spheres--god of war, of love, of the Sun, etc.--was a much later
development, but they may have had some special functions. These gods walked
among men and were concerned with their welfare, often having their favorites
whom they aided. They seemed not to be concerned with morality in general, but
did insist on such things as keeping oaths, protecting the family,and in general
maintaining tribal unity.
What seems to have happened in Greece is that several waves of nomadic tribes
invaded the Greek mainland from the north or east. They spoke an Indo-European
language, an ancestor of Greek, and they had a religion of male sky-gods, whose
actions and organization resembled those of the tribes themselves. There was
a chieftain (later Zeus), who ruled because of his power and was expected to
do whatever he had the power to do, as long as the tribe was maintained. His
sons were hereditary chiefs, and possibly his daughters as well.
These tribes found already existing in Greece small agricultural settlements,
worshiping female fertility goddesses. Chief among them was a powerful goddess,
often called the Great Mother.
Like pagans everywhere, when two groups met they tried to see how their gods
were related to one another. Two similar gods were said to be the same one under
more than one name, and often the gods of one group were said to be married
to the goddesses of another. Because none of this was systematically done, there
was very little cohesion among the various myths.
Belief. It is usually a mistake to think about pagan religious traditions
in terms of "belief." They told their myths, probably added to them
and even made up new ones. They talked about the gods, prayed to them, and above
all, carried out rituals. (It is quite possible that many of the myths were
made up to account for the rituals, rather than the reverse.) It was not until
late, however, that they even bothered to try to reconcile the myths with one
another.
Certainly, there was no body of doctrine that everyone was expected to believe.
One partial exception is the so-called "Mystery" sects. Unlike the
worship of the standard gods, the mysteries were private organizations whose
membership was closed and often secret. In the case of the most popular mysteries,
membership was not particularly difficult to acquire, but there were initiation
ceremonies that had to be gone through. They seemed to be primarily concerned
with healing and with survival after death. Of course, practices designed to
ensure life after death must have had some theory behind them, but they were
probably vague and restricted to the membership of the particular sect.
There was no general belief about life after death in ancient Greece. There
was a widespread sense that although life was difficult, it was better than
being dead.
The religious problem. The old mythology didn't offer any moral guidance.
People could not be allowed to behave like the old gods, killing, defrauding,
raping, and committing adultery. There were three basic strategies offered in
the Golden Age:
1. Rejection. As Euripides put it, "there are no gods, or if there
are they do not care about humans." Terrible things happen: learn to live
with it.
2. Allegory. The myths and rituals are disguised moral messages or else
historical examples that we must try to follow.
3. Reflection. By asking questions like "what are we?," "what
are gods?" "What would good gods expect of us?" we can find out
how to live. The human mind is sufficient to govern our lives if we pay attention
and take care in our thinking. This seems to be Plato's view.
Barnes 2001
ARTEMIS AS PROTECTOR OF THE ANIMALS