The World of Homer
conspicuous, because their passions are no longer stirred by the great
war. In the opening lines they discountenance adultery (Aegisthus
and Clytaemnestra). They are equally offended by the use of poisoned
arrow-heads.[26] "All men yearn after the gods.". It is they who give
happiness in married life.[27] It is Zeus who protects suppliants.[28]
The just man is god-fearing.[29] The gods love righteousness and
compassion.[30] Throughout the whole poem, notably in the case of the
pious Eumaeus, a deep sense of dependence on the gods, and resignation
to their will, is depicted. Yet Zeus permits Poseidon to wreak his
grudge on Odysseus, and even on the Phaeacians who brought him home;
while in the song of Demodocus, a divine adultery is matter of mirth to
all Olympus.
Thus the religion of Homer is, ethically, a very good religion. Homeric
religion is already national, that is, all Achaeans believe in the same
Olympian consistory, with Zeus as the Over Lord. None the less many of
the cities have each their favourite divine being, a special patron,
just as cities had in the Middle Ages. All believed in the Deity, but
Orleans had a special patron in St. Aignan; and "the guarded mount" in
St. Michael. Athene was no less the patroness of Troy than of Athens.
The Gods are all national, though they have their preferences. We may
go further and say that, to Homer's mind, the Gods are universal.
To Homer, Zeus is anything but a "tribal" god: he is not even merely
a national god; all peoples known to Homer acknowledge his supremacy.
This was the tolerant view of historic Hellas: all nations had the
same gods named by different names in different languages. There were
not many Zeuses, but one Zeus, though various local names were given
to the god, Dodonaean Zeus, Idaean Zeus, Pelasgian Zeus, or, again,
Delian Apollo, Pythian Apollo, Smirithian Apollo, and so forth. The
god is in no way restricted to a given place, Dodona, Ida, Delos,
Delphi; these titles are his because he possesses a temple or Oracle
in each district. Men may call to the gods or to a god wherever they
find themselves, abroad or at home, on the sea or "in fairy lands
forlorn," and everywhere they may sacrifice. To the devout mind,
despite the local associations of the gods in mythology, the divine is
omnipresent; can hear and help everywhere.[31] As for the local titles
of gods, we know the same mediaeval usage in respect to the Saints. The
Scot who, when at home, had a devotion to St. Catherine of Bothwell,
in France sought the aid of St. Catherine of Fierbois.[32] The gods,
or at least Zeus and Apollo, are omniscient, yet they need, in myth,
to be told about events remote or future, or need to make special
observations from selected places, such as the crest of Ida. These are
the inevitable and universal contradictions which beset all early and
much late theological speculation.
When Ionia became speculative as to all things physical or divine,
the mythological aspects of the gods in Homer were, what to the
philosophers they remained, a stumbling-block. But philosophy could not
cure Greece, or do away with her heritage of barbarism and savagery.
Yet, in some incomprehensible way, the Achaeans, as represented by
Homer, had an infinitely cleaner religion and ritual than the mother
cities of the philosophers.
In the religion of historic Greece, from the Ionian age to the
establishment of Christianity, the most active, and, so to say,
practical element is, we repeat, that of hero-worship, worship of dead
men. The great temples of the gods of Greece in general, especially
of the oracular Apollo, and of Athene in Athens, Artemis in Ephesus,
Artemis Orthia at Sparta, and so on, were maintained in splendour and
enriched with treasures of gold-work, silver, and bronze. The god or
goddess and the shrines were centres of pilgrimages, and pilgrimages
were good for trade. By them were the cities nourished, as the maker of
silver shrines at Ephesus declared. Miracles were wrought, the blind
saw, the lame walked. The local deity was of as great economic service
to a city of Greece as the bones of the Apostle were to St. Andrews,
and the relics of St. Thomas to Canterbury.
But for practical purposes of securing supernormal aid in war or
famine, the dead heroes were to each town or village what St. Aignan
was to Orleans, a very present help in trouble. For near a thousand
years St. Aignan routed the foes of the good city, and his image
was adored and carried in processions in 1429. Thus "to Lycurgus,
after he was dead, the Spartans erected a temple, and paid him great
worship."[33] "So that, as might be supposed ... they straightway
shot up and became prosperous." The Spartans, therefore, determined
to annex Arcadia, but were defeated by the forces of Tegea. Later,
in the sixth century, during the time of Croesus, the Spartans asked
the Delphic Oracle to direct their choice of a patron god. They were
bidden to bring home the bones of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, which were
in hostile Tegea. In Tegea, Lichas found the coffin which contained
the bones, seven cubits long (half a cubit longer than Goliath), of
Orestes, and carried them to Sparta. Thenceforth the Spartans were
victorious. The bones were not in a cairn, for a blacksmith of Tegea
first found the coffin when he was digging a well.[34] He would not dig
for water in a tumulus or cairn.
We need not multiply examples of hero-worship and relic-snatching, and
of such tricks of ghost-scaring as Cleisthenes played when, unable
to cast the hero Adrastus bodily out of Sicyon, he drove him away by
introducing the worship of the deadly foe of Adrastus, Melanippus.[35]
Colonists carried the worship of Achilles into the coasts and isles
of the Euxine, and even to Tarentum; while, according to Clemens
Alexandrinus, the Spartans worshipped Zeus Agamemnon.[36] All this
saint-worship and care for relics is, of course, absolutely un-Homeric.
The _Odyssey_[37] gives the perhaps Phoenician case of Ino, daughter
of Cadmus, once a mortal, now a sea-goddess. But to Homer a dead man,
be he Achilles or Aias, is merely a dead man. The cairn covers his
bones; he has no chapel, no sacrifice; no men covet the possession of
his relics; he can neither help nor harm; his spirit is in Hades, with
the powerless peoples of the Dead. Trojans would leap and boast on the
cairn of Menelaus if he fell at Troy _(Iliad_, iv. 174-182). Historic
Greeks would have made offerings at the tomb. No such rites were in the
belief of the society for which Homer sang. Had they been worshippers
of the dead, the epic poet could not play the heresiarch, and tell
them that their faith and hope were void and vain. No poet, no set of
poets, who lived by pleasing could afford to horrify their hearers by
such impiety. No poets could ignore the existence of normal rites that
were familiar in practice to all. The most advanced modern novelist
cannot ignore the Christian rites of marriage and burial, however much
he may despise and detest them. It is, then, an historical fact that
the society for which Homer sang did not adore and do sacrifice to dead
men, did not make gods of them and do them sacrifice, did not scramble
for their relics, as was the practice of proto-historic and historic
Greece down to the time of Pausanias at least.
[1] Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. iii. p. 105.
[2] Helbig in Roscher, _s.v_. Minos, ii. 2. 3000. On this matter there
is much controversy.
[3] See several examples in Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Worship."
_J. H. S_., vol. xxi.
[4] _Ibid._ p. 108.
[5] Frazer, _Pausanias_, vol. iii. p. 121.
[6] Evans, _ut sup_. p. 108.
[7] _Pausanias_, iv. 33.
[8] Evans, p. 164, fig. 44.
[9] See "The Asiatic or Winged Artemis." by M. S. Thompson. _J. H. S._,
vol. xxix. pt. ii. pp. 286-308.
[10] Cults of the Greek States, vol. ii. p. 427.
[11] Iliad, xiv. p. 203.
[12] _Iliad_, ii. 550, 551.
[13] Leaf, _Iliad_, vi. 130.
[14] Frazer, Pausanias, vol. iii.
[15] _Ibid. ut supra_.
[16] Catalogue, Book ii. 844-850.
[17] _Iliad_, x. 434-441.
[18] Strabo, x. 3. 470; fragment 25. Miss Harrison, _Prolegomena_, p.
375.
[19] _Iliad_, xx. 21.
[20] The distinction here made between "religion" and "mythology" is
made merely for the sake of convenience. We may readily be told that
the belief in a good God is as mythical as the tales about bad gods.
But the belief in a just, wise, and loving heavenly Father, the source
and sanction of ethics, represents one mood, and leads to one set of
results in conduct; while the belief in wicked and buffooning gods
represents another aspect of human thought, and leads to very different
results, mainly to the bewilderment of late historic Greek thinkers.
[21] _Iliad_, iii. 279, 280.
[22] xix. 259, 260.
[23] _Iliad_, ix. 502-512.
[24] For a variety of theories, see Leaf, Notes to _Iliad_, iii. 278,
xix. 262. Quite possibly the formula of the oath is a survival from a
stage of belief more archaic than the ordinary Homeric conception of
Hades.
[25] _Odyssey_, i. 263.
[26] iii. 48.
[27] vi. 180-185.
[28] vii. 165.
[29] xiii. 202.
[30] _Odyssey_, xiv. 82-84.
[31] _Iliad_, xvi. 516. Prayer of Glaucus to Apollo.
[32] Cf. _Miracles de Madame de Sainte Catherine de Fierbois_, a chapel
register of miracles in the Hundred Years' War.
[33] Hdt. i. 66.
[34] i. 67.
[35] v. 67.
[36] See _R. G. E_. p. 128, note 3; and, for other instances, pp.
180-190.
[37] v. 333-335.
CHAPTER XIII
TEMPLES. ALTARS. RITUAL. PURIFICATION
Homeric religion is so advanced that we cannot expect to learn from it
anything about the earliest origins, or to illustrate it from what we
know of the most primitive forms of belief (it would be absurd to look
in Homer for any trace of totemism or exogamy). Yet Homeric religion
is so far _naïf_ and fresh, in that it is not the work of a priestly
caste; its services have not been elaborated by the mummeries of
interested medicine-men. As for sacrifice itself, it were superfluous
to quote passages in which sacrifice pleases the gods, and is counted
to men for righteousness. But it appears that the Olympians valued
sacrifice rather as a proof that men were mindful of them, and wished
to stand well in their eyes, than for any good they got from the smoke
and savour. They had their own nectar and ambrosia.
There were priests and there were prophets, but the State was decidedly
"Erastian." The Commander-in-chief superintended sacrifices in the
general interest, where the welfare of the host was concerned, and
individuals sought the favour of the gods by sacrifices offered at
their own expense. These were most elaborate after a theophany, or
visit from a visible and friendly god, as when Athene sat at meat
with Nestor in his house at Pylos. The rite is minutely described:
the household of Nestor and the crew of Telemachus are summoned, the
cow is driven up from the meadow; the goldsmith brings his tools:
seats are set out, wood is collected, water for hand-washing is
brought; Nestor provides gold to gild the horns of the victim, and
make it seem splendid in the eyes of the goddess. The son of Nestor,
Thrasymedes, holds the axe; Perseus has the vessel into which its
blood fell,--whether to avoid making a mess, or because the ground
must not be ceremonially polluted by the gore. But of ceremonial
pollution of any kind, Homer is ignorant. He says nothing suggestive of
a sacramental theory of the blood as apt "to pollute the earth or even
cry for vengeance."[1]
Nestor, then, does the rite of hand-washing and scattering barley
grain: Thrasymedes hamstrings the cow, which falls; and the women raise
a cry, not a wail of sympathy as among the Todas in India. (It may be