Outline of the Kinds of Belief and of Worship, Especially the Polytheistic

§. 54.

Even175 a mere survey of the forms of cult, if it were to be wholly general, would furnish material for a lengthy treatise of its own. The East alone, that fatherland of religions: how many remarkable phenomena of belief and worship it has brought forth from of old! In keeping with our purpose, we shall merely indicate here some main points, each of which would make a chapter if properly discussed. In particular, we shall set down in a few words, as landmarks, some reminders from the polytheistic religions of Western Asia, Greece, and Rome.

First, the religious mode of thought of the East has stamped itself in the following main forms of belief and thought: the doctrine of emanation, the system of materialism, dualism, and pantheism²¹⁸. To these 176 must be added the monotheism of the Hebrews, and other forms of religion.

Polytheism alone spreads out into countless branches and twigs, of which traces are found in the cults of the peoples of Western Asia, the Greeks, and the Romans. We name some main forms, each of which is to be noted in its origin and development:

• Fetishism. Probable origin of the name. Crudest form, and gradual refinement.
• Nature-worship in material form. Its three roots, the objects of its veneration, its character.
• Worship of the elements; fire-worship.
• Star-worship (its stages).
• Veneration of the phallus and the myllos (orgiastic worship).
• Animal-worship.
• Worship of the dead (the Roman concept of the Manes; festivals of souls).
• Veneration of heroes, and other subordinate kinds.

§. 55.

If we ask about the definite expressions of religious belief, especially polytheistic belief, our gaze falls first on the places chosen for worship.

Occasions for this choice: physical causes. Examples: the chasm at Delphi177; the cave of Trophonius; the spring Olympias on the Alpheus, which ran dry every other year, near which fire came out of the earth, and where a secret worship of the Great Goddesses was celebrated yearly²¹⁹.

Other remarkable features: ancient trees, at Samos, at Delos, on the Acropolis at Athens, at Dodona, in Syria, in Arcadia (the plane tree of Menelaus)²²⁰. Sacred groves, among Greeks and Romans and among the ancient Germans²²¹. The oldest tribal seats, or other places memorable to the people through old events.

Above all, mountains. The wide spread of this custom, and the ideas connected with it. Legends of the Eastern peoples: of the Indians about their Meru, of the Persians about Mount Albordj. The sacred worship of the Persians on the heights²²². Religious judgments of the Greeks on the choice of sacred places²²³. Later, temples.

[§. 55, continued]

178 Rites of worship. The mute actions of a crude people²²⁴. Invocations.

Origin of the Greek name for the deity: θεός. Diversity of the accounts among ancients and moderns:

• the gods are the ordainers, hence their name: “θεούς, ὅτι κόσμῳ θέντες τὰ πάντα πρήγματα” [“gods, because they had set all things in order”]²²⁵;
• they are so called from θέειν [“to run”], from the movement of the heavenly bodies²²⁶, as has also been compared with the Chinese name for heaven, Tien;
• from fear, δέος;
• from beholding, θέω, θεάω, θεάομαι (as overseers, or because they are known only through contemplation);
• or the word has an Egyptian origin, from θεύς²²⁷.

With greater probability, critical students of language have drawn attention to the Aeolic name of the highest god. He was called Δεύς, and with a sibilant prefixed Σδεύς, from which Ζεύς and θεός arose. With this the Aeolians designated the highest being, as 179 the Dorians called it Ζάν and the Ionians Ζήν. The first form, Δεύς, also Δίς, is derived from the old cult of the Curetes; and however that may be, it is related to the Roman Deus and Dis. Hesychius also ascribes the form Δέα to the Tyrrhenians, by which they are said to have designated one of the older highest deities of female sex, Rhea²²⁸.

Inferences from the above concerning the polyonymy of the Greek gods. The relatively late origin of the multiplicity of divine names in Greece. Comparison of this fact with reports of other peoples²²⁹.

Prayer-formulas of the ancients, especially of the Greeks and Romans. Direction and posture of those praying (toward the east among Greeks and Romans)²³⁰.

§. 56.

180 Sacrifice. Various explanations of its origin, and examination of these opinions. Choice of the objects to be sacrificed. The remarkable Greek legend that the oldest sacrifices were bloodless, and that plants and trees were first offered to the gods. Original meaning of θύειν and θυσία²³¹. Thus [incense].^a Various judgments on this.

Distinction of ages and of national characters. The wild Arcadian Lycaon had shed the blood of a child on the altar of his Zeus; Cecrops of Sais commands that cakes be offered on the altar of Zeus at Athens²³². So the harsh was softened by lawgivers. Mythic memories of the Athenians from the times of the oldest sacrificial worship: the Διιπόλια and Βουφόνια of the Attic primeval age²³³. A similar 181 softening of manners the Romans ascribed to their Numa²³⁴.

Other characteristic expressions: βουθυτεῖν; ἱερεῖα, ἄρτια, τέλεια [“victims, unblemished, perfect”]. Sacrificial animals of various kinds. The concept of the ἑκατόμβη.

On the kinds and the purposes of sacrifices²³⁵. Gifts, votive offerings (ἀναθήματα). Temple treasures. Religious vows of various kinds. Aberrations of peoples given over to wild nature-worship.

Acts of worship. Festivals. Origin and occasions. Celebration of the new moon. Sun festivals. Festive celebration at the close of greater periods of time. Character of the festivals: festivals of mourning and of joy; festivals of double character; harvest festivals, and so on. Festivals of the dead. Nocturnal festivals. Festive music and dance, scenic apparatus, masked processions, banquets, and the like. Remark on the fundamental trait of the original Greek festivals: cheerfulness²³⁶. A glance at the Roman festival calendar.

182 Relation of religious belief to idolatry. Examples of peoples who do without images in the worship of the stars or the elements²³⁷. The great antiquity of image-worship proper. Its origin (see above, in the first chapter).

Among the greatest peoples of the primeval world, natural objects themselves, stones especially, in which divine symbols were recognized, were the oldest objects of veneration; and that either as nature had formed them, or with slight assistance from the human hand²³⁸. The widely 183 spread belief that the deity had itself sent its image down from heaven to earth (διιπετὲς ἄγαλμα).

On the baetyls (βαιτύλια, βαίτυλοι). Origin of the word from the Syrian and Phoenician language: בית אל [Beth-El, “house of God”]²³⁹. The Greek explanation, and the myths connected with it²⁴⁰.

Some sacred stones: the stone at Pessinus in Galatia, sacred to Cybele; the stone of the sun-god Elagabalus; the sacred stone before the temple at Delphi²⁴¹. The last example cited recalls at the same time the widespread custom of anointing stones.

Legends of the Telchines 184 as the first inventors of images of the gods, Diodorus Sic. lib. V, cap. 55, and assessment of these legends. θεοποιοί for sculptors; cf. J. Frid. Gronov on Statius, Thebaid IX. 58.

Even when art had advanced far, those natural images of the gods, even the most shapeless stones, remained objects of veneration. Many traces of this had survived in the temples of Western Asia, Greece, and Italy²⁴².

Other kinds of images: ξόανον (carved image), Hesych. s. v., and the interpreters there (delubrum; Servius on Virgil, Aen. II. 225, IV. 56; compare Gerh. Vossius, Etymologicum s. v.); βρέτας; ἀνδριάς, and other designations; compare Potter, Archaeol. I. 464; ἄγαλμα. On the proper and tropical meanings of this many-meaning word, see Ruhnken on Timaeus, p. 5.

Increasing expense in the choice of material for images of the gods. Justin Martyr, de Monarchia Dei p. 81, and the classic passage of Sophocles there. Allusions of the ancients to this luxury: Lucian, de Sacrific. p. 356.

Customs at the setting up of images of the gods²⁴³. Dedicatio. Consecratio. 185 The hope, from the effect of these consecrations, that the deity itself would descend into these images, to these temples and altars. Hence, on the one hand, the care to fetter the images of the gods in public need, or the various arrangements made to bind a city bodily, as it were, to the god believed present²⁴⁴; on the other, the evocationes, which the Romans often used²⁴⁵.

Out of that old belief later philosophers, especially in their struggle with Christianity, built theories. So Iamblichus had maintained that not only those διοπετῆ [“fallen from Zeus”], but all images of the gods, even those made by human hand, were divine and full of the divine presence²⁴⁶. 186 Other philosophers, on the contrary, made a distinction. They ascribed a symbolic presence of the deity only to holier images worshipped by the initiates, and distinguished these from the ordinary temple idols of public worship²⁴⁷.

§. 57.

The seer (μάντις) and the priest, chiefly among Greeks and Romans; and mantic art and priesthood according to these peoples’ ideas.

The mediator between gods and men is the sacrificer (ἱερεύς) and diviner from the sacrifice (haruspex). He is the seer, who sees the hidden through divine signs (μάντις)²⁴⁸. He 187 is the watcher of birds (οἰωνοπόλος, auspex). He is the interpreter of dreams (ὀνειροπόλος).

Sometimes the belief in magic joins with him: a belief that some consider so deeply grounded and essential that they think it explains most naturally the origin of the priestly dignity itself. Without subscribing to this conviction, we remark that this idea of priestly magical power is found not only among quite crude peoples²⁴⁹, but in some traces among the Greeks as well. At least some imagined Orpheus and Amphion, who in legend counted as men invested with high royal or priestly dignity, as magicians who worked the wonders told of them by their extraordinary powers²⁵⁰.

Yet among Greeks and Romans the priest remained sharply separated from the magician (γόης), and the former 188 stood out far before the latter, as a publicly acknowledged and highly honoured person. The origin and oldest form of the priestly dignity among the most cultivated peoples of antiquity, and especially among the Greeks and Romans, speak for this too.

Connection of the priesthood with the rights of the father of the house. Connection of the priesthood with the royal dignity. Traces of this in the ἄρχων βασιλεύς [“king archon”] and the rex sacrificulus, with definite reports of the ancients²⁵¹.

Separation of the royal dignity from the priesthood, for various reasons, and often by stages, often at once²⁵². Hereditary priesthood in sacred families, among Indians, Hebrews, Egyptians. Priestly families of Greece and Western Asia. Certain priestly privileges of the Εὐπατρίδαι at Athens since Theseus. The old Thracian family of the Eumolpidae, which had first settled at Eleusis²⁵³. Parallel between the older Thracian priests and the Egyptian ones.

The Κήρυκες; the Ἐτεοβουτάδαι; the Thaulonidae. At Argos the Acestoridae189. The Branchidae, a priestly family at the temple of Apollo Didymaeus in the territory of Miletus²⁵⁴.

Names of the priesthoods. Sometimes all successors kept the name of the first founder of a temple, like the Αἴαντες, also called Τεῦκροι²⁵⁵. Proper names of office: the Μεγάβυζοι, as the priests of Artemis at Ephesus were called. The ancients are silent on whether this was a family name or an official name. It was frequent among the Persians, even among the most eminent persons²⁵⁶. Examples of other official names 190 of priestly persons: Μέλισσαι, the priestesses of Demeter; Θυσιάδες, of Proserpina; Κερνοφόροι, certain priestesses in the worship of Rhea; Γέραιραι, priestesses in the Bacchic secret worship at Athens²⁵⁷.

Qualities that conditioned the calling to the priesthood. Perfection of body. The idea connected with ὁλόκληροι and ἀφελεῖς²⁵⁸. Sometimes beauty as well: at Aegae in Achaea, in older times, the most beautiful boy was priest of Zeus²⁵⁹.

Other requirements; here a necessary distinction of ages. Theano in Homer, who held the priesthood of Athena, was married (Iliad VI. 298), with the noteworthy remark of Eustathius on the passage that higher antiquity did not require celibacy of the priest; cf. Herodot. I. 31. Sons of priests are also mentioned. The vow of perpetual virginity. Sometimes they remained priestesses only until puberty. Also univirae [“once-married women”]²⁶⁰.

191 Roman ideas of the priesthood. Priest in the wider and the narrower sense; in the latter case, distinction from soothsayers and diviners²⁶¹. Old worship of the gods by the individual Roman gentes. Public worship, and their mutual relation. State and religion under the Roman constitution. The Collegium Pontificum, the Senate. Influence of the legislative power²⁶². Was the Pontifex maximus a private person?²⁶³

§. 58.

On divination. Range of this word, and the lack of a corresponding term in 192 German. The Μαντική of the Greeks and the Divinatio of the Romans. Its two main parts: prophecy (Weissagung) and soothsaying (Wahrsagung). Division into natural and artificial divination²⁶⁴.

Origin of divination, especially of the Greek. Principal passages on it²⁶⁵. Epochs of divination as a whole²⁶⁶. The countless kinds of divination cited by older and later writers. Account of some principal kinds, and discussion of their outer and inner occasions:

Interpretation of dreams. Ὀνειροπόλοι, ὀνειροσκόποι. Ideas of crude or barbarous 193 peoples. Outlines of anthropology and psychology according to the ideas of Homeric man. Nature, seat, and fate of the soul. Dreams (ὄνειροι)²⁶⁷. Kinds of dream-interpretation: Ὀνειροκριτική. Dream-oracles. Incubationes, Ἐγκοιμήσεις²⁶⁸.

Prophecy from the flight and song of birds. Οἰωνιστική. Ideas of the Eastern peoples about the excellences and powers of birds, especially the high-flying ones. The Greek belief in birds that fall from the high air²⁶⁹. Gradation of observation: first natural perceptions, then artificial arrangements. Greek οἰωνοσκόποι; Etruscan and Roman augures. Division of the regions of the sky. The lituus. Alites, praepetes, oscines (voices, flight, and other manifestations of birds 194 were observed by rule)²⁷⁰.

In this connection, the Disciplina Etrusca, which also extended to other kinds of celestial and terrestrial phenomena: observation of the passage of clouds, of lightning, thunder, rivers, earthquakes, and the like. Beginnings and development of an ancient meteorology through these efforts. The libri fulgurales, tonitruales, and augurales of the Etruscans and Romans; the libri Acheruntici of the Etruscan Tages²⁷¹. The pullarii of the Romans.

Divination from sacrifice (ἱερομαντεία, ἱεροσκοπία, haruspicina). Its divisions. The libri haruspicini of the Etruscans. Prophecy from the entrails of sacrificial animals, extispicium, in Greece, Etruria, and Rome. Observation of the sacrificial flame and smoke²⁷²: πυρομαντεία, καπνομαντεία.

195 Other kinds of divination were: by water, and sometimes by basins, πυρομαντεία [sic], λεκανομαντεία²⁷³.^b Occasioning ideas of the fundamental forces of nature and the mightiest elements, among which fire and water were especially counted: ideas connected with the use of fire and water in Roman marriage customs, as with other customs of the ancients, and in part of more modern peoples too²⁷⁴.

The consulting of rods, ῥαβδομαντεία. And finally, not to name more kinds here, the widespread necromancy, νεκρομαντεία, which was more developed than many kinds of divination and was practised at particular 196 places in oracles of the dead (νεκυομαντεῖα)²⁷⁵.

§. 59.

Oracles. General designations of the places: χρηστήρια. Origin of the word: χρᾶν and χρᾶσθαι, and the form of the perfect reserved specifically for the idea of giving oracles: κέχρησμαι²⁷⁶. But χρηστήρια also designates the sacrificial victims slaughtered before an oracular response was obtained²⁷⁷. Μαντεῖα.

Names of the givers of oracles: χρησμολόγοι, by which, however, single oracle-speakers were sometimes meant, like Amphilytus there²⁷⁸. Names of the oracular sayings197: θεοπρόπια²⁷⁹, χρησμοί, λόγια²⁸⁰, and μαντεύματα²⁸¹.

198 Occasions for the origin of oracles: manifold, as with sacred places in general. Very old and widespread are the legends of prophesying women, or women interpreting the oracles of the deity. Sibyls. Origin of this name²⁸². Gradation of the Sibylline prophecies, in Asia, in Greece, and in Rome, down to the times of firmly established Christianity²⁸³.

Settlements of oracle-priests, and fixed, lasting seats of oracles. Reasons for the choice of a particular place: no doubt various. Sometimes at a beneficent spring, with which antiquity often connected the idea of the gods’ nearness²⁸⁴; or at places where remarkable phenomena of nature excited attention or produced extraordinary effects²⁸⁵; or where perhaps the 199 remains of a famous seer were buried, and similar occasions.

A glance at the oracles of the Greeks, and those connected with them. The principal passage on them, where the following are listed: the oracle at Delphi, that at Abae in Phocis, that at Dodona, the oracle of Amphiaraus and of Trophonius, that of the Branchidae in the territory of Miletus, and the oracle of Ammon in Libya²⁸⁶.

Distinction of the oracles of single tribes, which, though partly very old, were often regarded only as private institutions. Traces of old oracles of the dead: the νέκυια in the Odyssey, and other reports among the ancients. Dream-oracles. The oracle of Trophonius²⁸⁷. A Thracian oracle is also mentioned, with allusions that refer to an Orphic priestly institution and to the civilizing of the barbarians there through 200 laws. Tablets (σανίδες) called “of Orpheus” are mentioned in this connection²⁸⁸.

The oracle at Dodona. The oldest in Hellas, according to many legends, and belonging to the Pelasgian period. Egyptian legend of its origin: priestesses (πελειάδες, “doves”) from Thebes in Upper Egypt had founded it, as well as the Ammonium in Libya. Explanation of this legend²⁸⁹. The priests there: the Selli²⁹⁰. Manner of giving 201 oracles. The sacred tree there: φηγός, δρῦς [“oak”], and the φυλλομαντεία [“divination by leaves”] practised by it. But there were also other means of divination there, to which the basin (λέβης) especially belonged²⁹¹.

The oracle at Delphi, by far more important and more developed than all the others. Its origin and high antiquity. The myths of its successive possessors (Earth, Γαῖα πρωτόμαντις [“Earth the first prophetess”]²⁹²; Themis; Phoebe; and Apollo) contain significant hints of its gradual development²⁹³. Dionysus too was made a co-possessor of this most important of all Greek oracles²⁹⁴.

This oracle 202 also shows most clearly the influence of such institutions on the cultivation of Greek humanity. They were in part centres of culture; they furthered the tilling of the land; they civilized crude custom by checking blood-revenge²⁹⁵. Recall the oracle of Asclepius at Epidaurus, where medical experiences were written down²⁹⁶.

Public importance of some of these institutions: the oracle at Delphi, in connection with the Amphictyonic court at Pylae, for a long time the political centre of the Hellenic league of states.

Gradual decline of the oracles, the Delphic too: causes and circumstances. Period of complete degeneration. Remarks of the Christian writers on this.

The oracle of Ammon in Libya (see above). Manner of giving oracles, according to Herodotus, similar to that at Dodona²⁹⁷. It was also consulted by Greeks, though more rarely²⁹⁸. Lasting connection 203 of the Greek oracles with the foreign ones, especially with that of the Branchidae and with the Ammonium; while the effect of the former abroad was often very great, especially in the period of their flowering. Recall the Lydian king Croesus. Still more remarkable, however, is the history of the colonization of Cyrene, which was guided entirely by the Delphic oracle²⁹⁹.

The doctrine of the Mysteries, together with the necessary remarks on purifications, fasts, and penances, will find its place in the special part.

[End of Chapter Five.]