One of the most striking features of ancient Greek philosophy, and indeed of ancient Greek culture more generally, is a development of various forms of skepticism (in a broad sense of the term).1 This feature distinguishes ancient Greek philosophy and culture from the ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern sources which may well have stimulated the earliest emergence of philosophy in Greece.2
It seems to me that this feature of Greek philosophy and culture can to a significant extent be traced back to Homer (in the loose sense of the author(s) of the Iliad and the Odyssey, whoever he was or they were)3 and his culture. Accordingly, in this article I would like to discuss the beginnings of two very different forms of skepticism in Homer: what I shall call philosophical skepticism and literary skepticism respectively.
I. Philosophical skepticism
A casual survey of the works that survive from the archaic period of ancient Greece (roughly, the eighth to seventh centuries BC) might give the impression that the culture of that period lacked any clear epistemology, any clear theory of knowledge, at all. It might then seem attractive to infer from that supposed fact that it was in considerable part just for this reason that the Greeks were vulnerable to skepticism. However, I want to propose a quite contrary picture: that the culture of the archaic period, as reflected in the poets Homer and Hesiod, in fact had a rather clear epistemology, and that, ironically, the culture was set up for skepticism (was a skepticism ‘just waiting to happen,’ as it were) precisely because it had the epistemology in question—in other words, that it would have been much less vulnerable to skepticism had it possessed no epistemology at all, but instead merely made claims about this and that without having any general theory concerning how the information involved was known.4
Let us begin by considering the archaic epistemology in question, as it occurs in Homer and Hesiod.5 It consisted of two broad principles:
Human beings can attain some knowledge by means of human powers alone, but only concerning matters of which either they themselves or their more or less immediate acquaintances (who can serve them as witnesses) have personally had sense-experience.6 Accordingly, the epics of Homer are full of narratives of everyday episodes in which people know things based on their own sense-experience: who this warrior is, what that weapon is, and so on (though such judgments are not infallible—for example, the Trojans famously mistake Patroclus for Achilles—they are usually reliable). And concerning knowledge via one’s acquaintances, on occasion this can even extend as far as it does at Iliad, xx, 203–5, where Aeneas says to Achilles: “We know each other’s lineage and parents, hearing the words of mortal men which have been handed on successively by word of mouth.”7
However, this still leaves a vast domain concerning which human beings cannot achieve knowledge through their own powers alone—including, in particular, the future (recall that there was no predictive science to speak of at this period)8; the past insofar as it extends beyond one’s own experience and that of one’s acquaintances (recall that there was little or no writing, record-keeping, historiography, or archaeology at this period)9; and the non-sensible sphere, i.e., the sphere of the Olympian gods in their normal non-sensible forms (this time in all three temporal modalities: past, present, and future). In order to know anything about any of these matters, human beings are entirely dependent on inspiration by the gods.10 For example, in a fairly clear and comprehensive illustration of this picture, near the beginning of the Iliad Homer says of the divinely inspired prophet Calchas that he “had knowledge of all things that were, and that were to be, and that had been before,” and he then shows Calchas communicating information about Apollo’s present purposes (Iliad, i, 69–100). And concerning knowledge of the remote past specifically, Homer again early in the Iliad calls on the Muses to provide him with such knowledge, namely a list of the contingents of the Greeks who went to Troy in ancient times, saying,
Tell me now, ye Muses that have dwellings on Olympus—for ye are goddesses and are at hand and know all things, whereas we hear but a rumour and know not anything—who were the captains of the Danaans and their lords.
(Iliad, ii, 484–7)
In another reasonably clear and comprehensive attribution of a grasp of these several types of knowledge to inspiration by the gods, Hesiod says at the start of the Theogony that the Muses “breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things that were aforetime; and they bade me sing of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally” (Theogony, 31–3). According to this whole archaic conception, the specific sources and channels of such divine inspiration were quite diverse (including, besides the Muses with their poets, and Apollo with prophets such as Calchas, also divinely determined bird flight and other animal behavior, divinely caused meteorological phenomena such as lightning, divinely inspired dreams, oracles, and so on). But the crucial point is that, according to this archaic conception, where questions about the future, the remote past, or the Olympian gods are concerned, human beings, unless they enjoy divine inspiration through one or another of these sources and channels, “hear but a rumour and know not anything” (Iliad, ii, 486).11
Now, concerning the irony I mentioned earlier, the essential point to note is that precisely because the archaic period had this simple two-part epistemology covering all domains of knowledge, only two moves were required in order to plunge archaic culture into complete skepticism: (1) an undermining of faith in the reliability of sense-experience as a source of knowledge, and (2) an undermining of faith in the reliability of divine inspiration as a source of knowledge. In other words, in order to generate a complete skepticism there was no need to launch an attack on people’s myriad individual claims to knowledge or types of knowledge severally, which would have been an enormous and difficult, if not impossible, task; simply by attacking the two supports in question, the whole edifice of knowledge could be brought down.
It seems to me that both of these two moves were in fact made by presocratic philosophy, with the result that skepticism henceforth became a very natural option for Greek philosophy and culture. And it seems to me that the first person to make both moves, and to advocate a sort of global skepticism, was Xenophanes (who flourished around 530 BC).
Let us consider the two moves in question in reverse order, i.e., beginning with move (2): the undermining of faith in knowledge based on divine inspiration. Xenophanes rejected the traditional religion of Homer and Hesiod in a very radical and sweeping way. He rejected its anthropomorphism (frr. 14–16, 23), including its conception that the gods are born and have bodies, speech, and clothes, as humans do (fr. 14), and its conception that they indulge in such vices as theft, adultery, and deception, as humans do (frr. 11–12). An especially interesting part of his case here was an observation that different peoples conceive the gods in incompatible ways and in accordance with their own distinctive features—for example, that the Ethiopians conceive them as snub-nosed and black, but the Thracians as blue-eyed and red-haired (fr. 16)—and an inference from this that if animals such as cattle, horses, and lions were to represent gods, they would do the same (fr. 15). Moreover, he even rejected traditional religion’s polytheism, instead holding that there is only one god, a god who is quite unlike human beings: “One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought” (fr. 23; cf. fragments like 32, A40, and A43 in which Xenophanes explains away traditional gods such as Iris, the Sun, and the Moon as clouds, thereby implying that they are not really gods at all).12 And in yet another departure from it, he held that this single god remains unmoving in the same place (fr. 26) and causes motion by the power of thought alone (fr. 25).
For our purposes here, though, the most crucial aspect of Xenophanes’ rejection of traditional religion is that he repudiated the archaic view that the gods communicate knowledge to human beings through poetry, prophecy, and so on. This interpretation is controversial,13 so let me support it with some evidence (roughly in order of increasing strength): (i) Nowhere in the extant fragments does Xenophanes endorse that archaic view.14 (ii) He reproaches its paradigmatic representatives, Homer and Hesiod, for falsehood (fr. 11). (iii) He explicitly denies divinity to one of the gods who was traditionally most associated with the function of serving as a messenger between gods and humans, namely Iris: “And she whom they call Iris, she too is actually a cloud” (fr. 32).15 (iv) Moreover, as a monotheist who similarly explains away virtually all of the other traditional gods in naturalistic terms (see above), he implicitly eliminates virtually all of the remaining traditional sources of divine inspiration as well. (v) Most tellingly of all, he explicitly denies that the gods have communicated their omniscience to humans, saying that humans are instead reliant on themselves for improving their grasp of the world: “Yet the gods have not revealed all things to mortals from the beginning, but by seeking men find out better in time” (fr. 18).16 In short, Xenophanes made move (2).
Let us turn now to move (1): the undermining of faith in the reliability of sense-experience. It has often been argued by the modern secondary literature that Xenophanes’ skepticism did not extend to claims based on sense-experience.17 However, the balance of the evidence strongly suggests that it did. For one thing, a whole string of ancient authorities, who probably had considerably more evidence to draw on than we do—including pseudo-Plutarch, Aristocles, Aëtius, Sotion, and Sextus Empiricus—unanimously assert or imply that it did.18 For another thing, evidence for this reading can also be found in the extant fragments of Xenophanes themselves. Thus, in one fragment he seems to be offering an argument for skepticism concerning judgments about the sweetness of foodstuffs: “If gods had not created yellow honey, they [i.e., people] would say that figs were far sweeter” (fr. 38).19 And in another fragment he seems to register a measure of skeptical detachment even about his own age at the time of his exile from his native city of Colophon to a life of wandering, saying that he was 25 “if indeed I am able to tell correctly of these matters” (fr. 8).
James Lesher has objected to this sort of interpretation of Xenophanes’ position that a number of passages seem to speak against it.20 For example, in one fragment Xenophanes refers to “the upper limit of the earth that is seen here at our feet” (B28), and in another he encourages people to “observe” the multi-colored rainbow (B32). However, I think that this problem has a solution. The solution can be seen from Xenophanes’ remark at fr. 8 concerning his own age—“if indeed I am able to tell correctly of these matters”—and from his injunction in another fragment, “Let these things be opined as resembling the truth” (fr. 35). It is that although Xenophanes really is skeptical that he knows about such sensory matters, he nonetheless takes his impressions concerning them seriously—in a way that he does not take the supposed deliverances of divine inspiration seriously, for example. Such a combination of global skepticism about both the deliverances of divine inspiration (or reason) and the deliverances of the senses with a certain privileging of the latter over the former will later be characteristic of Pyrrhonian skepticism as well (consider, for instance, Sextus Empiricus’s account of the Pyrrhonist’s life of appearances in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism). Moreover, when one recalls that the de facto founder of Pyrrhonism, Timon, is known to have admired and imitated Xenophanes, it seems likely that Xenophanes was the source of that position in Pyrrhonism.21 (This is only one of several important debts that Pyrrhonism probably owes to Xenophanes via Timon. Others include the global renunciation of claims to knowledge; the model of proper inquiry as seeking, zêtein; calling on opposed appearances in order to undermine belief; and use of the specific example of not being able to tell due to opposed appearances whether or not honey is sweet.)
In short, Xenophanes not only took step (2), but also step (1) (undermining faith in the reliability of sense-experience).22
Having thus effectively cut off both of the two archaic routes to knowledge, Xenophanes found himself driven, with remarkable consistency, to a quite general skepticism. This is shown by his most famous skeptical fragment of all:
And as for certain truth, no man has seen it, nor will there ever be a man who knows about the gods and about all the things I mention. For even if he succeeds to the fullest in saying what is completely true, he himself nevertheless fails to know it; and opinion/seeming [dokos] is wrought over all things.
(fr. 34)23
In sum, surprisingly enough, archaic culture already had a certain rather clear, albeit simple, epistemology. Moreover, ironically enough, it was set up for a skeptical fall precisely because it did so (it would have been less vulnerable to skepticism if it had had no epistemology at all). By about the last third of the sixth century BC the two assumptions that had made knowledge possible according to this simple epistemology—the assumption of the availability of divine inspiration concerning the future, the unexperienced past, and the non-sensible; and the assumption of the normal reliability of sensory experience—had both been undermined, leading to a global skepticism. The person who took these steps was Xenophanes. By doing so he anticipated and strongly influenced the development of philosophical skepticism in the subsequent Greek tradition.
