Athenian Popular Religion

Jon D. Mikalson

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780807841945, 9780807815632
• eBook ISBN: 9781469616964
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: History

Most modern studies of Athenian religion have focused on festivals, cult practices, and individual deities. Jon Mikalson turns instead to the religious beliefs citizens of Athens spoke of and acted upon in everyday life. He uses evidence only from reliable, mostly contemporary sources such as the orators Lysias and Demosthenes, the historian Xenophon, and state decrees, sacred laws, religious dedications, and epitaphs.

“This is in no sense a general history of Athenian religion,” Mikalson writes, “even within the narrow historical boundaries set. It is rather an investigation of what might be termed the consensus of popular religious belief, a consensus consisting of those beliefs which an Athenian citizen thought he could express publicly and for which he expected fo find general acceptance among his peers.”

What emerges in Mikalson’s study is a remarkable homogeneity of religious beliefs at the popular level. The topics discussed at length in Athenian Popular Religion include the areas of divine intervention in human life, the gods and human justice, gods and oaths, divination, death and the afterlife, the nature of the gods, social aspects of popular religion, and piety and impiety.

Mikalson challenges the common opinion that popular religious belief in Athens deteriorated significantly from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century B.C. “The error in understanding the development of Athenian religion has arisen, it seems to me, because scholars have failed to distinguish properly between the differing natures of the sources for our knowledge of religious beliefs in the earlier and later periods,” Mikalson writes. The difference between those sources “is more than simply one of years. It is a difference between poetry and prose, with all the factors which that difference implies.”

ONE
Introduction

The general character of Greek religion and the nature of the ancient sources that happened to survive have made it surprisingly difficult to determine the religious beliefs and attitudes of the “ordinary” ancient Greek, Our sources for Greek religion tend to fall into two groups: firstly, the poetic and philosophic, and secondly, the scholastic and archaeological. The writings of poets and philosophers have provided the raw material for numerous studies of ancient Greek religious thought, but these studies, based as they are on creative literary works, really treat theology and the development of Greek intellectual thought, not the religion of ordinary people. We learn of many important details of Greek ritual and cult practice from the ancient scholarly tradition as it is preserved in the Suda (x A.D.) and other ancient lexica compiled by Harpocration (I-II A.D.), Hesychius (V A.D.), and Photius (IX A.D.). Similar “scholarly” explications of religious terminology and ritual are provided by scholiasts whose notes and explanations survive in the manuscripts of some classical authors. These various scholastic sources, especially when they can be supplemented by epigraphical and other archaeological material, sometimes allow us to give a reasonably complete description of what the ancient Greek did in cult practice. But they scarcely ever offer any sure indication of what the individual thought or believed when he performed these cultic acts.

What we should most welcome, of course, is a “confessional” literature in which individuals spell out their own religious beliefs and detail those points in which they differ from conventional beliefs. But such a literature is alien to Greek religion. So too is the concept of a book of revelation, such as the Bible, that sets forth what a person should believe. The Greeks also did not have a national or state church or a centrally organized priesthood to put forward and promote religious dogma. We thus lack for the Greeks convenient sources for what the ordinary person was expected to believe.

We must also remember that the ancient Greeks resided in several hundred small city-states that prided themselves on their independence from one another. In varying degrees Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Athens, and the other city-states differed from one another in political, social, and economic structure, and it is only reasonable to assume that they also differed to some extent in their religion. We know from Pausanias’ travel guide of the second century A.D. and from modern studies that myths and cult practices varied considerably from one city-state to another, and one has every reason to assume that religious beliefs also may have differed significantly.¹ One should be wary of assuming that a religious belief or practice must have been current in all the city-states and among all Greeks simply because it is attested for one city-state.

Religious beliefs and attitudes, however conservative they may have been, must also have changed throughout the centuries. Historical sense would suggest, and the evidence indicates, that there was a considerable difference between the religious beliefs of, for example, the Athenian of the sixth century B.C. who saw the beginning of the construction of the temple of Zeus Olympios and the Athenian of the second century A.D. who saw its completion under the Roman emperor Hadrian.² The names of the deities and many of the cult practices remained the same throughout these centuries, and this tends to conceal changes in religious belief. But the religious beliefs did change, and in studying Greek religion we must distinguish carefully between those held in different time periods as well as in different city-states.

This book focuses upon the religious beliefs and attitudes attested for Athens during the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C., approximately from the end of the Peloponnesian War (405) to the death of Alexander the Great (323). Athens alone of the city-states can realistically form the subject of a general study of religious beliefs, because from her alone do we have anything more than the most meager scraps of evidence for religious history, The late fifth and fourth centuries are the most promising period for such a study, because in comparison with other periods, fairly abundant evidence for social history exists in surviving political and forensic orations and in the inscriptions. By limiting the study to Athens of the late fifth and fourth centuries I hope to avoid the inaccuracies and contradictions inherent in the synoptic approach to Greek religion, an approach that sometimes indiscriminately amalgamates evidence from widely disparate places and historical periods.

This is not to claim that beliefs and practices discovered in this period were necessarily limited to it. Some originated before it, and some continued to exist far beyond it. Some did both. On occasion in discussing a statement of religious belief or practice 1 refer to a source from an earlier or later time, but only if the belief has been attested to for the period in question. My intent throughout is to avoid attributing to the late fifth and fourth centuries beliefs and concepts that have their proper place in an earlier or later time.

This book concerns “popular” Athenian religious beliefs and attitudes. “Popular” is not used here to indicate “middle-class” or “lower-class” in social terms,³ nor is it being used in a pejorative sense. This study does not treat the Greek peasant whose private and communal religious practices and beliefs Martin Nilsson has so carefully and sympathetically described, but investigates rather what Nilsson terms the popular religion of the townspeople.⁴ It focuses on religious views and attitudes that were acceptable to the majority of Athenians of the late fifth and fourth centuries. These are the views and beliefs which were a part of the common cultural experience of the Athenians and which were spoken of and acted upon daily by average Athenian citizens. They form, as Guthrie puts it, “the routine of religion which was accepted by most of the citizens of Athens as a matter of course.”⁵ During the late fifth and fourth centuries many innovative and idiosyncratic religious beliefs and theories were being developed and discussed by literary and philosophic figures, and these have been studied extensively by scholars. I have excluded these from this study, unless it can be demonstrated that they had an impact on popular religious belief during this period. Some philosophical and religious theories, and in particular those of Plato, did influence later times, but unless the influence is detectable during this period, they have been excluded.

Descriptions of individual deities, of cult practices, and of festivals will also be very limited, being used primarily to clarify statements of religious belief. In default of clear and convenient statements of popular beliefs, many scholars of Greek religion have concentrated their efforts on objective descriptions of deities, rituals, cults, and festivals, and have occasionally attempted to extrapolate from these descriptions the feelings and motives of the worshipers. This study differs considerably from such studies in that it directs attention first to what the Athenians said (

) about their religion and treats what they did (

) only to the extent that it clarifies or illustrates what they said.

I have introduced little of recent sociological, anthropological, and psychological theory about Greek religion. In Greek ritual and myth particularly there are fossilized remnants of much earlier, primitive practices and beliefs. Since the late nineteenth century there have been numerous attempts to build upon these remnants theories about Greek religion, theories which usually derive from current work in the social sciences and which are supported by parallels from other cultures. It is my view that descriptive work should precede theoretical interpretation and that both prosper when they are reasonably independent. It is also wise for us to know clearly what the Greeks consciously said about their religion before we begin to mine the somewhat murky depths of their subconsciousness. My intent is to present a descriptive study of one aspect of Athenian popular religion and to leave it to others to create a comparative, theoretical approach to it. I do not mean to disparage the theoretical work being done in certain areas of Greek religion, because excellent insights and valuable material have been offered by scholars such as E. R. Dodds in Greeks and the Irrational and Walter Burkert in Homo Necans. But in the study of popular religion the need now is for some descriptive work; a theoretical bias would only impede this work.

The primary ancient evidence for this study is threefold: the orators, the inscriptions, and the historian Xenophon.⁶ Although the importance of the orations of Demosthenes, Aeschines, Isocrates, Lycurgus, and others as a source for popular ethical and religious beliefs has been noted from time to time, it was only comparatively recently that they have been given their proper place in the study of these matters.⁷

The orations presented in the law courts and the citizen assemblies are the best evidence available for popular religious beliefs of the period. In the law courts the speakers addressed juries of from five hundred to twenty-five hundred or more Athenian adult male citizens, who were chosen by a rather complicated allotment process. A jury was not, of course, a perfect cross section of the Athenian citizenry, and the elderly, the urban, and those of the lower income groups may well have been somewhat overrepresented. This, at least, is suggested by the caricature of jurors in Aristophanes’ Wasps.⁸ In addition these trials were held only in the city, and the pay for jurors was comparatively meager.⁹ But nevertheless, next to the ecclesia, the Athenians’ general legislative assembly, the juries of the law courts represent the best cross section of Athenian society available to us.

The speakers in the law courts attempted to plead their cases as persuasively as possible and surely took care not to alienate the jury. The speaker would either naturally or with calculation express moral and religious views which would find acceptance with the greatest number of the jury. The plaintiff or defendant in a lawsuit could hardly be expected, like Plato’s Socrates in the Apology, to risk losing his case for the sake of making telling political, moral, or religious statements. The numerous surviving forensic orations indicate all too clearly that the single purpose was to win the case, and for this it was necessary to express sentiments intelligible and acceptable to the majority of the jurors. We may, therefore, assume that religious views and beliefs expressed in these forensic orations were familiar and acceptable to the majority of Athenian citizens of the period.

Political orations are generally viewed with somewhat more skepticism than forensic orations as evidence for the beliefs of ordinary citizens.¹⁰ Their exhortatory character, their occasionally idealistic patriotism, and our own experience with speeches of politicians justify this skepticism. But in the expression of religious views they may, I think, be used as reliable sources. An Athenian political orator such as Demosthenes, although he may have been attempting to reform popular opinion about economic policy, war, treaties, and such matters, was not attempting reform of religious views. Rather he used generally accepted religious beliefs as elements of persuasion to support his cause. And since this is the case, the religious views and beliefs expressed in these political orations may be assumed to be familiar and acceptable to the majority of the citizens.

From this period survive numerous writings which have a semioratorical form but were never intended to be presented orally to a group of citizens. They were composed as showpieces by rhetoricians and philosophers¹¹ and have their origins in the writings of the fifth-century sophist Gorgias. They are usually heavily tinged with contemporary philosophical theory and for this reason must be treated with caution as sources for contemporary popular beliefs. Into this category fall several works of Isocrates, as, for example, his panegyric of Helen (10). In this study these semioratorical writings are used only to detail religious beliefs which are attested from more reliable evidence.

It is my intent to illustrate religious beliefs which were generally familiar and acceptable to the majority of Athenians. In using the orations for this purpose, it should be noted that orators appeal to socially acceptable beliefs. These may, on occasion, be at variance with what the people or a substantial minority of the people did believe. For Athens of the period, of course, we entirely lack “confessional” literature which might reveal significant differences between private beliefs and those which were publicly acceptable.¹² We get rare glimpses of these differences in criticisms of contemporary religious beliefs and practices by intellectuals such as Plato and Theophrastus. On occasion these criticisms contribute to our understanding of popular belief and will be incorporated into the discussions.

Most inscriptions, inscribed on stone and publicly displayed, were directed to the general, citizenry. They include cult regulations and prohibitions, calendars of festivals and sacrifices, economic and legal matters concerning cults and sanctuaries, honorific decrees, dedications to deities, and epitaphs. These inscriptions seldom present explicit statements of religious beliefs, but they do occasionally offer excellent contemporary illustrations of their application. For this reason I have included, either in references in the notes or in translation in the text, a representative selection of epigraphical texts from the late fifth and fourth centuries.

The writings of the intellectuals such as Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle are introduced only sparingly, either to illustrate a belief already attested from another source or to present their occasional descriptions of popular beliefs. Without clear evidence from reliable sources the religious theories and views of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle cannot be assumed to have been widely accepted among the people, unless we choose to disregard the risk of creating a hopelessly romanticized picture of the average Athenian. An even greater caution is required in the use of the dramatists. When we are often unable to determine whether a specific passage or speech illustrates the views of the poet or has been given to the character only for dramatic purposes, we are hardly justified, without external, evidence, in assuming that a given passage reflects popular religious views. The tragedies are, moreover, set in mythical times, and to a certain extent the mythical element has conditioned the religious aspect.¹³

The comic poet Aristophanes, however, has been widely used in studies of Athenian social history. Some scholars who quite properly reject the tragedians as sources for popular customs and beliefs because, as Aristotle (Po. 1448a16–18) puts it, the tragedians represent man better than he is, nevertheless use Aristophanes extensively as a source.¹⁴ One must be cautious, I think, and take to heart Aristotle’s farther remark that comic poets represent man worse than he actually is.¹⁵ W. K. C. Guthrie, in fact, used the character Dicaeopolis of Aristophanes’ Acharnians as the focal point of his description of the popular religion of the period,¹⁶ However much Dicaeopolis may have prided himself on being a “good citizen” (Ach. 595), I can only think that the solemn speaker of Lysias’ seventh oration and the embattled speakers of the orations composed by Isaeus would have been appalled to be likened to Dicaeopol...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter One Introduction
• Chapter Two Priority of the Divine
• Chapter Three Areas of Divine Intervention
• Chapter Four The Gods and Human Justice
• Chapter Five The Gods and Oaths
• Chapter Six Divination
• Chapter Seven The Gods and Death
• Chapter Eight The Nature of Divine Intervention
• Chapter Nine The Nature of the Gods
• Chapter Ten The Afterlife
• Chapter Eleven Some Social Aspects of Popular Religion
• Chapter Twelve Piety and Impiety
• Chapter Thirteen The Consensus
• Chapter Fourteen Some Historical Considerations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Passages Cited
• General Index