, a* appeal* from .1 leii.-r ot tin- Kmperor 



Julian, and an anecdote i"l'l a ie\\ \ears later of 



rhr\so-.tom, ili.-, -on ii people were beginning to 



have H diiliculiv in understanding ancient tii-"k. 

 Intlci-tioiis tlifii began t<i disappear, foreign words 

 to debase tlio vocabulary, tin- quantity <>i syllables 

 lo ! disregarded, Greek won Is to be mutilated in 

 iomi iiinl changed in meaning. None of these 

 tendencies were new : they may lie detected from 

 . hf i>. -ginning of the life of tlie language, even in 

 Homer. Nor are they peculiar to Greek. Hut the 

 conditions were favourable to their development as 

 they never had been liefore, and rarely have been 

 .-Kewhere. Foremost iiinongst these developing 

 Conditions must be placed tlie fact that for cen- 

 turies tln> language was not a nation's organ of 



speech, nor the expression of a national life. At- 

 tempts are being made at the present day to revert 

 to tlie use of ancient Greek, 'correct Greek (^ 

 latfapti'ooaa. or veoeXXT/vtKT) or AXqptKi}), for literary 

 purposes; but the spoken language (dijuuSrjs or 

 X'5ota) is too far decomposed to admit of a success- 

 ful infusion of ancient forms, and not sufficiently 

 advanced to throw off all connection with the 

 ancient tongue. 



Ancient Religion. That the Greeks worshipped 

 many gods, and those made in the image of man, 

 needs not to be demonstrated. Let it l>e granted also 

 for tlie purposes of this article that religion is not the 

 saint: thing as Mysteries (q.v.), or Mythology (q.v. 

 also), ami that the reader may be referred to the 

 special articles on the various Greek gods for their 

 respective attributes and legends. The question at 

 once arises : In what sense of the word could the 

 Greeks have a religion ? Their mythology taught 

 tlieni that the gods were deceitful and approved of 

 deceit (Athene), were cowardly, even the god of 

 war (Ares), were guilty of cannibalistic infanticide 

 ( Cronos), incest (Cronos and Rhea, Zeus and Hera), 

 bestial amours (Zeus), and what was tantamount 

 amongst immortals to parricide (Uranos, Cronos, and 

 Zeus ). And though Greeks did not spend all their 

 days listening to these repulsive stories, they did 



, every day perform a number of rites and ceremonies 

 which were puerile, unmeaning, and absurd ; while 

 they showed the opinion they held of their gods by 

 the faith which they had that they could buy their 

 favour or buy off their disfavour by offerings. Nor 

 can it be alleged that this is our way, not theirs, of 

 re^irding their myths and cults. From the time 

 of Xenophanes to that of Euripides philosophers 

 and poets did not weary of denouncing the immor- 

 ality and bestiality of these myths. Plato pro- 

 tested that the current theory of offerings and 

 sacrifice made religion a variety of higgling in the 

 celestial market, a sort of political economy of the 

 spiritual world. Aristophanes and the comedians 

 of the old school could place a god in /irojiria per- 

 sona upon the stage to l>e derided for his cowardice, 

 braggadocio, and gluttony. Under these circum- 

 stances, then, what sort of religion was it that the 

 < J reeks eoiild have 1 



In the first place, whether it was that Zeus con- 

 trolled the other gods, or that he as well as they 

 wa> guided by fate or destiny or necessity, the 

 universe was, the Greeks believed as well as we, 

 ruled for some good end. In other words, they had 

 ffiith; and which enlists our sympathies that 

 faith was tried. They were not slow to observe 

 that, though the good do often prosper and the 

 wicked suffer in this world, the rule is far from 

 absolute; and we find, e.g. in Theognis and Solon, 

 that they could not reconcile this with their faith, 

 but for all that they did not cease to believe. 

 Again, whatever faith they put in the efficacy of 

 sacrifice and rites and ceremonies, they also 'be- 

 lieved that a good life was that which was most 

 acceptable in the sight of the gods. Thev certainly 

 233 



believed that wrong doing provoked the diplaure 

 oi he.-neti, anil l.-i hyliiM was led to dincnver that 

 tin- -ins of the father were veiled on tin- children, 

 while to Herodotuv and the Greeks generally their 

 gods seemed jealoiiH g<U. If it be attked how all 

 this could IN- reconciled with a belief in their 

 revolting myths, there are various answer* : what 

 was right for the gods might IK? not right for men, 

 just UM the schooling has no doubt that it ix right 

 for his father but not right for himself to smoke, 

 sit up late, or the like; or the myths might ) 

 the invention of misguiding or misguided ixmtH, or 

 might mean something and were not to he inter- 

 preted literally. 



Next, as to their conception of a future world. 

 In the earliest ( Homeric ) times it could scarcely have 

 been a potent religious factor; it is almost purely 

 mythological. If a wrong-doer like Sisyphus or 

 Tantalus is punished in Hades, merit can hardly 

 l)e said to be rewarded : tin- ghost of Orion con- 

 tinues, like the Red man's spirit, to go hunting, 

 but Achilles thinks the meanest life on earth pre- 

 ferable to being king of the shades )>elow. Hut in 

 course of time, when it became imjiossible to be- 

 lieve that the good were always rewarded and the 

 bad punished in this world, and when even the 

 theory that the sins of the father are visited on the 

 children was found an inadequate explanation of 

 the sufferings of the innocent, the belief in a system 

 of future punishments and rewards grew in strength, 

 and in Plato's time (Rep. 330 D. and 363) was 

 firmly held by the average respectable Greek. 

 On the whole then it seems probable that in Greece 

 myth did not kill religion, and that it was not 

 myth but religion which dominated the morality of 

 Greece, as it also dominated Greek art, especially 

 sculpture. 



The Greeks, therefore, were not without religion. 

 How then did it differ from modern systems ? The 

 more educated Greeks were, in many cases, mono- 

 theists, Zeus being supreme, and the other gods his 

 angels ; and the conception of the paternal love of 

 God was not strange to them. The essential differ- 

 ence is that the Greeks were not taught their 

 religion by authority, whether of revelation, the 

 state, or a priesthood. They had no revealed book 

 (Homer and Hesiod fixed the theogony indeed, but 

 not the religion ) ; they had no priests having author- 

 ity, and as long as a Greek performed the rites 

 Erescribed by the state he might interpret them as 

 e pleased. Thus, though on the one hand there 

 was nothing to prevent a man becoming a practical 

 monotheist, on the other, for want of organisation 

 and authority, the many elements of good there 

 were in the religion of the Greeks doubtless acted 

 less potently than they might have acted. Let us 

 remember, however, that had any dogmas been 

 enforced, they might have been the wrong ones. 

 Finally, it is in harmony with the Greek character 

 generally that in Greece there was no devil. 



In modern Greece the church is the Orthodox 

 Greek Church, which is 'endowed' in that bishops 

 and archbishops are paid by the state ( the inferior 

 clergy, however, by voluntary fees), and is 'estab- 

 lished ' in that the archbishops and bishops are 

 nominated by the king, as is the Synod of Five 

 which is supreme in the church ; and that, except 

 in purely spiritual matters, the synod is dependent 

 on the government. 



History. The earliest fact in the history of 

 Greece of which we can feel certain is the Dorian 

 invasion, or as the mythical version of this un- 

 doubtedly historic fact terms it, 'the return of the 

 Heraclidte.' Its date can of course only be ap- 

 proximately conjectured, but we may take it that 

 the changes in the ethnological map occasioned by 

 the Dorian invasion took about a couple of cen- 

 turies to effect, and were completed about 1000 B.C, 



