excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)
The religious situation in Greece was complicated in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., even in regard to popular religion. It was simple enough in backward districts, where the old faith survived without being disturbed and where the people kept the rustic customs, celebrated the old festivals, and venerated the gods and heroes without doing much thinking about the high gods. The background of this simple faith has survived until our own day. The situation was different elsewhere, especially in the cities, where religion had to encounter political life and the new enlightenment. The people ascribed the greatness and glory of the state, its freedom and independence, to its great gods; they feasted gladly on the sacrifices offered by the state; and they gathered with others at the panegyreis. But the cult of the great gods was too cold. These gods did not offer help in human needs and consolation to a contrite heart. The old bonds of state and family were loosened, the individual became conscious of himself. The state claimed as great authority as ever, but, as a matter of fact, the abuses of democracy turned people away from it and made them try to find the way that pleased them best. Man was no longer born to his gods as in earlier times. He wanted to find his gods for himself. And so he turned to gods who could help him–to Asclepius, the great healer of diseases; to the Cabiri, who brought help in distress at sea; or to gods who were able to stir his religious feelings deeply, as Sabazios could. In this movement the women seem to have played an important part. The criticism of religious beliefs by the Sophists and the improper jests at the expense of the gods by men like Aristophanes did their work. Atheists were not unknown, nor were statesmen who treated religion as only a means to their ends. The faith of the masses was shaken, but it was not destroyed.
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excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)
I have spoken of the religion of the countryside. Its cults certainly do not exhibit the gods in their highest aspects, nor do the rustic customs belong to the higher strata of religion. But they are near the bedrock of primitive ideas and they have survived the high gods, lasting on into our own day in Greece, as very similar forms of religion have in other European countries. I have spoken also of the religion of the townspeople. I have emphasized the fact that when a great number of people came together in a town and engaged in industry and commerce, their mode of life was profoundly changed as a result of their separation from nature and the cultivation of the soil and that as a consequence their religious needs and outlook also changed. There were other religious movements which were not a result of the difference between town and country, although they were connected with social conditions. This is especially true of the early age before the Persian Wars. I have said that this was, in part at least, an age of poverty and social distress. On the other hand it was an age of brisk and diversified activity, of sea voyages and colonization, of discoveries and of progress in all directions. The foundations of Greek science were laid at this time. Religion, too, was involved in these changes and developments. The new movements in Greek religion originated in this age, and they did not leave popular religion untouched.
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excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)
In a previous chapter I strongly emphasized the fact that in early times Greece was a country of tillers of the soil and of herdsmen, who subsisted on the products of their own labor. To these, of course, we must add the owners of the great landed estates, the nobility. But I have not forgotten that Greece was also a country of city-states. In some of the towns industrial and commercial activities were started, and these towns played the leading role in the development of Greek culture and even in religion. In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Greece was apparently overpopulated. The products of its soil were not sufficient for the increasing number of its inhabitants. We know from Hesiod how straitened were the circumstances of the small farmers. The stress was relieved not only by emigration and the founding of colonies around the Mediterranean, but also by the rise of industry and commerce in certain towns. At that time the laborers in the many workshops were not slaves, as they were in the classical age. The poor country population crowded into the towns, where they could find work and earn a livelihood which, although poor, was more certain than that provided by the seasonal labor of agriculture. This is the background of the social and political changes of the early historical age in Greece. The power of the nobility broke down. In the towns which were ahead in the development of industry and commerce tyrants arose. The rule of the tyrants was founded on the broad mass of the city population, and the tyrants strove to promote the interests of the masses. But this was only an interlude. The tyrants were expelled before the early age reached its end, and democracy, or at least a mitigated aristocracy, was established. 1
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excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)
A great scholar has graphically described Artemis as the goddess of the outdoors (Göttin des Draussen). Untamed nature may be lovely and beneficent, but, on the other hand, it may be terrible and frightful. The desert wilderness, the rugged mountains, the deep ravines, the precipitous torrents, and the thick forests inspire awe in man. Among them he feels himself subject to unknown and dangerous powers. There the wild beasts which attack him and his herds roam about, and robbers may lurk in the glens. “It is better at home, for it is dangerous outdoors” is an old Greek saying, found in Hesiod and in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. 1 Within the walls of his house, man feels himself secure, protected from dangers which threaten without. The ancient Greeks would have understood what we mean when we say, “A man’s house is his castle.” In the beginning of the work of Thucydides there is a vivid description of how unsafe life was in early times because of robbers and pirates.
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excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)
A chapter on the religion of Eleusis is a natural sequel to the description of the rural customs and festivals, 1 for the Eleusinian Mysteries are the highest and finest bloom of Greek popular religion. Originally the Eleusinian Mysteries were a festival celebrated at the autumn sowing. This is proved by the testimony of Plutarch 2 and by their very near kinship to the Thesmophoria. Although it is acknowledged that the basis of the Eleusinian Mysteries is an old agrarian cult, this fact has been pushed into the background by the attempts to discover the secret rites of the Mysteries. They have been discussed repeatedly by scholars and laymen, and numerous hypotheses have been put forward, some of them intelligent, others fantastic, none of them certain or even probable. Such a question seems to cast an everlasting spell on mankind, for mankind wants to know the unknowable. But the silence imposed upon the mystae has been well kept.
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excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)
I have emphasized strongly the fact that except for a few industrial and commercial centers ancient Greece was a country of peasants and herdsmen and that according to modern notions many of its so-called cities were but large villages. Certain provinces such as Boeotia, Phocis, and Thessaly, not to speak of Messenia, were always agricultural. In other ways also some of them were still very simple and backward in the classical age. Examples are Arcadia, Aetolia, and Acarnania. Except for those cities to which the leading role in Greek history fell, Greece depended on agriculture and on cattle and sheep raising. In early times, before the industrial and commercial development began, this was true of the whole of Greece, and it was then that the foundations of the Greek cults were laid.
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excerpt from Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson (1940)
Greek religion in its various aspects has been the subject of numerous investigations. Modern research has progressed along two lines especially, the search for primitive survivals and the study of the literary expressions of religion. The first is attributable to the rise of the science of anthropology since the seventies of the last century. In this science the study of Greek religion, viewed as a direct development from a primitive nature religion, has always taken a prominent place. I need only mention the names of Andrew Lang, Sir James Frazer, and Jane Harrison. While it is true that there were very many relics of primitive religion in Greek religion, it must be remembered that Greece was a highly civilized country and that even its most backward inhabitants were subject to the influence of its culture. It is misleading, therefore, to represent Greek religion as essentially primitive. The primitive elements were modified and overlaid by higher elements through the development of Greek culture. They were survivals and must be treated as such.
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