Atheism in Pagan Antiquity Part 5

CHAPTER VIII

In the preceding inquiry we took as our starting-point not the ancient conception of atheism but the modern view of the nature of the pagan G.o.ds.

It proved that this view was, upon the whole, feebly represented during antiquity, and that it was another view (demonology) which was transmitted to later ages from the closing years of antiquity. The inquiry will therefore find its natural conclusion in a demonstration of the time and manner in which the conception handed down from antiquity of the nature of paganism was superseded and displaced by the modern view.

This question is, however, more difficult to answer than one would perhaps think. After ancient paganism had ceased to exist as a living religion, it had lost its practical interest, and theoretically the Middle Ages were occupied with quite other problems than the nature of paganism. At the revival of the study of ancient literature, during the Renaissance, people certainly again came into the most intimate contact with ancient religion itself, but systematic investigations of its nature do not seem to have been taken up in real earnest until after the middle of the sixteenth century. It is therefore difficult to ascertain in what light paganism was regarded during the thousand years which had then pa.s.sed since its final extinction. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the other hand, the material is extraordinarily plentiful, though but slightly investigated. Previous works in this field seem to be entirely wanting; at any rate it has not been possible for me to find any collective treatment of the subject, nor even any contributions worth mentioning towards the solution of the numerous individual problems which arise when we enter upon what might be called "the history of the history of religion."(1) In this essay I must therefore restrict myself to a few aphoristic remarks which may perhaps give occasion for this subject, in itself not devoid of interest, to receive more detailed treatment at some future time.

Milton, in the beginning of _Paradise Lost_, which appeared in 1667, makes Satan a.s.semble all his angels for continued battle against G.o.d. Among the demons there enumerated, ancient G.o.ds also appear; they are, then, plainly regarded as devils. Now Milton was not only a poet, but also a sound scholar and an orthodox theologian; we may therefore rest a.s.sured that his conception of the pagan G.o.ds was dogmatically correct and in accord with the prevailing views of his time. In him, therefore, we have found a fixed point from which we can look forwards and backwards; as late as after the middle of the seventeenth century the early Christian view of the nature of paganism evidently persisted in leading circles.

We seldom find definite heathen G.o.ds so precisely designated as demons as in Milton, but no doubt seems possible that the general principle was accepted by contemporary and earlier authors. The chief work of the seventeenth century on ancient religion is the _De Theologia Gentili_ of G. I. Voss; he operates entirely with the traditional view. It may be traced back through a succession of writings of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries. They are all, or almost all, agreed that antique paganism was the work of the devil, and that idolatry was, at any rate in part, a wors.h.i.+p of demons. From the Middle Ages I can adduce a pregnant expression of the same view from Thomas Aquinas; in his treatment of idolatry and also of false prophecy he definitely accepts the demonology of the early Church. On this point he appeals to Augustine, and with perfect right; from this it may presumably be a.s.sumed that the Schoolmen in general had the same view, Augustine being, as we know, an authority for Catholic theologians.

In mediaeval poets also we occasionally find the same view expressed. As far as I have been able to ascertain, Dante has no ancient G.o.ds among his devils, and the degree to which he had dissociated himself from ancient paganism may be gauged by the fact that in one of the most impa.s.sioned pa.s.sages of his poem he addresses the Christian G.o.d as "Great Jupiter."

But he allows figures of ancient mythology such as Charon, Minos and Geryon to appear in his infernal world, and when he designates the pagan G.o.ds as "false and _untruthful_," demonology is evidently at the back of his mind. The mediaeval epic poets who dealt with antique subjects took over the pagan G.o.ds more or less. Sometimes, as in the Romance of Troy, the Christian veneer is so thick that the pagan groundwork is but slightly apparent; in other poems, such as the adaptation of the _Aeneid_, it is more in evidence. In so far as the G.o.ds are not eliminated they seem as a rule to be taken over quite navely from the source without further comment; but occasionally the poet expresses his view of their nature.

Thus the French adapter of Statius's _Thebas_, in whose work the Christian element is otherwise not prominent, cautiously remarks that Jupiter and Tisiphone, by whom his heroes swear, are in reality only devils. Generally speaking, the G.o.ds of antiquity are often designated as devils in mediaeval poetry, but at times the opinion that they are departed human beings crops up. Thus, as we might expect, the theories of ancient times still survive and retain their sway.

There is a domain in which we might expect to find distinct traces of the survival of the ancient G.o.ds in the mediaeval popular consciousness, namely, that of magic. There does not, however, seem to be much in it; the forms of mediaeval magic often go back to antiquity, but the beings it operates with are pre-eminently the Christian devils, if we may venture to employ the term, and the evil spirits of popular belief. There is, however, extant a collection of magic formulae against various ailments in which pagan G.o.ds appear: Hercules and Juno Regina, Juno and Jupiter, the nymphs, Luna Jovis filia, Sol invictus. The collection is transmitted in a ma.n.u.script of the ninth century; the formulae mostly convey the impression of dating from a much earlier period, but the fact that they were copied in the Middle Ages suggests that they were intended for practical application.

A problem, the closer investigation of which would no doubt yield an interesting result, but which does not seem to have been much noticed, is the European conception of the heathen religions with which the explorers came into contact on their great voyages of discovery. Primitive heathenism as a living reality had lain rather beyond the horizon of the Middle Ages; when it was met with in America, it evidently awakened considerable interest. There is a description of the religion of Peru and Mexico, written by the Jesuit Acosta at the close of the sixteenth century, which gives us a clear insight into the orthodox view of heathenism during the Renaissance. According to Acosta, heathenism is as a whole the work of the Devil; he has seduced men to idolatry in order that he himself may be wors.h.i.+pped instead of the true G.o.d. All wors.h.i.+p of idols is in reality wors.h.i.+p of Satan. The individual idols, however, are not identified with individual devils; Acosta distinguishes between the wors.h.i.+p of nature (heavenly bodies, natural objects of the earth, right down to trees, etc.), the wors.h.i.+p of the dead, and the wors.h.i.+p of images, but says nothing about the wors.h.i.+p of demons. At one point only is there a direct intervention of the evil powers, namely, in magic, and particularly in oracles; and here then we find, as an exception, mention of individual devils which must be imagined to inhabit the idols. The same conception is found again as late as the seventeenth century in a story told by G. I.

Voss of the time of the Dutch wars in Brazil. Arcissewski, a Polish officer serving in the Dutch army, had witnessed the conjuring of a devil among the Tapuis. The demon made his appearance all right, but proved to be a native well known to Arcissewski. As he, however, made some true prognostications, Voss, as it seems at variance with Arcissewski, thinks that there must have been some supernatural powers concerned in the game.

An exceptional place is occupied by the attempt made during the Renaissance at an actual revival of ancient paganism and the wors.h.i.+p of its G.o.ds. It proceeded from Plethon, the head of the Florentine Academy, and seems to have spread thence to the Roman Academy. The whole movement must be viewed more particularly as an outcome of the enthusiasm during the Renaissance for the culture of antiquity and more especially for its philosophy rather than its religion; the G.o.ds wors.h.i.+pped were given a new and strongly philosophical interpretation. But it is not improbable that the traditional theory of the reality of the ancient deities may have had something to do with it.

Simultaneously with demonology, and while it was still acknowledged in principle, there flourished more naturalistic conceptions of paganism, both in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. As remarked above, the way was already prepared for them during antiquity. In Thomas Aquinas we find a lucid explanation of the origin of idolatry with a reference to the ancient theory. Here we meet with the familiar elements: the wors.h.i.+p of the stars and the cult of the dead. According to Thomas, man has a natural disposition towards this error, but it only comes into play when he is led astray by demons. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Devil is mentioned oftener than the demons (compare Acosta's view of the heathenism of the American Indians); evidently the conception of the nature of evil had undergone a change in the direction of monotheism. In this way more scope was given for the adoption of naturalistic views in regard to the individual forms in which paganism manifested itself than when dealing with a multiplicity of demons that answered individually to the pagan G.o.ds, and we meet with systematic attempts to explain the origin of idolatry by natural means, though still with the Devil in the background.

One of these systems, which played a prominent part, especially in the seventeenth century, is the so-called Hebraism, _i.e._ the attempt to derive the whole of paganism from Judaism. This fas.h.i.+on, for which the way had already been prepared by Jewish and Christian apologists, reaches its climax, I think, with Abbot Huet, who derived all the G.o.ds of antiquity (and not only Greek and Roman antiquity) from Moses, and all the G.o.ddesses from his sister; according to him the knowledge of these two persons had spread from the Jews to other peoples, who had woven about them a web of "fables." Alongside of Hebraism, which is Euhemeristic in principle, allegorical methods of interpretation were put forward. The chief representative of this tendency in earlier times is Natalis Comes (Noel du Comte), the author of the first handbook of mythology; he directly set himself the task of allegorising all the myths. The allegories are mostly moral, but also physical; Euhemeristic interpretations are not rejected either, and in several places the author gives all three explanations side by side without choosing between them. In the footsteps of du Comte follows Bacon, in his _De Sapientia Veterum_; to the moral and physical allegories he adds political ones, as when Jove's struggle with Typhoeus is made to symbolise a wise ruler's treatment of a rebellion. While these attempts at interpretation, both the Euhemeristic and the allegorical, are in principle a direct continuation of those of antiquity, another method points plainly in the direction of the fantastic notions of the Middle Ages. As early as the sixteenth century the idea arose of connecting the theology of the ancients with alchemy. The idea seemed obvious because the metals were designated by the names of the planets, which are also the names of the G.o.ds. It found acceptance, and in the seventeenth century we have a series of writings in which ancient mythology is explained as the symbolical language of chemical processes.

Within the limits of the supernatural explanation the interest centred more and more in a single point: the oracles. As far back as in Aquinas, "false prophecy" is a main section in the chapter on demons, whose power to foretell the future he expressly acknowledges. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the interest in the prediction of the future was so strong, the ancient accounts of true prognostications were the real prop of demonology. Hence demons generally play a great part in these explanations, even though in other cases the Devil fills the bill. Thus Acosta in his account of the American religions; thus Voss and numerous other writers of the seventeenth century; and it is hardly a mere accident, one would think, when Milton specially mentions Dodona and Delphi as the seats of wors.h.i.+p of the Greek demons. Among a few of the humanists we certainly find an attempt to apply the natural explanation even here; thus Caelius Rhodiginus a.s.serted that a great part (but not all!) of the oracular system might be explained as priestly imposture, and his slightly younger contemporary Caelius Calcagninus, in his dialogue on oracles, seems to go still further and to deny the power of predicting the future to any other being than the true G.o.d. An exceptional position is occupied by Pomponazzi, who in his little pamphlet _De Incantationibus_ seems to wish to derive all magic, including the oracles, from natural causes, though ultimately he formally acknowledges demonology as the authoritative explanation. But these advances did not find acceptance; we find even Voss combating the view on which they were founded. It is characteristic of the power of demonology in this domain that in support of his point of view he can quote no less a writer than Machiavelli.

The author who opened battle in real earnest against demonology was a Dutch scholar, one van Dale, otherwise little known. In a couple of treatises written about the close of the seventeenth century he tried to show that the whole of idolatry (as well as the oracles in particular) was not dependent on the intervention of supernatural beings, but was solely due to imposture on the part of the priests. Van Dale was a Protestant, so he easily got over the unanimous recognition of demonology by the Fathers of the Church. The accounts of demons in the Old and New Testaments proved more difficult to deal with; it is interesting to see how he wriggles about to get round them-and it ill.u.s.trates most instructively the degree to which demonology affords the only reasonable and natural explanation of paganism on the basis of early Christian belief.

Van Dale's books are learned works written in Latin, full of quotations in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and moreover confused and obscure in exposition, as is often the case with Dutch writings of that time. But a clever Frenchman, Fontenelle, took upon himself the task of rendering his work on the oracles into French in a popular and attractive form. His book called forth an answering pamphlet from a Jesuit advocating the traditional view; the little controversy seems to have made some stir in France about the year 1700. At any rate Banier, who, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, treated ancient mythology from a Euhemeristic point of view, gave some consideration to it. His own conclusion is-in 1738!-that demonology cannot be dispensed with for the explanation of the oracles. He gives his grounds for this in a very sensible criticism of van Dale's priestly fraud theory, the absurdity of which he exposes with sound arguments.

Banier is the last author to whom I can point for the demon-theory applied as an explanation of a phenomenon in ancient religion; I have not found it in any other mythologist of the eighteenth century, and even in Banier, with the exception of this single point, everything is explained quite naturally according to the best Euhemeristic models. But in the positive understanding of the nature of ancient paganism no very considerable advance had actually been made withal. A characteristic example of this is the treatment of ancient religion by such an eminent intellect as Giambattista Vico. In his _Scienza Nuova_, which appeared in 1725, as the foundation of his exposition of the religion of antiquity he gives a characterisation of the mode of thought of primitive mankind, which is so pertinent and psychologically so correct that it antic.i.p.ates the results of more than a hundred years of research. Of any supernatural explanation no trace is found in him, though otherwise he speaks as a good Catholic.

But when he proceeds to explain the nature of the ancient ideas of the G.o.ds in detail, all that it comes to is a series of allegories, among which the politico-social play a main part. Vico sees the earliest history of mankind in the light of the traditions about Rome; the Graeco-Roman G.o.ds, then, and the myths about them, become to him largely an expression of struggles between the "patricians and plebeians" of remote antiquity.

Most of the mythology of the eighteenth century is like this. The Euhemeristic school gradually gave up the hypothesis of the Jewish religion as the origin of paganism; Banier, the chief representative of the school, still argues at length against Hebraism. In its place, Phoenicians, a.s.syrians, Persians and, above all, Egyptians, are brought into play, or, as in the case of the Englishman Bryant, the whole of mythology is explained as reminiscences of the exploits of an aboriginal race, the Cuthites, which never existed. The allegorist school gradually rallied round the idea of the cult of the heavenly bodies as the origin of the pagan religions; as late as the days of the French Revolution, Dupuis, in a voluminous work, tried to trace the whole of ancient religion and mythology back to astronomy. On the whole the movement diverged more and more from Euhemerism towards the conception of Greek religion as a kind of cult of nature; when the sudden awakening to a more correct understanding came towards the close of the century, Euhemerism was evidently already an antiquated view. Thus, since the Renaissance, by a slow and very devious process of development, a gradual approach had been made to a more correct view of the nature of ancient religion. After the Devil had more or less taken the place of the demons, the rest of demonology, the moral allegory, Hebraism and Euhemerism were eliminated by successive stages, and nature-symbolism was reached as the final stage.

We know now that even this is not the correct explanation of the nature and origin of the conception of the G.o.ds prevailing among the ancients.

Recent investigations have shown that the Greek G.o.ds, in spite of their apparent simplicity and clarity, are highly complex organisms, the products of a long process of development to which the most diverse factors have contributed. In order to arrive at this result another century of work, with many attempts in the wrong direction, has been required. The idea that the Greek G.o.ds were nature-G.o.ds really dominated research through almost the whole of the nineteenth century. If it has now been dethroned or reduced to the measure of truth it contains-for undoubtedly a natural object enters as a component into the essence of some Greek deities-this is in the first place due to the intensive study of the religions of primitive peoples, living or obsolete; and the results of this study were only applied to Greek religion during the last decade of the century. But the starting-point of modern history of religion lies much farther back: its beginnings date from the great revival of historical research which was inaugurated by Rousseau and continued by Herder. Henceforward the unhistorical methods of the age of enlightenment were abolished, and attention directed in real earnest towards the earlier stages of human civilisation.

This, however, carries us a step beyond the point of time at which this sketch should, strictly speaking, stop. For by the beginning of the eighteenth century-but not before-the negative fact which is all important in this connexion had won recognition: namely, that there existed no supernatural beings latent behind the Greek ideas of their G.o.ds, and corresponding at any rate in some degree to them; but that these ideas must be regarded and explained as entirely inventions of the human imagination.

CHAPTER IX

At the very beginning of this inquiry it was emphasised that its theme would in the main be the religious views of the upper cla.s.s, and within this sphere again especially the views of those circles which were in close touch with philosophy. The reason for this is of course in the first place that only in such circles can we expect to find expressed a point of view approaching to positive atheism. But we may a.s.suredly go further than this. We shall hardly be too bold in a.s.serting that the free-thinking of philosophically educated men in reality had very slight influence on the great ma.s.s of the population. Philosophy did not penetrate so far, and whatever degree of perception we estimate the ma.s.ses to have had of the fact that the upper layer of society regarded the popular faith with critical eyes-and in the long run it could not be concealed-we cannot fail to recognise that religious development among the ancients did not tend towards atheism. Important changes took place in ancient religion during the h.e.l.lenistic Age and the time of the Roman Empire, but their causes were of a social and national kind, and, if we confine ourselves to paganism, they only led to certain G.o.ds going out of fas.h.i.+on and others coming in. The utmost we can a.s.sert is that a certain weakening of the religious life may have been widely prevalent during the time of transition between the two ages-the transition falls at somewhat different dates in the eastern and western part of the Empire-but that weakening was soon overcome.

Now the peculiar result of this investigation of the state of religion among the upper cla.s.ses seems to me to be this: the curve of intensity of religious feeling which conjecture leads us to draw through the spiritual life of the ancients as a whole, that same curve, but more distinct and sharply accentuated, is found again in the relations of the upper cla.s.ses to the popular faith. Towards the close of the fifth century it looks as if the cultured cla.s.ses that formed the centre of Greek intellectual life were outgrowing the ancient religion. The reaction which set in with Socrates and Plato certainly checked this movement, but it did not stop it. Cynics, Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, in spite of their widely differing points of view, were all entirely unable to share the religious ideas of their countrymen in the form in which they were cast in the national religion. However many allowances they made, their att.i.tude towards the popular faith was critical, and on important points they denied it. It is against the background thus resulting from ancient philosophy's treatment of ancient religion that we must view such phenomena as Polybius, Cicero, and Pliny the Elder, if we wish to understand their full significance.

On the other hand, it is certain that this was not the view that conquered in the end among the educated cla.s.ses in antiquity. The lower we come down in the Empire the more evident does the positive relation of the upper cla.s.s to the G.o.ds of the popular faith become. Some few examples have already been mentioned in the preceding pages. In philosophy the whole movement finds its typical expression in demonology, which during the later Empire reigned undisputed in the one or two schools that still retained any vitality. It is significant that its source was the earlier Platonism, with its very conservative att.i.tude towards popular belief, and that it was taken over by the later Stoic school, which inaugurated the general religious reaction in philosophy. And it is no less significant that demonology was swallowed whole by the monotheistic religion which superseded ancient paganism, and for more than a thousand years was the recognised explanation of the nature thereof.

In accordance with the line of development here sketched, the inquiry has of necessity been focused on two main points: Sophistic and the h.e.l.lenistic Age. Now it is of peculiar interest to note what small traces of pure atheism can after all be found here, in spite of all criticism of the popular faith. We have surmised its presence among a few prominent personalities in fifth-century Athens; we have found evidence of its extension in the same place in the period immediately following; and in the time of transition between the fourth and third centuries we have thought it likely that it existed among a very few philosophers, of whom none are in the first rank. Everywhere else we find adjustments, in part very serious and real concessions, to popular belief. Not to mention the att.i.tude towards wors.h.i.+p, which was only hostile in one sect of slight importance: the a.s.sumption of the divinity of the heavenly bodies which was common to the Academics, Peripatetics, and Stoics is really in principle an acknowledgement of the popular faith, whose conception of the G.o.ds was actually borrowed and applied, not to some philosophical abstraction, but to individual and concrete natural objects. The anthropomorphic G.o.ds of the Epicureans point in the same direction. In spite of their profound difference from the beings that were wors.h.i.+pped and believed in by the ordinary Greek, they are in complete harmony with the opinion on which all polytheism is based: that there are individual beings of a higher order than man. And though the Stoics in theory confined their acknowledgment of this doctrine to the heavenly bodies, in practice-even if we disregard demonology-they consistently brought it to bear upon the anthropomorphic G.o.ds, in direct continuation of the Socratic reaction against the atheistic tendencies of Sophistic.

If now we ask ourselves what may be the cause of this peculiar dualism in the relations.h.i.+p of ancient thought to religion, though admitting the highly complex nature of the problem, we can scarcely avoid recognising a certain principle. Ancient thought outgrew the ancient popular faith; that is beyond doubt. Hence its critical att.i.tude. But it never outgrew that supernaturalist view which was the foundation of the popular faith. Hence its concessions to the popular faith, even when it was most critical, and its final surrender thereunto. And that it never outgrew the foundation of the popular faith is connected with its whole conception of nature and especially with its conception of the universe. We cannot indeed deny that the ancients had a certain feeling that nature was regulated by laws, but they only made imperfect attempts at a mechanical theory of nature in which this regulation of the world by law was carried through in principle, and with one brilliant exception they adhered implicitly to the geocentric conception of the universe. We may, I think, venture to a.s.sert with good reason that on such a.s.sumptions the philosophers of antiquity could not advance further than they did. In other words, on the given hypotheses the supernaturalist view was the correct one, the one that was most probable, and therefore that on which people finally agreed. A few chosen spirits may at any time by intuition, without any strictly scientific foundation, emanc.i.p.ate themselves entirely from religious errors; this also happened among the ancients, and on the first occasion was not unconnected with an enormous advance in the conception of nature.

But it is certain that the views of an entire age are always decisively conditioned by its knowledge and interpretation of the universe surrounding it, and cannot in principle be emanc.i.p.ated therefrom.

Seen from this point of view, our brief sketch of the att.i.tude of posterity towards the religion of the pagan world will also not be without interest. If, after isolated advances during the mighty awakening of the Renaissance, it is not until the transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century that we find the modern atheistic conception of the nature of the G.o.ds of the ancients established in principle and consistently applied, we can scarcely avoid connecting this fact with the advance of natural science in the seventeenth century, and not least with the victory of the heliocentric system. After the close of antiquity the pagan G.o.ds had receded to a distance, practically speaking, because they were not wors.h.i.+pped any more. No one troubled himself about them. But in theory one had got no further, _i.e._ no advance had been made on the ancients, and no advance could be made as long as supernaturalism was adhered to in connexion with the ancient view of the universe. Through monotheism the notions of the divinity of the sun, moon and planets had certainly been got rid of, but not so the notion of the world-_i.e._ the globe enclosed within the firmament-as filled with personal beings of a higher order than man; and even the duty of turning the spheres to which the heavenly bodies were believed to be fastened was-quite consistently-a.s.signed to some of these beings. As long as such notions were in operation, not only were there no grounds for denying the reality of the pagan G.o.ds, but there was every reason to a.s.sume it. So far we may rightly say that it was Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Kepler and Newton that did away with the traditional conception of ancient paganism.

Natural science, however, furnishes only the negative result that the G.o.ds of polytheism are not what they are said to be: real beings of a higher order than man. To reveal what they are, other knowledge is required. This was not attained until long after the revival of natural science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The vacillation in the eighteenth century between various theories of the explanation of the nature of ancient polytheism-theories which were all false, though not equally false-is in this respect significant enough; likewise the gradual progress which characterises research in the nineteenth century, and which may be indicated by such names as Heyne, b.u.t.tmann, K. O. Muller, Lobeck, Mannhardt, Rohde, and Usener, to mention only some of the most important and omitting those still alive. Viewed in this light the development sketched here within a narrowly restricted field is typical of the course of European intellectual history from antiquity down to our day.

NOTES

Of Atheism in Antiquity as defined here no treatment is known to me; but there exist an older and a newer book that deal with the question within a wider compa.s.s. The first of these is Krische, _Die theologischen Lehren der griechischen Denker_ (Gottingen, 1840); it is chiefly concerned with the philosophical conceptions of deity, but it touches also on the relations of philosophers to popular religion. The second is Decharme, _La critique des traditions religieuses chez les Grecs_ (Paris, 1904); it is not fertile in new points of view, but it has suggested several details which I might else have overlooked. Such books as Caird, _The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_ (Glasgow, 1904), or Moon, _Religious Thought of the Greeks_ (Cambridge, Ma.s.s., 1919), barely touch on the relation to popular belief; of Louis, _Les doctrines religieuses des philosophes grecs_, I have not been able to make use. I regret that Poul Helms, _The Conception of G.o.d in Greek Philosophy_ (Danish, in _Studier for Sprog-og Oldtidsforskning_, No. 115), was not published until my essay was already in the press. General works on Atheism are indicated in Aveling's article, "Atheism," in the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_, vol. ii., but none of them seem to be found at Copenhagen. In the _Dictionary of Religion and Ethics_, ii., there is a detailed article on Atheism in its relation to different religions; the section treating of Antiquity is written by Pearson, but is meagre. Works like Zeller, _Philosophie der Griechen_, and Gomperz, _Griechische Denker_, contain accounts of the att.i.tude of philosophers (Gomperz also includes others) towards popular belief; of these books I have of course made use throughout, but they are not referred to in the following notes except on special occasion.

Scattered remarks and small monographs on details are naturally to be found in plenty. Where I have met with such and found something useful in them, or where I express dissent from them, I have noticed it; but I have not aimed at exhausting the literature on my subject. On the other hand I have tried to make myself completely acquainted with the first-hand material, wherever it gave a direct support for a.s.suming Atheism, and to take my own view of it. In many cases, however, the argumentation has had to be indirect: it has been necessary to draw inferences from what an author does not say in a certain connexion when he might be expected to say it, or what he generally and throughout avoids mentioning, or from his general manner and peculiarities in his way of speaking of the G.o.ds. In such cases I have often had to be content with my previous knowledge and my general impression of the facts; but then I have as a rule made use of the important modern literature on the subject. In working out the sketch of the ideas after the end of Antiquity, I have been almost without any guidance in modern literature. I have accordingly had to try, on the basis of a superficial acquaintance with some of the chief types, to form for myself, as best I might, some idea of the course of the evolution; but I have not been able to go systematically through the immense material, however fruitful such a research appeared to be. In the meantime, between the publication of my Danish essay and this translation, there has appeared a work by Mr. Gruppe, _Geschichte der kla.s.sischen Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte_ (Leipzig, 1921). My task in writing my last chapters would have been much easier if I could have made use of Mr. Gruppe's learned and comprehensive treatment of the subject; but it would not have been superfluous, for Mr. Gruppe deals princ.i.p.ally with the history of cla.s.sical mythology, not with the history of the belief in the G.o.ds of antiquity. So I have ventured to let my sketch stand as it is, only reducing some of the notes (which I had on purpose made rather full, to aid others who might pursue the subject) by referring to Mr. Gruppe instead of to the sources themselves.

For kindly helping me to find my bearings in out-of-the-way parts of my subject, I am indebted to my colleagues F. Buhl, I.L. Heiberg, I.C.

Jacobsen and Kr. Nyrop, as well as to Prof. Martin P. Nilsson in Lund.

P. 1. Definition of Atheism: see the article in the _Catholic Encycl._ vol. ii.

P. 5. Atheism: see Murray, _New Engl. Dict._, under Atheism and -ism. The word seems to have come up in the Renaissance.

P. 6. Criminal Law at Athens: see Lipsius, _Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren_, i. p. 358.-The definition in Aristotle, _de virt. et vit._ 7, p. 1251_a_, has, I think, no legal foundation.

P. 9. On the legal foundation for the trials of Christians, see Mommsen, _Der Religionsfreuel nach romischem Recht_ (_Ges. Schr._ iii. p.

389).-Mommsen goes too far, I think, in supposing a legal foundation for the trials of Christians; above all, I do not believe that the defection from the Roman religion was ever considered as maiestas in the technical sense of the word, the more so as it is certain that, after the earliest period, no difference was made in the treatment of citizens and aliens.

P. 13. Lists of atheists: Cicero, _de nat. deor._ 1. 1, 2 (comp. 1. 23, 26). s.e.xt. Emp. _hypotyp._ 3. 213; _adv. math._ 9. 50. Aelian, _v.h._ 2.

31; _de nat. an._ 6. 40.-The predicate _atheos_ is once applied to Anaxagoras by a Christian author (Irenaeus: see Diels, _Vorsokr._ 46, A 113; compare also Marcellinus, _vit. Thuc._, see below, note on p. 29). Of such isolated cases I have taken no account.

P. 16. On the dualism in the Greek conception of the nature of G.o.ds see Nagelsbach, _Hom. Theol._ p. 11.-Pindar: _Ol._ 1. 28, 9. 35; _Pyth._ 3.

27.

P. 17. Xenophanes: Einhorn, _Zeit- und Streitfragen der modernen Xenophanesforschung_ (_Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos._ x.x.xi.).

P. 18. Xenophanes's age: Diels, _Vorsokr._ 11, B 8.-His criticism of Homer and Hesiod: _ibid._ 11, 12.-t.i.tans and Giants: _ibid._ 1. 22.-Criticism of Anthropomorphism: _ibid._ 14-16.-Divination: Cic. _de div._ 1. 3, 5.

P. 19. On Xenophanes's conception of G.o.d, comp. _Vorsokr._ 11, B 23-26; on the identification of G.o.d with the universe: _Vorsokr._ 11, A 30, 31, 33-36.-Cicero: _de div._ 1. 3, 5.