1 Cp. Tiele, Outlines, pp. 205, 207, 212. ↑
2 Cp. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 533. ↑
3 Cp. K. O. Müller, Literature of Ancient Greece, ed. 1847, p. 77. ↑
4 Duncker, Gesch. des Alterth. 2 Aufl. iii, 209–10, 252–54, 319 sq.; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterth. ii, 181, 365, 369, 377, 380, 535 (see also ii, 100, 102, 105, 106, 115 note, etc.); W. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Lit. 3te Aufl. p. 12; Gruppe, Die griech. Culte und Mythen, 1887, p. 165 sq. ↑
5 E. Curtius, Griech. Gesch. i, 28, 29, 35, 40, 41, 101, 203, etc.; Meyer, ii, 369. ↑
6 See the able and learned essay of S. Reinach, Le Mirage Orientate, reprinted from L’Anthropologie, 1893. I do not find that its arguments affect any of the positions here taken up. See pp. 40–41. ↑
7 Meyer, ii. 369; Benn, The Philosophy of Greece, 1898, p. 42. ↑
8 Cp. Bury, History of Greece, ed. 1906, pp. vi, 10, 27, 32–34, 40, etc.; Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, 1907, ch. ix; Maisch, Manual of Greek Antiquities, Eng. tr. §§ 8, 9, 10, 60; H. R. Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece, 1901, pp. 31, 32. ↑
9 Cp. K. O. Müller, Hist. of the Doric Race, Eng. tr. 1830, i, 8–10; Busolt, Griech. Gesch. 1885, i, 33; Grote, Hist. of Greece, 10-vol. ed. 1888, iii, 3–5, 35–44; Duncker, iii, 136, n.; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, i, 299–310 (§§ 250–58); E. Curtius, i, 29; Schömann, Griech. Alterthümer, as cited, i, 2–3, 89; Burrows, ch. ix. ↑
10 Cp. Meyer, ii, 97; and his art. “Baal” in Roscher’s Ausführl. Lex. Mythol. i, 2867. ↑
11 The fallacy of this tradition, as commonly put, was well shown by Renouvier long ago—Manuel de philosophie ancienne, 1844, i, 3–13. Cp. Ritter, as cited below. ↑
12 Cp. on one side, Ritter, Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. i, 151; Renan, Études d’hist. religieuse, pp. 47–48; Zeller, Hist. of Greek Philos. Eng. tr. 1881, i, 43–49; and on the other, Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. Eng. tr. i, 31, and the weighty criticism of Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 126–27 (Eng. tr. i, 9, note 5). ↑
13 Cp. Curtius, i, 125; Bury, introd. and ch. i. ↑
15 As to the primary mixture of “Pelasgians” and Hellenes, cp. Busolt, i, 27–32; Curtius, i, 27; Schömann, i, 3–4; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, ed. 1839, i, 51–52, 116. K. O. Müller (Doric Race, Eng. tr. i, 10) and Thirlwall, who follows him (i, 45–47), decide that the Thracians cannot have been very different from the Hellenes in dialect, else they could not have influenced the latter as they did. This position is clearly untenable, whatever may have been the ethnological facts. It would entirely negate the possibility of reaction between Greeks, Kelts, Egyptians, Semites, Romans, Persians, and Hindus. ↑
16 Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912, p. 59. ↑
17 Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. ii, 583. ↑
18 The question is discussed at some length in the author’s Evolution of States, 1912. ↑
19 Lit. of Anc. Greece, pp. 41–47. The discussion of the Homeric problem is, of course, alien to the present inquiry. ↑
20 Introd. to Scientif. Mythol. Eng. tr. pp. 180, 181, 291. Cp. Curtius, i, 126. ↑
21 Cp. Curtius, i, 107, as to the absence in Homer of any distinction between Greeks and barbarians; and Grote, 10-vol. ed. 1888, iii, 37–38, as to the same feature in Archilochos. ↑
22 Duncker, Gesch. des Alt., as cited, iii. 209–10; pp. 257, 319 sq. Cp. K. O. Müller, as last cited, pp. 181, 193; Curtius, i, 43–49, 53, 54, 107, 365, 373, 377, etc.; Grote, iii, 39–41; and Meyer, ii, 104. ↑
23 Duncker, iii, 214; Curtius, i, 155, 121; Grote, iii, 279–80. ↑
24 Busolt, Griech. Gesch. 1885, i, 171–72. Cp. pp. 32–34; and Curtius, i, 42. ↑
25 On the general question cp. Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, pp. 151 ff., 157, 158 ff., 656 ff., 672 ff. ↑
26 Preller, Griech. Mythol. 2 Aufl. i, 260; Tiele, Outlines, p. 211; R. Brown, Jr., Semit. Influ. in Hellenic Mythol. 1898, p. 130; Murray, Hist. of Anc. Greek Lit. p. 35; H. R. Hall, Oldest Civilization of Greece, 1901, p. 290. ↑
27 See Tiele, Outlines, pp. 210, 212. Cp., again, Curtius, Griech. Gesch. i, 95, as to the probability that the “twelve Gods” were adjusted to the confederations of twelve cities; and again p. 126. ↑
28 “Even the title ‘king’ (Αναξ) seems to have been borrowed by the Greek from Phrygian.... It is expressly recorded that τύραννος is a Lydian word. Βασιλεύς (‘king’) resists all attempts to explain it as a purely Greek formation, and the termination assimilates it to certain Phrygian words.” (Prof. Ramsay, in Encyc. Brit. art. Phrygia). In this connection note the number of names containing Anax (Anaximenes, Anaximandros, Anaxagoras, etc.) among the Ionian Greeks. ↑
30 It is now agreed that this is merely a guess. The document, further, has been redacted and interpolated. ↑
31 Prehist. Antiq. of the Aryan Peoples, Eng. tr. p. 423. Wilamowitz holds that the verses Od. xi, 566–631, are interpolations made later than 600 B.C. ↑
32 Tiele, Outlines, p. 209; Preller, p. 263. ↑
33 Meyer says on the contrary (Gesch. des Alt. ii, 103, Anm.) that “Kronos is certainly a Greek figure”; but he cannot be supposed to dispute that the Greek Kronos cult is grafted on a Semitic one. ↑
34 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 54, 181. Cp. Cox, Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, p. 260, note. It has not, however, been noted in the discussions on Semelê that Semlje is the Slavic name for the Earth as Goddess. Ranke, History of Servia, Eng. tr. p. 43. ↑
36 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 367 sq.; Ancient Empires, p. 158. Note p. 387 in the Lectures as to the Assyrian influence, and p. 391 as to the Homeric notion in particular. Cp. W. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Literatur, § 68. ↑
37 It is unnecessary to examine here the view of Herodotos that many of the Greek cults were borrowed from Egypt. Herodotos reasoned from analogies, with no exact historical knowledge. But cp. Renouvier, Manuel, i, 67, as to probable Egyptian influence. ↑
38 Cp. Meyer, ii, §§ 453–60, as to the eastern initiative of Orphic theology. ↑
39 It is noteworthy that the traditional doctrine associated with the name of Orpheus included a similar materialistic theory of the beginning of things. Athenagoras, Apol. c. 19. Cp. Renouvier, Manuel de philos. anc. i, 69–72; and Meyer, ii, 743. ↑
40 Cp. Meyer, ii, 726. As to the oriental elements in Hesiod see further Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, 1887, pp. 577, 587, 589, 593. ↑
41 Cp. however, Bury (Hist. of Greece, pp. 6, 65), who assumes that the Greeks brought the hexameter with them to Hellas. Contrast Murray, Four Stages, p. 61. ↑
42 Mahaffy, History of Classical Greek Literature, 1880, i, 15. ↑
43 Id. p. 16. Cp. W. Christ, as cited, p. 79. ↑
48 In Od. xiv, 18, αντίθεοι means not “opposed to the Gods,” but “God-like,” in the ordinary Homeric sense of noble-looking or richly attired, as men in the presence of the Gods. Cp. vi, 241. Yet a Scholiast on a former passage took it in the sense of God-opposing. Clarke’s ed. in loc. Liddell and Scott give no use of ἄθεος, in the sense of denying the Gods, before Plato (Apol. 26 C. etc.), or in the sense of ungodly before Pindar (P. iv, 288) and Æschylus (Eumen. 151). For Sophocles it has the force of “God-forsaken”—Oedip. Tyr. 254 (245), 661 (640), 1360 (1326). Cp. Electra, 1181 (1162). But already before Plato we find the terms ἄπιστος and ἄθεος, “faithless” or “infidel” and “atheist,” used as terms of moral aspersion, quite in the Christian manner (Euripides, Helena, 1147), where there is no question of incredulity. ↑
49 Cp. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2nd ed. i, 14–15. and cit. there from Professor Jebb. ↑
50 Cp. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, ii, 724–27; Grote, as cited, i, 279–81. ↑
52 The tradition is confused. Stesichoros is said first to have aspersed Helen, whereupon she, as Goddess, struck him with blindness: thereafter he published a retractation, in which he declared that she had never been at Troy, an eidolon or phantasm taking her name; and on this his sight was restored. We can but divine through the legend the probable reality, the documents being lost. See Grote, as cited, for the details. For the eulogies of Stesichoros by ancient writers, see Girard, Sentiment religieux en Grèce, 1869, pp. 175–79. ↑
53 Cp. Meyer (1901), iii. § 244. ↑
56 He dedicated statues to Zeus, Apollo, and Hermes. Pausanias, ix, 16, 17. ↑
58 A ruler of Libyan stock, and so led by old Libyan connections to make friends with Greeks. He reigned over fifty years, and the Greek connection grew very close. Curtius, i, 344–45. Cp. Grote, i, 144–55. ↑
59 Grote, 10-vol. ed. 1888, i, 307, 326, 329, 413. Cp. i, 27–30; ii, 52; iii, 39–41, etc. ↑
60 K. O. Müller, Introd. to Mythology, p. 192. ↑
61 “Then one [of the Persians] who before had in nowise believed in [or, recognized the existence of] the Gods, offered prayer and supplication, doing obeisance to Earth and Heaven” (Persae, 497–99). ↑
62 Agamemnon, 370–372. This is commonly supposed to be a reference to Diagoras the Melian (below, p. 159). ↑
64 So Whittaker, Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets, 1911, pp. 42–43. ↑
65 So Buckley, in Bohn trans. of Æschylus, p. 100. He characterizes as a “skeptical formula” the phrase “Zeus, whoever he may be”; but goes on to show that such formulas were grounded on the Semitic notion that the true name of God was concealed from man. ↑
66 Grote, ed. 1888, vii, 8–21. See the whole exposition of the exceptionally interesting 67th chapter. ↑
67 Cp. Meyer, ii, 431; K. O. Müller, Introd. to Mythol. pp. 189–92; Duncker, p. 340; Curtius, i, 384; Thirlwall, i, 200–203; Burckhardt, Griech. Culturgesch. 1898, ii. 19. As to the ancient beginnings of a priestly organization, see Curtius, i, 92–94, 97. As to the effects of its absence, see Heeren, Polit. Hist. of Anc. Greece, Eng. tr. 1829, pp. 59–63; Burckhardt, as cited, ii, 31–32; Meyer, as last cited; Zeller, Philos. der Griechen, 3te Aufl. i, 44 sq. Lange’s criticism of Zeller’s statement (Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 124–26, note 2) practically concedes the proposition. The influence of a few powerful priestly families is not denied. The point is that they remained isolated. ↑
68 Cp. K. O. MÜller, Introd. to Mythol. p. 195; Curtius, i, 387, 389, 392; Duncker, iii, 519–21, 563; Thirlwall, i, 204; Barthélemy St. Hilaire, préf. to tr. of Metaphys. of Aristotle, p. 14. Professor Gilbert Murray, noting that Homer and Hesiod treated the Gods as elements of romance, or as facts to be catalogued, asks: “Where is the literature of religion: the literature which treated the Gods as Gods? It must,” he adds, “have existed”; and he holds that we “can see that the religious writings were both early and multitudinous” (Hist. of Anc. Greek Lit. p. 62; cp. Meyer and Mahaffy as cited above, pp. 125–26. “Writings” is not here to be taken literally; the early hymns were unwritten). The priestly hymns and oracles and mystery-rituals in question were never collected; but perhaps we may form some idea of their nature from the “Homeridian” and Orphic hymns to the Gods, and those of the Alexandrian antiquary Callimachus. It is further to be inferred that they enter into the Hesiodic Theogony. (Decharme, p. 3, citing Bergk.) ↑
69 Meyer, ii, 426; Curtius, i, 390–91, 417; Thirlwall, i, 204; Grote, i, 48–49. ↑
71 Cp. Curtius, i, 392–400, 416; Duncker, iii, 529. ↑
72 Curtius, i, 112; Meyer, ii, 366. ↑
73 Curtius, i, 201, 204, 205, 381; Grote, iii, 5; Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 23 (Eng. tr. i, 23). ↑
74 Herodotos, i, 170; Diogenes Laërtius, Thales, ch. i. ↑
75 On the essentially anti-religious rationalism of the whole Ionian movement, cp. Meyer, ii, 753–57. ↑
76 The First Philosophers of Greece, by A. Fairbanks, 1898, pp. 2, 3, 6. This compilation usefully supplies a revised text of the ancient philosophic fragments, with a translation of these and of the passages on the early thinkers by the later, and by the epitomists. A good conspectus of the remains of the early Greek thinkers is supplied also in Grote’s Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates, ch. i; and a valuable critical analysis of the sources in Prof. J. Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy. ↑
77 Cp. Lange, Gesch. des Mat. i, 126 (Eng. tr. i, 8, n.). Mr. Benn (The Greek Philosophers, i, 8) and Prof. Decharme (p. 39) seem to read this as a profession of belief in deities in the ordinary sense. But cp. R. W. Mackay, The Progress of the Intellect, 1850, i, 338. Burnet (ch. i, § 11) doubts the authenticity of this saying, but thinks it “extremely probable that Thales did say that the magnet and amber had souls.” ↑
78 Mackay, as cited, p. 331. ↑
80 Diogenes Laërtius, Thales, ch. 9. ↑
83 Cp. Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 2nd. ed. introd. § 3. To Thales is ascribed by the Greeks the “discovery” of the constellation Ursus Major. Diog. ch. 2. As it was called “Phoenike” by the Greeks, his knowledge would be of Phoenician derivation. Cp. Humboldt, Kosmos, Bohn tr. iii, 160. ↑
84 Diog. Laërt. ch. 3. On this cp. Burnet, introd. § 6. ↑
85 Herod. i, 170. Cp. Diog. Laërt. ch. 3. ↑
88 Fairbanks, pp. 9–10. Mr. Benn (Greek Philosophers, i, 9) decides that the early philosophers, while realizing that ex nihilo nihil fit, had not grasped the complementary truth that nothing can be annihilated. But even if the teaching ascribed to Anaximandros be set aside as contradictory (since he spoke of generation and destruction within the infinite), we have the statement of Diogenes Laërtius (bk. ix, ch. 9, § 57) that Diogenes of Apollonia, pupil of Anaximenes, gave the full Lucretian formula. ↑
89 Diogenes Laërtius, however (ii, 2), makes him agree with Thales. ↑
90 Fairbanks, pp. 9–16. Diogenes makes him the inventor of the gnomon and of the first map and globe, as well as a maker of clocks. Cp. Grote, i, 330, note. ↑
91 See below, p. 158, as to Demokritos’ statement concerning the Eastern currency of scientific views which, when put by Anaxagoras, scandalized the Greeks. ↑
93 See Windelband, Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. 1900, p. 25, citing Diels and Wilamowitz-Möllendorf. Cp. Burnet, introd. § 14. ↑
94 It will be observed that Mr. Cornford’s book, though somewhat loosely speculative is very freshly suggestive. It is well worth study, alongside of the work of Prof. Burnet, by those interested in the scientific presentation of the evolution of thought. ↑
95 Diog. Laërt. ix, 19; Fairbanks, p. 76. ↑
96 Herodotos, i, 163–67; Grote, iii, 421; Meyer, ii, § 438. ↑
97 Cp. Guillaume Bréton, Essai sur la poésie philosophique en Grèce, 1882, pp. 23–25. The life period of Xenophanes is still uncertain. Meyer (ii, § 466) and Windelband (Hist. of Anc. Philos. Eng. tr. p. 47) still adhere to the chronology which puts him in the century 570–470, making him a young man at the foundation of Elea. ↑
98 Cousin, developed by G. Bréton, work cited, p. 31 sq., traces Xenophanes’s doctrine of the unity of things to the school of Pythagoras. It clearly had antecedents. But Xenophanes is recorded to have argued against Pythagoras as well as Thales and Epimenides (Diog. Laërt. ix, 2, §§ 18, 20). ↑
99 Metaphysics, i, 5; cp. Fairbanks, pp. 79–80. ↑
100 One of several so entitled in that age. Cp. Burnet, introd. § 7. ↑
101 Metaph., as cited; Plato, Soph. 242 D. ↑
102 Long fragment in Athenæus, xi, 7; Burnet, p. 130. ↑
105 Fairbanks, p. 67, Fr. 5, 6; Clem. Alex. Stromata, bk. v, Wilson’s tr. ii, 285–86. Cp. bk. vii, c. 4. ↑
107 Cicero, De divinatione, i, 3, 5; Aetius, De placitis reliquiæ, in Fairbanks, p. 85. ↑
108 Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii, 23, § 27. A similar saying is attributed to Herakleitos, on slight authority (Fairbanks, p. 54). ↑
109 Cicero, Academica, ii, 39; Lactantius, Div. Inst. iii, 23. Anaxagoras and Demokritos held the same view. Diog. Laërt, bk. ii, ch. iii, iv (§ 8); Pseudo-Plutarch, De placitis philosoph. ii, 25. ↑
110 Cp. Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, i, 340. ↑
111 Diog. Laërt. in life of Pyrrho, bk. ix, ch. xi, 8 (§ 72). The passage, however, is uncertain. See Fairbanks, p. 70. ↑
112 Fairbanks. Fr. 1. Fairbanks translates with Zeller: “The whole [of God].” Grote: “The whole Kosmos, or the whole God.” It should be noted that the original in Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. ix, 144) is given without the name of Xenophanes, and the ascription is modern. ↑
113 Grote, as last cited, p. 18. ↑
114 Fairbanks, Fr. 19. In Athenæus, x, 413. ↑
115 Polybius, iv, 40; Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, viii, 126; Fairbanks, pp. 25, 27; Frag. 4, 14. Cp. 92, 111, 113. ↑
119 Id. Frag. 43, 44, 46, 62. ↑
120 Diog. Laërt. last cited. This saying is by some ascribed to the later Herakleides (see Fairbanks, Fr. 119 and note); but it does not seem to be in his vein, which is wholly pro-Homeric. ↑
121 Clem. Alex. Protrept. ch. 2, Wilson’s tr. p. 41. The passage is obscure, but Mr. Fairbanks’s translation (Fr. 127) is excessively so. ↑
122 Clemens, as cited, p.32; Fairbanks, Fr. 124, 125, 130. Cp. Burnet, p. 139. ↑
125 Theaetetus, 180 D. See good estimates of Parmenides in Benn’s Greek Philosophers, i, 17–19, and Philosophy of Greece in Relation to the Character of its People, pp. 83–95; in J. A. Symonds’s Studies of the Greek Poets, 3rd ed. 1893, vol. i, ch. 6; and in Zeller, i, 580 sq. ↑
126 Plutarch, Perikles, ch. 26. ↑
127 Mr. Benn finally gives very high praise to Melissos (Philos. of Greece, pp. 91–92); as does Prof. Burnet (Early Gr. Philos. p. 378). He held strongly by the Ionian conception of the eternity of matter. Fairbanks, p. 125. ↑
128 Diog. Laërt. bk. ix, ch. iv, 3 (§ 24). ↑
129 Diog. Laërt. ix, 3 (§ 21). ↑
130 As to this see Windelband, Hist. Anc. Philos. pp. 91–92. ↑
131 Cp. Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, i. 340. ↑
132 “The difference between the Ionians and Eleatæ was this: the former endeavoured to trace an idea among phenomena by aid of observation; the latter evaded the difficulty by dogmatically asserting the objective existence of an idea” (Mackay, as last cited). ↑
133 Cp. Mackay, i, 352–53, as to the survival of veneration of the heavenly bodies in the various schools. ↑
135 Meyer, ii, 9, 759 (§§ 5, 465). ↑
137 Jevons, Hist. of Greek Lit. 1886, p. 210. ↑
138 Compare Meyer, ii, § 502, as to the close resemblances between Pythagoreanism and Orphicism. ↑
140 Fairbanks, pp. 145, 151, 155, etc. ↑
143 Prof. Burnet insists (introd. p. 30) that “the” Greeks must be reckoned good observers because their later sculptors were so. As well say that artists make the best men of science. ↑
144 Metaph. i, 5; Fairbanks, p. 136. “It is quite safe to attribute the substance of the First Book of Euclid to Pythagoras.” Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 2nd ed. p. 117. ↑
145 Diog. Laërt. Philolaos (bk. viii, ch. 7). ↑
146 L. U. K. Hist. of Astron. p. 20; A. Berry’s Short Hist. of Astron. 1898, p. 25; Narrien’s Histor. Acc. of the Orig. and Prog. of Astron. 1850, p. 163. ↑
147 See Benn, Greek Philosophers, i, 11. ↑
148 Diog. Laërt. in life of Philolaos; Cicero, Academica, ii, 39. Cicero, following Theophrastus, is explicit as to the teaching of Hiketas. ↑
149 Hippolytos, Ref. of all Heresies, i, 13. Cp. Renouvier, Manuel de la philos. anc. i, 201, 205, 238–39. ↑
150 Pseudo-Plutarch, De Placitis Philosoph. iii, 13, 14. ↑
151 Ueberweg, i, 49. Cp. Tertullian (Apol. ch. 11), who says Pythagoras taught that the world was uncreated; and the contrary statement of Aetius (in Fairbanks, pp. 146–47). ↑
152 Berry, Short Hist. of Astron. pp. 22, 25. The question is ably handled by Renouvier, Manuel, i, 199–205. ↑
153 Diog. Laërt., viii, i, 8. ↑
154 The whole question is carefully sifted by Grote, iv, 76–94. Prof. Burnet (Early Greek Philos. 2nd ed. pp. 96–98) sums up that the Pythagorean Order was an attempt to overrule or supersede the State. ↑
155 Cp. Burnet, p. 97, note 3. Prof. Burnet speaks of the Pythagorean Order as a “new religion” appealing to the people rather than the aristocrats, who were apt to be “freethinking.” But on the next page he pictures the “plain man” as resenting precisely the religious neology of the movement. The evidence for the adhesion of aristocrats seems pretty strong. ↑
157 Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates, ed. 1885, iv, 163. ↑
158 Diog. Laërt. bk. viii, ch. i, 19 (§ 21). ↑
159 Ennius, Fragmenta, ed. Hesselius, 1707, pp. 1, 4–7; Horace, Epist. ii, 1, 52; Persius, Sat. vi. ↑
161 Scholiast on Iliad, xx, 67; Tatian, Adv. Græcos, c. 48 (31); W. Christ, Gesch. der griech. Literatur, 3te Aufl. p. 63; Grote, ch. xvi (i, 374). ↑