RELIGION IN LITERATURE Flashcards
OLYMPIAN GODS
- Herodotus, Histories 2.53
“But it was – if I may so put it – the day before yesterday that the Greeks came to know the origin and form of the various gods, and whether or not all of them had always existed; for Homer and Hesiod are the poets who composed theogonies and described the gods for the Greeks, giving them their appropriate titles, offices, and powers.” - Homeric Hymn 11
“Protectress of cities, that fearsome goddess who cares with Ares for warlike works – the sacking of cities, the scream of battle, the clash of the fray – and also ensures the army’s safe parting and homeward return.” - Homeric Hymn 28.4-5, 7-8
“It was craft-filled Zeus himself who gave birth from his sacred head to her already in armour of war. Quickly she leaped from his deathless head to stand before Zeus who bears the aegis.”
ANTHROPOMORPHISM 1
- Euripides, Bacchae, line 4
“I have exchanged my divine form for a mortal one.” - Euripides, Hippolytus, line 1414
“I wish that the race of men could curse the gods.” - Homer, Odyssey 5.292-298
“With that he marshalled the clouds and, seizing the trident in his hands, stirred up the sea. He roused the stormy blasts of every wind that blows, and covered land and water alike with a canopy of cloud. Darkness swooped down from the sky. The East Wind and the South Wind and the tempestuous West Wind clashed together, and the North Wind came from the upper sky, rolling a great wave in front of it.”
ANTHROPOMORPHISM 2
- Homer, Odyssey 5.383-387
“She summoned the strong North Wind with which she flattened the waves in the swimmer’s path, so that Odysseus, favourite of Zeus, might be rescued from the jaws of death.” - Hesiod, Works and Days 5-10, 105
“For easily he makes strong, and easily he oppresses the strong, easily he diminishes the conspicuous one and magnifies the inconspicuous, and easily he makes the crooked straight and withers the proud – Zeus who thunders on high, who dwells in the highest mountains… There is no way to evade the purpose of Zeus.” - Homer, Iliad 1.529-530
“The lord god’s immortal hair streamed forward from his deathless head, and he shook the heights of Olympus.” - Euripides, Hippolytus 1437-1438
“It is not lawful for me to look upon the dead or to defile my sight with the last breath of the dying.”
ANTHROPOMORPHISM 3
- Xenophanes, fragments
“But mortals seem to have begotten gods to have their own garb and voice and form. Now if horses or oxen or lions had hands or power to paint and make the works of art that men make, then horses would give their gods horse-like forms in painting or sculpture, and oxen ox-like forms, even each after its own kind.”
RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP
- Hesiod, Works and Days 338-341
“Appease the immortal gods with libations and burnt offerings, both when you go to bed and when the holy light returns, so that they may have a gracious heart and spirit towards you, and you may buy other men’s land and not have someone else buy yours.” - Euripides, Bacchae 45-46
“This man is a god-fighter where my worship is concerned, forcibly excluding me from libations and making no mention of me in prayer.” - Hesiod, Works and Days 280, 437
“If a man is willing to say what he knows to be just, to him wide-seeing Zeus gives prosperity… For those who occupy themselves with violence and wickedness and brutal deeds, Cronus’s son, wide-seeing Zeus, marks out retribution…”
HERO CULTS
- Pausanias (an ancient travel writer of the 2nd century CE) 9.6-8
“At the Festival previous to this it is said that Cleomedes of Astypalaea killed Iccus of Epidaurus during a boxing-match. On being convicted by the umpires of foul play and being deprived of the prize he became mad through grief and returned to Astypalaea. Attacking a school there of about sixty children he pulled down the pillar which held up the roof. This fell upon the children, and Cleomedes, pelted with stones by the citizens, took refuge in the sanctuary of Athena. He entered a chest standing in the sanctuary and drew down the lid. The Astypalaeans toiled in vain in their attempts to open the chest. At last, however, they broke open the boards of the chest, but found no Cleomedes, either alive or dead. So they sent envoys to Delphi to ask what had happened to Cleomedes. The response given by the Pythian priestess was, they say, as follows:—“Last of heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea; honour him with sacrifices as being no longer a mortal.” So from this time have the Astypalaeans paid honours to Cleomedes as to a hero.
ELEUSIAN MYSTERIES
- Andocides, On the Mysteries, 1.10
“As I have already told you, gentlemen, my defence will begin at the beginning and omit nothing. I shall deal first with the actual charge which furnished grounds for the lodging of the information that has brought me into court today, profanation of the Mysteries. I shall show that I have committed no act of impiety, that I have never turned informer, that I have never admitted guilt, and that I do not know whether the statements made to you by those who did turn informers were true or false. Of all this you shall have proof.” - Andocides, On the Mysteries, 1.25
“Of those who went into exile as a result of the profanation of the Mysteries, some died abroad; but others have returned and are living in Athens. These last are present in court at my request.” - Andocides, On the Mysteries, 1.29
“So much for the profanation of the Mysteries, gentlemen, on which the information lodged against me is based and which you are here as initiates to investigate. I have shown that I have committed no act of impiety, that I have never turned informer, that I have never admitted guilt, and that I have not a single offence against the Two Goddesses upon my conscience, whether serious or otherwise. And it is vitally important for me to convince you of this; for the stories told you by the prosecution, who treated you to so shrill a recital of bloodcurdling horrors, with their descriptions of past offenders who have made mock of the Two Goddesses and of the fearful end to which they have been brought as a punishment—what, I ask you, have such tales and such crimes to do with me?”
ELEUSIAN MYSTERIES 2
- Andocides, On the Mysteries, 1.33
“Should Cephisius here, who was responsible for the information laid against me, fail to gain one-fifth of your votes and so lose his rights as a citizen, he is forbidden to set foot within the sanctuary of the Two Goddesses under pain of death.” - Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 481-483
“Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiated and who has no part in them, never has a lot of similar good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.” - Isocrates, Panegyricus 4.28-29
“The mystic rite we continue even now, each year, to reveal to the initiates; and as for the fruits of the earth, our city has, in a word, instructed the world in their uses, their cultivation, and the benefits derived from them.” - Sophocles, Fragments 837
“Because three times fortunate are those among mortals who have seen these rites before going to Hades; for they alone have life there, while others have every kind of misery.”
NATURE OF ADVICE SOUGHT BY PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS
- Homer, Odyssey 14.327-8
“But Odysseus, he said, had gone to Dodona, to hear the will of Zeus from the high-crested oak of the god, even how he might return to the rich land of Ithaca after so long an absence, whether openly or in secret.”
Religion and Society
- Aristophanes, Lysistrata 641-647
“As soon as I was seven years old, I was an Arrephoros; then I was a Grinder; when I was ten, at the Brauronia, I shed my saffron gown as one of the Foundress’s Bears; and I was also once a basket-bearer, a beautiful girl, wearing a string of dried figs.”
IMPIETY
- Hesiod, Works and Days, 724-6
“Never, from dawn forward, pour a shining libation of wine to Zeus or to the other immortals, without washing your hands first. When you do, they do not hear your prayers; they spit them back at you.” - Sophocles, Oedipus the King 95-111 (Creon’s words)
“Then I declare that this is what I gathered from the god: Apollo tells us clearly that there is miasma here, pollution inbred in this very land… and now the oracle speaks clear: we must exact revenge upon [Laius’] murderers.” - Sophocles, Oedipus the King 350-352 (Tiresias’s words)
“I tell you: stand by your own decree that you proclaimed, and from this day do not address these men, nor me – because you are the foul pollutant in this land.”
RELATIONSHIP WITH MORTALS
Eumenides AESCHYLUS
Orestes keeps obeying Apollo’s instructions, like coming to pray at his temple carrying the appropriate olive-branch-wreathed-in-wool. As a result, Orestes gets a powerful force on his side, a deity that ends up saving him from the wrath of the Furies and the Athenian law court.
“Pausanias lifted up his eyes to the temple of Hera at Plataea and called on the goddess, praying that they might not be disappointed in their hope.” - Herodotus
RELATIONSHIP WITH MORTALS
Eumenides AESCHYLUS
Orestes keeps obeying Apollo’s instructions, like coming to pray at his temple carrying the appropriate olive-branch-wreathed-in-wool. As a result, Orestes gets a powerful force on his side, a deity that ends up saving him from the wrath of the Furies and the Athenian law court.
“Pausanias lifted up his eyes to the temple of Hera at Plataea and called on the goddess, praying that they might not be disappointed in their hope.” - Herodotus
