Note 225 — Chapter V · FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE

It was a result of the general movement of mind throughout the rest of the Hellenic world that freethinkers of culture were still numerous. Archelaos of Miletos, the most important disciple of Anaxagoras; according to a late tradition, the master of Sokrates; and the first systematic teacher of Ionic physical science in Athens, taught the infinity of the universe, grasped the explanation of the nature of sound, and set forth on purely rationalistic lines the social origin and basis of morals, thus giving Sokrates his practical lead.225 Another disciple of Anaxagoras, Metrodoros of Lampsakos (not to be confounded with Metrodoros of Chios, and the other Metrodoros of Lampsakos who was the friend of Epicurus, both also freethinkers), carried out zealously his master’s teaching as to the deities and heroes of Homer, resolving them into mere elemental combinations and physical agencies, and making Zeus stand for mind, and Athenê for art.226 And in the belles lettres of Athens itself, in the dramas of Euripides [480–406 B.C.], who is said to have been the ardent disciple of Anaxagoras,227 to have studied Herakleitos,228 and to have been the friend of Sokrates and Protagoras, there emerge traces enough of a rationalism not to be reconciled with the old belief in the Gods. If Euripides has nowhere ventured on such a terrific paradox as the Prometheus, he has in a score of passages revealed a stress of skepticism which, inasmuch as he too uses all the forms of Hellenic faith,229 deepens our doubt as to the beliefs of Æschylus. Euripides even gave overt proof of his unbelief, beginning his Melanippe with the line: “Zeus, whoever Zeus be, for I know not, save by report,” an audacity which evoked a great uproar. In a later production the passage was prudently altered;230 but he never put much check on his native tendency to analyse and criticize on all issues—a tendency fostered, as we have seen,231 by the constant example of real and poignant dialectic in the Athenian dikastery, and the whole drift of the Athenian stage. In his case the tendency even overbalances the artistic process;232 but it has the advantage of involving a very bold handling of vital problems. Not satisfied with a merely dramatic presentment of lawless Gods, Euripides makes his characters impeach them as such,233 or, again, declare that there can be no truth in the “miserable tales of poets” which so represent them.234 Not content with putting aside as idle such a fable as that of the sun’s swerving from his course in horror at the crime of Atreus,235 and that of the Judgment of Paris,236 he attacks with a stringent scorn the whole apparatus of oracles, divination, and soothsaying.237 And if the Athenian populace cried out at the hardy opening of the Melanippe, he nonetheless gave them again and again his opinion that no man knew anything of the Gods.238 Of orthodox protests against freethinking inquiry he gives a plainly ironical handling.239 As regards his constructive opinions, we have from him many expressions of the pantheism which had by his time permeated the thought of perhaps most of the educated Greeks.240