Note 76.1 — Chapter IV · Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean.

Turning now to the proto-Hellenic period, which, without prejudging any ethnic question, I have kept distinct from the Mycenaean, we have here the advantage of literary records to assist the archaeological evidence. I have stated my conviction that the earliest Hellenes had already reached the stage of personal polytheism before conquering the southern Peninsula; and the combined evidence of the facts of myths and cults justifies the belief that their imagination of the deity was mainly anthropomorphic. By the period of the Homeric poems, composed perhaps some five centuries after the earliest entrance of the Hellenes, we must conclude that the anthropomorphism as a religious principle was predominant in the more progressive minds that shaped the culture of the race: a minute but speaking example of this is the change that ensued in accordance with Homeric taste in the meaning of the old hieratic epithet βοῶπις; in all probability it originally designated a cow-faced goddess, but it is clear that he intends it for ox-eyed, an epithet signifying the beauty of the large and lustrous human eye. The bias that is felt in the religious poetry of Homer comes to determine the course of the later religious art, so that the religion, art, and literature of historic Greece may be called the most anthropomorphic or anthropocentric in the world. Yet we have sufficient proof that in the pre-Homeric age the popular mind was by no means bound by any such law, and that the religious imagination was unfixed and wavering in its perception of divinity: and the belief must have been general that the god, usually imagined as a man, might manifest himself at times in the form of some animal. Apollo Lykeios, the wild god of the woods, was evidently in the habit of incarnating himself in the wolf, so that wolves might be sacramentally offered to him or sacrifice offered to certain wolves.76.1 In the Artemis legend of Brauron and Aulis we detect the same close communion of the goddess with the bear. Now, upon the fairly numerous indications in cult-legend and ritual that the deity was occasionally incarnate in the animal, much fallacious anthropological theory has been built. It is not now my cue to pursue this matter au fond. But it is necessary for my purpose to emphasise the fact that there is fair evidence for some direct zoolatry in the proto-Hellenic period, though there is less than is often supposed, and it needs always careful criticism. As I have already said, the ancients of the later learned period were often vague and unprecise when they spoke of “the worship” of animals. Thus Clemens informs us77.1 that the Thessalians “worshipped” ants, and on the authority of Euphorion that the Samians “worshipped” a sheep: the word used in each case being σέβειν. But accurate statements concerning religious psychology demand the nicest discrimination: “a little more, and how much it is.” We may suspect that the word σέβειν was as vaguely used in antiquity as the term “worship” in loose modern writing: and it is to be remarked that when one authority uses this word, another may employ the verb τιμᾶν, which does not imply so much. For instance, Clemens states that the Thebans “honoured” the weasel; Aelian, that they “worshipped” it.77.2 We are nearly always left in doubt how much is meant: whether the animal was merely treated reverentially and its life spared, or whether sacrifice and prayers were offered to it: the former practice may be found in almost any society modern or ancient, the latter is savage zoolatry, and is a fact of importance for the religious estimate of a people.