Note 145.1 — Chapter VIII · Religion and Morality.

And this may serve as a fairly accurate description of the moral character of Greek religion at that stage of development where Homer presents it to us. The high deities are worshipped on the whole as moral beings and as beneficent: that is, as the guardians of the social morality of the period, whatever that was. The usual popular writer does not perceive this, because he is always liable to the error of confusing mythology with worship, and supposing that if the mythology is licentious or immoral, the deity is worshipped in that character. All students of mythology and religion are aware that this is false. We might be able to show that the religious imagination and statement of Homer at times fall below the level of contemporary cult, at times rise above it. At any rate, he is evidently addressing a world of religious-minded people, who impute their own moral ideals to their highest divinities, especially to their high god Zeus. Νέμεσις, the social feeling of indignation which is at the psychic basis of social morality, is the common emotion excited both in gods and men by the same acts; and though much of Greek religion was still not yet penetrated with morality, the higher personal gods were generally regarded as on the side of righteousness. One or two Greek myths, such as that of Prometheus, as Hesiod narrates it, might suggest that the deity was not necessarily conceived as the friend, but sometimes even as the enemy, of man. But Hesiod’s narrative does not strike us as primitive or popular; and, at any rate, such a view is inconsistent with the earliest stage of worship that we can discover or surmise. The poets and philosophers might dislike Ares; but the Hellenes, who worshipped him, did not worship him as an evil god, with apotropaeic rites: nor is it proved or likely that any deity to whom actual service was paid, was regarded as in his nature maleficent by his worshippers. The dread powers of the lower world were also givers of vegetation. The Erinyes had scarcely a recorded cult, and their wrath was moralised as righteous indignation; nor was ghost-cult, when it arose, merely a service of terror and aversion. It is a striking confirmation of the view here expressed, that among the very long list of cult-appellatives attached to the Greek divinities, some of which have a moral value, there are only two doubtful examples of an evil connotation attaching to the word.145.1