on his side. For their own Athena the Athenians clearly often felt a genuinely warm affection. Comic poets could even
make good-humoured fun of certain gods. How indeed could one help being amused by Hermes, in myth a merry thieving
rogue, in image little more than a huge erect phallus? There was nothing irreligious about such laughter, the expression of a
relaxed and unthreatened piety. As we have seen, the mood of cult was normally one of festivity, and dedications express
gratitude and faith: one of the seventh century, for instance, from the precinct of Hera on Samos was set up 'in return for
great kindness'.
The divine lustre, which is emphasized in high literature to bring out by contrast the murkiness of man, was also available
to be admired in itself. It is clear from art and poetry (particularly the Homeric Hymns) that Greeks rejoiced in the grace
and radiance of the immortals. They were marvelous figures; their deeds and their loves were as fascinating as those of film
stars. Tragic literature was not, therefore, a simple expression of a generally shared tragic world view. (And there is, of
course, much variety of attitude even within tragedy.) On the contrary, it often gained its effects by putting optimistic
popular beliefs, such as that in the justice of the gods, to the test of extreme cases. The chorus in Euripides' Hippolytus
comments, when faced by the downfall of a most virtuous man: 'To think of the gods' care for men is a great relief to me
from pain. Deep within me I have hopes of understanding; but when I look around at what men do and how they fare I
cannot understand.'
Traditional, local, mythological religions such as that of Greece are thought to have little power of survival. The
proselytizing international religions based on books and doctrines mop them up. Greek religion, however, lasted for more
than a thousand years, and it was able to do so largely because of its very lack of doctrinal precision. Criticism had begun in
the sixth century with Xenophanes, who said that 'Homer and Hesiod ascribed to the gods everything that among men is a
shame and disgrace: theft, adultery, and deceiving one another.' But it was easy to counter the objection, by rewriting
embarrassing myths (as Pindar did in Olympian 1), interpreting them allegorically, or simply refusing to believe them (so
Plato). Xenophanes went on to criticize anthropomorphic conceptions of deity: Ethiopians made their gods black and snub-
nosed like themselves, and if cows had hands they would represent the gods as cows. He declared that god was in truth a
single disembodied mind. Other pre-Socratic philosophers had already by implication banished anthropomorphic gods-for
them the divine was some first force or principle of the world-and were ready to explain all observable phenomena in terms
of natural laws: thus Zeus was robbed of his thunderbolt. No philosopher henceforth seems to have believed in the literal
reality of deities such as those of Homer, human in form and erratic in conduct.
There is, however, no evidence that, when first advanced, such ideas caused scandal. But late in the fifth century there was
a kind of religious crisis at Athens. Protagoras the sophist announced: 'About the gods I cannot declare whether they exist
or not'; other sophists speculated about why men had ever come to believe in deity, and it is possible that Anaxagoras, the
leading scientist of the day, was an atheist. Men began to notice the moral implications of the scientists' physical
explanations of the world, which left the gods powerless to intervene in defence of their ordinances. It is clear from
Aristophanes' Clouds that traditional religion was felt to be under threat, and with it, crucially, traditional social morality.
Late sources tell of a persecution of intellectuals at this time; details are very uncertain, but it is symptomatic that one of the
charges brought against Socrates was that of 'not recognizing the gods that the city recognizes'.
But-we do not quite know how-the crisis was surmounted. Explicit atheism remained virtually unknown. Scientific enquiry
ceased to be seen as threatening: even if Zeus did not hurl the thunderbolt with his own hand, might he not be working
through the mechanisms postulated by the physicists? Philosophers could not accept the riotous Olympians of mythology,
since it was now axiomatic that any god must be wholly wise and good, but they had no wish (least of all the influential and
conservative Plato) to dispense with the divine. A compromise was therefore possible. One might not believe in the
traditional gods exactly as they were described and portrayed, but one believed in the divine and in piety, and there was no
reason not to pay homage to the divine principle through the forms of worship sanctified by tradition. Many philosophers
even came to terms with a traditional belief as problematic as that in divination.
The institution of ruler-cult has often been seen as a symptom of a religion in decay. It was first paid, to our knowledge, to
the Spartan general Lysander by the Samians late in the fifth century, and subsequently to Alexander and many Hellenistic
kings. This was certainly a radical change, but the real precondition for it was a loss not of faith but of political freedom. In