Classical Mythology

CHAPTER

27

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY

IN LITERATURE AND ART

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN LATE ANTIQUITY

THE DECLINE OF THE GODS OF THE GREEK CITY-STATE

The connection between religion and the state in classical Greece is evident in
Greek drama and in the sculpture of the great temples. The gods and their myths
were central in the life of the city-state, which reached its climax in many parts
of the Greek world during the fifth century B.c. In the following century the self-
confidence of many city-states was weakened in part by political strife and war-
fare, in part by the need for alliances with other Greek cities or with non-Greek
peoples. Citizens were less motivated by patriotism to make great sacrifices on be-
half of their city, whose gods were no longer ubiquitous in its life. They were less
relevant to a world where citizens sought from religion comfort for their individ-
ual concerns.
The process of undermining Homeric religion had begun centuries earlier,
when the Ionian philosophers began to explain the place of human beings in
the macrocosm in nontheological terms. A whole world separates Hesiod's
cosmogony and theogony from the Ionians' theories about the universe.
Anaximenes of Miletus (ca. 545 B.c.), for example, said that air was the elemen-
tal substance of the universe (including the gods) and did not hesitate to refer
to it as theos (God). Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 500) taught that fire was the prime
element and further criticized the rituals of Homeric religion, in particular its
central feature, the animal sacrifice; purifying oneself with blood, he said, was
like washing in mud. The most outspoken of these early critics was Xenophanes
of Colophon (ca. 525), who attacked Homeric anthropomorphism: "Homer and
Hesiod," he said, "have attributed to the gods everything that is shameful and
a reproach among mortals: theft, adultery, and deceit" (frag. 11 [Diels]). Toward
the end of the fifth century, the criticisms of the philosophers were widely ac-
cepted among thoughtful people, whose confidence in the old order and estab-
lished religion was shaken by the political, moral, and intellectual upheavals
that surrounded them. In the period of the Peloponnesian War (431^04), the
Sophists (professional philosophers) were to be found lecturing in many Greek

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