THE NATURE OF THE GODS 133
all the evidence. Homer offered to the Greeks a literary bible of humanism that
could on occasion be quoted (as Shakespeare is for us) like scripture; the mys-
tery religions provided a dogma and ritual of a more exacting nature. Certainly
Hesiod pronounces his divine revelation with a vehement biblical authority.
Priests and priestesses devoted their lives to the service of the gods. The
city-states upheld—by custom, tradition, and law—strict moral and ethical codes
of behavior. If the stories of opposition to the new god Dionysus rest upon any
stratum of historical truth, a foreign message of salvation was not always read-
ily or easily accommodated, and one could be put to death (in Athens, of all
places) on a charge of impiety. The Greeks thought profoundly about god, the
immortality of the soul, and the meaning and consequences of vice and virtue.
The Platonic myth of Er (translated in Chapter 15) is a terrifying vision of heaven
and hell; as such it is a religious document. Along with much other evidence, it
shows that Greek philosophical thought can hold its own with that of any of the
so-called higher religions.
THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF HERODOTUSThe historian Herodotus (fifth century B.C.) perhaps best represents Greek hu-
manistic and religious attitudes in their clearest and most succinct form when
he relates the story of Solon, Croesus, and Cyrus. Fortunately, episodes in this
drama may be easily excerpted here, for they illustrate many things. Monothe-
ism and polytheism are shown resting compatibly side by side. The jealous god
of Solon is not unlike the wrathful deity of the Old Testament, a god who makes
manifest to mortals that it is better to be dead than alive. The divine is able to
communicate with mortals in a variety of ways; one can understand the simple
and sincere belief in Apollo and Delphi possible in the sixth century B.C. There
is a fascinating interplay between the inevitability of fate or destiny and the in-
dividuality of human character and free will.
Much that is Homeric has colored the Herodotean view, not least of all a com-
passion, tinged with a most profound sadness and pity, for the human condition.
Homeric and dramatic, too, is the simple elucidation of the dangers of hubris and
the irrevocable vengeance of Nemesis—the kernel, as it were, of a theme that dom-
inates Greek tragedy. Herodotus, like most Greek writers, takes his philosophy
from Homer. In the last book of the Iliad (see pp. 464-467), Priam, great king of
Troy, comes alone as a humble suppliant to the Greek hero Achilles in order to
beg for the body of his son Hector, whom Achilles has killed. In the course of their
interview, Achilles, who has also suffered much, not least of all because of the
death of his beloved Patroclus, divulges his conclusions about human existence:
f
No human action is without chilling grief. For thus the gods have spun out for
wretched mortals the fate of living in distress, while they live without care. Two
jars sit on the doorsill of Zeus, filled with gifts that he bestows, one jar of evils,
the other of blessing. When Zeus who delights in the thunder takes from both