Whatever bond the tragic poet and the philosopher shared as free-thinking intellectuals in fifth century Athens, they were clearly on different sides of a growing cultural divide. The poet thought in terms of capricious divine powers—or were they stand-ins for social and natural forces?—that could traumatize hapless mortals. The philosopher, on the other hand, thought in terms of reasons and arguments, seeing mortals as almost equal to deity in their rational abilities.
As part of his education, Socrates had been required to memorize long passages from the earliest Greek poets, Homer especially and also Hesiod (ch. 3*). Early philosophers complain that “all have learned from the beginning according to Homer” and “The teacher of the multitude is Hesiod.”[23] Their works present heroic deeds of bygone leaders from the Trojan War and before, and also the interactions of gods with mortals, and gods with gods. What they do not offer is anything like a code of moral conduct, either for mortals or for gods. Homer’s Iliad begins with Apollo raining his arrows on the Achaeans (Greeks), causing a plague that kills the Greeks and their animals. The Greek leaders consult the seer Calchas to find out why they are being attacked. He informs them that Apollo is angry because when Agamemnon carried off the daughter of his priest in a raid and the priest offered a ransom for his daughter, Agamemnon refused it.[24] Apollo is angry not because the Greeks were carrying off women (no harm in that), but because Agamemnon insulted his priest. If you mess with Apollo’s boys, you mess with him.
The gods, as portrayed by the poets, lie, cheat, and steal among themselves. Indeed, Zeus got his throne, according to Hesiod, only through a series of violent conflicts among the gods and a war between generations of deities.[25] The gods are immortal and blessed, but they are not noticeably better in their moral behavior than wretched mortals. Hesiod, composing sometime after Homer, does maintain that the gods uphold morality. Among animals, he says, there is no sense of justice:
But to men he gave justice, which proves to be by far
the best. For if someone wishes to speak justly
with knowledge, far-seeing Zeus gives to him prosperity.[26]
Many times, indeed, the gods punish a whole city for the sins of individuals in that city:
Often a whole city suffers for one evil man
who sins and devises wickedness.
On them from heaven does the son of Cronus impose great suffering,
famine together with plague, and the people perish.
The women do not bear children, and the households dwindle
by the counsels of Olympian Zeus. Again at another time
the son of Cronus destroys their wide army or their wall
or their ships at sea.[27]
Hesiod seems quite sincere in his belief in divine justice. But his view of things raises new questions. If I can be punished for the sins of other people in my city, or for wrongs my ancestor has done, how can that be justice for me? And if my own sins will not be punished until a later generation, what incentive is that for me to be good now, assuming that I am inclined to be evil?
Writing a century before Socrates, the poet Theognis complains about the distribution of good and evils by the gods:
Dear Zeus, I’m amazed at you! For you rule over all,
enjoying honor and great power yourself,
knowing well the mind and heart of men,
and your power is supreme, O king.
How, then, does your mind, son of Cronus, dare to treat
sinners and the righteous alike? . . .
Is there no divine judgment set for mortals,
no path that they might follow to please the immortals?[28]
Also a century before Socrates, Xenophanes of Colophon, who was exiled from his native city in Ionia and carried on as a traveling bard in the Greek states of Sicily and southern Italy, went farther. In the preamble of one of his poems he warned his cultured audience that they should not tell stories about wars among the gods; it is not fitting.[29] In other poems he pointed out that the Scythians worshiped gods who were red-haired and green-eyed like themselves; the Africans worshiped gods who were snub-nosed and black like them; and if cattle or horses could draw, they would produce gods just like themselves.[30] Surely, he maintained, anthropomorphism was a shabby kind of theology.
Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things
that are blameworthy and disgraceful for men:
stealing, committing adultery, deceiving each other.[31]
If there is divinity, it must be above sordid human conduct. The poets themselves are impious and shameful. We need an understanding of the gods that exceeds anything past traditions have been able to give us.
Euripides belonged to a new generation of freethinkers who did not take religious traditions for granted. If the gods of mythology seemed like copies of mortal men, in their form, their dress, their behavior, their morals, no doubt they were just that: inventions of the human imagination. In a satyr play variously attributed to the sophist Critias and to Euripides, we are told that in order to instill fear into society, men invented gods.[32] Thus there was a whole new anthropological approach that considered how the belief in gods arose.
Early anthropological models told of the ascent of man from primitive beginnings. Men gradually developed language and culture in their struggle for survival. Fearful of unknown powers, they attributed divine qualities to natural objects and worshiped them. Leaders used the gods thus invented to support the moral and civic order, and thus gods were institutionalized. But now, instead of men being created by and for the gods, intellectuals had the gods being created by and for men. Once the secret was out, there was little for the enlightened individual to do but to recognize that the existence of deity was, as the scientist Laplace would later say to Napoleon, a hypothesis one had no need of. Natural forces were real and powerful, but divine beings were, the new learning implied, merely a human convention. For Euripides and his mates, the gods of mythology were perhaps stand-ins for forces of nature or human psychology which held humans no less in thrall.
Was religion, then, just a pious fraud? Was there any place left for divinity in the brave new world? Was the social order a self-serving invention of rulers? Was moral virtue a mere pretense to mask human libido? And was there any escape from passion and irrationality?
[23].Xenophanes B10; Heraclitus B57.
[24]. Homer Iliad 1.8-100.
[25]. Hesiod Theogony 147-82; 453-91; 666-705; 721-35.
[26].Hesiod Works and Days 279-281.
[27].Hesiod Works and Days 240-47.
[28].Theognis 373-82.
[29].Xenophanes B1.21-24.
[30].Xenophanes B15, B16.
[31].Xenophanes B11, cf. B12.
[32].DK 88B25.