The Problem of Relating to the Gods

BICS-65-2 BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES 2022 PROBLEMS WITH GREEK GODS EDITED BY SUSAN DEACY AND ESTHER EIDINOW INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Abstracts 91 List of Abbreviations 93 Esther Eidinow and Susan Deacy Introduction: experiencing the gods Hugh Bowden When Pheidippides met Pan: problems with epiphany 103 Robin Osborne The theology of divine appearance 116 Emily Kearns Gods of nature: some problems and solutions 138 Karolina Sekita Between justice, fertility, and the Underworld: problems with the chthonians revisited 150 Erica Angliker The problem of local epiclesis abroad: a case study of the worship of Apollo Pythios on the island of Kea 162 Susan Deacy Problems with Athena: god of nothing 176 Esther Eidinow The problem of relating to the gods 187 BICS-65-2 2022 95 Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2022, 65, 187–198 https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbac015 Original article The problem of relating to the gods* Esther Eidinow University of Bristol, UK ‘It is the unbeliever who believes that the believer believes…’1 1. IN TRODUCTION: A REL ATIONAL APPROACH In scholarship on ancient Greek religion, numerous arguments have been made both challenging and defending the use of the concept of belief for understanding attitudes towards the supernatural that existed within ancient Greek culture. I will not revisit those arguments here;2 instead, this essay aims to lay out some other models that might replace or at least accompany some current approaches. Drawing on the anthropological insights of, among others, Jean Pouillon and Adam Ashforth, I develop further some arguments that I have made previously, in order to suggest that ancient Greek attitudes to the gods were importantly dynamic and relational. They started from and, in turn, informed, an individual’s sense of themselves, and encompassed mental, emotional, embodied, and contextual experiences in interaction with each other. My argument draws, in part, on some anthropological studies of ‘belief ’. First, that of Jean Pouillon, whose approach to understanding ‘belief ’ is based on an acknowledgement that in Christianity belief is ‘contestable and contested’. It is not only one among many other beliefs, but also depends on an idea that the religious realm exists at another level from that of the ‘realities of the world of creation’, which can be revised through ongoing scientific discoveries.3 Pouillon compares what he sees as the Christian use of the term ‘belief ’ and its cognates to the variety of terms used by the Dangaleat (one of the groups called Hadjeraï, living in the central region of the Republic of Chad, Department of Guera), to describe the different aspects of their worship of ‘the margaï’, or local spirits. These include serving the spirits, trusting in them, knowing from experience that they exist, and, finally, trying to carry out the right service for them. As Pouillon notes, the Dangaleat ‘have no need of the verb “to believe”’; rather, as he puts it their attitude suggests, ‘It is the unbeliever who believes that the believer believes …’4 Pouillon’s work reveals some similarities of approach to that of Adam Ashforth, in his studies of communities in Soweto, South Africa. Ashforth has noted how, while it may not be possible to have clarity about the nature of belief in specific supernatural entities, and although we may treat the entities in question as ‘virtual’, we can treat the relations as real, and analyze the evidence for those; Ashforth calls this ‘a form of relational realism’, where we analyze these relations as social relations.5 Moreover, these entities may not necessarily be understood as beings in human bodily form: they may be objects or substances, or even texts, which Ashforth describes as ‘a sort of talismanic hybrid of * 1 2 3 4 5 I am very grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the funding (a Philip Leverhulme Prize) that enabled me to write this essay. Pouillon 2016: 486. These are discussed, for example, in Eidinow 2019: 66–68. Pouillon 2016: 490. Pouillon 2016: 486. Ashforth 2011: 135. © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Classical Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com 188 • Eidinow image and object, containing the word of God’; they may be presumed to have agency themselves or to be inert but powerful.6 I suggest that Pouillon’s and Ashforth’s analyses of ‘belief ’ and relations with the gods provide compelling inspiration for exploring the dynamic and nuanced experience of living with the ancient Greek gods. Drawing on their insights, I develop here two arguments I have previously made elsewhere. The first suggested that we think of ancient Greek religion as comprising a network of individuals in which relational ties were developed through narratives that emerged in the formation of identities. These relational ties were not only between mortals, but between mortals and gods: ancient evidence clearly indicates that our ancient subjects understood themselves to be in relationships of various kinds with a range of invisible entities, ranging across personified concepts, anonymous daimons, local heroes, and all-powerful gods. The narratives that were integral to these ties were expressed in a variety of media and forms, via a confluence of emotional/cognitive and bodily interactions with the world.7 The second argument explored how, in ancient Greek culture, the social and corporeal institutionalization of rituals served to embed ideologies in everyday practices, desires, and thoughts.8 The result was not only a vast range of everyday ritual activities, but also more specific initiations and personalized ritual services, intended not only to maintain existing relationships with the gods, but also to create new ones. That argument introduced some ideas of relationality and the concept of the self, to examine how, by implicating individuals in their (historical) social and cultural context, we could perhaps begin to see how ‘maps of meaning could be shared, developed, and inculcated, not (or not only) at the level of abstracted symbolic meaning, but also specifically expressed in and by bodily experiences, including activities, and practices’.9 Taking these ideas as a starting point, in this essay, I suggest that such a relational approach allows some refinement of the idea of ‘belief ’, introducing, in place of this complex term, the potential for conceiving of a more nuanced sequence of relational frameworks as structuring interactions between humans and supernatural entities. It challenges approaches that tend towards an implicit understanding of the sense of ‘belief ’ as an object of study that can be described as being either present or not in our historical subjects, and which risks the reification of ancient Greek ‘religion’ as something that may be categorized in terms of seemingly distinct social structures (‘public, private, personal’).10 Thus, in what follows, I first explore how some of our current approaches may be limited by current interpretations (§ 2), and consider how different understandings of relations with the gods may emerge from consideration of both philosophical texts and material evidence (§ 3). I suggest that an alternative understanding of ancient Greek ritual practice can be found in the writing of Herodotus (§ 4), examining the significance not only of Herodotus’ focus on concrete and physical manifestations of religious practice, but also of his use of the term ēthea for illustrating conceptions of the individual in relational terms (§ 5). Finally, I draw out some suggestions for the ways in which a different conception of the individual, and of the broader worldview in which that conception existed, may inform approaches to the study of ancient Greek ritual practice: the individual and their motivations are at the heart of analyses that focus not on static assertions of ‘belief ’, but on the dynamic activities of building effective relationships with the gods (§ 6). 2. ADJUSTING OUR QUESTIONS One of the issues with ‘belief ’, which Pouillon’s analysis emphasizes, is the ways in which it understandably prompts us to ask questions about other cultures that are structured according to our own contemporary perceptions of that term.11 In this section, I examine two examples of those kinds of 6 Ashforth 2011: 141. Eidinow 2011, 2015, 2018; cf. Bremmer 2020. Eidinow 2019. 9 Eidinow 2013, 2018, 2019 (esp. p. 82 for quotation). 10 As, for example, Kindt 2015, which provides an overview of current approaches to these categories, but retains the anachronistic categories of public, private, and personal (cf. Pirenne-Delforge 2016 and Rüpke et al. 2020). For a nuanced interpretation of ‘personal religion’ see Festugière 1954. 11 As Versnel 2011 (esp. appendix 4) has rigorously demonstrated. 7 8 The problem of relating to the gods • 189 questions: the first concerns enquiries into the presence not only of belief but also its opposite, atheism, in ancient texts; the second explores the categorization of ancient Greek religious attitudes and activity with labels such as ‘public’, ‘private’, and ‘personal’. For the first example, which is concerned with the presence of atheism, I focus on the fragments of Protagoras, who has been described as one of the atheists of the ancient Greek world.12 Protagoras’ writings exist in fragmentary form; moreover, they were written as aphorisms, making their interpretation significantly difficult.13 The key fragment is one with which his book On the Gods apparently began. It states: ‘Concerning the gods, I cannot ascertain whether they exist or whether they do not, or what form they have; for there are many obstacles to knowing, including the obscurity of the question and the brevity of human life.’14 This has been described as ‘a discourse attacking the assumption that gods have an objective existence’—that is, as evidence of atheism.15 That interpretation, however, is far from certain: it is a reading that elides not being able to know with not knowing. Indeed, other scholars, ancient and modern, have suggested that instead of being understood as an assertion of atheism, the fragment can be read more accurately as an expression of agnosticism: it expresses Protagoras’ denial not of the possibility of knowledge about the gods, but of personal knowledge about them.16 Such professions were not novel in ancient philosophy: we can compare, for example, similar observations by other philosophers, for example, by Xenophanes: And thus there has never been any man, nor will there ever be one, Who knows what is clear about the gods and whatever I say about all things. For even if he happened most to say something perfect, He himself nonetheless does not know: opinion is set upon all things.17 Importantly, such an approach to relations with the divine need not have been an obstacle to worship: as other scholars have noted of ancient Greek relations with the gods, in order to worship them, ‘one did not need to know precisely what those gods were like. The ability to carry on without such knowledge was a defining characteristic of this untheological religion.’18 Before leaving Protagoras, one further fragment needs a brief discussion in this context. It occurs in a Commentary on the Psalms by Didymus the Blind, a second-century CE Christian theologian in the Church of Alexandria. In his exegesis, Didymus describes Protagoras as arguing that ‘the being of things that are consists in being manifest’. He proceeds to give examples: a situation in which someone is able to see him sitting and someone is not there to see him sitting; a time when the moon is seen by someone or not by someone; and the idea that honey may seem sweet to a healthy person and bitter to someone sick. The conclusion in each example is that what is the case (whether a person is sitting or not), or what is there or not (the moon), or the nature of the qualities something has (the honey) is adēlon (literally, ‘unclear’, but see further below on the translation of this term).19 12 As Whitmarsh (2016) has argued: but for reservations about his approach to atheism, religion, and other significant concepts (and the difference between them), including scepticism, agnosticism, or even theomachia, see reviews by Graziosi 2016, Janko 2016, Nethercut 2016, and Chalfant 2018. 13 Schiappa 2013: 31. 14 F29 (Euseb. Praep. evang. 14.3.7) in Graham 2010: 706–07; see Kahn (1973: 302) for discussion of the Greek verb einai ‘to be’ as an existential predicate (he argues that this was the first technical use of einai in this sense; but cf. Kerferd 1981: 165–67). 15 Whitmarsh 2016: 101. This is not the first time this suggestion has been made: Diogenes of Oenoanda made it in the second century ce (see DK A23); and Dodds (1973: 97) agrees. There is a story that this fragment led to Protagoras’ death, condemned by the Athenians, and his book burned, but this is unlikely (Diog. Laert. 9.8.51–52). Diogenes Laertius reports that On the Gods was the first book Protagoras read in public (Diog. Laert. 9.8.56)—and he then lived on as a successful and respected Sophist for forty years, making it unlikely that he was expelled and his books burned (Diog. Laert. 9.8.54; see discussion Schiappa 2013: 143–45). 16 See Timon of Phleious F5 (Diels 1901); among modern scholars, see, for example, Graham 2010: 15; Barnes 2015: 190–91 (who offers a useful discussion of those ancient sources that do ascribe atheism to Protagoras, but clearly asserts that he was in the modern sense of the term an agnostic) and Bonazzi 2020. 17 Xenophanes DK 21 B34 (Sext. Emp. Math. 7.49, 7.110, 8.326, et al.), trans. Laks and Most 2016 (D49). 18 Parker 2011: 15. 19 Didymus the Blind F2, On the Psalms part 3, p. 380 Gronewald, 222.2–25. I am using here Graham’s translation (2010: 704–05, no. 21). This places less emphasis on reality than, for example, Whitmarsh (2016: 99, translating this fragment, τὸ εἶναι τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν τῷ φαίνεσθαι ἔστιν, as ‘When things are real, their being is equivalent to their appearance’) and leaves open the notion of the role of subjective perception. 190 • Eidinow This whole section of the exegesis has been described as the argument of Protagoras and, again, discussed as evidence for the view that Protagoras was an atheist.20 But in fact only one sentence in the quoted passage is described as being by Protagoras: ‘I seem to you who are present to be sitting; to someone who is absent I do not seem to be sitting: it is unclear whether I am sitting or not sitting.’ Moreover, the authenticity of even just this fragment has been disputed: some have denied it outright, while others have argued that the fragment has been much distorted by a long, complex chain of transmission through different philosophical traditions, revealing how Protagoras came to be understood by later Hellenistic philosophers.21 Whatever its origin, the idea that this fragment indicates atheism is again difficult to substantiate. The argument that this passage is evidence for Protagoras’ atheism rests on the translation of adēlon in its conclusion to mean ‘objectively not present’; but the literal meaning of the Greek term is ‘unclear’—and this suggests again that these observations concern the role of human apprehension (and blocks to it) in establishing objective reality.22 Indeed, scholars have argued that this passage offers a similar logic to the fragment ‘concerning the gods’ examined above: rather than indicating atheism, both concern barriers to knowledge.23 The examples given by Didymus are in fact not so different in this sense from Plato’s presentation of Protagoras’ philosophy in the Theaetetus. Socrates says of him: It is likely that a wise man is not talking nonsense; so let us follow after him. Is it not true that sometimes, when the same wind blows, one of us feels cold, and the other does not? or one feels slightly and the other exceedingly cold? […] Then in that case, shall we say that the wind is in itself cold or not cold; or shall we accept Protagoras’s saying that it is cold for him who feels cold and not for him who does not?24 Rather than suggesting that Protagoras was known for assertions concerning the existence or not of the gods, this rather indicates that he was renowned for philosophical relativism—a stance that is also signalled by his most famous aphoristic insight: ‘of all things, the measure is man’ (as it is commonly translated).25 If we understand atheism to be a sign of progress, then it may make sense to try to fit the ancient evidence to that model: it aligns with a particular notion of the achievements of ancient Greek culture. But even this brief examination of the evidence suggests that these ancient enquiries about the gods comprise discussions of relations with the gods that go beyond a simple denial of their existence. Once the spectre of atheism is disinvited, then it is possible to see in these fragments of Protagoras’ writing an investigation into concerns about the extent and ways in which gods were perceived to be present, active, or visible in different areas of life. This brief excursus reinforces the idea that, in the ancient world, those worshipping were concerned primarily not with identifying the existence or not of gods, but, more broadly, with relations with the divine. It suggests an implicit understanding that not only do relations with the gods change, but the nature of those relations, and the contexts in which they occur, shape those gods, in terms of their perceived natures, their appearances, and how best to engage with them. This is no less a powerful idea than atheism, and perhaps still more relevant to contemporary research on religious ‘belief ’, which suggests that (as with other forms of knowledge) human beings tend to enlist particular god-related conceptualizations to suit their particular contexts.26 20 Whitmarsh 2016: 101. Barnes 1982: 645, n. 16 disputes its authenticity; see Woodruff 1985 for a discussion of the possible steps of its transmission; Schiappa 2013: 150–51. 22 Rather than arguing that ‘things can only exist when they are perceived to exist’, as Whitmarsh 2016: 99. The ancient commentator on this fragment notes that, in making this argument, Protagoras and his followers were trying to ‘establish the doctrine of the impossibility of apprehension (akatalēpsia)’. See R27 (≠ DK) Didymus the Blind, On the Psalms 34.17 [P.Tura V 222.18–29, CPF Protagoras 3T] Laks and Most 2016. Again, this can be translated as meaning that there is no objective reality, but this is to miss the emphasis on subjectivity: the focus of the argument is not on what is out there, but on the impossibility of perceiving it. 23 Mansfeld 1981: 51, n. 45. 24 Pl. Tht. 152b (trans. Fowler 1921). 25 Protagoras F1(a–e) Graham 2010: 701–03. Cf. Schiappa 2013: 118; he translates the phrase himself as (p. 120) ‘Of everything and anything the measure [truly-is] human(ity).’ 26 Westh 2014: 410; Barrett and Keil 1996; see discussion in Eidinow 2022, esp. 75–76. 21 The problem of relating to the gods • 191 3. FROM THEORY TO PR ACTICE Material evidence indicates, however, that, across ancient Greek culture, these concerns about knowledge of the gods were not limited to those exploring these ideas in theory; they also beset worshippers concerned with the practical activities of cult. For example, the importance of aiming one’s cult activities at the right divinity is illustrated by a particular type of question that was frequently asked at the oracle of Dodona by both individuals and communities: ‘God. The Kerkyraians ask Zeus Naios and Dione by sacrificing and praying to which god or hero may they live in the best and finest way now, and in the future.’27 In this regard, as I have argued elsewhere, we can find parallels with anthropological observations by Adam Ashforth, who notes in the communities that he studies in Soweto, South Africa, where he works, the presence of what he calls ‘spiritual insecurity’.28 This is a ‘sense of danger, doubt, and fear arising from efforts to manage relations with invisible forces’.29 This ‘epistemic anxiety’ arises, he argues, from ‘a crisis of interpretive authority’ when there are many different religious figures—healers or prophets, for example—who may claim knowledge of how to interpret and manage invisible agencies. The questions posed at Dodona are just one example of evidence that suggests a similar concern in ancient Greek society. But while such oracle questions illustrate the pressing need to find the right divinity to whom to present one’s offerings, they also reveal a further dimension about the relationship between mortal and god. These are not questions concerning an eternal truth; rather, they are concerned with maximizing efficacy by identifying the right god to whom to pay cult. There is still evidence here for a concern with how to manage relations with invisible forces, but there is also a very particular focus on action. These questions indicate that individuals and communities were concerned, in the immediate moment or context of their enquiry, with what to do, as well as whom to address. A parallel for this insight is available in the work of Herman Kroesbergen, in his studies of communities in the English-speaking countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.30 He builds on Ashforth’s conception of spiritual insecurity, arguing that among the people he has worked with, the myriad ways in which it is possible to explain misfortune become rather the numerous approaches to explaining and resolving misfortune. Kroesbergen suggests that it means that ‘people are not so much insecure in frequenting different prophets and healers, but in frequenting these prophets and healers they are looking for a way to deal with insecurities in their lives’.31 This has a further implication, which is relevant to this essay. For Kroesbergen, the communities that he studies are not concerned with religious truth claims, but rather about whether or not a set of interactions with invisible powers is perceived to work or not.32 Thus, he argues, ‘to “believe in” is an action and is merely one of the steps that might work to obtain what one wants concerning jobs, marriage, children, visas, houses, demons or witchcraft’.33 Turning back to the ancient Greek world, these perspectives offer a different way of thinking about ritual practices; in particular, they suggest a new approach both to the interactions of ritual activity and social structures, and to some of the questions that have arisen about these interactions. This brings me in turn to the second set of examples of questions that scholars have raised about ancient religion that implicitly introduce our own contemporary perceptions of that term: the categorization of ancient Greek religious attitudes and activity with labels such as ‘public’, ‘private’, and ‘personal’. While these terms have sometimes been introduced productively as a way of interrogating the perceived structures of ancient religion,34 they can, ironically, also reinforce a perceived and anachronistic hierarchy of ritual worship, by maintaining an overview of ‘Greek religion’ as comprising static social structures—like a sequence of Russian dolls—in which the polis (or Greek city state) is 27 See Eidinow 2013: 63 for discussion. See Eidinow 2013: 63 for discussion. I have also explored this idea in Eidinow 2019 with regard to the ways in which spiritual insecurity may have shaped ancient Greek culture generally, not only with regard to approaches to the gods but also to fellow human beings, creating heightened social anxiety, in which a person’s relationships within the community became significant sources of concern, prompting such anxious questions as ‘Who is directing supernatural forces against me?’ and ‘Against whom should I direct supernatural forces?’ 29 Ashforth 1998: 39–67; 2005: 172–84; and 2011: 133. 30 Kroesbergen 2019. 31 Kroesbergen 2019: 11–12; my italics. 32 Kroesbergen 2019: 4. 33 Kroesbergen 2019: 8. 34 Ando and Rüpke 2015. 28 192 • Eidinow the largest and the individual is the smallest of the formal social structures of worship. In place of this approach, I have argued elsewhere for a view of ancient Greek ritual practice as comprising ‘physical and social networks between individuals and groups involved in religious practice, which created meanings and identities for those involved’.35 This network approach draws on relational sociology to consider the ways in which individuals are embedded in their cultural context. Here, I would like to build on that approach, by considering the gods as part of that network; this may offer some further insights into the use of the concept of ‘belief ’ in such a context. If we understand that a central concern of ancient Greek men and women was to build an efficacious relationship with the gods, then this had serious and far-reaching implications. It is true that each individual, potentially, had direct access to the divine, so there was no need for a revelation or third party to mediate communication between them. But in a community, an individual does not exist in isolation; one’s identity also comprises a series of diverse social groups. To ensure that relationships with the gods remained unproblematic it was necessary to come together in a variety of social and political structures (as the theory of polis religion so elegantly demonstrates).36 In turn, sociopolitical structures themselves emerged from the need to develop efficacious ritual practices that allayed concerns about relations with the gods. In such a context, multitudes of deities and practices developed within a community, because they were, at one time or another, perceived to be effective, whether that meant that feared disasters did not occur, or that specific benefits accrued to the community. But, while ritual practices can be understood as occurring in the context of particular sociopolitical structures, our perspective on those practices need not—in fact, should not—be limited by those structures; they were as complex as the networks of mortal identities and interrelations that comprised the community in which they developed. For example, the purchase by an individual of specific services from an itinerant ritual practitioner need not mean that the individual (or others) perceived this as having implications only for that individual. Similarly, in a group ritual context, it may have been that the ritual practice of a group, as a group, superseded the particular concerns of an individual; or that the activities of individuals aligned with each other, while being—and remaining—primarily motivated by individual concerns. The crucial dimension of any particular ritual activity was that it had proved—and so could still potentially be— effective in building relationships with the gods. If we view interactions with the gods as based on such a network of relations built up over time, structured by a long history of activities that were understood as having been, and potentially remaining, efficacious, then the boundaries between these categories of ‘public’, ‘private’, or even ‘personal’ become far more difficult to impose. In their stead, I want to suggest that we consider a sense of ‘interrelations’ that reaches beyond the individual to encompass place, community, activity, and character. In what follows, I argue that that this sense of relationality underpins one of the most famous descriptions of the key elements of ancient Greek ritual activity. 4. A NET WORK OF REL ATIONS In Herodotus’ account of the Athenians’ statement, just preceding the Battle of Plataea, to the Spartan envoys of why they will not make an alliance with the Persians, the Athenians detail very specific aspects of Greek life and culture that generate Greek allegiance to Greek: First and foremost, the burning and destruction of the statues and temples of our gods, whom we are constrained to avenge to the utmost rather than make pacts with the perpetrator of these things, and next the kinship of all Greeks (to hellēnikon) in blood (homaimon) and speech (homoglōsson), and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common (koina), and the likeness of our way of life (ēthea homotropa).37 35 Eidinow 2015: 59. See Sourvinou-Inwood 1988 and 1990. Hdt. 8.144.2 (trans. Godley 1920, adapted): πρῶτα μὲν καὶ μέγιστα τῶν θεῶν τὰ ἀγάλματα καὶ τὰ οἰκήματα ἐμπεπρησμένα τε καὶ συγκεχωσμένα, τοῖσι ἡμέας ἀναγκαίως ἔχει τιμωρέειν ἐς τὰ μέγιστα μᾶλλον ἤπερ ὁμολογέειν τῷ ταῦτα ἐργασαμένῳ, αὖθις δὲ τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν, ἐὸν ὅμαιμόν τε καὶ ὁμόγλωσσον, καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι ἤθεά τε ὁμότροπα. 36 37 The problem of relating to the gods • 193 At first sight, this is a description that simply emphasizes sameness across blood, language, sanctuaries, sacrifices, and customs. But, as Irene Polinskaya insightfully elaborates, in contrast to many translations of this passage, in the original Greek particular adjectives are clearly grouped with particular nouns: blood, language, and customs are all described with compounds of homoios; sanctuaries and sacrifices are described as koina.38 This is important because of the nuances of the original adjectives: she notes that while koina implies ‘overlap’, homoios indicates ‘a degree of closeness, a virtual equation’.39 On the latter, ‘a degree of closeness’ best suits the variety of customary behaviour; it draws attention to the local and specific nature of Greek life.40 As for the nature of sanctuaries and sacrifices, however, the question of what ‘overlap’ means here bears closer examination: how are we to understand koina? Polinskaya identifies two possible meanings for koina if translated as ‘common’: a) a notion of abstract commonness on the level of typology, designating an entitlement of any and all carriers to whom the commonness is ascribed; b) a concrete reference limited to specific groups or individuals involved in sharing and to specific conditions under which this sharing is possible. Adducing further evidence, she argues that in this definition of to hellēnikon by Herodotus, the term koinos carries the ‘narrow sense of sharing between specific political communities at specific places and on specific occasions’.41 In this she agrees with Albert Schachter’s conclusions on this passage: ‘Herodotus does not say that the Hellenes had the same religion […] the shared sanctuaries and festivals he had in mind were probably specific places and events, the great panhellenic sanctuaries and the festivals celebrated there.’42 For the immediate purposes of this essay, it is important to note that Herodotus does not highlight the shared mental states—such as understandings and attitudes—of the Greeks. Rather, he appears to be focused on the concrete manifestations (the buildings) and the actions that were performed (sacrifices) in order to communicate with invisible powers.43 What mattered was what was done, and its efficacy in building relationships between mortals and gods. In this passage, Herodotus is building on that idea to show how those activities and their physical manifestations generate relationships that extend beyond the mortal and supernatural dyad, into a network of other mortals. In that context, we can also note, with Polinskaya, the lack of reference to shared gods: the conclusions of her examination again support the argument of this essay. What was important was the efficacy of the action taken by mortals, and whatever followed that ritual activity would then indicate whether supernatural forces were satisfied, or not.44 But this focus on the physical side of worship is not intended as an argument that Herodotus and his contemporaries perceived there to be a division between the outer manifestations of worship and the inner mental worlds of worshippers. In building relationships with the supernatural, I argue, mental representations and embodied, physical actions were not perceived as being so clearly distinguished. In such a cultural worldview, an individual’s external context, their embodied, physical activity, and their inner mental world were understood to be crucially related and interactive. To further develop this argument, I turn attention in the next section to the final item listed in Herodotus’ list of common and overlapping properties, that is the idea of ēthea. 5. BODY, COM MUNIT Y, PL ACE The term ēthea in the context of the passage from Herodotus has received very little attention; in general, it is taken to indicate ‘customary practice’, although some scholars broaden this to ‘way of life’.45 These 38 Polinskaya 2010: 46. Polinskaya 2010: 46. Polinskaya 2010: 47: ‘our archaeological, textual and epigraphic evidence that is replete with epichoric emphasis’. 41 Polinskaya 2010: 50. 42 Schachter 2000: 2; followed by Polinskaya 2010: 48. 43 Hall 1997: 44–45, on Hdt. 8.144.2, suggested that Herodotus’ innovation in definitions of ethnicity is to add religion and customs. 44 Polinskaya 2010: 45: ‘Notably, the category of gods does not figure in the formulation.’ But while she does go on to examine the perception of the commonality or not of Greek gods as demonstrated by other evidence, she does not explore that omission in this passage from Herodotus. 45 Thomas 2001: 213 and Hall 2002: 189: ‘customs’; Saïd 2001: 275: ‘way of life’ and ‘way of looking at life’. 39 40 194 • Eidinow translations have in common a notion of externalized and repetitive everyday activity, which is surely correct. I want to argue, however, that the choice of the term ēthos here is significant; it offers a key insight into broader aspects of an ancient Greek worldview—specifically, the ways in which external and internal phenomena, including the surrounding environment, and embodied and mental experiences, were understood to be intrinsically related. This, I want to suggest, can help us not only to better understand the meaning of the Herodotean passage, but also, more broadly, to gain insight into the ancient Greek perception of the role of Greek ritual practice in building effective relationships between mortals and gods. In Homer, ēthea refers to ‘accustomed places’ or ‘haunts’, particularly those of animals, but also of the abodes of men.46 And, as other ancient texts demonstrate, both explicitly and implicitly, there was perceived to be a strong, influential link between the land that a person came from and the formation of their character. For example, Herodotus’ own work describes the interaction of local environment and ethnicity, although, as Rosalind Thomas has pointed out, this is far from a mechanistic ‘environmental determinism’.47 The medical writers examine the role, for example, of wind in shaping the characters of peoples.48 This may be the underlying conceptual association that helps ēthos also to gain its perhaps more well-known meaning of ‘disposition, character’.49 One specific ancient use of this meaning of the term is to describe a particular dimension of artistic production. The first explicit analysis of this meaning of ēthos is found in Aristotle’s Poetics, in discussion of characterization in drama: he states that while the mythos or the storyline is compared to the outline of a picture, the ēthos is like the colours added to the picture.50 As Eva Keuls observes, discussions of it in earlier work demonstrate that it was already a focus of concern—with emphasis on the question of artistic representation.51 For example, Socrates interrogates the painter Parrhasios in Xenophon’s Memorabilia and provides us with some initial insight into its meaning: Socrates: ‘Well now, do you also reproduce the character of the soul (τῆς ψυχῆς ἦθος), the character that is in the highest degree captivating, delightful, friendly, fascinating, lovable? Or is it impossible to imitate that?’ Parrhasios: ‘Oh no, Socrates; for how could one imitate that which has neither shape nor colour nor any of the qualities you mentioned just now, and is not even visible?’52 Socrates’ response is to suggest that these qualities can be reflected by specific representations of the physical body. This makes particular sense in this text, because Xenophon’s defence of Socrates’ character turns at least in part on the ways in which he behaved, and how he interacted with others; indeed, it has been argued that he is ‘“Socratising” the genre of wisdom literature by framing Socrates within it’.53 Turning back to Aristotle, we find further details that make explicit what is implicit in Socrates’ discussion: ēthos with dianoia (intellectual capacity), we learn, forms the ‘causes of action’,54 a combination that is also found in Aristotle’s Politics.55 In his discussion of tragic action, the ēthea are the passages in the dialogue that reveal individual action.56 These arguments already suggest that ēthos was perceived to be a part of the inner individual human, but, as Stephen Halliwell emphasizes, this is not equivalent to the vaguer modern sense of 46 Hom. Il. 6.511; [of swine] ἔρξαν κατὰ ἤθεα κοιμηθῆναι, Od. 14.411; this usage is also found in later literature (of lions, Hdt.7.125; of fish, Opp. Hal. 1.93; of the abodes of men, Hes. Op. 167, 525, Hdt.1.15, 157, Aesch. Supp. 64, Eur. Hel. 274, Pl. Leg. 865e, [Arist.] Mund. 398b33; and of the sun, Hdt. 2.142.4). 47 Thomas 2000: 104–05; the term ‘environmental determinism’ is coined by Lloyd 1990: 225. See also McCoskey 2012 and Lo Presti 2012. 48 Hippoc. Flat. 3, Epid. 1 (4), Aph. 3.5, Hum. 14, Vict. 2.38, Aer. 9, 10, 15, 19. See Chiasson 2001. 49 LSJ A.II.2. 50 Arist. Poet. 6.1450b1–3. 51 Keuls 1978: 95. I am indebted to her discussion of these aspects. 52 Xen. Mem. 3.10.3 (trans. Marchant 1923): τί γάρ; ἔφη, τὸ πιθανώτατον καὶ ἥδιστον καὶ φιλικώτατον καὶ ποθεινότατον καὶ ἐρασμιώτατον ἀπομιμεῖσθε τῆς ψυχῆς ἦθος; ἢ οὐδὲ μιμητόν ἐστι τοῦτο; πῶς γὰρ ἄν, ἔφη, μιμητὸν εἴη, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὃ μήτε συμμετρίαν μήτε χρῶμα μήτε ὧν σὺ εἶπας ἄρτι μηδὲν ἔχει μηδὲ ὅλως ὁρατόν ἐστιν; 53 Gray 1998: 179. 54 Arist. Poet. 6.1450a1–2. 55 Arist. Pol. 2.1337a38. 56 Arist. Poet. 6.1450a19. The problem of relating to the gods • 195 personality or individuality; we do not find here the division between external behaviours and an inner mental realm. For Aristotle, ēthos is ‘a specific moral factor in relation to action’ and ‘character represents the ethical qualities of actions’.57 Aristotle’s definition of character in chapter 6 of the Poetics ably demonstrates the integration of action and character: ‘character is that which shows the nature of deliberate moral choice […] consequently there is no character in those speeches in which there is nothing at all that the speaker chooses or rejects’.58 As Keuls summarizes, the use of the term in ancient discussions of drama and painting reveals that it carries the meaning of characteristic behaviour under the impact of action, as opposed to pathos, which is behaviour under the influence of strong emotion.59 If we now return to Herodotus’ use of the term ēthos in this passage and in his work more generally, we can see the full range of meanings of this term being used. For example, in a number of passages, he uses ēthos to communicate information about the habitats of humans or animals.60 These habitats can be whole countries or, perhaps mirroring the use of the term for animals, human ‘lairs’; it can also be used to refer to people’s homes. From habitats to habits: the term is also used to mean the ways of life that individuals and groups exhibit. For example: Now the Thracians were a poor and backward people, but this Salmoxis knew Ionian ways and a more advanced way of life (ēthea) than the Thracian; for he had consorted with Greeks, and moreover with one of the greatest Greek teachers, Pythagoras.61 And, in another example: The Man-eaters are the most savage of all men in their way of life (ēthea); they know no justice and obey no law. They are nomads, wearing a costume like the Scythian, but speaking a language of their own; of all these, they are the only people that eat men. This can be formalized as the specific customs that a people adopt: for example, the ‘Ethiopians learn Egyptian customs (ēthea)—and so conform’; and Just as the Egyptians have a climate peculiar to themselves, and their river is different in its nature from all other rivers, so, too, have they instituted customs (ēthea) and laws contrary for the most part to those of the rest of mankind.62 In other passages, this appears as a symbiotic relationship between land and inhabitants, for example, as the Phocaeans sail for Cyrnus, they long for their home—and it is as if the land itself has acquired a certain character: But while they prepared to sail to Cyrnus, more than half of the citizens were overcome with longing and pitiful sorrow for the city and the life of their land (tōn ētheōn), and they broke their oath and sailed back to Phocaea.63 57 Halliwell 1986: 151. Arist. Poet. 6.1450b8–10. Keuls 1978: esp. 95–102. 60 e.g. Hdt. 1.15: Cimmerians driven from their homes. Used of land belonging to a particular ethnic group of people or animals, see also: 1.157.1 (Persians), 2.93.2 (fish), 4.76.2 (the land of the Scythians), 4.80.1 (Scyles’ own home), 5.14.1 (Paeonians), and 5.15.3 (the Paeonians, the Siriopaeones and Paeoplae), 7.125 (lions), 7.10H (Persian land), 7.75.2 (Strymonians), 8.100.5, and 8.101.3 (Persian homeland). 61 Here and below, trans. Godley 1920. Hdt. 4.95.2: ἅτε δὲ κακοβίων τε ἐόντων τῶν Θρηίκων καὶ ὑπαφρονεστέρων, τὸν Σάλμοξιν τοῦτον ἐπιστάμενον δίαιτάν τε Ἰάδα καὶ ἤθεα βαθύτερα ἢ κατὰ Θρήικας, οἷα Ἕλλησι τε ὁμιλήσαντα καὶ Ἑλλήνων οὐ τῷ ἀσθενεστάτῳ σοφιστῇ Πυθαγόρῃ and cf. 4.106: Ἀνδροφάγοι δὲ ἀγριώτατα πάντων ἀνθρώπων ἔχουσι ἤθεα, οὔτε δίκην νομίζοντες οὔτε νόμῳ οὐδενὶ χρεώμενοι. νομάδες δέ εἰσι, ἐσθῆτά τε φορέουσι τῇ Σκυθικῇ ὁμοίην, γλῶσσαν δὲ ἰδίην, ἀνθρωποφαγέουσι δὲ μοῦνοι τούτων. 62 Hdt. 2.30.5: τούτων δὲ ἐσοικισθέντων ἐς τοὺς Αἰθίοπας ἡμερώτεροι γεγόνασι Αἰθίοπες ἤθεα μαθόντες Αἰγύπτια and 2.35.2: Αἰγύπτιοι ἅμα τῷ οὐρανῷ τῷ κατὰ σφέας ἐόντι ἑτεροίῳ καὶ τῷ ποταμῷ φύσιν ἀλλοίην παρεχομένῳ ἢ οἱ ἄλλοι ποταμοί, τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ἔμπαλιν τοῖσι ἄλλοισι ἀνθρώποισι ἐστήσαντο ἤθεά τε καὶ νόμους. 63 Hdt. 1.165.3: ὑπερημίσεας τῶν ἀστῶν ἔλαβε πόθος τε καὶ οἶκτος τῆς πόλιος καὶ τῶν ἠθέων τῆς χώρης, ψευδόρκιοι δὲ γενόμενοι ἀπέπλεον ὀπίσω ἐς τὴν Φωκαίαν. 58 59 196 • Eidinow And that the features of the land themselves may have laws/habitats is suggested by the Egyptian priests’ description of the odd behaviour of the sun during the period in which they had no king as a god in human form: ‘Four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to experience (tōn ētheōn); twice he came up where he now goes down, and twice went down where he now comes up.’64 Here Godley’s translation of ēthea underlines the ambiguity of the term, which can be taken most straightforwardly to refer to the sun moving outside its habitat,65 but also as the irregular behaviour of the sun—its uncharacteristic behaviour. In fact, the translation also suggests a further meaning: that this phenomenon is outside the realm of experience of those who live in the area and observe their landscape. This link to the behaviour of natural phenomena introduces a further, broader, cosmic sense to the term. Ēthea may translate as place, community, and regular activity, customary to the point of a natural law. On that front, we may also recall that ēthos itself has a supernatural element, as seems to be suggested by Heraclitus: ‘Heraclitus said that the ēthos of a man is his daimōn/guardian spirit’, where daimōn is often understood to mean ‘fate’.66 The ways in which individuals behave, the actions they customarily take, not only indicate the kinds of characters they have, and/or their community’s ritual practices, they also link them to specific supernatural forces, the daimones that represent or are their human fates. Thus, ēthea are not only the bodily activities of customs and rituals; they are also—as suggested by the analysis of artistic representation—the internal attitudes and characters that those behaviours demonstrate, and the cosmic forces that shape them. Thus, we may understand ēthea as both personal and private, and public and political, referring to both mundane community and cosmic interactions. As a concept, this nuanced term, I suggest, illustrates Greek notions of the fundamental interactions between place, community, activity, and character—and the supernatural world that encompassed mortal experience. Thus, if we return to Herodotus’ account of the speech of the Athenians to the Spartans, we see that ēthea adds a further, crucial set of dimensions to the reasoning that Herodotus sets out. While it may be translated a ‘way of life’, it also alludes specifically to the place in which that way of life is conducted; the interactions between the two; the character that shapes and is shaped by those interactions; and, in addition, the ways in which that character, in turn, is shaped by supernatural, and cosmological forces. Like ‘blood’ and ‘language’, in the Herodotus passage considered at the beginning of this section of this essay, this word ēthea is described with a homoios compound, ὁμότροπα/homotropa. As argued above, the term homoios indicates ‘a degree of closeness, a virtual equation’, which, importantly, allows for the specificity and variety of local cultures, landscapes, practices, or customs, and characters, while noting the alignments and commonalities between them. More generally, it suggests that in ancient Greek culture, an individual and a community were both perceived in relational terms, in which (what for modern sensibilities may be) separate categories of internal and external; the surrounding environment; embodied experience and mental representations; public, private, and personal; natural and supernatural, interacted and informed each other in significant ways. 6. CONCLUSION: A DIFFEREN T WORLDVIEW This essay began by arguing that some analyses of ancient Greek religion risk constraining our understanding through their attempts to fit the evidence into models that are based on the imposition of (static) categories such as ‘belief vs atheism’ and/or ‘public’, ‘private’, and ‘personal’. In contrast, this essay has argued, there are grounds to adopt a theoretical approach to ancient Greek ritual practice that explores interactions with the gods as based on a network of dynamic relations built up over time, with all the variety that entails. Building effective relationships with the gods that allayed concerns 64 Hdt. 2.142.4: ἐν τοίνυν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ τετράκις ἔλεγον ἐξ ἠθέων τὸν ἥλιον ἀναστῆναι· ἔνθα τε νῦν καταδύεται, ἐνθεῦτεν δὶς ἐπανατεῖλαι, καὶ ἔνθεν νῦν ἀνατέλλει, ἐνθαῦτα δὶς καταδῦναι. 65 Thus, How and Wells (1912) translate ἐξ ἠθέων/ex ētheōn as ‘away from his previous quarter’, that is, the sun ‘had changed his place of rising four times, rising in the east for two periods and in the west for two’. 66 Trans. Graham 2010: 174–75, no. 135 [F90]; Stob. 4.40.23; DK B119: Ἡράκλειτος ἔφη ὡς ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων. Translation as ‘fate’: e.g. Kahn 1979: 81. The problem of relating to the gods • 197 about relations with the gods led, in turn, to the development of multitudes of deities, practices, and social structures within and across communities. But this is not an argument that privileges a worshipper’s external actions over his or her inner mental world: rather, it suggests that while the focus was on building effective relationships with the supernatural, mental representations and embodied experiences were not perceived by the Greeks as being distinct. This approach was, in turn, part of a larger cultural worldview, in which an individual’s external setting, embodied physical activity, inner mental world, and divine connections were understood as being crucially related and interactive. Ancient evidence for such a worldview can be found in the concept of ēthos, which illustrates ancient Greek notions of the dynamic interactions between the surrounding environment and the physical and mental realms, integrating place, community, activity, character, and cosmos. Such a relational approach will, I hope, offer some potential for nuanced analyses of the frameworks, cognitive and otherwise, structuring interactions between humans and supernatural entities in ancient Greek cultures. By basing our analyses on ancient rather than modern worldviews and concepts, we can perhaps begin to refine not only the answers that we draw from ancient evidence, but also the questions we ask about it in the first place. REFERENCES Ando, C., and J. Rüpke. 2015: Public and Private in Ancient Mediterranean Law and Religion, Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 65, Berlin–Munich–Boston. 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