Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

3. In Ithaca, the ἄλσος of the Nymphs, with an altar, beside the fountain, where all passers-by offered sacrifice, Od. xvii. 205-11.

4. In Ithaca again, the ἄλσος of Apollo, where public sacrifice was performed in the city on his feast-day, Od. xx. 277, 8.

5. In Bœotia, Onchestus is called the ἄγλαον ἄλσος of Neptune, Il. ii. 506.

6. The ἄλσεα of Persephone are on the beach beyond Oceanus, and are composed of poplars and willows, Od. x. 509.

7. In the great Assembly of gods before the Theomachy, all the Nymphs are summoned, who inhabit ἄλσεα as well as fountains and meadows, Il. xx. 8. But here the meaning includes any grove, dedicated or not. And again,

8. The attendants of Circe are such as inhabit ἄλσεα, groves, or fountains, or rivers, Od. x. 350.

Thus the ἄλσος, when used in the religious sense, means a grove or clump of trees, sometimes with turf, or with a fountain; set apart as a place for worship, and inhabited by a deity or his ministers, yet quite distinct from a property capable of supporting them. These clumps appear to be so appropriated more commonly by Hellenic, than by Pelasgian practice.

As to statues of the gods.

4. We will take next the case of statues of the gods.

In the opinion of Mure, the metaphor which represents human affairs as resting in the lap of the gods (θεῶν ἐν γούνασι), gives conclusive evidence that the custom of making statues of the deities prevailed among the Greeks. I do not however see why this particular figure should bear upon the question, more than any of the other very numerous representations which treat them as endowed with various members of the body. If this evidence be receivable at all, it is overwhelming. But it is open to some doubt, whether, because gods are mentally conceived according to the laws of anthropomorphism, we may therefore assume that they were also materially represented under the human form.

We have, I believe, no more than one single piece of direct evidence on the subject, and it is this; that, when the Trojan matrons carry their supplication to the temple of Minerva, together with the offering of a robe, they deposit it on her knees (Il. vi. 303), Ἀθηναίης ἐπὶ γούνασιν ἠϋκόμοιο. This appears to be quite conclusive as to the existence of a statue of Minerva at Troy: but it leaves the question entirely open, whether it was an Hellenic, as well as a Pelasgian, practice thus to represent the gods.

It is quite plain, I think, that the practice was not one congenial or familiar to the mind of Homer. Had it been so, he surely must have made large poetic use of it. Whereas on the contrary it is by inference alone, though certainly by unavoidable inference, from language which he uses without that intention, that we become assured even of their existence in his time. He speaks, indeed, more than once of placing ἀγάλματα in temples, or of suspending them in honour of the gods[360 - Od. iii. 438. xii. 347.]: but our title to construe this of statues appears to be wholly conjectural.

It would seem inexplicable that a poet, who enlarges with so much power, not only on the Shield of Agamemnon and the Arms of Achilles, but on the ideal Ægis of Minerva, the chariot of Juno, the bow of Apollo, and the metallic handmaids of Vulcan, should entirely avoid description of the statues of the Olympian gods, if they were habitually before his eyes.

I have argued elsewhere that we see in Homer the Hellenic, not the Pelasgian, mind. And if it be so, then I think we are justified in associating with his Hellenism, as one among many signs, this remarkable silence. The ritual and external development of Pelasgian religion would delight in statues as visible signs: the Hellenic idealism would not improbably eschew them. Hence we may treat this practice of the period as belonging to Pelasgian peculiarities.

If this be so, then I think we may pass on to the conclusion, that the original tendency to produce visible forms of the Divinity was not owing to, and formed no part of, the efforts of the human imagination, so largely developed in Homer, to idealize religion, and to beautify the world by its imagery. But, on the contrary, so far as we can judge from Homer, it first prevailed among a race inclined to material and earthy conceptions in theology, and from them it spread to others of higher intelligence. It was a crutch for the lameness of man, and not a wing for his upward aspirations.

And indeed, as it appears to me, this proposition is sustained even by the past experience and present state of Christendom. When faith was strongest, images were unknown to the faithful. Nor is it art, which produces them: it is merely a kind of corporal and mechanical imitation. No considerable work of art is at this moment, I believe, in any Christian country, an object of religious worship. The sentiment which craves for material representations of such objects in order to worship them, appears also commonly to exact that they should be somewhat materialized. The higher office of art, in connection with devout affection, seems to be that it should point our veneration onwards, not arrest it. It holds out the finger which we are to follow, not the hand which we are to kiss.

As to Seers or Diviners.

The order of Seers or Diviners was common to Greeks, Trojans, and probably we may add, from its being known among the Cyclopes, to all contemporary races. It is singular that we should find here, and not among the priesthood, the traces of caste, or the hereditary descent of the gift. In all other points, this function stands apart from hierarchical developments. For the μάντις, except as to his gift, is like other men. Melampus engages to carry off oxen. Polypheides migrates upon a quarrel with his father. Cleitus is the lover of Aurora. Theoclymenus has committed homicide[361 - Od. xv. 224 et seqq.]. Teiresias is called ἄναξ, a lord or prince[362 - Od. xi. 150.]. We do not know that Calchas fought as well as prophesied, but it may have been so, since Helenus, the son of Priam, and Eunomus, the Mysian leader, were seers or augurs not less than warriors. But the most instructive specimen of this order among the Greeks is the Suitor Leiodes[363 - Od. xxii. 310-29. xxi. 144.], who was also θυοσκόος, or inspector of sacrifices, to the body of Suitors. Now Ulysses had, in consideration of a ransom, spared Maron the priest of Apollo at Ismarus[364 - Od. ix. 197-201.]. But, far from recognising in the professional character of Leiodes a title to immunity, he answers the plea with characteristic and deadly repartee. And this, notwithstanding that Leiodes was, as we learn, distinguished from the rest of the Suitors by the general decency of his conduct.

The θυοσκόος apparently inspected sacrifices, but did not offer them; for this character is clearly distinguished in the Iliad[365 - Il. xxiv. 221.] from that of the priest. Indeed, the word θύειν in Homer appears properly to apply to those minor offices of sacrifice, which did not involve the putting to death of victims; as in Il. ix. 219, where, it may be observed, the function is not performed by the principal person, but is deputed by Achilles to Patroclus. The inspection of slain animals would probably stand in the same category, among divine offices, as the interpretation of other signs and portents.

The members of this class are, upon the whole, as broadly distinguished from the priests in Homer, as are the prophets of the Old Testament from the Levitical priesthood.

They were called by the general name of μάντις, or by other names, some of them more limited: such as θεόπροπος, ὑποφήτης, οἰωνόπολος, ὀνειρόπολος. They sometimes interpreted from signs and omens; sometimes, as in Il. vi. 86, and vii. 44, without them.

The diffusion of the gift among the royal house of Troy, where Polydamas had it as well as Helenus, and possibly also Hector, is less marked than the great case of the family of Melampus. The augur was in all respects a citizen, while possessed of a peculiar endowment: and the ὑποφῆται[366 - Il. xvi. 235.] mentioned in the invocation of Achilles, whether they were the royal house, or persons dispersed through the community, evidently formed a more conspicuous object among the Helli than we find in any Pelasgian race. Again; in Greece we find the oracles of Delphi and Delos, as well as of Dodona; but there is no similar organ for the delivery of the divine will reported to us in Troy.

As to the Priesthood.

We come now to the last and most important point connected with the outward development of the religious system, that of the priesthood: and here I shall endeavour to describe distinctly the evidence with regard to both nations. First, let us consider the case of priesthood as it respects the Greeks.

We have at least one instance before us in the Iliad, where a combined religious action of Greeks and Trojans is presented to us. In the Third Book, Priam comes from Troy to an open space between the armies, and meets Agamemnon and Ulysses. The honour of actually offering the sacrifice is allotted to the Greeks. No priest appears; and the function is performed by the King, Agamemnon. It is therefore natural to suppose that the Greeks have with them in Troas no sacrificing priest. On every occasion, the Greek Sovereign offers sacrifice for himself and for the army. So also do the soldiery[367 - Il. ii. 400.] at large for themselves;

ἄλλος δ’ ἄλλῳ ἔρεζε θεῶν αἰειγενετάων.

There was an altar[368 - Il. xi. 807, 8.] for the very purpose in the part of the camp appropriated for Assemblies; a fact which, though it does not demonstrate, accords with the union of the regal and sacerdotal functions. Nor can we account for the absence of priests from the camp, on the same principle as for that of bards; since poems were a luxury, but sacrifices a necessity. And we find Calchas representing the class of religious functionaries that the Greek nation did acknowledge; namely, the Seers, who interpreted the divine will, without any fixed ministry belonging to any particular place, although the gift was generally derived from Apollo, as one among his peculiar attributes.

In the remarkable passage, which enumerates for us the principal trades and professions of Greece in the heroic age[369 - Od. xvii. 384-6.], we find mentioned the prophet, the physician, the artificer, the divinely prompted bard; but not the priest. Yet, had such an order existed, it could not well, on account of its importance, have been omitted. For in truth this enumeration is, as we have before seen, nearly exhaustive, as applied to an age when there was no professional soldier, when the husbandman, fisherman, or herd, could not be called a δημιοεργὸς, for he had no relation to the public, and when commerce was confined to foreigners like the Phœnicians, or pirates like the Taphians, and formed no part of the business of the settled communities of Greece.

On the other hand, in the Legend of Phœnix concerning Meleager, we have a notice of priests as having existed at that time in Ætolia. The embassy, which was sent to conciliate Meleager, consisted of elders and of the best, or most distinguished, among the priests;

τὸν δὲ λίσσοντο γέροντες
Αἰτωλῶν, πέμπον δὲ θεῶν ἱερῆας ἀρίστους. Il. ix. 574.

Now, the word Αἰτωλὸς, I apprehend, indicates an Hellenic race, for Tydeus is Αἰτώλιος; and it is worth notice, that in this passage the elders are called Ætolian, but not the priests.

Again, this event took place during the reign of Œneus, two generations before the Trojan war[370 - Il. ix. 535.]. At that time the Hellenic influence was quite recent in Middle and in Southern Greece. The family of Sisyphus had indeed arrived there at least two generations before, but it disappeared, and it had never risen to great power. It was the date of Augeias, of Neleus, and of Pelops; all of them, apparently, the first of their respective families in Peloponnesus. So again the name Portheus, assigned to the father of Œneus, probably marks him as the first Hellenic occupant of the country.

Plato observes, that new settlers might naturally remain for a time without religious institutions[371 - Legg. vi. 7.] of their own.

The Hellenes, then, had recently come into Ætolia at the time, and even on this ground were less likely to have had priests of their own institution. But it is not to be supposed that, finding a hierarchy among the Pelasgian tribes, devoted to the worship of such deities (Minerva and Apollo for example) as they themselves acknowledged, they would extirpate such a body. The most probable supposition is, that it would continue in all cases for a time. The person of Chryses, the priest of Apollo, was respected, at least for the moment, even by Agamemnon[372 - Il. i. 28.] in his displeasure. Fearless of his threats, the injured priest immediately appealed to his god for aid. We cannot doubt that interests thus defended would be generally left intact. Still, as priests were, in the language of political economy, unproductive labourers, and as they seem to have held their offices not by descent but by election, we can easily perceive a road, other than that of violence, to the extinction of the order among a people that set no store by its services.

There is yet another place, in which the name is mentioned among the Greeks. It is in the Assembly of the First Iliad, held while the plague is raging. Achilles says, ‘Let us inquire of some prophet, or priest, or interpreter of dreams (for dreams too are from Jupiter), who will tell us, why Apollo is so much exasperated[373 - Il. i. 62.].’ But the allusion here seems plainly to be to Chryses, who had himself visited the camp, and had appeared with the insignia of his priestly office in a previous Assembly of the Greeks[374 - Il. i. 15.]. Being now in possession of the whole open country, they of course had it in their power to consult either him or any other Trojan priest not within the walls. We cannot, therefore, argue from this passage, that priesthood was a recognised Hellenic institution at the period.

In the Odyssey, we find Menelaus engaged in the solemn rites of a great nuptial feast; and Nestor in like manner offering sacrifice to Neptune, his titular ancestor, in the presence of thousands of the people. In neither of these cases is there any reference to a priest: and on the following day Nestor with his sons offers a new sacrifice, of which the fullest details are given.

Again, had there been priests among the Homeric Greeks, it is hardly possible but that we must have had some glimpse of them in Ithaca, where the order of the community and the whole course of Greek life are so clearly laid open.

An important piece of negative evidence to the same effect is afforded by the great invocation of Achilles in the Sixteenth Iliad. It will be remembered, that we there find the rude highland tribe of the Helli in possession of the country where Dodona was seated, together with the worship of the Pelasgian Jupiter; and themselves apparently exercising the ministry of the god. Now that ministry was not priesthood, but interpretation; for they are ὑποφῆται, not ἱερῆες[375 - Il. xvi. 235.].

It therefore appears clear, that the Hellenic tribes of Homer’s day did not acknowledge a professional priesthood of their own; that there was no priest in the Greek armament before Troy; that the priest was not a constituent part of ordinary Greek communities: and that, if he was any where to be found in the Homeric times, it was as a relic, and in connection with the old Pelasgian establishments of the country.

At a later period, when wealth and splendour had increased, and when the increased demand for them extended also to religious rites, the priesthood became a regular institution of Greece. It is reckoned by Aristotle, in the Politics, among the necessary elements of a State; while he seems also to regard it as the natural employment of those, who are disqualified by age from the performance of more active duties to the public, either in war or in council. The priest was, even in Homer’s time, a distinctly privileged person. Like other people, he married and had children: but his burdens were not of the heaviest. He would live well on sacrifices, and the proceeds of glebe-land: and it is curious, that Maron the priest had the very best wine of which we hear in the poems[376 - Od. ix. 205.]. The priest formed no part of the teaching power of the community, either in this or in later ages. Döllinger makes the observation[377 - Döllinger, Heid. u. Jud. iv. 1.], that Plutarch points out as the sources of religious instruction three classes of men, among whom the priests are not even included. They are (1) the poets, (2) the lawgivers, and (3) the philosophers: to whom Dio Chrysostom adds the painters and sculptors. So that Isocrates may well observe, that the priesthood is anybody’s affair. Plato[378 - Plat. Legg. vi. 7. (ii. 759.)] in the Νόμοι requires his priests, and their parents too, to be free from blemish and from crime: but carefully appoints a separate class of ἐξηγηταὶ, to superintend and interpret the laws of religion; as well as stewards, who are to have charge of the consecrated property.

The priest of the heroic age would however appear to have slightly shared in the office of the μάντις, although the μάντις had no special concern with the offering of sacrifice. The inspection of victims would fall to priests, almost of course, in a greater or a less degree; and there is some evidence before us, that they were entitled to interpret the divine will. It is furnished by the speech of Achilles[379 - Il. i. 62.], which appears to imply some professional capacity of this kind: and, for Troy at least, by the declaration[380 - Il. xxiv. 22.] of Priam, who mentions priests among the persons, that might have been employed to report to him a communication from heaven.

We have now seen the case of priesthood among the Greeks. With the Trojans it is quite otherwise. We are introduced, at the very beginning of the Iliad, to Chryses[381 - Il. i. 23.] the priest (ἱερεὺς) of Apollo. In the fifth Iliad we have a Trojan[382 - Il. v. 9.], Dares, who is priest of Vulcan; and we have also Dolopion, who, as ἀρητὴρ[383 - Ibid. 76.] of the Scamander, filled an office apparently equivalent. Chryses the priest is also called an ἀρητήρ[384 - Il. i. 11.]; and though, on the other hand, it was the duty of Leiodes in the Odyssey to offer[385 - Od. xxii. 322.] prayer on behalf of the Suitors, yet he is never termed ἀρητήρ. In the Sixth Iliad appears Theano, wife of Antenor, and priestess of Minerva[386 - Il. vi. 298.]. And in the Sixteenth, we have Onetor[387 - Il. xvi. 604.], priest of Idæan Jupiter. Again, while Eumæus in the Odyssey does not recognise the priest among the Greek professions, but substitutes the prophet, Priam, on the contrary, in the Twenty-fourth Iliad, says he would not have obeyed the injunction to go to the Greek camp if conveyed to him by any mortal, of such as are in these professions[388 - Il. xxiv. 221.],

ἢ οἳ μάντιές εἰσι, θυοσκόοι, ἢ ἱερῆες,

where it might be questioned, whether μάντις and θυοσκόος are different persons, or whether he speaks of the μάντις θυοσκόος; but in either case it is equally clear that he names the priest, ἱερεὺς, apart from either. The speech of Mentes, in Od. i. 202, probably suffices to draw the line between the μάντις and the θυοσκόος.

It further appears that among the allies of Troy, as well as in the country, the priest was known; for in the Ninth Odyssey we find Maron, son of Euanthes the priest of Apollo at Ismarus[389 - Od. ix. 196-9.], among the Cicones. The city they inhabited was sacked by Ulysses on his way from Troy, and on this account we must infer that, as they were allies of Troy (Il. ii. 846), so likewise they belonged to the family of Pelasgian tribes.

To these priests, personally engaged in the service of the deities, a personal veneration, and an exemption from military service, appear to have attached, which were not enjoyed by the μάντιες. This is plainly developed in the case of Chryses. The offence is not that of carrying off a captive, for there could be no guilt in the act, as such matters were then considered, but rather honour: it is the insult offered to Apollo in the person of his servant, by subjecting his daughter to the common lot of women of all ranks, including the highest, that draws down a frightful vengeance on the army. So, again, the priest never fought; Dolopion, Dares, and Onetor, all become known to us through their having sons in the army, whose parentage is mentioned. And as to the priest Maron, Ulysses says he was spared from a feeling of awe towards the god, in whose wooded grove, or portion, he resided[390 - Ibid. 199-201.]:

οὕνεκά μιν σὺν παιδὶ περισχόμεθ’ ἠδὲ γυναικὶ
ἁζόμενοι· ᾤκει γὰρ ἐν ἄλσεϊ δενδρήεντι
Φοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος.

But it does not appear that the μάντις, though he was endowed with a particular gift, bore, in respect of it, such a character, as would suffice to separate him from ordinary civil duties, and to make him, like the priest, a clearly privileged person.

Upon the other hand, we should not omit to notice that we are told in the case of Theano, though she was of high birth and the wife of Antenor, that she was made priestess by the Trojan people. The same fact is probably indicated in the case of Dolopion, who, we are told, had been made or appointed ἀρητὴρ to Scamander (ἀρητὴρ ἐτέτυκτο Il. v. 77). And the appearance of the sons of priests in the field appears to show, that there was nothing like hereditary succession in the order; which was replenished, we may probably conclude, by selections having the authority or the assent of the public voice. Thus the body was popularly constituted, and was in thorough harmony with the national character. It does not, on that account, constitute a less important element in the community, but rather the reverse.