Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

CHAPTER X.
THE OLYMPIANS.
ATOnON A AN e'(H e'( TIC {k\H (J>lAeTN TON Af&.
oy r&P Toyc Ty4>^ n ^c eKefNoyc oyAe Toyc nr&NTAC &p\eiN &AA& ton
TTATGpA GecON KAI ANOpcOTTGON.
In the Peace 1 of Aristophanes, when Trygaeus is trying to win
Hermes to his side, he tells him that there is a most serious and
alarming plot being hatched against all the gods. Hermes asks
what it is all about and Trygaeus answers
'Why there's Selene and that old villain Helios
Have been plotting away against you for ever such a time,
To betray Hellas into the hands of the barbarians.'
Hermes asks why they should do that and Trygaeus explains
'Why, by Zeus, it's because
We sacrifice to you, but those barbarians
To them, and of course that's why they'd like
To ruin us altogether, that they may get
For themselves the feasts that ought to belong to the gods.'
The 'barbarians' on whose behalf the Moon and Sun are
plotting are, of course, the Persians. Herodotus 2 in an instructive
passage tells us of the manner of their worship.
The Persians to my knowledge observe the following customs.
It is not their habit to set up images, temples and altars; rather they
charge them who do so with folly, and this, I think, is because they do not
hold like the Greeks that the gods are of human natures. It is their practice
to ascend to the tops of mountains, and there they do sacrifice to Zeus, and
they call the whole circle of heaven Zeus (Ala). They sacrifice to the sun
and the moon, to the earth and to fire and water and the winds. To these
and these only have they sacrificed from the beginning.
Herodotus, like Trygaeus, clearly thought that the nature-gods
of the Persians were quite distinct from the human-nature gods of
the Greeks. He could not possibly, at his stage of thinking,
realize that all gods are, in the sense explained in the last chapter,
1 v. 403 ff.
2 I. 131 ...on ouk &vdpw!ro(pvea.$ ivbixiaav tovs deous Kara wep oi'FjXXrjves elvai...