Atheism in Pagan Antiquity Part 1

Atheism in Pagan Antiquity.

by A. B. Drachmann.

PREFACE

The present treatise originally appeared in Danish as a University publication (_Kjbenhavns Universitets Festskrift_, November 1919). In submitting it to the English public, I wish to acknowledge my profound indebtedness to Mr. G. F. Hill of the British Museum, who not only suggested the English edition, but also with untiring kindness has subjected the translation, as originally made by Miss Ingeborg Andersen, M.A. of Copenhagen, to a painstaking and most valuable revision.

For an account of the previous treatments of the subject, as well as of the method employed in my investigation, the reader is referred to the introductory remarks which precede the Notes.

A. B. DRACHMANN.

CHARLOTTENLUND, _July 1922_.

INTRODUCTION

The present inquiry is the outcome of a request to write an article on "Atheism" for a projected dictionary of the religious history of cla.s.sical antiquity. On going through the sources I found that the subject might well deserve a more comprehensive treatment than the scope of a dictionary would allow. It is such a treatment that I have attempted in the following pages.

A difficulty that occurred at the very beginning of the inquiry was how to define the notion of atheism. Nowadays the term is taken to designate the att.i.tude which denies every idea of G.o.d. Even antiquity sometimes referred to atheism in this sense; but an inquiry dealing with the history of religion could not start from a definition of that kind. It would have to keep in view, not the philosophical notion of G.o.d, but the conceptions of the G.o.ds as they appear in the religion of antiquity. Hence I came to define atheism in Pagan antiquity as the point of view which _denies the existence of the ancient G.o.ds_. It is in this sense that the word will be used in the following inquiry.

Even though we disregard philosophical atheism, the definition is somewhat narrow; for in antiquity mere denial of the existence of the G.o.ds of popular belief was not the only att.i.tude which was designated as atheism.

But it has the advantage of starting from the conception of the ancient G.o.ds that may be said to have finally prevailed. In the sense in which the word is used here we are nowadays all of us atheists. We do not believe that the G.o.ds whom the Greeks and the Romans wors.h.i.+pped and believed in exist or have ever existed; we hold them to be productions of the human imagination to which nothing real corresponds. This view has nowadays become so ingrained in us and appears so self-evident, that we find it difficult to imagine that it has not been prevalent through long ages; nay, it is perhaps a widely diffused a.s.sumption that even in antiquity educated and unbiased persons held the same view of the religion of their people as we do. In reality both a.s.sumptions are erroneous: our "atheism"

in regard to ancient paganism is of recent date, and in antiquity itself downright denial of the existence of the G.o.ds was a comparatively rare phenomenon. The demonstration of this fact, rather than a consideration of the various intermediate positions taken up by the thinkers of antiquity in their desire to avoid a complete rupture with the traditional ideas of the G.o.ds, has been one of the chief purposes of this inquiry.

Though the definition of atheism set down here might seem to be clear and unequivocal, and though I have tried to adhere strictly to it, cases have unavoidably occurred that were difficult to cla.s.sify. The most embarra.s.sing are those which involve a reinterpretation of the conception of the G.o.ds, _i.e._ which, while acknowledging that there is some reality corresponding to the conception, yet define this reality as essentially different from it. Moreover, the acknowledgment of a certain group of G.o.ds (the celestial bodies, for instance) combined with the rejection of others, may create difficulties in defining the notion of atheism; in practice, however, this doctrine generally coincides with the former, by which the G.o.ds are explained away. On the whole it would hardly be just, in a field of inquiry like the present, to expect or require absolutely clearly defined boundary-lines; transition forms will always occur.

The persons of whom it is related that they denied the existence of the ancient G.o.ds are in themselves few, and they all belong to the highest level of culture; by far the greater part of them are simply professional philosophers. Hence the inquiry will almost exclusively have to deal with philosophers and philosophical schools and their doctrines; of religion as exhibited in the ma.s.ses, as a social factor, it will only treat by exception. But in its purpose it is concerned with the history of religion, not with philosophy; therefore-in accordance with the definition of its object-it will deal as little as possible with the purely philosophical notions of G.o.d that have nothing to do with popular religion. What it aims at ill.u.s.trating is a certain-if you like, the negative-aspect of ancient religion. But its result, if it can be sufficiently established, will not be without importance for the understanding of the positive religious sense of antiquity. If you want to obtain some idea of the hold a certain religion had on its adherents, it is not amiss to know something about the extent to which it dominated even the strata of society most exposed to influences that went against it.

It might seem more natural, in dealing with atheism in antiquity, to adopt the definition current among the ancients themselves. That this method would prove futile the following investigation will, I hope, make sufficiently evident; antiquity succeeded as little as we moderns in connecting any clear and unequivocal idea with the words that signify "denial of G.o.d." On the other hand, it is, of course, impossible to begin at all except from the traditions of antiquity about denial and deniers.

Hence the course of the inquiry will be, first to make clear what antiquity understood by denial of the G.o.ds and what persons it designated as deniers, and then to examine in how far these persons were atheists in our sense of the word.

CHAPTER I

Atheism and atheist are words formed from Greek roots and with Greek derivative endings. Nevertheless they are not Greek; their formation is not consonant with Greek usage. In Greek they said _atheos_ and _atheotes_; to these the English words unG.o.dly and unG.o.dliness correspond rather closely. In exactly the same way as unG.o.dly, _atheos_ was used as an expression of severe censure and moral condemnation; this use is an old one, and the oldest that can be traced. Not till later do we find it employed to denote a certain philosophical creed; we even meet with philosophers bearing _atheos_ as a regular surname. We know very little of the men in question; but it can hardly be doubted that _atheos_, as applied to them, implied not only a denial of the G.o.ds of popular belief, but a denial of G.o.ds in the widest sense of the word, or Atheism as it is nowadays understood.

In this case the word is more particularly a philosophical term. But it was used in a similar sense also in popular language, and corresponds then closely to the English "denier of G.o.d," denoting a person who denies the G.o.ds of his people and State. From the popular point of view the interest, of course, centred in those only, not in the exponents of philosophical theology. Thus we find the word employed both of theoretical denial of the G.o.ds (atheism in our sense) and of practical denial of the G.o.ds, as in the case of the adherents of monotheism, Jews and Christians.

Atheism, in the theoretical as well as the practical sense of the word, was, according to the ancient conception of law, always a crime; but in practice it was treated in different ways, which varied both according to the period in question and according to the more or less dangerous nature of the threat it offered to established religion. It is only as far as Athens and Imperial Rome are concerned that we have any definite knowledge of the law and the judicial procedure on this point; a somewhat detailed account of the state of things in Athens and Rome cannot be dispensed with here.

In the criminal law of Athens we meet with the term _asebeia_-literally: impiety or disrespect towards the G.o.ds. As an established formula of accusation of _asebeia_ existed, legislation must have dealt with the subject; but how it was defined we do not know. The word itself conveys the idea that the law particularly had offences against public wors.h.i.+p in view; and this is confirmed by the fact that a number of such offences-from the felling of sacred trees to the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries-were treated as _asebeia_. When, in the next place, towards the close of the fifth century B.C., free-thinking began to a.s.sume forms which seemed dangerous to the religion of the State, theoretical denial of the G.o.ds was also included under _asebeia_. From about the beginning of the Peloponnesian War to the close of the fourth century B.C., there are on record a number of prosecutions of philosophers who were tried and condemned for denial of the G.o.ds. The indictment seems in most cases-the trial of Socrates is the only one of which we know details-to have been on the charge of _asebeia_, and the procedure proper thereto seems to have been employed, though there was no proof or a.s.sertion of the accused having offended against public wors.h.i.+p; as to Socrates, we know the opposite to have been the case; he wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.ds like any other good citizen. This extension of the conception of _asebeia_ to include theoretical denial of the G.o.ds no doubt had no foundation in law; this is amongst other things evident from the fact that it was necessary, in order to convict Anaxagoras, to pa.s.s a special public resolution in virtue of which his free-thinking theories became indictable. The law presumably dated from a time when theoretical denial of the G.o.ds lay beyond the horizon of legislation. Nevertheless, in the trial of Socrates it is simply taken for granted that denial of the G.o.ds is a capital crime, and that not only on the side of the prosecution, but also on the side of the defence: the trial only turns on a question of fact, the legal basis is taken for granted. So inveterate, then, at this time was the conception of the unlawful nature of the denial of the G.o.ds among the people of Athens.

In the course of the fourth century B.C. several philosophers were accused of denial of the G.o.ds or blasphemy; but after the close of the century we hear no more of such trials. To be sure, our knowledge of the succeeding centuries, when Athens was but a provincial town, is far less copious than of the days of its greatness; nevertheless, it is beyond doubt that the practice in regard to theoretical denial of the G.o.ds was changed. A philosopher like Carneades, for instance, might, in view of his sceptical standpoint, just as well have been convicted of _asebeia_ as Protagoras, who was convicted because he had declared that he did not know whether the G.o.ds existed or not; and as to such a process against Carneades, tradition would not have remained silent. Instead, we learn that he was employed as the trusted representative of the State on most important diplomatic missions. It is evident that Athens had arrived at the point of view that the theoretical denial of the G.o.ds might be tolerated, whereas the law, of course, continued to protect public wors.h.i.+p.

In Rome they did not possess, as in Athens, a general statute against religious offences; there were only special provisions, and they were, moreover, few and insufficient. This defect, however, was remedied by the vigorous police authority with which the Roman magistrates were invested.

In Rome severe measures were often taken against movements which threatened the Roman official wors.h.i.+p, but it was done at the discretion of the administration and not according to hard-and-fast rules; hence the practice was somewhat varying, and a certain arbitrariness inevitable.

No example is known from Rome of action taken against theoretical denial of the G.o.ds corresponding to the trials of the philosophers in Athens. The main cause of this was, no doubt, that free-thinking in the fifth century B.C. invaded h.e.l.las, and specially Athens, like a flood which threatened to overthrow everything; in Rome, on the other hand, Greek philosophy made its way in slowly and gradually, and this took place at a time when in the country of its origin it had long ago found a _modus vivendi_ with popular religion and was acknowledged as harmless to the established wors.h.i.+p. The more practical outlook of the Romans may perhaps also have had something to say in the matter: they were rather indifferent to theoretical speculations, whereas they were not to be trifled with when their national inst.i.tutions were concerned.

In consequence of this point of view the Roman government first came to deal with denial of the G.o.ds as a breach of law when confronted with the two monotheistic religions which invaded the Empire from the East. That which distinguished Jews and Christians from Pagans was not that they denied the existence of the Pagan G.o.ds-the Christians, at any rate, did not do this as a rule-but that they denied that they were G.o.ds, and therefore refused to wors.h.i.+p them. They were practical, not theoretical deniers. The tolerance which the Roman government showed towards all foreign creeds and the result of which in imperial times was, practically speaking, freedom of religion over the whole Empire, could not be extended to the Jews and the Christians; for it was in the last resort based on reciprocity, on the fact that wors.h.i.+p of the Egyptian or Persian G.o.ds did not exclude wors.h.i.+p of the Roman ones. Every convert, on the other hand, won over to Judaism or Christianity was _eo ipso_ an apostate from the Roman religion, an _atheos_ according to the ancient conception. Hence, as soon as such religions began to spread, they const.i.tuted a serious danger to the established religion, and the Roman government intervened. Judaism and Christianity were not treated quite alike; in this connexion details are of no interest, but certain princ.i.p.al features must be dwelt on as significant of the att.i.tude of antiquity towards denial of the G.o.ds. To simplify matters I confine myself to Christianity, where things are less complicated.

The Christians were generally designated as _atheoi_, as deniers of the G.o.ds, and the objection against them was precisely their denial of the Pagan G.o.ds, not their religion as such. When the Christian, summoned before the Roman magistrates, agreed to sacrifice to the Pagan G.o.ds (among them, the Emperor) he was acquitted; he was not punished for previously having attended Christian services, and it seems that he was not even required to undertake not to do so in future. Only if he refused to sacrifice, was he punished. We cannot ask for a clearer proof that it is apostasy as such, denial of the G.o.ds, against which action is taken. It is in keeping with this that, at any rate under the earlier Empire, no attempt was made to seek out the Christians at their a.s.semblies, to hinder their services or the like; it was considered sufficient to take steps when information was laid.

The punishments meted out were different, in that they were left solely to the discretion of the magistrates. But they were generally severe: forced labour in mines and capital punishment were quite common. No discrimination was made between Roman citizens and others belonging to the Empire, but all were treated alike; that the Roman citizen could not undergo capital punishment without appeal to the Emperor does not affect the principle. This procedure has really no expressly formulated basis in law; the Roman penal code did not, as mentioned above, take cognizance of denial of the G.o.ds. Nevertheless, the sentences on the Christians were considered by the Pagans of the earlier time as a matter of course, the justice of which was not contested, and the procedure of the government was in principle the same under humane and conscientious rulers like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius as under tyrants like Nero and Domitian. Here again it is evident how firmly rooted in the mind of antiquity was the conviction that denial of the G.o.ds was a capital offence.

To resume what has here been set forth concerning the att.i.tude of ancient society to atheism: it is, in the first place, evident that the frequently mentioned tolerance of polytheism was not extended to those who denied its G.o.ds; in fact, it was applied only to those who acknowledged them even if they wors.h.i.+pped others besides. But the a.s.sertion of this principle of intolerance varied greatly in practice according to whether it was a question of theoretical denial of the G.o.ds-atheism in our sense-or practical refusal to wors.h.i.+p the Pagan G.o.ds. Against atheism the community took action only during a comparatively short period, and, as far as we know, only in a single place. The latter limitation is probably explained not only by the defectiveness of tradition, but also by the fact that in Athens free-thinking made its appearance about the year 400 as a general phenomenon and therefore attracted the attention of the community. Apart from this case, the philosophical denier of G.o.d was left in peace all through antiquity, in the same way as the individual citizen was not interfered with, as a rule, when he, for one reason or another, refrained from taking part in the wors.h.i.+p of the deities. On the other hand, as soon as practical refusal to believe in the G.o.ds, apostasy from the established religion, a.s.sumed dangerous proportions, ruthless severity was exercised against it.

The discrimination, however, made in the treatment of the theoretical and practical denial of the G.o.ds is certainly not due merely to consideration of the more or less isolated occurrence of the phenomenon; it is rooted at the same time in the very nature of ancient religion. The essence of ancient polytheism is the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds, that is, cultus; of a doctrine of divinity properly speaking, of theology, there were only slight rudiments, and there was no idea of any elaborate dogmatic system.

Quite different att.i.tudes were accordingly a.s.sumed towards the philosopher, who held his own opinions of the G.o.ds, but took part in the public wors.h.i.+p like anybody else; and towards the monotheist, to whom the whole of the Pagan wors.h.i.+p was an abomination, which one should abstain from at any cost, and which one should prevail on others to give up for the sake of their own good in this life or the next.

In the literature of antiquity we meet with sporadic statements to the effect that certain philosophers bore the epithet _atheos_ as a sort of surname; and in a few of the later authors of antiquity we even find lists of men-almost all of them philosophers-who denied the existence of the G.o.ds. Furthermore, we possess information about certain persons-these also, if Jews and Christians are excluded, are nearly all of them philosophers-having been accused of, and eventually convicted of, denial of the G.o.ds; some of these are not in our lists. Information of this kind will, as remarked above, be taken as the point of departure for an investigation of atheism in antiquity. For practical reasons, however, it is reasonable to include some philosophers whom antiquity did not designate as atheists, and who did not come into conflict with official religion, but of whom it has been maintained in later times that they did not believe in the existence of the G.o.ds of popular belief. Thus we arrive at the following list, in which those who were denoted as _atheoi_ are italicised and those who were accused of impiety are marked with an asterisk:

Xenophanes.

*Anaxagoras.

_ Diogenes of Apollonia._ _ Hippo of Rhegium._ *_Protagoras._ _ Prodicus._ _ Critias._ *_Diagoras of Melos._ *Socrates.

Antisthenes.

Plato.

*Aristotle.

Theophrastus.

*Stilpo.

*_Theodorus._ *_Bion._ _ Epicurus._ _ Euhemerus._

The persons are put down in chronological order. This order will in some measure be preserved in the following survey; but regard for the continuity of the tradition of the doctrine will entail certain deviations. It will, that is to say, be natural to divide the material into four groups: the pre-Socratic philosophy; the Sophists; Socrates and the Socratics; h.e.l.lenistic philosophy. Each of these groups has a philosophical character of its own, and it will be seen that this character also makes itself felt in the relation to the G.o.ds of the popular belief, even though we here meet with phenomena of more isolated occurrence. The four groups must be supplemented by a fifth, a survey of the conditions in Imperial Rome. Atheists of this period are not found in our lists; but a good deal of old Pagan free-thinking survives in the first centuries of our era, and also the epithet _atheoi_ was bestowed generally on the Christians and sometimes on the Jews, and if only for this reason they cannot be altogether pa.s.sed by in this survey.

CHAPTER II

The paganism of antiquity is based on a primitive religion, _i.e._ it is originally in the main h.o.m.ogeneous with the religions nowadays met with in the so-called primitive peoples. It underwent, however, a long process of evolution parallel with and conditioned by the development of Greek and later Roman civilisation. This evolution carried ancient religion far away from its primitive starting-point; it produced numerous new formations, above all a huge system of anthropomorphic G.o.ds, each with a definite character and personality of his own. This development is the result of an interplay of numerous factors: changing social and economical conditions evoked the desire for new religious ideas; the influence of other peoples made itself felt; poetry and the fine arts contributed largely to the moulding of these ideas; conscious reflection, too, arose early and modified original simplicity. But what is characteristic of the whole process is the fact that it went on continuously without breaks or sudden bounds. Nowhere in ancient religion, as far as we can trace it, did a powerful religious personality strike in with a radical transformation, with a direct rejection of old ideas and dogmatic accentuation of new ones. The result of this quiet growth was an exceedingly heterogeneous organism, in which remains of ancient, highly primitive customs and ideas were retained along with other elements of a far more advanced character.

Such a state of things need not in itself trouble the general consciousness; it is a well-established fact that in religion the most divergent elements are not incompatible. Nevertheless, among the Greeks, with their strong proclivity to reflective thought, criticism early arose against the traditional conceptions of the G.o.ds. The typical method of this criticism is that the higher conceptions of the G.o.ds are used against the lower. From the earliest times the Greek religious sense favoured absoluteness of definition where the G.o.ds are concerned; even in Homer they are not only eternal and happy, but also all-powerful and all-knowing. Corresponding expressions of a moral character are hardly to be found in Homer; but as early as Hesiod and Solon we find, at any rate, Zeus as the representative of heavenly justice. With such definitions a large number of customs of public wors.h.i.+p and, above all, a number of stories about the G.o.ds, were in violent contradiction; thus we find even so old and so pious a poet as Pindar occasionally rejecting mythical stories which he thinks at variance with the sublime nature of the G.o.ds.

This form of criticism of popular beliefs is continued through the whole of antiquity; it is found not only in philosophers and philosophically educated laymen, but appears spontaneously in everybody of a reflective mind; its best known representative in earlier times is Euripides. Typical of its popular form is in the first place its casualness; it is directed against details which at the moment attract attention, while it leaves other things alone which in principle are quite as offensive, but either not very obviously so, or else not relevant to the matter in hand.

Secondly, it is nave: it takes the G.o.ds of the popular belief for granted essentially as they are; it does not raise the crucial question whether the popular belief is not quite justified in attributing to these higher beings all kinds of imperfection, and wrong in attributing perfection to them, and still less if such beings, whether they are defined as perfect or imperfect, exist at all. It follows that as a whole this form of criticism is outside the scope of our inquiry.

Still, there is one single personality in early Greek thought who seems to have proceeded still further on the lines of this nave criticism, namely, Xenophanes of Colophon. He is generally included amongst the philosophers, and rightly in so far as he initiated a philosophical speculation which was of the highest importance in the development of Greek scientific thought. But in the present connexion it would, nevertheless, be misleading to place Xenophanes among those philosophers who came into conflict with the popular belief because their conception of Existence was based on science. The starting-point for his criticism of the popular belief is in fact not philosophical, but religious; he ranks with personalities like Pindar and Euripides-he was also a verse-writer himself, with considerable poetic gift-and is only distinguished from them by the greater consistency of his thought. Hence, the correct course is to deal with him in this place as the only eminent thinker in antiquity about whom it is known that-starting from popular belief and religious motives-he reached a standpoint which at any rate with some truth may be designated as atheism.

Xenophanes lived in the latter part of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth centuries B.C. (according to his own statement he reached an age of more than ninety years). He was an itinerant singer who travelled about and recited poetry, presumably not merely his own but also that of others.

In his own poems he severely attacked the manner in which Homer and Hesiod, the most famous poets of Greece, had represented the G.o.ds: they had attributed to them everything which in man's eyes is outrageous and reprehensible-theft, adultery and deception of one another. Their accounts of the fights of the G.o.ds against t.i.tans and Giants he denounced as "inventions of the ancients." But he did not stop at that: "Men believe that the G.o.ds are born, are clothed and shaped and speak like themselves"; "if oxen and horses and lions could draw and paint, they would delineate their G.o.ds in their own image"; "the Negroes believe that their G.o.ds are flat-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair." Thus he attacked directly the popular belief that the G.o.ds are anthropomorphic, and his arguments testify that he clearly realised that men create their G.o.ds in their own image. On another main point, too, he was in direct opposition to the religious ideas of his time: he rejected Divination, the belief that the G.o.ds imparted the secrets of the future to men-which was deemed a mainstay of the belief in the existence of the G.o.ds. As a positive counterpart to the anthropomorphic G.o.ds, Xenophanes set up a philosophical conception of G.o.d: G.o.d must be One, Eternal, Unchangeable and identical with himself in every way (all sight, all hearing and all mind). This deity, according to the explicit statements of our earliest sources, he identified with the universe.