Legalism and Superstition; Hell

Greek Popular Religion, by Martin P. Nilsson, [1940], at sacred-texts.com

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LEGALISM AND SUPERSTITION; HELL

I have spoken of the religion of the countryside. Its cults certainly do not exhibit the gods in their highest aspects, nor do the rustic customs belong to the higher strata of religion. But they are near the bedrock of primitive ideas and they have survived the high gods, lasting on into our own day in Greece, as very similar forms of religion have in other European countries. I have spoken also of the religion of the townspeople. I have emphasized the fact that when a great number of people came together in a town and engaged in industry and commerce, their mode of life was profoundly changed as a result of their separation from nature and the cultivation of the soil and that as a consequence their religious needs and outlook also changed. There were other religious movements which were not a result of the difference between town and country, although they were connected with social conditions. This is especially true of the early age before the Persian Wars. I have said that this was, in part at least, an age of poverty and social distress. On the other hand it was an age of brisk and diversified activity, of sea voyages and colonization, of discoveries and of progress in all directions. The foundations of Greek science were laid at this time. Religion, too, was involved in these changes and developments. The new movements in Greek religion originated in this age, and they did not leave popular religion untouched.

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In times of distress and need man is prone to seek relief and consolation in religion. The hardships of the age we are considering certainly intensified its religious movements and helped to spread certain ideas widely among the people. There are two main streams of contrasting ideas which appear in all religion, including that of the Greeks. Man may seek union with God in mystic and ecstatic forms of religion, or he may seek to make peace with God and win His favor by fulfilling His commandments to the last item. The latter is legalism. The mystic and ecstatic movement is well known and has often been expounded, as in the admirable and much read book by Erwin Rohde. ¹ Its herald was Dionysus, whose popularity was based on the longing of humanity for mystic and ecstatic experiences. The violent diffusion of the Dionysiac orgies took place in so early an age that it has left traces only in myths and cults. When our historical information begins the Dionysiac frenzy had already been tamed by the joint activity of the state and the Delphic oracle. Mysticism was not dead, only repressed, and it took refuge in certain religious movements of an almost sectarian character, especially Orphism. Although these movements seem to have been widespread in the early age, they cannot be called popular in the strict sense of the word, and I must pass over them here. ²

There were some very curious men, characteristic of this age, who were not unlike the medicine men of primitive peoples. They went around fasting and doing wonders, and their souls were able to leave their bodies, make journeys, and enter them again. At the same time they were purificatory priests connected with Apollo. They were mystics, of course,

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but they were also associated with legalism, for purification from trespasses is a necessary complement of legalism and is imposed by it.

The legalistic tendency has been much less noticed than the mystical and ecstatic, but it is at least as important, and it finally carried the day in its higher, political forms. Here I propose to treat of its popular forms, which were in great part suppressed. We turn to the oldest work of Greek poetry next to Homer, Hesiod's Works and Days. ³ Hesiod was a peasant from a miserable village in Boeotia, although he had learned the minstrel's profession. He wrote for his fellows, giving them good counsel in regard to their occupation and their life. He passionately preaches labor, by which man earns his livelihood, and justice, which allows him to enjoy its fruits. It is interesting to see that the wisdom of Hesiod is often expressed in the same forms as the wisdom of the peasants of other nations. He has a like predilection for proverbs, maxims, and enigmatical expressions; for example, he calls the snail "he who carries his house." He takes notice of the stars, the migrating birds, and other indications of the change of the seasons.

It is not this, however, which is of interest in this connection, but his rules for the religious life and for the conduct of man, two things which for him are inseparable. There are in his writings expressions of a piety pervading the life of man such as is seldom found among the Greeks. He prescribes a prayer to Demeter and Zeus in the earth when the hand is laid to the plow to begin the autumn sowing, in order that the ears of corn may be full and heavy. This is a hallowing of labor which is not far from Protestant ideas. He prescribes the bringing of animal sacrifices to the gods in a chaste and pure manner according to each man's ability and

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the pouring out of libations and offering of frankincense in the morning when one rises and in the evening when one retires. This seems like ardent piety. But ritualism, which is only another name for legalism, is much more prominent in Hesiod. He gives rules for good behavior, mixed with religious rules. These are on a superstitious level, being characterized by a fear of offending gods or daemons. The words cited above, which testify to a genuine piety, are followed by a collection of maxims concerning intercourse with friends, neighbors, and relatives. At the end of the poem there is another collection of maxims beginning with more rules. You must not cross a river without praying while looking into its water, or without washing your hands, for the gods are angry with those who cross a river without washing away their wickedness and washing their hands. You must not take your food from a vessel which has not been consecrated. Ordinary rules of purity are numerous, for example the prohibition against pouring out a libation to Zeus with unwashed hands. There are also a number of superstitious rules, most of which are well known from modern folklore: you may not cut your nails at a sacrificial meal, a boy may not sit down on that which it is not permitted to move, a man may not bathe in a bath for women.

Such prescriptions occur elsewhere. They were especially taken up by the exoteric school of the Pythagoreans, the so-called akousmatikoi. ⁴ Pious and ritual and superstitious and merely secular rules of conduct are blended without any distinction. Especially interesting from our point of view is the addition to Hesiod's poem, which is properly called The Days. It is generally recognized that it was not composed by Hesiod himself, and this is probably true of the second collection of maxims also. But the date of composition is not

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much later, and from our point of view the diversity of authorship does not matter. On the contrary it is valuable because it proves that the same train of thought was common and that the same ideas were widely disseminated. The Days enumerates most of the days of the lunar month, though not all of them, and characterizes them in accordance with the maxim that a day is sometimes a mother, sometimes a stepmother. The Days prescribes on which days certain of the tasks of agriculture and stockbreeding should be performed and describes the significance of the days for family life and birth. It is very similar to the popular astrological predictions which are found in late antiquity, printed in handbooks (Bauernpraktik) and not yet completely forgotten. We do not include these things in religion. In late antiquity it was otherwise, for these predictions are part of astrology, which in that age was a dominant form of religion, culminating in sun worship. The calendar of lucky and unlucky days in Hesiod also belongs to a religious system, probably of Babylonian origin. Its religious importance is proved by the fact that certain days of the lunar month are designated as birthdays of the gods. Two such birthdays are mentioned in Hesiod.

About the same time the calendars of the Greek states were regulated, probably at the instigation of the Delphic oracle. ⁵ The eight year intercalary cycle was introduced, and the festivals were fixed on certain days of the lunar month. This regulation of the calendar is connected with the belief in the different virtues of the days of the lunar month, but there is a notable difference. Apollo paid attention to the cult of the gods only. The people wanted the guidance of religion in all matters, even those belonging to practical life. Apollo did not satisfy this demand. He cared only for the cult.

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According to our notions, much of this has little or nothing to do with religion, but all these rules are to a certain degree cognate. They are an outcome of legalism, of the endeavor to lay down definite prescriptions for all actions. In religion this is called ritualism, and ritualism, extended to the whole of human life, is a dominant factor in certain religions. But the Greek gods, fortunately for their people, did not care about the details of daily life, provided that the simple prescriptions of the cult were observed. Apollo required purity of hands, especially in regard to bloodguilt, and he did a great work in impressing upon the people a respect for human life. But the ritualism which Apollo promoted concerned cult, not daily life. Hesiod refers not to Apollo but to Zeus as the protector of his prescriptions. In Hesiod there appears a tendency towards a more severe kind of ritualism, such as is found among the Jews, fastening its fetters on the whole of man's life. But it was only a tendency, for the Greeks were too sensible to push legalism to the bitter end. It is, however, very interesting to see how strongly this tendency took hold of the people and how the representatives of religion, especially the Delphic oracle, saved it from these restraints, endorsing ritualism in cult only, not in daily life. The appeal of cultual ritualism was, however, so great in that age that Apollo at Delphi founded his dominant position upon it.

The tendency to legalism as well as to mysticism belongs to the early age before the Persian Wars. In the last century of this era social conditions began to improve. In politics the lead was taken by statesmen belonging to the middle class who wanted peace and quiet. In the sphere of religion they were supported by the Delphic oracle, the leading authority in religious matters. This oracle maintained the ancestral customs and the more orderly forms of cult and

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religion, and it was hostile to the excesses both of legalism and of mysticism. The representatives of this trend were the so-called Seven Sages, and their slogans, which were inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, were "Nothing too much" and "Know thyself," that is, know that thou art only a man. An Apolline piety was developed which taught the inferiority of man to the gods. Man must bow to the will of the gods and he must not be proud of his pious works and of his offerings to them.

A great change came about with the victory over the Persians. It was a victory of the Greek gods and heroes, that is of the Greek state religion. If we know the character of this religion, of which I have spoken earlier, we know that the consequence was the still further repression of the mystical and legalistic movements which had sprung from the depths of the popular mind.

Another dominant issue in the early age was the problem of justice. Although its greatest importance lay on the social plane, it influenced religion also in many respects. I cannot expatiate on this here. I will only make the following brief remarks. From of old, Zeus was the protector of justice, and he is celebrated as such by Hesiod, Aeschylus, and many others. But he was a theoretical more than a practical protector. His rule was too arbitrary to allow him to appear as a true guardian of justice, and the same was true of the behavior of the Greek gods in general. The demand for social justice was a demand for the equalization of social rights. One of its motives was a very human envy of the rich and mighty. It found an argument in the vicissitudes of human life. The higher a man rose, the greater was his fall. This was proved by the fate of many men, not to speak of the tyrants. So the conception of the hybris of man and the nemesis of the gods came into existence. The translations "wantonness"

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and "jealousy" do not quite hit the mark. Hybris is the feeling of being supported by good luck, nemesis is the feeling of something unjust, improper. The idea of hybris and the corresponding idea of nemesis are akin to the slogan "Know thyself." Both teach man the humble position which befits him.

These ideas are very often found in literature, and it may be asked how far they belonged not only to the educated classes but also to the people. The people demanded justice, but the battle for justice was fought on the social rather than on the religious plane. The conceptions of hybris and nemesis had a popular background in what the Greeks called baskania, the belief, still common in southern Europe, that excessive praise is dangerous and a cause of misfortune. Even we are accustomed to saying "touch wood" if things go exceptionally well with us. It was customary, and is so still, to avert such a danger by spitting into one's bosom or by making an obscene gesture. The impressive scene in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, in which the king fears to tread on purple carpets when entering his palace lest the envy of some evil eye should harm him, is taken from real life. ⁶ Herodotus' story of the tyrant Polycrates contains a folk-tale motif which is still current. ⁷ When King Amasis heard of Polycrates' exceptional good luck he advised him to offset it by throwing away something which he valued very highly. Polycrates obeyed and threw a costly ring into the sea, but it was found again in the stomach of a fish which was brought to him a few days later by a fisherman. When Amasis heard this he renounced so dangerous a friendship, and Polycrates ended his life on the cross. This belief was popular, but it may be doubted if it was religious in the true sense of the

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word. Fate is the work of the gods; but in Herodotus, at least, this is never said of a specific god, but always of "the gods" collectively or of "the divine" in the abstract. The belief comes very near to fatalism. It is a kind of philosophy of life and its vicissitudes rather than a religious conception.

I remarked that certain kinds of legalism come very near to superstition and that Hesiod has prescriptions which are also current in modern folklore. We are accustomed to making a clear-cut distinction between religion and superstition. Superstition is something which is not allowed in a Christian and which is unworthy of him. The situation was somewhat different in ancient Greece. The Greek word which we usually translate by "superstition" is deisidaimonia, fear of the daimones. But these include the gods also, as in Homer and elsewhere. Consequently the word can and sometimes must be translated "fear of the gods." Xenophon still uses it in this good sense when he praises King Agesilaus for his deisidaimonia, his reverence for the gods. ⁸ In Theophrastus' characterization of the deisidaimon ⁹ the sense has deteriorated and the word can rightly be translated by "superstition." The superstitious man is one who, if something happens, washes his hands, sprinkles himself with holy water, and walks about the whole day with laurel leaves in his mouth. If a weasel crosses his path, he waits for another person walking the same way or he throws three stones over the road. If he sees a snake in his house, he invokes Sabazios if it is a pareias. If it is a so-called holy snake, he erects a hero shrine on the place. He pours out oil on the stones at the crossroads when he passes and, falling on his knees, he venerates them before he continues on his way. If a mouse has gnawed a hole in his flour sack, he goes to the exegete and asks what

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to do. If the exegete replies that he is to give it to the leatherworker to be repaired, he does not listen to him but turns away and carries out purifications and the like. We see that popular superstitions and the purificatory customs of the common religion were mixed up, and from the last sentence quoted it appears that official representatives of religion treated such exaggerated fears humorously. In ancient Greece the difference between religion and superstition was a difference of degree rather than of kind. There were also merely popular superstitions, but even these were not sharply distinguishable from certain religious ideas.

The general opinion is that the Greeks of the classical age were happily free from superstition. I am sorry that I am obliged to refute this opinion. There was a great deal of superstition in Greece, even when Greek culture was at its height and even in the center of that culture, Athens. Superstition is very seldom mentioned in the literature of the period simply because great writers found such base things not worth mentioning. But the Greeks borrowed Hecate from Caria because they needed a goddess of witchcraft and ghosts, and in the classical age her triple image was erected before every house in order to avert evils of that kind. Aristophanes is a witness to the fact that witchcraft was well known. ¹⁰ He makes Strepsiades say that he wants to buy a Thessalian witch to bring down the moon and shut it up, and he mentions necromantics, the calling up of the dead to foretell the future, a kind of mantic which was almost completely absent from Greece in early times.

Very important is the tract on the holy disease, that is, epilepsy. It is one of the earliest in the collection ascribed to Hippocrates, ¹¹ and was probably written by him. At any

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rate it belongs to the fifth century B.C. It should be read by everyone who wants to become acquainted with the religious situation of the time. The author says that the men who call this disease holy are of the same kind as the magicians, charlatans, and purificatory and begging priests and that they cover up their ignorance and helplessness by the pretext that this disease is holy. They resort to purifications and spells. They prescribe the avoidance of black garments and of putting one foot on another or one hand on another. These are the methods of magic, well known from folklore. The author further tells us that some people pretended to be able by certain secret rites to bring down the moon, eclipse the sun, cause storm or calm, bring rain or drought, call forth water, or make the earth sterile. He includes a catalogue of magical achievements of the sort described in the Roman age and generally believed to belong to that age only. As a matter of fact they were much older, although they were more in evidence at a later time, when the soberness of the old religion had vanished. Our author informs us that these people had drawn the gods also into the circle of their superstitious ideas. If the sick man bellows or has convulsions, they say that the Great Mother is responsible. If his cries resemble neighing, Poseidon is the cause; if they resemble the chirping of birds, Apollo Nomios is to blame; and if he foams at the mouth and kicks with his feet, it is Ares' doing. Finally, if he has evil dreams by night, sees frightful figures, and leaps up from his bed, they say that he has been attacked by Hecate or by some hero.

The last words call for some comment. Ghost stories like those current even in our day were current in antiquity also. In literature they do not appear until the Roman age. Their apparent absence in the classical age is deceptive. Ghosts went by the name of heroes, and genuine ghost stories are

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related of the heroes. I have mentioned the hero of Temesa, to whom the inhabitants were compelled to sacrifice yearly the fairest virgin of their town until a well-known pugilist by the sheer force of his fists drove him into the sea, and Orestes, whom no Athenian liked to meet by night because he was likely to give him a thrashing and to rob him of his clothes. There was also Actaeon, who devastated the fields of the Boeotians until on the advice of the oracle his statue was chained to a rock. Plautus' comedy Mostellaria, which was copied from the Greek poet Philemon, is a ghost story of a very common type. A guest-friend has been killed and buried in a certain house. He walks about at night, disquieting and frightening people, so that nobody dares to live in the haunted house.

The account in Hippocrates concerns disease, and in cases where human resources fail superstition flourishes strongly even in our day. Even Pericles, who was above such base things, had to tolerate the tying of an amulet to him by the women when he was ill. ¹² Of the cures in the Asclepieion at Epidaurus, the most miraculous and unbelievable tales are related. ¹³ I will not enter into the sane and sober views of Hippocrates on religion, although they are worth reading. I turn instead to another author who has much to say about magic and magicians, Plato. He prescribes the severest punishments for men who pretend to be able to call up the dead; to coerce the gods through the magical powers of sacrifices, prayers, and spells; and to destroy individuals, whole families, and towns. He speaks of several tricks, spells, and imprecations of black magic and of wax dolls which

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are seen at doors, at crossroads, and on tombs. ¹⁴ It is a well-known fact, and one frequently mentioned in a later age, that witches and sorcerers used dolls for their purposes, burning them, transfixing them, and so forth, in order to affect with like pain the persons whom they represented. Plato's description is much more suggestive of the witchcraft of late antiquity than of the fourth century B.C., but it is impossible to doubt that he took it from the life of his own times.

This can be corroborated. When Plato speaks of imprecations he uses the word katadeseis. These are leaden tablets inscribed with imprecations directed against persons named on them and deposited in tombs in order to devote these cursed persons to the gods of the nether world. A great number of these tabellae defixionis have been found and published, ¹⁵ but it has been too little remarked that many of them belong to the fourth century B.C. A curious unpublished inscription on the shard of a cup, which reads "I put quartan fever on Aristion to the death," is probably as early as the end of the fifth century B.C. Numerous leaden tablets have been found at Athens, and it is a very interesting and important fact that many of the names mentioned on them are names of historically known persons. We find two brothers of the well-known politician Callistratus, who was exiled in 361 B.C.; Callias and Hipponicus, from the wealthy and famous house of the dadouchoi; Demophilus, the prosecutor of Aristotle and Phocion; Demosthenes; Lycurgus; and other orators and politicians. This is astonishing. The names mentioned show that belief in the magical power of these imprecations was not confined to artisans, hawkers, and such

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people, who also appear among those cursed. It must have been current even in the best society.

Most of these curses refer to lawsuits. The gods, especially Hecate and Hermes of the nether world, are asked to tie the soul, the intellect, the tongue, and the limbs of the per-son cursed. It is manifest that these imprecations are connected with the degeneration of the Athenian democracy and law courts and with the abuses and cavils of the sycophants. I am obliged to state, although I am very sorry to do it, that superstition and a belief in magic and witchcraft were very common and widespread in the heyday of the classical age. If this was so in Athens, it can hardly have been less so in backward districts of Greece. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that this recrudescence of superstition and magic is connected with the decay of the old religion, which was secularized by the state and attacked by the Sophists. When such a void is created in religion, the opportunity is present for the flourishing of superstition and magic and the immigration of new gods.

The leaden tablets with imprecations were deposited in tombs, a sure sign of the belief in the power of the dead to do harm. Belief in the power of the dead appears in the old tomb cult. It was supposed to belong to the individual who was buried in the tomb and venerated there, and who was called up to help his family. Our notions of the cult of the dead are derived from literature, especially from the tragedies, which cling to what is old. The cult of the dead had, however, been suppressed for political and social reasons and had lost much of its vigor. The belief in ghosts remained. The general Greek idea of the other world was of something else, the dark and gloomy Hades with its pale, dumb, powerless shadows. It was so ingrained in the Greek mind that, in spite of the fact that Christianity has preached quite a different

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conception for nearly two thousand years, the nether world of the Greek peasant is the same today. Its lord has kept the name of the ancient ferryman, Charon or Charos, although he is represented as a horseman and hunter. The shadows were powerless. They were supposed to have the same appearance which the man had during his life or at the moment of his death. Odysseus recognizes his deceased comrades in Hades. This is constantly so among all peoples. The life of this world is the pattern after which the other life is pictured, although the shadows may be darker or lighter. There is one exemption from the gloominess of Hades, the bliss awaiting those initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries. But even this consists in a repetition of the celebration of the Mysteries, and nothing was required for it but initiation.

While for Homer the body is the man himself and the soul is a pale shadow worth nothing, the Orphics considered the soul as immortal and the body as its prison. ¹⁶ The soul was able to leave the body temporarily in dreams and left it once for all in death. The consequence of this doctrine was a new evaluation of the other life. For the Orphics, also, initiation and the accompanying purification were necessary, but they added a demand for righteousness and moral purity. He who has not been purified in this life will continue in his impurity in the other life. "He will lie in the mud" is the keynote of the new ideas of the other world. There is here a recurrence of the old idea of the repetition of this life, modified only in so far as the repetition in itself is regarded as a punishment. This is not infrequently the case in modern folk-lore.

The Orphic idea is expressed in certain myths, including that of the Danaids. The figures which are generally called Danaids were represented in the picture by Polygnotus at Delphi

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as those who had not been initiated and who were compelled in the other life to carry water for their purification, unceasingly and in vain. If the idea took hold on the popular mind, this was because it was coupled with another idea dear to the Greeks, that of retributive justice. In early times the individual was only a link in the chain of the family. Children and children's. children had to pay for the trespasses of their ancestors. There came a time when it seemed unjust that one individual should pay for the trespasses of another. It was demanded that the man who had trespassed should be punished, that he himself and no other should pay for his guilt. We find this demand in Solon. But experience taught that a man who had committed unjust deeds sometimes died without having suffered the fitting punishment. The solution of the dilemma was found in the Orphic doctrine. The punishment due was transferred to the life after death.

Sinners punished in the underworld, such as Tantalus and Sisyphus, are familiar from mythology. Originally they were enemies of the gods who were punished by the gods in the upper world, and only later were they transferred to the underworld. This underworld is described in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, and it was depicted by the great painter Polygnotus in a famous picture at Delphi. ¹⁷ But this picture contained something new. It represented a man who, having killed his father, was strangled by him, and a man who, having robbed a temple, was punished by a woman in various ways. Punishments were invented in accordance with the old jus talionis, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, or were taken from human justice. This idea of punishment in the other world was fatally extended, and occasions were found for the invention and addition of ever new modes of torture

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and punishment. The driving force was the idea of retributive justice.

Before long the underworld was pictured as a place of horror, a hell in the full sense of the word. Aristophanes describes it in The Frogs. He fills it with frightful beasts, snakes, and monsters like Empousa. There in the mud and ever-flowing mire lie those who have committed wrongs to guest-friends, frauds, or perjury or who have beaten their fathers. Aristophanes also gives a detailed enumeration of the most frightful pains which can be inflicted upon a man, copied from the mythological punishments, and enlarged upon and extended in a grotesque manner.

All this is known well enough, but it is generally set aside on the ground that it is mythology and has as little importance for real belief as myths ordinarily have. But it had a very serious background. Aristophanes would not have been able to give such a long and picturesque description of hell and its horrors if the subject had not been familiar to his audience. Elsewhere in literature such things are not mentioned. Like superstition, they were too base and grotesque. But there are two exceptions, two very important passages which prove beyond doubt that the idea of punishment in the other world had taken strong hold on the popular mind in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The philosopher Democritus says: "Many people who do not know that human nature is dissolved in death, but who know that they have committed much wrong, live constantly in fear and anxiety, composing lying fables concerning the time after death." ¹⁸ And in the introduction to his great work the Republic, Plato makes the aged Kephalos say that a man who sees the hour of death approaching is seized by fright and begins to think about

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things that had not troubled him before. For while the myths that are told of the underworld, according to which he who has committed wrongs in this world will be punished in that world, seemed ridiculous to him hitherto, now his soul is anxious, for they may be true. He is disquieted and he makes up his account, considering whether he has done wrong to anybody. If he finds that he has committed many unjust actions, he is filled with alarm; he often leaps up from his bed in sleep as children do, and he lives in fear. ¹⁹ This is a striking picture and drawn from life. Plato's own detailed accounts of the other world and of metempsychosis must be passed over here, for they are myths created by him and have nothing to do with popular ideas. Their influence on the future, however, was great and fateful.

A reference may be added to the paintings of the Apulian tomb vases, which belong to the fourth century B.C. and are an offshoot of Attic vase painting. They represent the palace of Hades and the mythological criminals punished in the underworld. That such subjects were chosen for tomb monuments proves that these ideas were popular in southern Italy. This is, perhaps, especially due to the strong Orphic influence in that country.

Long ago Dieterich tried to prove that hell was created by the Greeks. ²⁰ Another great scholar, Cumont, has, on the contrary, derived it from the Orient. ²¹ But if we take the earliest Christian vision of hell, the so-called Apocalypse of St. Peter, which was the starting point of Dieterich's research, it appears that Dieterich was right. The description of the punishments for moral sins, which were sins for the heathens also,

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is detailed, and the old keynote, the lying in the mud, recurs constantly in many variations. On the other hand, the description of the punishments of unbelievers is briefer, less detailed, and evidently copied from the former. The background is Greek.

I have dwelt here on the dark and base sides of Greek religion--superstition, magic, and the idea of punishment in the other world. For I am of the opinion that it is necessary to know these also if we are to have a true conception of Greek popular religion. We know that such ideas became dominant in late antiquity. The way was prepared by the decay of the old religion. Man needs some kind of religion. If his old faith is destroyed, he turns to superstition and magic and to new gods who are imported from foreign countries or who rise from the dark depths of the human mind. There were such depths in the Greek mind also. That mind was not so exclusively bright as is sometimes said.

Footnotes

103:1 Psyche; Seelencult and Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen (Freiburg i. B., 1894).

103:2 See my paper, "Early Orphism and Kindred Religious Movements," Harvard Theological Review, XXVIII (1935), 181 ff.

104:3 Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. T. A. Sinclair (London, 1932).

105:4 See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 665 ff.

106:5 See my "Entstehung and religiöse Bedeutung des griechischen Kalenders," Lunds universitets årsskrift, XIV: 2 (1918), No. 21.

109:6 Agamemnon, vss. 945 ff.

109:7 Herodotus, III, 40 ff.

110:8 Agesilaus, XI, 8.

110:9 Characteres, 16.

111:10 Nubes, vss. 749 ff., and Aves, vss. 1553 ff.

111:11 De morbo sacro, I.

113:12 Plutarch, Pericles, 38.

113:13 The inscriptions are collected in Inscriptiones Graecae, Editio minor, Vol. IV, Fasc. i, Nos. 121-27. See also R. Herzog, "Die Wunderheilungen von Epidauros," Philologus, Supplementary Vol. XXII(1931), No. 3.

114:14 Laws, X, p. 909b; see also p. 908d and XI, p. 933.

114:15 The Attic tabellae defixionis have been published by R. Wünsch in an appendix to Inscriptiones Graecae, III. Several important finds have appeared later. See my forthcoming Gesch. der griech. Rel., I, 757 ff.

116:16 Plato, Cratylus, p. 400c.

117:17 Described by Pausanias, X, 28 ff.

118:18 Frag. 297, in H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1934-37), II, 206-7.

119:19 Plato, Republic, I, pp. 330d ff.

119:20 A. Dieterich, Nekyia; Beiträge zur Erklärung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse (Leipzig, 1893; 2d ed., 1913).

119:21 F. Cumont, After Life in Roman Paganism (New Haven, 1922), pp. 88 ff.