Chapter I: Introductory (2)

The various charms which we have so far considered are directed towards the hurt or the healing of man: but external nature is also responsive to magic spells. It is rumoured that there are still witches who have power to draw down the moon from the heavens by incantation; but a more useful ceremony, designed to draw down the clouds upon a parched land, may still be actually witnessed. The most recent case known to me was in the April of 1899, when the rite was carried out some few days, unfortunately, after I had left the district by the people of Larissa. The custom is known all over the north of Greece--in Epirus[32], Thessaly, and Macedonia,--and also it is said among some of the Turks, Wallachs, and Servians; to the south of those regions and in the islands of the Aegean I heard nothing of it. A boy (or sometimes, it is said, a girl[33]) is stripped naked and then dressed up in wreaths and festoons of leafage, grass, and flowers, and, escorted by a troop of children of his own age, goes the round of the neighbourhood. He is known as the περπερία, and his companions sing as they go,

Perpería goes his way
And to God above doth pray,
Rain, O God, a gentle rain,
Shed, O God, a gentle shower,
That the fields may give their grain,
And the vines may come to flower,

and so forth in such simple strain[34]. At each doorway and more particularly at every spring and well, which it is the special duty of the Perpería to visit, anyone who will may empty a vessel of water over the boy, to whom some compensation for his drenching is usually made in the form of sweetmeats or coppers.

The word περπερία has been the subject of considerable discussion. By-forms περπερίτσα, περπεροῦνα, and παππαροῦνα also occur. The first two are of the nature of diminutives; the last-named is a corrupt form used only, so far as I know, in one district of Epirus, and means a ‘garden-poppy.’ The perversion of the word has in this district (Zagorion) affected the rite itself; for it is considered necessary for this flower to be used largely in dressing up the chief actor in the ceremony[35]. But the most general, and, as I think, most correct form is περπερία (or περπερεία). With the ancient word περπερεία, derived from the Latin _perperus_ and used in the sense of ‘boasting’ or ‘ostentation,’ it can, I feel, have no connexion; and I suggest that it stands for περιπορεία, with the same abbreviation as in περπατῶ for περιπατῶ, ‘walk,’ and subsequent assimilation of the first two syllables. If my conjecture is right, the word originally meant nothing more than a ‘procession round’ the village; next it became confined in usage to a procession for the particular purpose of procuring rain; and finally, the words πορεία[36] and πορεύομαι having been lost from popular speech, it was taken to be the name of the boy who plays the uncomfortable part of vegetation craving water. And indeed it would seem likely that the song which forms part of the ceremony was actually first composed at a time when περπερία was still understood in the sense of ‘procession’: for in every recorded version known to me it would be still possible to interpret the word in this meaning without detriment to the context.

The rite itself as an example of sympathetic magic requires no commentary: a simpler application of the principle that like produces like could not be found.

* * * * *

Other examples of primitive customs and beliefs still prevalent in Greece might easily be amassed: but I have preferred to select these few for detailed treatment rather than to glance over a larger number, in order that they may the more clearly be seen to belong to certain types of superstition found the whole world over and therefore presumably dating from prehistoric ages: for if the population of Greece has proved a good vehicle for the transmission of superstitions so primaeval, it will surely follow that there is nothing extravagant in hoping to learn also from their traditions something of the religion of historic Hellas.

§ 3. THE SURVIVAL OF HELLENIC TRADITION.

There may however be some who, while admitting that mere lapse of time need not have extinguished ancient Hellenic ideas, will be disposed to question the likelihood, even the possibility, of their transmission on racial grounds. The belief in the evil eye and the practice of sympathetic magic were once, they may say, the common property of the whole uncivilised world; and though the inhabitants of modern Greece have inherited these old superstitions and usages, there is nothing to show from what ancestry they have received the inheritance. The population, it may be urged, has changed; the Greeks of to-day are not Hellenes; their blood has been contaminated by foreign admixture, and with this admixture may have come external, non-Hellenic traditions; has not Fallmerayer stoutly maintained that the modern inhabitants of Greece have practically no claim to the name of Hellenes, but come of a stock Slavonic in the main, though cross-bred with the offscourings of many peoples?

The historical facts from which Fallmerayer argued are not to be slighted. It is well established[37] that, from the middle of the sixth century onwards, successive hordes of Slavonic invaders swept over Greece, driving such of the native population as escaped destruction into the more mountainous or remote districts; that in the middle of the eighth century, when the numbers of the Greek population had been further reduced by the great pestilence of 746, ‘the whole country,’ to use the exact phrase of Constantine Porphyrogenitus[38], ‘became Slavonic and was occupied by foreigners’; that the Slavonic supremacy lasted at least until the end of the tenth century; that thereafter a gradual fusion of the remnants of the Greek population with their conquerors began, but proceeded so slowly that at the beginning of the thirteenth century the ‘Franks,’ as the warriors of Western Christendom were popularly called, found Slavonic tribes in Elis and Laconia quite detached from the rest of the population, acknowledging indeed the supremacy of the Byzantine government, but still employing their own language and their own laws; and finally that the amalgamation of the two races was not complete even by the middle of the fifteenth century, for the Turks at their conquest of Greece found several tribes of the Peloponnese, especially in the neighbourhood of Mount Taygetus, still speaking a Slavonic tongue.

If then, as is now generally admitted, Fallmerayer’s conclusions were somewhat exaggerated, it remains none the less an historical fact that there is a very large admixture of Slavonic blood in the veins of the present inhabitants of Greece. The truth of this is moreover enforced by the physical characteristics of the people as a whole. Travellers conversant alike with Slavs and with modern Greeks have affirmed to me their impression that there is a close physical resemblance between the two races; and while I have not the experience of Slavonic races which would permit me to judge of this resemblance for myself, it certainly offers the best explanation of my own observations with regard to the variations of physical type in different parts of the Greek world. In the islands of the Aegean and in the promontory of Maina, to which the Slavs never penetrated, the ancient Hellenic types are far commoner than in the rest of the Peloponnese or in Northern Greece. Not a little of the charm of Tenos or Myconos or Scyros lies in the fact that the grand and impassive beauty of the earlier Greek sculpture may still be seen in the living figures and faces of men and women: and if anyone would see in the flesh the burly, black-bearded type idealised in a Heracles, he need but go to the south of the Peloponnese, and among the Maniotes he will soon be satisfied: for there he will find not merely an occasional example, as of reversion to an ancestral type, but a whole tribe of swarthy, stalwart warriors, whose aspect seems to justify their claim that in proud, though poverty-stricken, isolation they have kept their native peninsula free from alien aggression, and the old Laconian blood still pure in their veins. The ordinary Greek of the mainland, on the other hand, is usually of a mongrel and unattractive appearance; and in view of the marked difference of the type in regions untouched by the Slavs, I cannot but impute his lack of beauty to his largely Slavonic ancestry.

Yet even in the centre of the Peloponnese where the Slavonic influence has probably been strongest, the pure Greek type is not wholly extinct. I remember a young man who acted as ostler and waiter and in all other capacities at a small _khan_ on the road from Tripolitza to Sparta, who would not have been despised as a model by Praxiteles; and elsewhere too, now and again, I have seen statuesque forms and classic features, less perfect indeed than his, but yet proclaiming beyond question an Hellenic lineage; so that I should hesitate to say that in any part of Greece the population is as purely Slavonic as in Maina or many of the islands it is purely Greek.

But, as I think, the exact proportion of Slavonic and of Hellenic blood in the veins of the modern Greeks is not a matter of supreme importance. Even if their outward appearance were universally and completely Slavonic, I would still maintain that they deserve the name of Greeks. Though their lineage were wholly Slavonic, their nationality, I claim, would still be Hellenic. For the nationality of a people, like the personality of an individual, is something which eludes definition but which embraces the mental and the moral as well as the physical. A man’s personality is not to be determined by knowledge of his family and his physiognomy alone; and similarly racial descent and physical type are not the sole indices of nationality. Even if a purely Slavonic ancestry had dowered the inhabitants of Greece with a purely Slavonic appearance, yet, if their thoughts and speech and acts were, as they are, Greek, I would still venture to call them Greek in nationality. _Ce n’est que la peau dont l’Ethiope ne change pas._

But the people of modern Greece do not actually present so extreme a case of acquired nationality. They are partly Greek in race: and if it should appear that they are wholly Greek in nationality, the explanation must simply be that the character, no less than the language, of their Hellenic ancestors was superior in vitality to that of the Slavs who intermarried with them, and alone has been transmitted to the modern Greek people.

What, then, is the national character at the present day?

The first feature of it which casual conversation with any Greek will soon bring into view is that narrow patriotism which was so remarkable a trait in the Greeks of old time. If he be asked what is his native land (πατρίδα), his answer will be, not Greece nor any of the larger divisions of it, but the particular town or hamlet in which he happened to be born: and if in later life he change his place of abode, though he live in his new home ten or twenty years, he will regard himself and be regarded by the native-born inhabitants as a foreigner (ξένος). Or again if a man obtain work for a short time in another part of the country, or if a girl marry an inhabitant of a village half a dozen miles from her own, the departure is mourned with some of those plaintive songs of exile in which the popular muse delights. Nor are there lacking historical cases in which this narrow love of country has produced something more than fond lamentations; the boast of the Maniotes that they have never acknowledged alien masters is in the main a true boast, and it was pure patriotism which nerved them in their long struggle with the Turks for the possession of their rugged, barren, storm-lashed home. It was patriotism too, narrow and proud, that both sustained the heroic outlaws of Souli in their defiance of Ottoman armies, and also,--because they disdained alliance with their Greek neighbours,--contributed to their final downfall.

But so tenacious and indomitable a courage is in modern, as it was in ancient, Greece the exception rather than the rule. The men of Maina and of Souli are comparable to the Spartans: but in no period of Greek history has steadfast bravery been commonly displayed. Yet, in spite of the humiliating experiences of the late Graeco-Turkish war, the Greek people should not be judged devoid of courage. But theirs is a courage which comes of impulse rather than of self-command; a courage which might prompt a charge as brilliant as that of Marathon, but could not cheerfully face the hardships of a campaign; a courage which might turn a slight success into a victory, but could not save a retreat from becoming a rout.

It must be acknowledged also that the rank and file are in general more admirable than their officers. The bravery of the men, impulsive and short-lived though it be, is inspired by a real devotion of themselves to a cause; whereas among the officers self-seeking and even self-saving are conspicuous faults. Even the really courageous leaders seldom have a single eye to the success of their arms. Their plans are marred by petty jealousies. The same rivalries for the supreme command which embarrassed the Greeks of old in defending their liberty against Persia, were repeated in the struggles of the last century to throw off the Turkish yoke. And if in both cases the Greeks were successful, in neither was victory due to the unity and harmony of their leaders, but rather to that passionate hatred of the barbarians which stirred the people as a whole.

Indeed, not only in war but in all conditions of life, any personal eminence or distinction has been apt to turn the head of a Greek. ‘The abundant enjoyment of power or wealth,’ said the ancients not without knowledge of the national character, ‘begets lawlessness and arrogance’; and in humbler phrase the modern proverb sums up the same qualities of the race,--καλὸς δοῦλος, κακὸς ἀφέντης, ‘a good servant and a bad master.’ In all periods of Greek history there have been few men who have attained to power without abusing it. The honour of being returned to the Greek Parliament upsets the mental balance of a large number of deputies. Without any more intimate knowledge of politics than can be obtained from second-rate newspapers, they believe themselves called and qualified to lead each his own party, with the result--so it is commonly said--that no government since the first institution of parliament has ever had an assured majority in the House, and on an average there have been more than one dissolution a year. The modern parliament is as unstable an institution as the ancient ecclesia of Athens when there was no longer a Pericles to control it, and its demagogues are as numerous.

Even the petty eminence of a village schoolmaster proves to be too giddy a pinnacle for many. Such an one thinks it necessary to support his position--which owing to the Greek love of education is more highly respected perhaps than in other countries--by a pretence of universal knowledge and a pedantry as lamentable as it is ludicrous. I remember a gentleman who boasted the title of Professor of Ancient History in the _gymnasium_ or secondary school of a certain town, who called to me one day as I was passing a _café_ where he and some of his friends were sitting, and said that they were having a pleasant little discussion about the first Triumvirate, and had recalled the names of Cicero and Caesar, but could not at the moment remember the third party. Could I help them? I hesitated a moment, and then resolved to risk it and suggest, what was at least alliterative if not accurate, the name of Cato. ‘Of course,’ he answered, ‘how these things do slip one’s memory sometimes!’ Yet this Professor posed as an authority on many subjects outside his own province of learning, and frequently when I met him would insist on talking dog-Latin with an Italian pronunciation, a medium in which I found it difficult to converse.

In this readiness to discourse on any and every subject and to display attainments in and out of season, he and the class of which he is typical are the living images of the less respectable of the ancient Sophists. And in pedantry of language too they fairly rival their famous prototypes. The movement in favour of an artificial revival of ancient Greek has already been of long duration, and has had a detrimental effect upon the modern language. The vulgar tongue has a melodious charm, while many classical words, in the modern pronunciation, are extremely harsh and uncouth. The object of the movement is to secure an uniform ‘pure’ speech, as they call it, approximate to that of Plato or of Xenophon; and the method adopted is to mix up Homeric and other words of antiquarian celebrity with literal renderings of modern French idioms, inserting datives, infinitives, and other obsolete forms at discretion. To aid in this movement is the task and the delight of the schoolmasters: and such is their devotion to this linguistic sophistry, that they are not dismayed even by the ambiguity arising from the use of ancient forms indistinguishable in modern speech. The two old words ἡμέτερος and ὑμέτερος have now no difference in sound: yet the schoolmaster uses them and inculcates the use of them, with the lamentable result that the children are not taught to distinguish _meum_ and _tuum_ even in speech.

And here again the character of the modern Greek reflects that of his ancestors. Honesty and truthfulness are not the national virtues. To lie, or even to steal, is accounted morally venial and intellectually admirable. It is a proof of superior mother-wit, than which no quality is more valued in the business of everyday life. Almost the only things in Greece which have fixed prices are tobacco, newspapers, and railway-tickets. The hire of a mule, the cost of a bunch of grapes, the price of meat, the remuneration for a vote at the elections,--such matters as these are the subject of long and vivacious bargaining, and if the money does not change hands on the spot, the bargain may be smilingly repudiated and an attempt made, on any pretext which suggests itself, to extort more. Yet there is a certain charm in all this; for, if a man get his own price, it is not so much the amount of his profit which pleases him as his success in winning it; and if he fail, he takes a smaller sum with perfect good humour and increased respect for the man who has outwitted him. Anyone may be honest; but to be ἔξυπνος, as they say, shrewd, wide-awake,--this is Greek and admirable. The contrast of an Aristides with a Themistocles is the natural expression of Greek thought. Moral uprightness and mental brilliance are not to be expected of one and the same man; and for the most part the Greeks now as in old time praise others for their justice and pride themselves on their cunning. The acme of cleverness is touched by him who can both profit by dishonesty and maintain a reputation for sincerity.

But, while truthfulness and fair dealing are certainly rare, there is one relation in which the most scrupulous fidelity is unfailingly shown. The obligations of hospitality are everywhere sacred. The security and the comfort of the guest are not in name only but in actual fact the first consideration of his host. However unscrupulous a Greek may be in his ordinary dealings, he never, I believe, harbours for one moment the idea of making profit out of the stranger who seeks the shelter of his roof. For hospitality in Greece, it must be remembered, means not the entertainment of friends and acquaintances who are welcome for their own sake or from whom a return in kind may be expected, but real φιλοξενία, a generous and friendly welcome to a stranger unknown yesterday and vanished again to-morrow. To each unbidden chance-comer the door is always open. For lodging he may chance to have an incense-reeking room where the family _icons_ hang, or a corner of a cottage-floor barricaded against the poultry and other inmates; for food, hot viands rich in circumambient oil, or three-month-old rye-bread softened in a cup of water; but among rich and poor alike he is certain of the best which there is to give. Even where there are inns available, the stranger will constantly find that the first native of the place to whom he puts the Aristophanic enquiry ὅπου κόρεις ὀλίγιστοι[39]--which inn is of least entomological interest--will constitute himself not guide but host and will place the resources of his own house freely at the service of the chance-found visitor.

The reception accorded by Eumaeus to Odysseus, in its revelation of human--and also of canine--character, differs in no respect from that which may await any traveller at the present day. As Odysseus approached the swineherd’s hut, ‘suddenly the yelping dogs espied him, and with loud barking rushed upon him, but Odysseus guilefully sat down and let fall his staff from his hand[40].’ Such is the opening of the scene; and many, I suppose, must have wondered, as they read it, wherein consisted Odysseus’ guilefulness. A shepherd of Northern Arcadia resolved me that riddle. I had been attacked on a mountain-path by two or three of his dogs,--‘like unto wild beasts[41],’ as Homer has it,--and the combat may have lasted some few minutes when the shepherd thought fit to intervene. Sheep-dogs are of course valued in proportion to their ferocity towards any person or animal approaching the flock, and a taste of blood now and again is said to keep them on their mettle. Fortunately matters had not reached that point; but none the less I suggested to the man that he might have bestirred himself sooner. ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘if you are really in difficulties, you should sit down’; and when I showed some surprise, he explained that anyone who is attacked by sheepdogs has only to sit down and let go his walking-stick or gun or other offensive weapon, and the dogs, understanding that a truce has been called, will sit down round him and maintain, so to speak, a peaceful blockade[42]. On subsequent occasions I tested the shepherd’s counsel, beginning prudently with one dog only and, as I gained assurance, raising the number: it is uncomfortable[43] to remain sitting with a bloodthirsty Molossian hound at one’s back, ready to resume hostilities if any suspicious movement is made; but I must own that, in my own fairly wide experience, Greek dogs, as they are _sans peur_ in combat, are also _sans reproche_ in observing a truce. The traveller may fare worse than by following the example of guileful Odysseus.

But if the scene of the encounter be not a mountain-path but the approach to some cottage, the dogs’ master will, like Eumaeus, hasten to intervene, ‘chiding them and driving them this way and that with a shower of stones[44],’--for the Greek dog does not heed mere words,--and again like Eumaeus will assure his visitor that he himself would have been ‘covered with shame[45]’ if the dogs had done his guest any hurt. Then he will conduct his guest into his cottage and bid him take his fill of bread and wine before he tells whence he is come and how he has fared[46]: for Greek hospitality spares the guest the fatigue of talking until he is refreshed. The visitor therefore sits at his ease, silent and patient, while his host catches and kills such beast or fowl as he may possess, cuts up the flesh in small pieces, threads these on a spit, and holds them over the embers of his fire till they are ready to serve up[47]: similarly, in Homeric fashion, he mixes wine and water[48]; and then, all the preparations being now complete, he urges his guest to the meal[49].

Thus the hospitality of to-day, in its details no less than in its spirit, recalls the hospitality of the Homeric age. The supreme virtue of the ancient Greek remains the supreme virtue of the modern, and a familiarity with the manners of the present day alone might suffice to explain why Paris who stole another man’s wife was execrable but Admetus who let his own wife die for him could yet win admiration. The one broke the laws of hospitality; the other, by hiding his loss and entertaining his guest, upheld them.

A comparative estimate, such as I have essayed, of the characters of Greeks of old and Greeks of to-day is perhaps evidence of a somewhat intangible nature to those who are not personally intimate with the people: but no foreigner, even though he were totally ignorant of the modern language, could chance upon one of the many festivals of the country without remarking that there, in humbler form, are re-enacted many of the scenes of ancient days. The πανηγύρια, as they call these festivals,--diminutives, both in name and in form, of the ancient πανηγύρεις,--present the same medley of religion, art, trading, athletics, and amusement which constituted the Olympian games. The occasion is most commonly some saint’s-day, and a church or a sacred spring (ἅγι̯ασμα) the centre of the gathering. Art is represented by the contests of local poets or wits in improvising topical and other verses, and occasionally there is present one of the old-fashioned rhapsodes, whose number is fast diminishing, to recite to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument still called the κιθάρα[50] the glorious feats of some patriot-outlaw (κλέφτης) in defiance of the Turks. Then there are the pedlars and hucksters strolling to and fro or seated at their stalls, and ever crying their wares--fruit, sausages, confectionery of strange hues and stranger taste, beads, knives, cheap _icons_ ranging in subject from likenesses of patron-saints to gaudy views of hell, and all manner of tin-foil trinkets representing ships, cattle, and parts of the human body for dedication in the church. Then in some open space there will be a gathering of young men, running, wrestling, hurling the stone; yonder others, and with them the girls, indulge in the favourite recreation of Greece, those graceful dances, of which the best-known, the συρτός[51], and probably others too, are a legacy from dancers of old time. It is impossible to be a spectator of such scenes without recognising that here, in embryonic form, are the festivals of which the famous gatherings of Olympia and Nemea, Delphi and the Isthmus, were the full development.

And it may well happen too that the observant onlooker will descry also the rudiments of ancient drama. Often, as is natural in so mountainous and rugged a country, the only level dancing-place which a village possesses is a stone-paved threshing-floor hewn out of the hill-side. Hither on any festal occasion, be it a saint’s-day or one of the celebrations which naturally follow the ingathering of harvest or vintage, the dancers betake themselves. Here too a small booth or tent, still called σκηνή, is often rigged up, to which they can retire for rest or refreshment, while on the slopes above are ranged the spectators. The circular threshing-floor is the _orchestra_, the hill-side provides its tiers of seats, the dancers, who always sing while they dance, are the chorus; add only the village musician twanging a sorry lyre, and in the intervals of dancing an old-fashioned rhapsode reciting some story of bygone days, or, it may be, two village wits contending in improvised pleasantries, and the rudiments of ancient Tragedy or Comedy are complete.

Other illustrations might easily be amassed. On March 1st the boys of Greece still parade the village-streets with a painted wooden swallow set on a flower-decked pole, and sing substantially the same ‘swallow-song’ (χελιδόνισμα)[52] as was sung in old time in Rhodes[53]. On May 1st the girls make wreaths of flowers and corn which, like the ancient εἰρεσιώνη, must be left hanging over the door of the house till next year’s wreaths take their place. The fisherman still ties his oar to a single thole with a piece of rope or a thong of leather, as did the mariners of Homer’s age[54]. The farmer still drives his furrows with an Hesiodic plough.

Such are a few of the survivals which bear witness to the genuinely Hellenic nationality of the inhabitants of modern Greece: and last, but not least, there is the language, which, albeit no index of race, is most cogent evidence of tradition. To the action of thought upon language there corresponds a certain reaction of language upon thought: it is impossible to speak a tongue which contains, let us say, the word νεράϊδα (modern Greek for a ‘nymph’) without possessing also an idea of the being whom that word denotes. Therefore even if the whole population of Greece were demonstrably of Slavonic race, the fact that it now speaks Greek would go far to support its claim to Hellenic nationality: for its adoption of the Greek language would imply its assimilation of Greek thought.

But, quite apart from the evidence of custom and language, the occasional perpetuation of the ancient Greek physical type and the general survival of the ancient Greek character plainly forbid so extreme a supposition as that of Fallmerayer: no traveller familiar with the modern Greek peasantry could entertain for a moment the idea that at any period the whole of Greece became Slavonicized, but, whatever might be the historical arguments for such a theory, would reject it, on the evidence of his own eyes, as ludicrously exaggerated. Fusion of race, no doubt, there has been; but in that fusion the Hellenic element must have been the most vital and persistent; for if the present population of Greece is of mixed descent, in its traditions at least it is almost purely Hellenic.

§ 4. THE SURVIVAL OF PAGAN TRADITION.

It appears then that notwithstanding the immigration of Slavonic hordes, and notwithstanding also, it may be added, the influences exercised in later periods by ‘Franks,’ Genoese, Venetians, and Turks, the traditions of the inhabitants of Greece still remain singularly pure; and their claim to Hellenic nationality is justified by their language, by their character, and by many secular aspects of their civilisation. But in the domain of religion it might reasonably be expected that a large change would have taken place. There is the obstinate fact, it may be thought, that the Greeks are now and have long been Christian. Did not the new religion dispossess and oust the ancient polytheism? Are we to look for pagan customs in the hallowed usages of the Greek Church? What can the simple Christian peasant of to-day, subject from his youth up to ecclesiastical influence, know of the religion of his distant ancestors,--of those fundamental beliefs which guided their conduct towards gods and men in this life, and inspired their care for the dead?

On the conduct of man towards his fellow-men in this life the influence of Christianity appears to have been as great as that of paganism was small. Duty towards one’s neighbour hardly came within the purview of Hellenic religion. If we look at the supreme acts of worship in ancient times, we cannot fail to be struck by the disunion of the religious and the ethical. A certain purity was no doubt required of those who attended the mysteries of Eleusis; but by that purity was meant physical cleanliness and, strangely enough, a pure use of the Greek language, just as much as any moral temperance or rectitude; and the required condition was largely attained by the use or avoidance of certain foods and by bathing in the sea. Their cleanliness in fact was of the same confused kind, half physical and half moral, as that which the inhabitants of Tenos were formerly wont, and perhaps still continue, to seek on S. John the Baptist’s day (June 24) by leaping thrice through a bonfire and crying ‘Here I leave my sins and my fleas[55]’: and it was acquired by means equally material. There is nothing conspicuously ethical in such a purity as this.

If moreover, as has been well argued[56], a state of ecstasy was the highest manifestation of religious feeling, and this spiritual exaltation was the deliberate aim and end of Bacchic and other orgies, it must be frankly avowed that religion in its highest manifestations was not conducive to what we call morality. The means of inducing the ecstatic condition comprised drunkenness, inhalation of vapours, wild and licentious dancing. With physical surexcitation came, or was intended to come, a spiritual elevation such that the mind could visualise the object of its desire[57] and worship, and enjoy a sense of unity therewith. On the savagery and debauchery which accompanied these religious celebrations there is no need to enlarge. The _Bacchae_ of Euripides, with all its passion for the beauty of holiness, is a standing monument to the excesses of frenzy: and that these were no mere figment of the poet’s imagination nor a transfiguration of rites long obsolete, is proved by a single sentence of a sober enough writer of later times, ‘The things that take place at nocturnal celebrations, however licentious they may be, although known to the company at large, are to some extent condoned by them owing to the drunkenness[58].’

There were of course certain sects, such as the Orphic, who, in strong contrast with the ordinary religion, upheld definite ethical standards, preaching the necessity of purification from sin, and advocating moral and even ascetic rules of life. Yet, in spite of this, we find a certain amalgamation of Orphic and Bacchic mysteries. And why? Simply because both sects alike had a single end in view, a spiritual exaltation in which the soul might transcend the things of ordinary life, and see and commune with its gods. What did it matter if the means to that end differed? The one sect might reduce the passions of the body by rigid abstinence; the other might deaden them with a surfeit of their desire; but, whether by prostration or by surexcitation, the same religious end was sought and gained, and that end justified means which we count immoral.

In effect the morality of a man’s life counted for nothing as compared with his religion. Participation in the mysteries ensured blessings here and hereafter which an evil life would not forfeit nor a good life, without initiation, earn. ‘Thrice blessed they of men, who look upon these rites ere they go to Hades’ home: for them alone is there true life there, and for the others nought but evil[59].’ It was this that made Diogenes scoffingly ask, ‘What, shall the thief Pataecion have a better lot than Epaminondas after death, because he has been initiated[60]?’ Seemingly religion and morality were to the Greek mind divorced, or rather had never been wedded. Religion was concerned only with the intercourse of man and god: the moral character of the man himself and his relations with his fellows were outside the religious sphere.

Indeed it would have been hard for the ancients to regard morality as a religious obligation, when immorality was freely imputed to their gods. This was a real obstacle to the ethical improvement of the people at large, and was recognised as such by many thinkers. Pindar strove to expurgate mythological stories which brought discredit on the morals of Olympus. Plato would have banished the evil records of Homeric theology from his ideal state, and ridicules Musaeus for forming no more lofty conception of future bliss than ‘eternal drunkenness.’ Epicurus defended his own attitude towards the gods on the plea that there was ‘no impiety in doing away with the popular gods, but rather in attaching to the gods the popular ideas of them[61].’ In effect, in order to reconcile religion with the teaching of ethics, the would-be preacher of morality had either openly to discard a large amount of the popular theology or else to have recourse to adaptation and mystical interpretation of so artificial and arbitrary a kind that it could gain no hold upon the simple and spontaneous beliefs of the common-folk. Yet even among the ordinary men of those days there must have been some who, though they did not aspire to instruct their fellow-men, yet in hours of sober reason and cool judgement cannot have viewed unabashed the inconsistencies of a religion whose gods were stained with human vices. But such thoughts, we may suppose, were swept away, as men approached their sanctuaries and their mysteries, by a flood of religious fervour. Passion in such moments defeated reason. Emotion, susceptibility, imagination, impetuosity, powers of visualisation regarded among western nations as the perquisite of the inebriate, powers of ecstasy not easily distinguished from hysteria,--such were the mental conditions essential to the highest acts of worship; by these, and not by sober meditation, the soul attained to the closest communing and fullest union with that god whose glory for the nonce outshone all pale remembrance of mere moral rectitude and alone was able to evoke every supreme emotion of his worshipper.

If then morality was ever to be imposed and sanctioned by religion, a wholly new religion had to be found. This was the opportunity of Christianity. Paganism, in some of its most sacred rites, had availed itself even of immoral means to secure a religious end: Christianity gave to ethics a new and higher status, and was rather in danger of making religion wholly subservient to morality. That it was difficult to bring the first converts to the new point of view, is evident from the rebukes administered by S. Paul to the Corinthians, who seem not only to have indulged in many gross forms of vice in everyday life, but even to have made the most sacred of Christian services an occasion for gluttony and drunkenness[62].

In all then that concerns the ethical standards of the people, our study of modern Greece will contribute little to the understanding of ancient thought or conduct. Christianity has fenced men about with a rigid moral code, and has exerted itself to punish those who break bounds. Duty towards man is now recognised as the complement of duty towards God; and any one who by a notoriously evil life has outraged the moral laws of conduct, is liable to be deprived by excommunication of the established means of worship. The frailties of the Greek character remain indeed such as they always were: but now religion at least enjoins, if it cannot always enforce, the observance of a moral code which includes the eighth commandment, and Pataecion, though he go regularly to church, yet lacks something.

But while the Church had an open field in matters of morality and had no system of ethics based on Hellenic religion to combat in introducing her higher views of man’s duty towards his fellow-men, in the province of pure religion and of all that concerns the relations of man with his God or gods she necessarily encountered competition and opposition. Primarily the contest between paganism and Christianity might have been expected to resolve itself into a struggle between polytheism and monotheism: but as a matter of fact that simple issue became considerably complicated.

The minds of the educated classes had become confused by the subtleties of the Gnostics, who sought to find, in some philosophical basis common to all religions, an intellectual justification for accepting Christianity without wholly discarding earlier religious convictions. This however was a matter of theology rather than of religion, appealing not to the heart but to the head: and so far as the common-folk were concerned we may safely say that such speculations were above their heads. Yet for them too the issue was confused in two ways. The first disturbing factor was the attitude adopted by each of the two parties, pagan and Christian, towards the object of the other’s worship. The pagans--so catholic are the sympathies of polytheism--were ready enough to welcome Christ into the number of their gods. Tertullian tells us that the emperor Tiberius proposed the apotheosis of Christ[63]. Hadrian is said to have built temples in his honour[64]. Alexander Severus had in his private chapel statues of Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus[65]; and a similar association of Homer, Pythagoras, Christ, and S. Paul is noted by S. Augustine[66]. Since then there is no reason for supposing that the common-folk were more exclusive in their religious sympathies than the upper classes, it may safely be inferred that the average Pagan was willing to admit Christ to a place among the gods of Greece. The Christians on the other hand did not attack paganism by an utter denial of the existence of the old gods. They sought rather to ridicule and discredit them by pointing out the inconsistencies of pagan theology, and by ransacking mythology for every tale of the vices and misdoings of its deities. They even appealed to the testimony of Homer himself to show that the so-called gods (θεοί) of the Greek folk were mere demons (δαίμονες)[67],--for since Homer’s day the latter word had lost caste. Such methods, had they been wholly successful, might have produced similar results to those which followed the conflict of two religions in the early ages of Greece. As the Titanic dynasty of gods had fallen before the Olympian Zeus, and in their defeat had come to be accounted cruel and malicious powers rightly ousted from heaven by a more just and gracious deity, so too in turn might the whole number of the pagan gods have been reduced to the status of devils to act as a foil to the goodness of the Christian God. But this did not happen. One reason perhaps was that Christianity came provided with its own devil or devils, and the pagans were naturally averse from placing the gods whom they had been wont to venerate in the same category with spirits so uncompromisingly evil. The main reason however must be found in the fact that the Church had nothing to offer to the pagans in exchange for the countless gods of the old religion whom she was endeavouring to displace and to degrade. Indeed the real difficulty of the Christian Church was the tolerant spirit of the Greek people. They would not acknowledge that any feud existed. They were ready to worship the Christian God: but they must have felt that it was unreasonable of the Christian missionaries to ask them to give up all their old gods merely because a new god had been introduced. Even if their gods were all that the Christians represented them to be--cruel, licentious, unjust--that was no reason for neglecting them; rather it furnished a stronger motive for propitiating them and averting their wrath by prayer and sacrifice. Tolerant themselves, they must have resented a little the intolerance of the new religion.

Such being the attitude of the two parties, it may be doubted whether the Church would have made much headway in Greece, had it not been for a fresh development in her own conditions. And this development was the second disturbing factor in what should have been the simple struggle between monotheism and polytheism. Christianity, as understood by the masses, became polytheistic on its own account.

It is true that the authorities of the Greek Church have always taught that the angels and saints are not to be worshipped in the same sense as God. Ecclesiastical doctrine concedes to them no power to grant the petitions of men at their own will: they can act as intermediaries only between man and the Almighty; yet while they cannot in their own might fulfil the requests which they hear, their intervention as messengers to the throne of God is deemed to enhance the value of man’s prayers and wellnigh to ensure their acceptance. But such a doctrine is naturally too subtle for the uninstructed common-folk: and just as Christ had been admitted to the ranks of the Greek gods, so were the saints, it would seem, accepted as lesser deities or perhaps heroes. Whatever their precise status may have been, they at any rate became objects of worship; and a religion which admits many objects of worship becomes necessarily a form of polytheism.

Now while the Church did not sanction this state of things by her doctrine, there can be no doubt that she condoned it by the use to which she put it. The attempt to crush paganism had so far failed, and there was no longer any thought of a combat _à outrance_ between the two religions. Violence was to give way to diplomacy; and the chief instrument of the Church’s diplomacy was the worship of the saints. It became her hope to supplant paganism by substituting for the old gods Christian saints of similar names and functions; and the effects of this policy are everywhere in evidence in modern Greece.

Thus Dionysus was displaced by S. Dionysius, as a story still current in Greece testifies. ‘Once upon a time S. Dionysius was on his way to Naxos: and as he went he espied a small plant which excited his wonder. He dug it up, and because the sun was hot sought wherewith to shelter it. As he looked about, he saw the bone of a bird’s leg, and in this he put the plant to keep it safe. To his surprise the plant began to grow, and he sought again a larger covering for it. This time he found the leg-bone of a lion, and as he could not detach the plant from the bird’s leg, he put both together in that of the lion. Yet again it grew and this time he found the leg-bone of an ass and put plant and all into that. And so he came to Naxos. And when he came to plant the vine--for the plant was in fact the first vine--he could not sever it from the bones that sheltered it, but planted them all together. Then the vine grew and bore grapes and men made wine and drank thereof. And first when they drank they sang like birds, and when they drank more they grew strong as lions, and afterwards foolish as asses[68].’

The disguise of the ancient god is thin indeed. His name is changed by an iota, but his character not a jot. S. Dionysius is god of the vine, and even retains his predecessor’s connexion with Naxos. It is perhaps noteworthy too that in Athens the road which skirts the south side of the Acropolis and the theatre of Dionysus is now called the street of S. Dionysius the Areopagite. I was once corrected by a Greek of average education for speaking of the theatre of Dionysus instead of ascribing it to his saintly namesake.

Demeter again, although as we shall see later she still survives as a distinct personality, has been for the most part dispossessed by S. Demetrius. His festival, which falls in October and is therefore remote from harvest-time, is none the less celebrated with special enthusiasm among the agricultural classes; marriages too are especially frequent on that day[69].

Similarly Artemis, though she too is still known to the common-folk in some districts, has in the main handed over her functions to a saint of the other sex, Artemidos. Theodore Bent has recorded a good instance of this from the island of Keos (modern Zea). There is a belief throughout Greece that weakly children who show signs of wasting have been ‘struck by the Nereids,’--by nymphs, that is, of any kind, whether terrestrial or marine. ‘In Keos,’ says Bent, ‘S. Artemidos is the patron of these weaklings, and the church dedicated to him is some little way from the town on the hill-slopes; thither a mother will take a child afflicted by any mysterious wasting, “struck by the Nereids,” as they say. She then strips off its clothes and puts on new ones, blessed by the priest, leaving the old ones as a perquisite to the Church; and then if perchance the child grows strong, she will thank S. Artemidos for the blessing he has vouchsafed, unconscious that by so doing she is perpetuating the archaic worship of Artemis, to whom in classical times were attached the epithets παιδοτρόφος, κουροτρόφος, φιλομείραξ; and now the Ionian idea of the fructifying and nourishing properties of the Ephesian Artemis has been transferred to her Christian namesake[70].’ It might have been added that in this custom are reflected not only those general attributes of the tendance of children which Artemis shared with many other deities, but possibly also her power to undo any mischief wrought by her handmaidens, the nymphs[71].

Again there is every reason to suppose that S. Elias[72] whose chapels crown countless hilltops is merely the Christian successor to Helios, the Sun. The two names, which have only a moderate resemblance in the nominative, coincide for modern pronunciation in the genitive; and the frequency with which that case was needed in speaking of the church or the mountain-peak dedicated to one or the other may have facilitated the transition. Besides inheriting the mountain sanctuaries at which the worship of the Sun may have persisted from a very early age, S. Elias has also taken over the chariot of his predecessor, and thunder is sometimes attributed to the rolling of its wheels.

In other cases, without any resemblance of names, identity of attributes or functions suggested the substitution of saint for pagan deity. Hermes who in old times was the chief ‘angel’ or messenger of the immortals (ἄγγελος ἀθανάτων) was naturally succeeded by the archangel Michael, upon whom therefore devolves the duty of escorting men’s souls to Hades; and to this day the men of Maina tell how the archangel, with drawn sword in his hand instead of the wand of his prototype, may be seen passing to and fro at the mouth of the caves of Taenarus through which Heracles made his ascent with Cerberus from the lower world, and which is still the best-known descent thereto. The supplanting of Hermes by Michael is well illustrated in the sphere of art also by a curious gem. The design is an ordinary type of Hermes with his traditional cap, and at his side a cock, the symbol of vigilance and of gymnastic sport; by a later hand has been engraved the name ‘Michael’; the cock remained to be interpreted doubtless as the Christian symbol of the awakening at the last day of them that sleep[73].

The conversion of pagan temples or of their sites to the purposes of Christianity tells the same tale. The virgin goddess of Athens ceded the Parthenon to the Blessed Virgin of the Christians. The so-called Theseum, whether Theseus or Heracles was its original occupant, was fitly made over to the warrior S. George: but none the less what seems to have been an old pagan festival, known as the ρουσάλια (Latin _rosalia_)[74], continues to this day to be celebrated with dancing and feasting in its precincts. The Church of the Annunciation at Tenos, so famous throughout the Greek world for its miracles of healing, stands on the foundations of Poseidon’s ancient sanctuary, and includes in its precincts a holy spring (ἅγι̯ασμα) whose healing virtues, we can hardly doubt, were first discovered by the pagans: for Poseidon was worshipped in Tenos under the title of the ‘healer’ (ἰατρός)[75]. Indeed throughout the length and breadth of the land the traveller will find churches built with the material of the old temples or superimposed upon their foundation, and cannot fail to detect therein evidence of a deliberate policy on the part of the Church.

But in her attempts to be conciliatory she became in fact compromised. It was politic no doubt to encourage the weaker brethren by building churches on sites where they had long been wont to worship: it was politic to smooth the path of the common-folk by substituting for the god whom they had worshipped a patron-saint of like name or attributes. But in so doing the Church practically condoned polytheism. She drove out the old gods from their temples made with hands, but did not ensure the obliteration of them from men’s hearts. The saints whom she set up in the place of the old deities were certain to acquire the rank of gods in the estimation of the people and, despite the niceties of ecclesiastical doctrine, to become in fact objects of frank and open worship. The adoption of the old places of worship made it inevitable that the old associations of the pagan cults should survive and blend themselves with the new ideas, and that the churches should more often acquire prestige from their heathen sites than themselves shed a new lustre of sanctity upon them. In effect, paganism was not uprooted to make room for the planting of Christianity, but served rather as an old stock on which a new and vigorous branch, capable indeed of fairer fruit but owing its very vitality to alien sap, might be engrafted.