(4) Development of the sacred place into a re- ligious centre or Hieron.—Naturally, some of the sacred places became much more famous and im- portant than others. The circumstances that pro- duced such fame and importance belong to the history of each individual locality. It was the needs, the numbers, and the nature of the sur- rounding population that made some shrines greater than others. Holy places in very secluded situa- tions could hardly become very important as re- ligious centres, though devotees often visited them and made offerings. The great Hiera were usually connected with some centre of population, where the primitive form of theocratic government and the needs of the ritual (on which see § VIII (7) and § VII (9)) caused the growth of a large establish- ment, whose influence became recognized far beyond the immediate circle of its original wor- shippers. Such, for example, were the Pontic and the Cappadocian Komana, the Galatian Pessinus, the two Hiera of the Cappadocian Zeus at Venasa and at Tyana, the Hieron of the Milyadie Zeus or Sabazios, mentioned by Allius Aristides (which is certainly the one that is described in consider- able detail in the writer’s Cities and Bishopries of Phrygia, i. ch. ix., though the identification is not there mentioned), the Hzeron of Leto and Lairbenos at Dionysopolis and Hierapolis (id. ch. iv.), and many others.
* Eflatun Bunar, ‘Plato’s Spring’; Hist. Geogr. As. Min. p. 39.
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It is not the case, however, that those great Hiera were later in growth than the cities beside which or in which they were situated. In many cases it was the Hieron which caused the city to grow by attracting population. But a large popu- lation required a suitable home, and the town where people should dwell could in many cases not be situated exactly at the holy place, and must be placed at some distance. At Ephesus it is highly probable that the place among the moun- taims on the south of the valley where the goddess was believed to have been born, and where Mysteria were regularly performed, was the true old holy pints ; but the Hieron grew in the open valley,
eside an isolated hill, which formed a convenient centre for the growing population. _ (5) Saered places in the religion of Greece.—It is obvious how entirely pre-Hellenic this religion was, so far as we have yet described it, and how entirely unlike it was to the religion that we are familiar with as Greek. Not a single feature which we regard as characteristically Hellenic is apparent in it. And yet, to everything that we have described, parallels can be cited from religious foundations in the strictly Greek lands. Behind Greek religion proper there lies, far away back, that old aniconic worship in mountain solitudes and mysterious caves, or on mountain tops, like that of Hera on Mount Ocha in Eubea, or of Zeus on Mount Lyceeus in Arcadia; and the most barbarous of the rude symbolic images of Anatolia, compounded of parts of animals, are not more abso- lutely un-Hellenic than the Arcadian horse-headed Demeter. That early religion of the Greek lands seems to have been the religion of the aboriginal race who elaborated the Mycenzean civilization of Crete and the Aigean Islands, and, above all, of the Argolic valley and other parts of the West Aigean coastland, the people whom Prof. W. Ridgeway would identify as Pelasgian. On this ancient foundation the religion of later and more artistic -Greece was gradually built up: see below, B, § I.
V. RELATION OF THE ORIGINAL ANICONIC RE- LIGION TO IMAGE-WORSHIP. —(1) Coexistence of the two kinds of worship.—We have spoken of that primitive religion as aniconic, as reverencing the Divine nature without giving it any definite form ; and yet we have been forced often to speak of the rude images in which that primitive conception of the Deity was expressed. The truth seems to be that the inconsistency, in which we find ourselves involved, lies in the religion from the beginning. Probably it was at no time absolutely aniconic and impersonal : doubtless there was always in the popular conceptions a deep-seated and unconquer- able tendency to give form to the Divine nature, to regard it as envisaged in something like human or animal form. The anthropomorphic side alone was steadily developed in the growth of Hellenism. In the Anatolian religion the aniconic side and the barbaric bestial envisagement both continued strong and important, until they were forced into the background by the invasion of the formed and completed Hellenic civilization, with its philo- sophic scepticism about the old religion in theory and its anthropomorphic orthodoxy in practice. But even then those native characteristics were far from being extirpated. They persisted in the form of superstitious and secret mysterious rites, and, for the most part, even the educated tolerated them and accorded a moderate amount of recognition to them.
Again, even in the latest period, when image- worship was apparently universal, the old, vague, impersonal conception of the Divine nature was not extirpated, but remained still vigorous. No inconsistency was felt between the aniconic and the iconic personal idea, All the stages in this
long process of development could perfectly well exist at the same time. Two or three centuries after Christ, it is evident from many inscriptions that the popular mind often thought of and spoke about ‘the God,’ or ‘the just God,’ or ‘the pious and just God,’ as the vague, formless Divine power. The people were all acquainted with and reverenced both the purely human representations of the Greek religious art and the barbarous sym- bolic images of primitive Anatolian worship. But still their mind was also occupied with a mysteri- ous power behind them.