128 RELIGION OF GREECE
RELIGION OF GREECE
efficaciousness : the mere approaching them in the proper ritual and method enabled the worshipper to call them into action on his side, and he could as it were compel them to act by addressing them by the proper formule (which thus acquired a magic character); but some kind of sacrifice was an invariable part of the ritual.* (c) To invoke the Deity as a witness of what they were about to say or had said (8pxos). This, again, was strictly a variety of the previous class, for the horkos was simply an imprecation of evil on oneself in case one were speaking falsely. The person swears by the Deity whom he invokes as a witness, and who is his horkos; and, as the form was very ancient, the object sworn by might be an animal or a stone, as the primitive embodiment or home of Divine power: such was the old Cretan oath associated with the name of Rhadamanthus (though the Scholiast on Aristoph. Av. 520 speaks as if Rhada- manthus were the inventor of such milder forms of oath, as by the dog, the goose, the ram, etc.) : such also was the sacred Latin oath, per Jovem lapidem. An oath, as being really a prayer to the Deity, was properly accompanied by a sacri- fice.
In all such cases the prayer or oath is binding on the descendants or representatives of him who has invoked the Deity, and the consequences may fall on them even generations later. It was not uncommon to bring the children to the place where the oath was taken, and thus make them explicitly and publicly parties to the act and sharers in its consequences.
These voluntary and occasional acts, which per- sisted alongside of the stated ritual, were older than, and gave rise to, ritual. The asking of help from the god in difficulties or troubles was as old as the idea of a god ; for in the Anatolian belief the god was the helper and teacher. The way in which he was efficaciously approached naturally came gradually to be stereotyped as ritual, and was regarded as revealed by the god, who was in this way his own first priest, and teacher of his own rites.
(9) Priests.—The original idea which gave rise to the Anatolian priesthood has become clear in the preceding investigation. The priest is the bearer of the Divine knowledge; he can teach men how to approach and propitiate the Divine power. This knowledge was originally taught by the Divine Being personally to men; in other words, the god is the first priest, performing as an ex- ample to his successors the due ceremonies. The idea of a Divine revelation, through which man becomes aware of the nature and will of God, is here present in a very crude and rude form; and it is hardly possible to distinguish how far this rudeness is the real primitive simplicity of a very early stage, when thought is hardly separated from the sensuous accompaniments through which it is suggested to men, and how far it may be im- parted by degeneration, i.e. by the stereotyping of prunitive sensuous forms, and the loss of the germ of thought implicated in those forms.
While the priest in this ancient stage of religion possesses the knowledge and imparts it to the worshippers, he is not considered to be necessary in himself. The worshipper, whether a private individual who approaches the Deity on behalf of himself and his family, or an official or magistrate who acts on behalf of the State or body which he represents, needs no intermediary between himself and the god. Provided he can perform fully and correctly his part in the transaction,+ the Deity is satisfied and must respond. The priest or helper
* This second purpose frequently passed into the sphere of magic: see C, § IIT (4). 1 ae ¢ i T turoping cpa v3 ein vixvy % osors : Plato, Huth. 14 EB,
is needed only to keep the worshipper right, to guard him against errors, and to help him to understand the way in which the Deity replies or conveys information ; in other words, the helping priest merely acts as instructor, while the wor- shipper plays the part of priest-officiator, and per- forms the series of acts which the god himself originally did as an example to mankind who come after him.
In this stage there is not, in the strict sense, any priest or any sacerdotal order or caste, though naturally the Divine knowledge would tend to be handed down from father to son. Priests in the strictest sense begin only when a person per- manently assumes the place of the god’s represen- tative, and plays the part of the god regularly in the ritual as it was rehearsed at the proper intervals before a body of worshippers. The priest in this fuller sense was connected with and helped the growth of an anthropomorphic conception of the Deity. He was the representative on earth of the god as the priestess was of the goddess; and the two played their parts year after year in the Divine drama, which constituted the most im- portant part of the growing body of ritual.
The priest who represented the god wore his dress,* and in some cases, probably in most, assumed his name. In Pessinus, for example, the chief priest was called Atis, as is shown by inscriptions of the 2nd cent. B.c. ; and undoubtedly this was simply the name of the god variously spelt Attis or Atys or Ates, and was assumed as an official title, implying that the office was tepdvupos, z.e. the bearer lost his individual name and assumed a hieratic name when he entered on office.