But in the literature Zeus became by degrees more completely the bearer of a moral rule, and the other gods the willing ministers of his provi- dence and will. As this idea was more thoroughly grasped, the opposition between Fate and God was in some degree reconciled; the order of nature (Hiuapuévn) became a moral and knowable law, the will of God : man, by learning and living in accord- ance with that will, can avoid the calamity which must otherwise overtake him. Soin Pindar, Zeus causes all that happens to man ; he can turn night to day, and day to night: nothing that man does is hid from him; only where he shows the way is a blessing to be hoped for. The constant theme of Aischylus is the unerring, unfailing justice dis- played in the course of nature. He uses Justice (Atckn) and Zeus sometimes as convertible terms ; and both denote that order in nature which through suffering teaches knowledge and con- formity with itself, and the recognition of which is the only consolation in time of doubt. He recognizes a development in the history of re- ligion ; the triumph of Zeus over the older dynasty of the Titans is the triumph of a moral providence over a lower order of gods. He directly combated the ancient saying as it appears, ¢e.g., in Herodotus (radaiparos doyos), and declares that it is the actual sin of man, not the mere fact of his prosperity, that brings on him the divinely-sent calamity (Agam. 750; Hwm. 531); and in many other pas- sages he shows in clear words that such calamity is simply the way in which wisdom is taught to men even against their will. The law of Zeus, or the course of justice, is to learn by suffering (wabeiv pabeiv, mdber pdos, Agam. 170). The law is a kindly one, the gracious dispensation of one that has power to make his will into Necessity. The older dynasty had represented the rule of fear: Necessity was only a punishing power, which man must dread but cannot understand ; and was exercised by the gods of that dynasty—
tls oby avdykns éorly olaxoarpédos ; Motpar rpimoppor uvipoves T ’Hpuvvves: and Heraclitus declares that if the sun were to
transgress his bounds the Erinnyes would punish him. But under the completed sway of Zeus the
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RELIGION OF GREECE
avenging power of the older gods is merged in the helping and benignant power of the younger deities, for Necessity is changed into order and reason, which man can learn and respect, and thereby avoid the punishment and gain the good. Socrates seems even to have substituted Pronov, Providence, for Necessity ; but his biographer did not understand him. :
In Sophocles, polytheism perhaps appears in its most perfect form ; the other gods are only repre- sentatives of the one God, or instruments used in turn by a moral providence. To Pindar, also, Zeus is not so much a god, as the one God.
Euripides was clearly conscious of the essential self-contradiction involved in polytheism ; he per- ceived clearly and felt strongly that it results in degrading the several gods and making the world irrational: he gave as emphatic and_open expression to this as he dared: for example, in the Apollo of the Jon, whose criminal conduct towards Creusa in the past is even surpassed by the dishonesty of his attitude towards her and towards Xuthus in the play. That Euripides was fully conscious of this aspect of the action seems undeniable: that the general Athenian public had only some vague, uneasy sense that the poet was maligning the gods seems equally certain. It is doubtful if Euripides had any solution to offer that satisfied himself; but at any rate the condi- tions under which he had to work precluded his formally offering any solution, for he dared not make his views about the gods too explicit, and could only suggest difficulties and put questions. But, although his plays are remarkably instructive as regards the attitude of a section of the think- ing and educated Greeks towards polytheism, the subject is too large for our limits.
At the same time, the other side of religious thought grew correspondingly. The idea of a larger cycle of life in which the apparent injustice of earthly existence might be eliminated and all men receive their deserts—an idea of which the most scanty traces appear in Homer and Hesiod— grows more apparent in Pindar: future punishment is the climax of the Divine vengeance in A‘schylus, it is often referred to in Sophocles, and Euripides says, ‘Who knows if death is not really the life, and life the death?’ This recognition of a single rule in life and after death reconciles the antithesis of Olympian and Chthonian deities.
The influence of literature penetrated gradually through the people. The more educated were, of course, more open to it, and thus tended to become estranged from the popular beliefs as superstitions. Hence in the 5th and 4th cents. there was a growing gap between the religion of the educated and the religion of the common people. Both, so far as we have yet gone, were equally polytheistic. Philosophy entered on a bolder path, and directly combated the polytheism and _anthropomorphism of the popular religion. While the poets saw in the ancestral religion the germs of higher thoughts, they did not try to free these thoughts from the sensuous symbolism in which the prevailing re- ligion enveloped them. Philosophy naturally tended more to rise above the traditional and accepted ideas. Hence it appears to Plato in the Tenth Book of the Republic that in the conflict between philosophy and the vulgar crowd the poets are among the latter.