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The Origin of Belief among the Greeks in the Divinity of the Heavenly Bodies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Martin P. Nilsson
Martin P. Nilsson
Affiliation:
Lund University, Sweden
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Extract

It is a fact which is not justly appreciated that the Sun and the Moon had almost no cult in the early and classical age of Greece except for the Sun at Rhodes, a cult which is reasonably suspected to be of foreign origin. Helios and Selene were, of course, considered to be gods, but in mythology. Those scholars who have eagerly tried to find evidence for their cult ought to remember the statements of Aristophanes and Plato that Helios and Selene were barbarous gods. These two certainly knew the cults of their compatriots better than we do. On the other hand, the Sun cult was very popular and wide-spread in Roman times and became finally the last State religion of the Empire. It came from the Orient, and the mediator and the reason of its popularity was astrology. So the question arises: why did the Greeks accept the astrology which they rejected in an earlier age, and why did they begin to pay a cult to Helios to whom they had shown no veneration in earlier times? Did they simply succumb to a foreign religion or were there intrinsic reasons which contributed to this result?

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 1940 , pp. 1 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1940

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References

1 See my remarks Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, xxx, 1933, p. 141.

2 Aristoph., Pac, V. 406 seqq.; Plato, Cratylus, p. 397 C.

3 Democritus, Test. A 75 in Diels-Kranz, Fragm. der Vorsokratiker.

4 Critias fragm. 1 V. 27 seqq. in Nauck, Fragm. tragicorum 2.

5 Prodicus B fragm. 5 loc. cit.

6 Aristoph., Nub., V. 399 seqq.

7 Plato, Cratylus, p. 397 C.

8 Plato, Timaeus, p. 37 C; F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, p. 101.

9 Plato, De leg., p. 886 B.

10 This subject has been very vigorously discussed. I cite W. Jaeger, Aristoteles, Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, 1923; English translation by R. Robinson, 1934. J. Bidez, Platon, Eudoxe de Cnide et l'Orient, Acad. belgique, classe de lettres, xix, 1933, pp. 195 and 245; E. de Places, Platon et l'astronomie chaldéenne, Mélanges Cumont, 1936, pp. 129 seqq.

11 The last defence of its genuineness is by H. Raeder, Platons Epinomis, Kong. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Hist.-filol. Meddelelser, xxvi: 1, 1938.

12 Translation by J. Harward.

13 The words hint at the Chaldaean origin of the astrology. J. Bidez, Rev. de philol. xxix, 1905, p. 319, has proved that in p. 987 C the slowest planet according to the best manuscripts is called ‘Ηλίου, not Κρόνου ἀστήρ. According to the Chaldaean doctrine Saturn was the sun of the night. That the Greek names of the planets used in the Epinomis were soon ousted by the Babylonian ones shows the rapid spread of the Chaldaean doctrine; F. Cumont, Babylon und die griechische Astronomie, Neue Jahrb. f. klass. Altertum, xxvi, 1911, pp. 1.

14 Aristotle, fragm. 12 Rose in Sextus Emp., adv. dogm., iii, 20 seqq.

15 Cicero, de nat. deorum, ii, 95.

16 Aristotle, fr. 13 in Sextus iii, 26 seq.

17 H. von Arnim, Die Entstehung der Gotteslehre des Aristoteles, Sitz.-ber. Akad. Wien, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 212, Bd. 5. Abh., 1931, p. 1.

18 W. Jaeger, op. cit.; H. von Arnim, op. cit.; Guthrie, W. K. C., The Development of Aristotle's Theology, Class. Quarterly, xxvii, 1933, pp. 162, and in the introduction to his translation of Aristotle, De caelo, in the Loeb Classical Library, the proof-sheets of which I have been able to use, thanks to the kindness of the author.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Aristotle, De caelo, i, 9, p. 279 a, 30 seqq.

20 Ibid, ii, 3, p. 286 a, 9. On passages in De caelo which seem to imply the transcendent mover see Guthrie loc. cit.

21 Cicero, De nat. deorum, ii, 42 and 44 resp.

22 Guthrie in his introduction to De caelo, pp. xxxii and xxvii resp.

23 E. Pfeiffer, Studien zum antiken Sternglauben, 1916.