Artemis'
Position Amongst Other Deities; How Does Ancient Greek Polytheism Translate Into
Modern Study?
For this posting we will expand somewhat on the
aspect of ancient Greek religion which is perhaps the most different from what
we know of most modern religions. Polytheism, a religious term meaning to
worship a pantheon of multiple gods, was fundamental to the way of life in this
civilisation. The ancient Greeks lived their lives in a way that appeased not
just the gods but also worshipped ancient Greek heroes such as Hercules and
Achilles. The vast network of deities or those that received worship in this
civilisation is staggering. Any google search of ‘list of Greek gods and
goddesses’ brings up multiple websites containing sometimes hundreds of deities
including Olympian and chthonic gods (more on this in a future post) and also
heroes. Rituals as well as spectacles such as competitive games in honour of
these deities were held in an attempt to receive favour.
Each deity had a specific sphere which related to
day to day activities of the Greeks and the success of these activities was
placed on worship to divine beings. The question we can ask ourselves is how do
we differentiate between divines? How to we tell apart one divine from another?
Certain deities were largely linked to Earth in ways that certain other deities
were lesser involved with nature. We can call this divide nature versus
culture. For example, Demeter was the goddess of harvest and is the power that
aids in crop growth. To worship Demeter was to put faith in her for a
successful harvest. We can consider this a fairly natural goddess then? It is
not so clear a divide as we see far harsher links to nature in Poseidon.
Similarly, to worship Artemis was to aid in hunting but also safe progress in
childbirth. 'The Homeric Artemis abandons the battlefield in humiliation, and
the goddess evidently does not owe her military role to her own
prowess as a warrior. She has a place, it has been suggested, because battle is
the point of intersection between civilization and culture that she regularly,
if in very different ways, patrols.'[1]
In order to properly differentiate between how this
aspect of polytheism was organized, one must consider the question of whether
we can highlight any aspects of Greek thought that fully allowed for the
differentiation of the divines. We know of Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hera,
Demeter, Artemis, Apollo, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus and Dionysus (arguably so
for Dionysus, whom fairly often was replacement for Hestia) as being the twelve
Olympic gods.
Robert Parker poses an interesting idea towards
Greek thought on the matter. ‘The distinction between the named gods of myth
and the anonymous gods of daily discourse derives; it may be objected, not from
a different belief about the nature of the gods but from the limitations of
human perception.[2] His argument goes on
to highlight that giving the gods a name allows for belief to spread, but that
there is no logical way to link interventions in events that occur. This
is one particular insight by Parker that clearly shows modern perception as
finding difficulty in the logic of Hellenic polytheism. Perhaps logic is the
problem.
Today, we could account for the failure of a crop
as being due to scientific factors such as poor weather, soil, lack of
nutrients; these are logical suggestions as to the reason for a poor harvest.
However, the intervention of Demeter in such matters was regarded as important
enough to require sacrifice in order to progress.
How much importance the Greeks put tradition down to their belief in the gods? Again, to use Parker as a reference for such an idea, ‘So much for the divine as manifested in the world of nature’[3] Up to this point, one can fully agree with Parkers appraisal of the Greek gods. This appraisal is essentially highlighting that the literature which all so often mentions the divines is a reflection of Greek religious thought but that actual manifestations were represented in the forms of objects or devices such as Demeter as grain and Dionysus as wine, also Zeus as the thunderbolt.
This has meaning from the argument that the vast network of Greek gods and their identifiable traits derives from the possibility to then create a societal identity. To help clarify this, Sparta commonly worshipped Artemis and as such was important to this region but Athens put critical belief on Athena as protector of their polis. This is just one problem modern scholarly seeks to study and address in connection with how ancient Greeks worshipped in a polytheistic manner there are several more yet to be discussed within this blog.
[1]Parker R (2005) Polytheism and Society at Athens. Oxford University Press. P.400
[2] Scullion, S (Apr.1994) ‘Olympian and
Chthonian’, Classical Antiquity. 13.1, University of
California Press pp.75-76
[3]Parker, R (2011) On Greek Religion. Cornell
University Press. Pp.66-67
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