Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

by Tim Whitmarsh

2. Prometheus: Hesiod, Theogony 514–616.

  3. Menoetius: Ibid.

  4. Zeus’s overthrow: Prometheus Bound 755–70. For a similar prophecy see Hesiod, Theogony 886–90.

  5. Pliny: Natural History 2.5.27. On the omnipotence paradox see for example P. Grim, “Impossibility Arguments,” in M. Martin (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 200–204. Bia and kratos: Hesiod, Theogony 385–87, and Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 1–87.

  6. Iliad 1.565–69.

  7. On the centrality of debate and competition to early Greek society see especially E. Barker, Entering the Agōn: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  8. Cult of the war dead in historical times: B. Currie, Pindar and the Cult of Heroes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 89–119. Divinization of rulers: Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 439–92, and below, chapter 10.

  9. Pisistratus: Herodotus 1.60, with W. R. Connor, “Tribes, Festivals and Processions; Civic Ceremonial and Political Manipulation in Archaic Greece,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 107 (1987): 40–50.

  10. Homer, Iliad 5.311–430, 850–909; 21.211–97.

  11. This is the version found in Pherecydes (Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 3 F 119 = schol. Iliad 6.153). The reason for supposing this to be the Catalogue’s story is that Apollodorus (who tends to follow the Catalogue) recounts the first part about Aesopus and Aegina (Library 1.9.3). Contrary to what is sometimes said, this version is compatible with Theognis 698–715 and Alcaeus fr. 38a, which have Sisyphus escaping from the underworld: this may just be the later part of the story recounted in Pherecydes. Folkloric tales of the tricking of death are type 332 in A. Aarne and S. Thompson, The Types of the Folk-Tale: A Classification and Bibliography, 2nd ed. (Helsinki: Academia Scientarum Fennica, 1981).

  12. Fragment 10(d) in R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) = P. Michigan inv. 1447 ii 14–19; see also Apollodorus, Library 1.53. For the addition see Etymologicum Genuinum under “Alcyone”; the Greek, which is ambiguous at this point, could also mean that he “wanted to be thought of as a god.”

  13. Apollodorus, Library 1.9.7.

  14. Imitation: Diodorus of Sicily 6.6.4–5; Vergil, Aeneid 6.585–95; Galen, On the Method of Healing 14.10.18; pseudo-Hyginus, Stories 61, 239.

  15. S. Trzaskoma and R. Scott Smith, “Apollodorus 1.9.7: Salmoneus’ Thunder Machine,” Philologus 149 (2005): 328–46. For the bronteion and the keraunoskopeion see Pollux 4.19.130.

  4. The Material Cosmos

  1. For accessible introductions to the pre-Socratics see A. A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and J. Warren, Presocratics (Stocksfield, UK: Acumen, 2007). They are cited from D. W. Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996; 1st ed. 1962).

  2. “Intelligent design” and the pre-Socratics (and other philosophers), D. Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). For naturalism see for example M. Ruse, “Naturalism and the Scientific Method,” in S. Bullivant and M. Ruse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 383–96.

  3. G. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 83–103; Hesiod, Works and Days 650–62.

  4. Kostas Vlassopoulos in particular has challenged the Greek/Near Eastern distinction: see his Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History Beyond Eurocentrism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Greeks and Barbarians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

  5. On Near Eastern influences on the pre-Socratics see M. L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)—not universally accepted, but certainly suggestive.

  6. Thales fell down a well: Plato, Theaetetus 174a. Eclipse: Herodotus 1.74.2, Pliny Natural History 2.53. Phoenician: Herodotus 1.170.3, Diogenes Laertius 1.22. Studied in Egypt: Diogenes Laertius 1.24, pseudo-Plutarch Opinions 1.3.1, Proclus On Euclid 65.3–11.

  7. The theological aspects of the pre-Socratic arkhē are discussed from a different perspective by A. Drozdek, Greek Philosophers as Theologians: The Divine Arkhe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); see also S. Broadie, “Rational Theology,” in Long, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, 205–24. Thales and thal: A. Feldman, “Thoughts on Thales,” Classical Journal 41 (1945): 4–6.

  8. Thales on god as creator and designer: fragments 35–37 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy. Anaximander on thunder: fragments 30–31. Anaximenes: fragments 12, 27–28. Anaximenes on seasonal change: fragments 30–31; rainbows 32–33; earthquakes 34. Anaximander on heavenly bodies: fragment 20; Anaximenes fragment 12. Life emerged from the sea: Anaximander fragments 19–20.

  9. God: Anaximander fragment 19, Anaximenes fragments 36–38. Quotation: Anaximander fragment 19. Anaximander also identifies gods with “innumerable worlds” at fragment 41 and with “countless heavens” in 42: whatever underlies these opaque claims, there is certainly a strikingly recurrent association of the idea of divinity with the infinite.

  10. Xenophanes fragments 29, 31, 32, 33 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy. Anthropomorphism in religion: S. Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

  11. Fictions: fragment 9.21–22. Prophecy: fragments 43, 44; heating of the earth: fragment 56; caves: fragment 57; rain: fragment 53; solar systems, salination, fossils: fragment 59; sun and moon: fragments 60, 67; lightning: fragment 71; rainbows: fragment 72; comets, shooting stars, meteors: fragment 70; Saint Elmo’s fire: fragment 73.

  12. One god: fragment 35; unmoving, unchanging: fragments 38, 42; uncreated and eternal: fragments 41, 42; causing movement through his mind: fragment 37. On Xenophanes’s wavering between monotheism and polytheism see Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 244–68.

  13. Zeno fragment 15 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy.

  14. Some of the testimonies say that Hippo came from southern Italy; perhaps he relocated there from Samos at some point (there was much to-ing and fro-ing between the two during the period). Evidence for activity in Athens comes in the form of a parody by the Athenian comic poet Cratinus: see Hippo testimonium 2 in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 1, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951), 385–87. The soul is the brain: testimonium 3. An “atheist”: testimonia 4, 8. More generally see S. Shapiro, “Hippon the Atheist: The Surprisingly Intelligent Views of Hippon of Samos,” Journal of Ancient Civilizations 14 (1999): 111–23). No soul in Homer and Hesiod: J.-P. Vernant, “Psuche: Simulacrum of the Body or Image of the Divine?,” in F. I. Zeitlin (ed.), Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 186–94. On mystery cults see in general W. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).

  15. Hippo fragment 2 in Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. For Michael Hendry’s alternative reading see http://www.curculio.org/​Ioci/​november.pdf (accessed April 2014).

  16. Mind: fragments 30–34 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy. I follow the reconstruction of Anaxagoras’s thought in Sedley, Creationism, 1–30.

  17. Reputation as an atheist: Plato, Apology of Socrates 26c–d. For more on the trial of Anaxagoras see chapter 8. Plato’s criticism: Phaedo 98c, with Sedley, Creationism, 87. Mind as creator: fragment 33.

  18. Athens: Leucippus and Democritus fragment 4 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy.

  19. Mult
iple worlds with varying degrees of life: fragment 53. Big bang: R. Collins, cited at W. J. Wood, God (Durham, UK: Acumen, 2011), 21.

  20. Material soul: fragments 113–15. Gods as misperceptions of natural phenomena: fragment 183. Gods as nocturnal visions: 186–88.

  Part Two: Classical Athens

  1. Number of poleis: M. H. Hansen, “95 Theses about the Greek ‘Polis’ in the Archaic and Classical Periods: A Report on the Results Obtained by the Copenhagen Polis Centre in the Period 1993–2003,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 52 (2003): 257–82, at 263–64. For orientation on Athenian democracy see, for example, J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); R. Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200–479 BC, 2nd ed. (Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2009): 276–97 and Athens and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); P. J. Rhodes (ed.), Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). More generally: S. Hornblower, The Greek World, 479–323 BC, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002).

  2. For a lively account of the rise of Persia and the conflict with Greece, see T. Holland, Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (London: Little, Brown, 2005).

  3. On the Delian League see especially A. Powell, Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 BC, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2001); and the essays in P. Low (ed.), The Athenian Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).

  4. On the Peloponnesian War see G. Cawkwell, Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War (London: Routledge, 1997); D. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Viking, 2003).

  5. Laurion: quotation from Diodorus of Sicily 3.13.3, who perhaps relies on earlier testimony. Possible numbers of slaves are canvassed by R. Osborne, Athens and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 86–88. For a brief survey of issues around Athenian slavery see also T. E. Rihll, “Classical Athens,” in K. Bradley and P. Cartledge (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 1, The Ancient Mediterranean World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 48–73. Aelian, Varied History 2.1.9 offers a catalogue of the imperialist cruelties of the classical Athenians.

  5. Cause and Effect

  1. Euripides, Trojan Women 988–90.

  2. On the law courts see especially A. Lanni, Law and Justice in the Courts of Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  3. Sacred olive tree: Lysias 7. Generally on the representation of religion in Greek oratory see G. Martin, Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1–216. See his p. 205 on the vagueness of references to divine intervention. Aristophanes parodies the blaming of gods (Clouds 85), and Plato overtly disapproves of it (Republic 379c–380c; also pseudo-Plato, Alcibiades II 142d). This idea has its roots in Homer, however (see Odyssey 1.32–34).

  4. For this kind of explanation of intellectual change on the basis of political change the work of G. E. R. Lloyd has been pivotal: see Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origins and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), Science, Folklore and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), Demystifying Mentalities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  5. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience, 38–49.

  6. All quotations from Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease 1–2. See more generally Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience, 15–27.

  7. On the rhetorical denigration of opponents in Greek science see Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology, 119–35. The one area where the early medical writers do acknowledge divine influence is in dreams (see the Hippocratic On Dreams).

  8. The contrast between Greek and biblical approaches to the recording of the past is drawn in characteristically forthright terms by R. Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible (London: Penguin, 2006). Herodotus invokes the now-fragmentary Hecataeus of Miletus as a partial precedent. There has been some skepticism over Herodotus’s claims about his travels: see especially D. Fehling, Herodotus and His Sources: Citation, Invention and Narrative Art, trans. J. G. Howie (Leeds: F. Cairns, 1989).

  9. On Herodotus’s relationship to contemporary Athenian intellectual life see R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Quotations: Herodotus, preface; 1.5–6.

  10. Phye: 1.60; Thales: 1.75; Nile: 2.22.

  11. Herodotus as rationalist: see for example D. Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1989); as religious thinker: T. Harrison, Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and J. D. Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). For a recent assessment see S. Scullion, “Herodotus and Greek Religion,” in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 192–208; Scullion discusses the rare references to specific gods and the commoner language of abstract divinity at 194–97; see also Harrison, Divinity and History, 158–81. Quotation about human prosperity: Herodotus 1.5. Herodotus’s preoccupation with tisis is a central theme of J. Gould, Herodotus (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989). It is true that there are occasions when gods seem to intervene, notably 1.87 (Croesus prays; rain falls), 6.105 (the epiphany of Pan to Phidippides), and 8.36–39 (local Delphic heroes appear to the invading Persians). In these instances, certainly, Herodotus comes closer to conventional religiosity, but note that Herodotus always keeps the idea of divine intervention at arm’s length: in the first case he leaves open the possibility of coincidence, and the second and third are reported by characters within the narrative rather than in his own voice.

  12. Herodotus quotation: 7.46 (Artabanus reflecting with Xerxes on the brevity of life).

  13. Marcellinus, Life of Thucydides 22; a late-antique biography, but Marcellinus explicitly attributes this observation to his source Antyllus (a grammarian of unknown date). Marcellinus writes that “he was thought ērema an atheist”: unlike most commentators I take the adverb with the verb rather than the noun (i.e., “he was whispered to be an atheist,” rather than “he was thought to be something of an atheist”). W. Furley, “Thucydides and Religion,” in A. Rengakos and A. Tsakmakis (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Thucydides (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 415–38 offers an excellent survey of Thucydidean attitudes to religion and the gods.

  14. Thucydides 2.54; more generally on his treatment of oracles see Furley, “Thucydides and Religion,” 418–21. On religion as human practice see B. Jordan, “Religion in Thucydides,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 116 (1986): 119–47.

  15. Thucydides 3.36–50 (quotation from 3.39).

  16. Melian debate: 5.84–116 (quotation from 5.105).

  17. Thucydides 7.87.

  18. Nicias quotation: Thucydides 7.86.

  19. Thucydides 7.50.

  20. Mutilation of the herms: Thucydides 6.27–8.

  6. “Concerning the Gods, I Cannot Know”

  1. On the sophists see W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3, The Fifth Century Enlightenment. Part 1: The Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), with pp. 226–47 on the criticism of traditional religion; G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); S. Broadie, “Socrates and the Sophists,” in D. N. Sedley (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 73–97. The texts are gathered in D. W. Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). The quotation from On the Gods is fragment 29.

 
; 2. Dating of the visit: J. Walsh, “The Dramatic Dates of Plato’s Protagoras and the Lesson of Arete,” The Classical Quarterly 34 (1984): 101–6, arguing that Plato also blended in details relating to an earlier visit.

  3. Plato, Protagoras 310a–b.

  4. Protagoras, fragment 21 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy.

  5. Xenophanes, fragment 33 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy (vol. 1).

  6. Exile and book-burning: fragment 31 (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.24.63). Reputation for atheism: M. Winiarczyk, “Wer galt im Altertum als Atheist?,” Philologus 128 (1984): 177–78. Humanistic religion: L. Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato’s Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010), 60; see, more fully, E. Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 141–53. Lampert rests heavily on a book by the notoriously conservative ideologue Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 189–90. The myth: Plato, Protagoras 320c–322d = Protagoras fragment 45.

  7. Prodicus’s reputation for atheism: Winiarczy, “Wer galt,” 177. For the papyrus see D. Obbink, Philodemus on Piety Part 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); see also A. Henrichs, “Two Doxographical Notes: Democritus and Prodicus on Religion,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 79 (1975): 93–123.

  8. For more on Democritus see chapter 5. For the argument (predating the re-examination of Philodemus) that Democritus underlies the anthropological account in Diodorus of Sicily 1.8 see T. Cole, Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology (Cleveland: Western Reserve University 1967). Democritus on the origins of religion: see Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.24 = fragment 183 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy. Herculaneum fragment: Herculaneum Papyrus 1428, fragment 19. See Henrichs, “Two Doxographical Notes,” 96–106.