Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

by Tim Whitmarsh

  9. Herculaneum Papyrus 1428, fragment 19, which is fragment 72 in R. Mayhew, Prodicus the Sophist: Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). I follow Henrichs in translating “thought of [nomizomenous] as gods” as “the gods of popular belief” on the grounds that nomizein has a distinctive semantic field when it comes to religion: see below, p. 119. Henrichs has a fuller account of Prodicus on atheism in “The Atheism of Prodicus,” Cronache Ercolanesi 6 (1976): 15–21.

  10. Prodicus and the deification of natural bounty: Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.42.118; Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.18, 9.52. These appear as Prodicus, fragments 29–30 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy and 73–75 in Mayhew, Prodicus the Sophist. Two-stage process: Henrichs, “Two Doxographical Notes,” 111, 113–15, and Mayhew, Prodicus the Sophist, xvii–xiii. Castor and Pollux (“the Dioscuri”) are mentioned in fragment 71 Mayhew, but a gap follows immediately, and their invention is not specified; they are often associated with sailing, but horsemanship is another possibility. “Changing letters”: Philodemus, On Piety 19 Obbink = fragment 70 in Mayhew. E. R. Dodds thought that Prodicus underlay Euripides, Bacchae 274–85 (see his Euripides, Bacchae, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 104–5.

  11. For the alternative translation see Mayhew, Prodicus the Sophist, 47.

  12. On the Sisyphus fragment see, among others, M. Davies, “Sisyphus and the Invention of Religion (‘Critias’ TrGF 1 [43] F 19 = B 25 DK),” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 36 (1989): 16–32; N. Pechstein, Euripides Satyrographos: ein Kommentar zu den euripideischen Satyrspielfragmenten (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1998); P. O’Sullivan, “Sophistic Ethics, Old Atheism, and ‘Critias’ on Religion,” Classical World 105 (2012): 167–85; D. N. Sedley, “The Atheist Underground,” in V. Harte and M. Lane (eds.), Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 329–48; T. Whitmarsh, “Atheist Aesthetics: The Sisyphus Fragment, Poetics, and the Creativity of Drama,” Cambridge Classical Journal 60 (2014): 109–24.

  13. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, tr. by Alan Sheridan (London: Allen Lane, 1977).

  14. Odysseus in the underworld: Homer, Odyssey 11.593–94.

  7. Playing the Gods

  1. Generally on Athenian theater see A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, rev. 2nd ed. by J. Gould and D. M. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). For orientation on the role of the theater in Athenian society see J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysus? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); E. Csapo and W. J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); C. Pelling (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); D. Wiles, Tragedy in Athens: Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); E. Csapo and M. Miller (eds.), The Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  2. Aristotle, Poetics 1449a. On the weakness of the ritual case see S. Scullion, “Nothing to Do with Dionysus: Tragedy Misconceived as Ritual,” Classical Quarterly 52 (2002): 102–37. For “ritualist” approaches to Greek drama see W. Burkert, “Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966): 88–121; R. Seaford, Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Tragedy and Athenian Religion (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003); A. Bierl, Ritual and Performativity: The Chorus in Greek Comedy (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2009).

  3. Euripides, Trojan Women 67–68. Generally on the representation of gods in tragedy see R. Parker, “Gods Cruel and Kind: Tragic and Civic Theology,” in C. Pelling (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Ancient Historian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 143–60. For the contrary view that tragedy did teach Athenians a form of civic piety, see C. Sourvinou-Inwood, “Tragedy and Religion,” in Pelling, Greek Tragedy, 161–86.

  4. Aristophanes, Knights 30–35.

  5. Euripides: Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 451. Clouds quotations: 818–19, 365–84 (quotation from 365–67).

  6. On the date and contemporary resonance of Oedipus the King see especially B. M. W. Knox, “The Date of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles,” American Journal of Philology 77 (1956): 133–47; reprinted in Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 112–24. Knox argues that the play should be dated to after the second outbreak of plague in Athens, specifically to 425 (but this seems to push the evidence too far). It should be said that an alternative interpretation of Sophocles’s choice to begin with a plague could be to explain it as an echo of the Iliad. Discussion of Sophocles and religion in R. Parker, “Through a Glass Darkly: Sophocles and the Divine,” in J. Griffin (ed.), Sophocles Revisited: Essays Presented to Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11–30.

  7. Diopeithes decree: Plutarch, Pericles 32.1 (see also Diodorus of Sicily 12.39.2); more details in the following chapter. Apollo and Diopeithes: Xenophon, History of Greece 3.3.3 (if this is the same Diopeithes; see M. A. Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008], 123–24). The connection with Apollo may also be implied at Aristophanes, Knights 1086 (if Apollo is distancing himself from his own prophet). Descriptions of Tiresias: Oedipus the King 387–88. On the overlap of terminology with itinerant prophets of the new gods see H. S. Versnel, Ter Unus: Isis, Dionysos, Hermes; Three Studies in Greek Henotheism (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 116–18 (although it should be conceded that Aeschylus’s Cassandra is also called a vagabond prophetess: Agamemnon 1273–74). Diopeithes the madman: Amipsias, fragment 10, Teleclides fragment 7, scholion on Aristophanes, Wasps 380a, 380c, 988c. Drums: Phrynichus fragment 9 (also Aelian fragments 22–23). All references to comic fragments are to the edition of R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983-2001). Aristophanes: Birds 980–89.

  8. Sophocles, Oedipus the King 857–58.

  9. Ibid., 906–10.

  10. Naming gods in prayers: Aeschylus, Agamemnon 160–61: “Zeus, whoever he is, if this name is pleasing to him.” Denying prophecy: Xenophanes, fragment 43 in D. W. Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Euripides, Helen 744–57.

  11. Sophocles, Oedipus the King 1080; Democritus, fragments 231, 236, 239, 240 in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy.

  12. Oedipus the atheos: Sophocles, Oedipus the King 1360.

  13. Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria 450–51. Similarly, at Frogs 836 he is accused by Aeschylus of being an “enemy of the gods.” Satyrus, Life of Euripides F6 fr. 39 col. 10, in S. Schorn (ed.), Satyros aus Kallatis: Sammlung der Fragmente mit Kommentar (Basel: Schwabe, 2004). M. Winiarczyk, “Wer galt im Altertum als Atheist?,” Philologus 128 (1984): 171–72 lists seven ancient instances where he is associated with atheism. Many of the “impious” passages from his plays (but not, strangely, the Bellerophon fragment) are collected and discussed by M. R. Lefkowitz, “ ‘Impiety’ and ‘Atheism’ in Euripides’ Dramas,” Classical Quarterly 39 (1989): 70–82 (reprinted in J. Mossman [ed.], Euripides [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 102–21). Lefkowitz seeks to limit the impact of such passages by discussing what happens to their speakers rather than the philosophical implications of the words. See also C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, 291–458 (especially 294–97 on atheism); A. Rubel, Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens: Religion and Politics During the Peloponnesian War (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014), 167–79.

  14. Euripides, Trojan Women 884–88. The ancient commentator on this passage notes that these words “derive from the sayings of Anaxagoras.”

  15. Euripides, Heracles 342–47, 1262–65, 1341–46
; Xenophanes fragment in Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy; Pindar, Olympian Ode 1.28–35; Olympian Ode 9.35–41. On the theological issues raised by Heracles see H. Yunis, A New Creed: Fundamental Religious Beliefs in the Athenian Polis and Euripidean Drama (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988), 139–71. Sourvinou-Inwood, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, 361–77, is more conservative.

  16. Bellerophon fragment 1. On the problem of evil and its consequences for religious thought see M. L. Peterson, “The Problem of Evil,” in S. Bullivant and M. Ruse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 71–86. For a recent attempt to reconstruct the plot of Bellerophon (arguing, implausibly to my mind, that the “atheistic” fragment is spoken by Stheneboea) see D. W. Dixon, “Reconsidering Euripides’ Bellerophon,” Classical Quarterly 64 (2014): 493–506.

  17. Homer, Iliad 6.200–201; 6.199. Pindar, Isthmian Ode 7.44–48 (and implicitly at Olympian Ode 13.91–93).

  18. On the correspondences between Peace and Bellerophon see M. Telò, “Embodying the Tragic Father(s), Autobiography and Intertextuality in Aristophanes,” Classical Antiquity 29 (2010): 308–17, with further bibliography. In-depth discussion of the Bellerophon fragment in C. Riedweg, “The ‘Atheistic’ Fragment from Euripides’ Bellerophontes (286 N2),” Illinois Classical Studies 15 (1990): 39–53.

  19. Pollux 4.127–32.

  20. On the parallel titles see for example R. Janko, “The Derveni Papyrus (‘Diagoras of Melos, Apopyrgizontes Logoi?’), A New Translation,” Classical Philology 96 (2001): 1–32, especially 7. Although apopyrgizein is unattested elsewhere in Greek, there is a similar word, apoteikhizein, from teikhos, “a wall”; the ancient writers on siege craft use it to mean “knock down a city wall.” Connection with Diagoras: T. Bergk, Griechische Literaturgeschichte vol. 3, ed. G. Hinrichs (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884), 473. For more on Diagoras see the following chapter.

  21. Aristophanes’s Birds and Diagoras: see lines 1072–78. “Melian famine”: 186, with F. E. Romer, “Atheism, Impiety and the Limos Melios in Aristophanes’ Birds,” American Journal of Philology 115 (1994): 351–65.

  8. Atheism on Trial

  1. For text, translation, and details see G. Betegh, The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For more discussion see A. Laks and G. Most (eds.), Studies on the Derveni Papyrus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Orphism: Betegh, Derveni Papyrus, 68–73 (cautiously). The Orphic texts were certainly not scripture in the Abrahamic sense: see R. G. Edmonds III, Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 95–138. Note also that the so-called Getty Hexameters, an “Orphic” poem from late fifth-century BC Selinous (in Sicily), have a reference to “lawless houses” (22), which may denote those outwith the religious group. For text, translation, and essays see C. A. Faraone and D. Obbink (eds.), The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic, and Mystery in Ancient Selinous (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

  2. My translation follows the text of Betegh, The Derveni Papyrus.

  3. Homer does know the expression “This did not happen without a god [atheei]” (Odyssey 18.353), but otherwise the earliest usages I can find are in the fifth-century BC authors Aeschylus (Eumenides 540, Bacchylides 11.109) and Pindar (Pythian Odes 4.162), where it means in effect “accursed.” Crescendo: Gorgias, Palamedes 36; Euripides, Bacchae 995, 1015, Andromache 491, Helen 1148 (compare The Madness of Hercules 433). The adverb is always used in conjunction with another negative in early Greek: see Antiphon, Against the Stepmother 21, 23, Tetralogy 1; Plato, Gorgias 481a, 523b. Socrates: Plato, Apology 26c. Cyclopes: Homer, Odyssey 9.106–8. “Surnamed” (epiklētheis or similar) the atheos: Hippo testimonia 8, 9 in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951); Diagoras: testimonia 6A, 9B, 17, 53, etc., in M. Winiarczyk, Diagorae Melii et Theodori Cyrenaei reliquiae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1981); Theodorus: 1A, B, C, 17, 26B in Winiarczyk.

  4. I follow here the developmental account of asebeia given by M. Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society and Politics in Fifth-Century Athens (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 528–36, although there is much that remains uncertain. The idea that Diopeithes’s decree transformed the meaning of the terms also underlies E. Derenne, Les procès d’impiété intentés aux philosophes à Athènes au Vme et au IVme siècles avant J.-C. (Liège: Vaillant-Carmanne; Paris: Champion, 1930). For temple inscriptions relating to asebeia see A. Delli Pizzi, “Impiety in Epigraphic Evidence,” Kernos 24 (2011): 59–76. For what we know of Diopeithes see M. Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 124–25. Asebeia is first mentioned, to my knowledge, in the sixth century (Theognis 1180; Xenophanes fr. A14 in M. L. West, Iambi et elegi Graeci, vol. 2. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

  5. Decree: Plutarch, Pericles 32.1. There are arguments against historicity in K. J. Dover, “The Freedom of the Intellectual in Greek Society,” Talanta 7 (1976): 24–54; reprinted in The Greeks and Their Legacy: Collected Papers, vol. 2: Prose Literature, History, Society, Transmission, Influence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 135–58, 138–41, but the evidence for both decree and trial is exhaustively sifted by J. Mansfeld, “The Chronology of Anaxagoras’ Athenian Period and the Date of His Trial. Part II. The Plot Against Pericles and His Associates,” Mnemosyne 33 (1980): 17–95, who accepts both as historical (and dates the former to 438/7 BC and the latter to 437/6—rather earlier than most would). On eisangelia I follow M. H. Hansen, Eisangelia: The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth Century B.C. and the Impeachment of Generals and Politicians (Odense: Odense University Press, 1975).

  6. On Plutarch’s use of Craterus of Macedon as a source see P. A. Stadter, A Commentary on Plutarch’s Pericles (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), lxix–lxx; and C. Higbie, “Craterus and the Use of Inscriptions in Ancient Scholarship,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 129 (1999): 43–83.

  7. That nomizein the gods always (up until Plato) means “to venerate through ritual” is argued by M. Giordano-Zecharya, “As Socrates Shows, the Athenians Did Not Believe in Gods,” Numen 52 (2005): 325–55; see, however, the criticisms of H. Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 554–59. The full range of meanings for classical times is surveyed by W. Fahr, ΘΕΟΥΣ ΝΟΜΙΖΕΙΝ: Zum Problem der Anfänge des Atheismus bei den Griechen (Hildesheim: Olms, 1969). See p. 166 for the evidence that the meaning “believing in the gods” goes back at least to the 420s. D. Cohen, Law, Sexuality and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 211–13 argues that correct belief in the gods was a central part of Athenian conceptions of piety (but all of his evidence postdates the Diopeithes decree—in which, however, he does not believe).

  8. On the politicization of the courts, see R. Bauman, Political Trials in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1990), who gives an instrumental role to the trials of Pericles and his circle (pp. 35–49). Bauman accepts as historical more of the later story tradition than many would.

  9. Aristotle, Virtues and Vices 1251a. In my interpretation of the elasticity of asebeia I follow Cohen, Law, Sexuality and Society, 203–217. For sensible, cautious, and succinct discussion see R. Parker, “Law and Religion,” in M. Gagarin and D. Cohen (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 65–68. Impious man accuses his father: Plato, Euthyphro. Demosthenes: Against Meidias 51, 55.

  10. Delli Pizzi, “Impiety”: 4 notes the absence of mention of asebeia in relation to the Diopeithes decree. On the widespread political uses of asebeia see Bauman, Political Trials (index under “asebeia” and “impiety”), with the caveat I have mentioned. On drama see the previous chapter.

  11. Diogenes of Apollonia: see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Phil
osophers 9.57, and Aelian, Varied History 2.31 (testimonia 1 and 3 in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. [Berlin: Weidmann, 1952]). Protagoras: Aristotle fragment 67 Rose (prosecution), Timon of Phlius fragment 5 Diels and Diogenes Laertius 9.52 (book burning), Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.56 (prosecuted and escaped). Fourth-century trials: L.-L. O’Sullivan, “Athenian Impiety Trials in the Late Fourth Century B.C.,” Classical Quarterly 47 (1997): 136–52. Derenne, Les procès d’impiété covers all of this material, albeit uncritically. R. Parker, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 207–10, gives a levelheaded assessment of the evidence, on which I rest here. Further studies are cited by Delli Pizzi, “Impiety,” n. 3.

  12. Anaxagoras tried for asebeia: Diodorus of Sicily 12.39.2 (paraphrasing his fourth-century BC source, Ephorus), Diogenes Laertius 2.12 (prosecuted by Cleon, not Diopeithes), etc. Mansfeld, “Chronology,” 82–3, convincingly undermines arguments against the historicity of the trial and observes the Platonic allusion to it at Apology 26d. Evidence for Diagoras of Melos: F. Jacoby, Diagoras ὁ ἄθεος (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1959), 3–8; and especially M. Winiarczyk, Diagorae Melii et Theodori Cyrenaei reliquiae. Jacoby believes that Diagoras was exiled for his beliefs; Winiarczyk by contrast argues that he gained his reputation for atheism solely on the basis of the profanation of the mysteries (“Diagoras von Melos: Wahrheit und Legende [Fortsetzung],” Eos 68 [1980]: 51–75). Atheism: testimonia 38–68 Winiarczyk. Aristoxenus: testimonium 69, with the interpretation of Decharme, Les procès d’impiété, 61–62. An atheistic Phrygian Discourse is also attributed to Diagoras by a Christian writer, Tatian, but this is likely to have been in fact a Hellenistic text in the euhemerist tradition (J. Rives, “Phrygian tales,” Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 45 [2005]: 230–32). Conversion to atheism: testimonium 9B, 26; statue of Heracles: testimonia 6A and 27–33, 63; storm: testimonia 34–35B.