Download HFM 020 – When did ancient Greeks and Romans stop worshipping

HFM 020 –
When did ancient Greeks and Romans stop
worshipping Greek Gods and Goddesses?
Michael Rank: This is the History in Five Minutes Podcast, the #1 podcast for learning
about anything in history in no time at all! I’m your host, Michael Rank.
Today’s topic is ‘When did ancient Greeks and Romans stop worshipping gods and
goddesses?’ A lot of times in history we talk about the birth of religions, Christianity,
Judaism, and Islam, but we don’t really talk about the death of religions all that much
although you could say it’s just as important. It’s a bit of a mystery of why the gods and
goddesses of Greek mythology stopped being worshipped. Most people assume that they
were widespread across the Roman and Greek world, but with the rise of Christianity, they
slowly started to ebb. And then when Constantine became emperor and became a
Christian, it completely stopped overnight.
Well, the process is actually a lot longer and went on for about 1,000 years and it happened
for two reasons. The first is philosophy and the second is politics.
First, we’ll look at the philosophy of worshipping Greek gods and goddesses. If you ever
look at mythology, you find that these people, Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and the whole lot are
really short-tempered. Zeus would constantly cheat on Hera behind her back, and in order
to keep her from finding out his mistresses, will turn them into animals to escape her
notice. There are tons of stories like this of behaving capriciously which a lot of historians
say is because Greeks didn’t really understand the world around them, so the easiest way to
do this was to attribute these elements to gods and anthropomorphize them. Also, if all you
had to do was give a sacrifice to a god and appeal to their vanity, then you sort of had a
way to manipulate nature.
Here’s just two quick stories about the type of gods that Greeks worshipped and the actions
they would commit. One is Hermes who was the God of transitions and boundaries. He was
also a bit of a kleptomaniac. He would steal Zeus’s scepter, Aphrodite’s girdle, Poseidon’s
trident, and the sword of Ares. One of the ways that he earned favor from Zeus was
basically busting one of his mistresses out of prison. Zeus being the gentlemanly
philanderer that he was turned Io, one of his favorite mistresses, into a cow to escape the
vengeance of his jealous wife, Hera. He asked Hermes to jailbreak her. The way that he did
this was Io was being kept watch by Argos, a titan who had 100 eyes and not all of them
ever closed all at once in order to go to sleep. Hermes managed to loll him to sleep by
playing on a shepherd’s pipe until all of them went shut. Then, he slew the titan and earned
Zeus’ favor by jail-breaking his mistress who was transformed from a cow back into her
womanly form.
Another story that I can mention is that of Hephaestus. He was the god of volcanoes and
blacksmiths and the son of Zeus and Hera, but unfortunately by coming from bad
parentage, the two of them kicked him off Mount Olympus because they thought he was too
ugly. Well, he grew up to get his revenge on dear old mom. One thing he fashioned was a
device throne that he presented to Hera, and when she sat on it, she would become locked
within its secret chain so firmly that no one could break her free. She was kept in this state
until Dionysus, the god of wine and conciliation who managed to help people get along
probably through wine, convinced the two to bury the hatchet and she was set free.
HFM 020 –
When did ancient Greeks and Romans stop
worshipping Greek Gods and Goddesses?
As you can imagine, over time, ancient civilizations started to call into question the whole
idea of worshipping gods that could bless them one minute and turn them into cow the
next. Developments in Greek philosophy encouraged intellectuals to begin scrubbing the
religion of such crude elements. In the 5th century BC, the philosopher, Xenophanes,
commented on the anthropomorphic origin of their religion and he started to question if
they really should worship gods who are made in their own image. Kind of echoing the
sentiment that Mark Twain one said that God created men in his own image and many
decided to return the favor.
Socrates agreed with this sentiment and two centuries later argued that men should not
attribute his failings to the gods. It was precisely for this reason that the poets of Athens
killed him for exposing their stories as myths that while entertaining were not suitable for
moral instruction or philosophy to create a virtuous society. Plato and Aristotle continued
this theme of not attributing moral failings and human failings to the gods, so this was
something that was happening on the philosophical level. On the political level, it is very
clear that Constantine’s conversion of Christianity really sealed the death of Greek
mythology.
However, this wasn’t something that happened immediately. You have to remember that
when Constantine became a Christian, only about 10% or 15% of the empire were
Christians. Also, they were among the lower class, so it’s not as if the military or the
political lead suddenly converted since they mostly look down upon Christianity. Also, it
should be remembered that Constantine did not declare Christianity the official religion of
the empire. This wouldn’t come until about a century later. Nor was it ever illegal to be a
pagan. Only public worship of the gods was outlawed. Well, this is probably one of the
main reasons why people stop believing in Greek mythology.
Ancient religion was more of a communal practice than a private one. Unlike Christianity,
there was no probing into one’s personal religious convictions and what they believed.
Religion was a public civic affair. As a result, different studies in Greece would worship
different gods. If you were in Athens, of course, you would worship that city’s patron
goddess, Athena. If you were near the sea, you would probably have lots of celebrations to
Poseidon in order to keep the seas calm and keep your voyages safe. And if you were a
vineyard cultivator, then you would want to worship Dionysus and ask that he bring you a
fruitful crop. But Christianity changes by being the more universal religion that had a
specific text and called for not only the public worship and the corporate worship together,
but also changing one’s private beliefs.
Christianity to some degree could withstand the banning of public displays of gathering of
Christianity, but paganism couldn’t do this in the same way.
The final death now that we can probably say although it didn’t happen for several centuries
after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 380’s by
Theodosius is after Constantine, the emperor was Julian who attempted to revive paganism.
There’s a story about how much apathy had set in among pagans and how he was really
fighting a losing battle. When he visited Antioch, he went to the shrine of Apollo in the
grove of Daphne in order to worship the gods expecting a huge procession and celebration
of public worship and a restored fervor. But all he found was one old priest who could just
HFM 020 –
When did ancient Greeks and Romans stop
worshipping Greek Gods and Goddesses?
manage to wrestle up a goose for his sacrifice – pretty obviously here that the days of
worshipping the Greek gods and goddesses were numbered.
If you’re interested in hearing more stories like this about the strange and odd behavior of
Greek gods and goddesses, I just released a new book on Kindle that you can buy today.
It’s called Greek Gods and Goddesses Gone Wild: Bad Behavior and Divine Excess from
Zeus’s Philandering to Dionysus’s Benders. You can find it on www.amazon.com and just do
a search for Greek Gods and Goddesses Gone Wild, and it will probably come right up.
For more history like this that is offbeat, obscure, but most of all not boring, come check out
my website at www.michaelrank.net. There, you can find podcasts and blog posts like this.
I’ll even throw in a free history Ebook that you can grab right now at
www.michaelrank.net\freebook. Have a good day!