Religion and Art in Ancient Greece | Page 3

they show us the traditional and easily recognisable figures in
which the gods usually occurred to the imagination of the Greek
people.
The association of acts of worship with certain specially sacred objects
or places lies at the basis of much religious art, though very often art
has little or nothing to do with such objects in a primitive stage of
religious development. Stocks and stones--the latter often reputed to
have fallen from heaven, the former sometimes in the shape of a
growing tree, sometimes of a mere unwrought log--were to be found as
the centres of religious cult in many of the shrines of Greece. These
sacred objects are sometimes called fetishes; and although it is perhaps
wiser to avoid terms belonging properly to the religion of modern
savages in speaking of ancient Greece, there seems to be an analogy
between the beliefs and customs that are implied. Such sacred stocks or
stones were not regarded merely as symbols of certain deities, but were
looked upon as having certain occult or magic qualities inherent in
them, and as being in themselves potent for good or evil. The
ceremonies used in their cult partook of the nature of magic rather than
religion, so far as these consisted of anointing them with oil or with
drink offerings; such ceremonies might, indeed, be regarded as
gratifying to the deity worshipped under their form, when they were
definitely affiliated to the service of an anthropomorphic god; but in a
more primitive stage of belief the indwelling power probably was not
associated with any such generalisation as is implied in the change
from "animism" or "polydaemonism" to polytheism. We are here
concerned not with this growth of religious feeling, but rather with its
influence upon the sacred things that were objects of worship and with
the question how far their sanctity encouraged their artistic decoration.
It is perhaps easier to realise the feeling of a primitive people about this
matter in the case of a sacred building than in that of the actual image

of a god. A temple does not, indeed--in Greece, at least--belong to the
earliest phase of cult; for it is the dwelling of the god, and its form,
based on that of a human dwelling-house, implies an anthropomorphic
imagination. We find, however, in Homer that the gods are actually
thought of as inhabiting their temples and preferring one to another,
Athena going to Athens and Aphrodite to Paphos as her chosen abode.
It was clearly desirable for every city to gain this special favour; and an
obvious way to do this was to make the dwelling-place attractive in
itself to the deity. This might be done not merely by the abundance of
sacrifices, but also by the architectural beauty of the building itself, and
by the richness of the offerings it contained. Here was, therefore, a very
practical reason for making the dwelling of the god as sumptuous and
beautiful as possible, in order that he might be attracted to live in it and
to give his favour and protection to those that dwelt around it.
Doubtless, as religious ideas advanced and the conception of the nature
of the gods became higher, there came the notion that they did not
dwell in houses made with hands; yet a Greek temple, just like a
mediaeval cathedral, might be made beautiful as a pleasing service and
an honour to the deity to whom it was dedicated; and there was a
continuous tradition in practice from the lower conception to the higher,
nor is it easy to draw the line at any particular stage between the two.
If we turn now to the sacred image of the deity we find the same
process going on. The rude stock or stone was sometimes itself the
actual recipient of material offerings; or it might be painted with some
bright and pleasing colour, or wrapped in costly draperies. In most of
these customs an assumption is implied that the object of worship is
pleased by the same things as please its worshippers; and here we find
the germ of the anthropomorphic idea. It was probably the desire to
make the offerings and prayers of the worshippers perceptible to the
power within that first led to the addition of human features to the
shapeless block. Just as the early Greeks painted eyes upon the prows
of their ships, to enable them to find their way through the water, so
they carved a head, with eyes and ears, out of the sacred stone or stock,
or perhaps added a head to the original shapeless mass. We find many
primitive idols in this form--a cone or column with a head and perhaps
arms and feet added to it; and the tradition survives in the herm, or in

the mask of Dionysus