The Religious Thought of the Greeks

ORPHISM, PYTHAGOREANISM, AND THE MYSTERIES

The seventh and sixth centuries before Christ were marked by important social, philosophic, and religious movements. Of the many causes which brought about these changes, the most easily traced are those of a political and economic nature.

The form of government which is pictured in the Homeric poems is one in which the king and nobles alone have an effective voice. The humbler folk meet to hear the decision of the few, which they are expected to accept without a murmur. On only one occasion does a common man, Thersites, venture to raise his voice against his betters, and then he is made the laughing-stock of his fellows and is beaten into a sad silence by Odysseus. But the Homeric organization of society was gradually superseded by aristocracies in which the power of wealth ultimately claimed a position beside nobility of birth. The development of industry and trade in Ionia and on the mainland of Greece proper created a new wealthy class which was a rival of the old nobility whose riches had been in herds and lands. The political struggles which accompanied these changes were highly educative to considerable bodies of citizens, who were expending their efforts in improving the condition of their own class or of themselves rather than in maintaining 


the advantage of some prince or noble. In this way there was developed a political and social self-consciousness. When kings were superseded by aristocracies, magistracies, limited in scope and duration, had necessarily been employed. Thus political machinery and organization developed. These political changes and the failure of ancient customs to fit new social and economic conditions naturally led to a demand for written law, which alone can be the basis of even justice and protection. So we hear of many “law-givers” in Greece during the seventh and sixth centuries b.c., of whom the most famous were Zaleucus among the western Locrians, Charondas of Catane, and Draco of Athens, followed about thirty years later by Solon. Now written law usually tends to become ultimately the embodiment of rules for all, not simply for one class alone, so that the written codes marked a long step in the advance of the common man toward equality with the noble. It is true that the aristocracies in many parts of Greece were later followed by the rule of tyrants, but the tyrannies themselves fostered the development of the lower classes on whose well-being and support the existence of the tyrannies depended.