Theophany, Part One

by Walter F. Otto. Translated from the original German by Farasha Euker

Why do the Gods of Olympus shine with eternal and ever-new light?

At the beginning of the introductory chapter, we asked ourselves: Why is it that the Greeks, who we recognize as the founders and masters of Western culture, do not receive credit and attention for their religion? Why is it that their works of art, philosophy, and science represent a pinnacle for us in the sphere of value, while the significance of their Gods and cults is zero?

However, at this point, it must be clarified that this is true, yes, but only as far as attention is focused on how things stand in the field of philosophical culture, religious confessions, and the science of religion. Another, opposite, question therefore arises here: Why have the Olympian Gods not lost their authority to this day?

In reality, it is of them that we speak when we talk seriously about the world and existence. Apollo, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Hermes, etc. continue to be luminous figures for us, inexhaustibly significant, despite Christianity and Enlightenment scientism. And as distant as true belief in them may be from us, their sublime gaze does not cease to strike us when, detached from daily life, we elevate ourselves to the sphere in which divine figures dwell. Why do we not speak as much about Isis and Osiris, Indra and Varuna, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, Wotan, Thor, and Freya?

One might answer that this is due to our humanistic tradition. But such a tradition could not have advocated for the cause of the Olympian Gods with such strength and effectiveness—one must not forget that more than a millennium and a half has passed since their temples were closed—if their intrinsic essence did not testify in their favor, despite every condemnation.

But what is this essence of theirs that could—after Greek civilization had passed—still emerge and shine among peoples of other languages, religions, and worldviews? Goethe describes them in his Epilogue on Schiller’s Bell as “Shining before us, disappearing like a comet, / infinite light joining its own light.”

The Greek Gods do not need the authority of a revelation

The Greek Gods clearly differ from those of the East because, unlike the latter, they do not address us directly about themselves. Therefore, it is not surprising that when it comes to elaborating a conception of the divine (as Rudolf Otto’s famous The Idea of the Holy testifies), it is usually the Gods of the East, rather than the Greek Gods, that are looked to. It is certainly not a new observation, for example, that a divine self-testimony, such as the one so familiar to us that begins with the words “I am” would be unthinkable in the mouth of a Greek God.

The Greek Gods do not speak of themselves. Apollo of Delphi, to whom pilgrims of the most diverse conditions, from kings to beggars, continued to flock for centuries from countries all over the world seeking advice, has never revealed anything about his being or his will, nor has he ever claimed preferential veneration for himself. In this regard, Schelling’s significant statement comes to mind: “Precisely for this reason,” he says, “God is the great blessed one, as Pindar calls him, because his thoughts are constantly turned to what is outside of himself, to his creation. He alone has nothing to do with himself, because he is a priori certain and sure of his being” (Deduction of the Principles of Positive Philosophy).

No dogma declares, in the name of these Gods, how they are to be understood, their attitude towards humanity, or humanity’s debt to them. No sacred book determines what one must unconditionally know or believe. Everyone can think of the Gods in their own way; as long as they do not withhold the tribute that ancient tradition demands.

Therefore, the Greek Gods do not need the authority of a revelation like that to which other religions refer. They testify to themselves in everything that exists and happens, and this with such evidence that, in centuries of greatness, except for a few cases, there is no disbelief. How different from modern times! Homer, the most realistic of all the poets (which makes him always current, even after millennia), can say, with regard to every important event, which God is present and active, and the people he talks about know with certainty that, as they say, “God” or “a God” is the secret cause. In the Homeric world, there is no event in which the Gods do not intervene; indeed, they are actors in the truest sense of the word.

But there is something hard to reconcile with this omnipresent providence that we gladly acknowledge—something that is at odds with the current religious sentiment and that seem highly scandalous. Among all that can be said about these Gods, there is nothing more certain than this: they live in the peace of a supreme beatitude, unconcerned with the happiness and suffering of the world. This is the most typical trait of their divine nature, and it is precisely in the heavenly lightheartedness, in the calm beatitude that emanates from their figures, that the Greeks’ Gods possess their power to delight and liberate.

The Muses

Where did the Greeks acquire this knowledge of the Gods, given that they had neither a Moses nor a Zarathustra?

The truth is that they too received a message, which fully deserves the name of revelation: a divine announcement such as no other people had. This did not speak of the majesty of a Creator of the world, of a Lawgiver, of a Savior; it spoke of what is: what is, whether it be joy or pain for humans, bears witness to the presence of the Divine and its magnificence and beatitude.

This enlightenment came from a particular deity, from the Muse, or the Muses (in the plural), because the Muses are one and many at the same time. The Muse is a unique and incomparable figure: no other people knew her equal. Her name—the only name of a deity that has entered into all European languages—has become so naturalized in our culture, along with its derivatives (“music,” etc.), that we run the risk of interpreting it according to our [modern] aesthetic and artistic canons. But this would be a very serious misunderstanding. The Muse is the Goddess who announces the truth in the highest sense of the word. Singers and poets, seers, call themselves her “servants,” “followers” or “prophets” and offer her religious veneration and worship. Pindar, addressing the Muses, calls them “Mothers” (Nemean Odes 3). Those touched by grace are fully aware that they have no right to the proud title of “creators;” they know they are only listeners, because the Goddess herself is the one who sings. This is already stated in the verse with which the Iliad begins—“Sing, O Goddess, the wrath of Achilles”—and is testified to many times in great poetry. A particularly beautiful line is found in Alcman, the choral poet of the seventh century BCE. After the choir of young girls has risen, for whose song he has invoked the aid of the Muse, in ecstatic rapture the poet exclaims: “Sing, Muse, the siren with the clear voice.”

The Muses have a very high, indeed unique, place in the divine hierarchy. They are said to be daughters of Zeus, born of Mnemosyne, the Goddess of memory; but that is not all, for it is reserved for them, and them alone, to bear, like the father of the Gods himself, the epithet “Olympian,” an epithet which used to honor not only the Gods in general, but—at least originally—no particular God, with the exception of Zeus and the Muses.

But even more important for understanding the Muses and their task is what we learn from Pindar’s famous Hymn to Zeus. The hymn has been lost, but we know its content at least partially. It narrated how Zeus, when he had completed the ordering of the world, asked the Gods, immersed in silent amazement, if anything was still missing from perfection. And they replied that one thing was still missing: a divine voice that would announce and celebrate that magnificence. And so they asked him to procreate the Muses.

The ontological meaning that Greek myth attributes to singing and language in general finds no parallel anywhere else.

The being of the world reaches completion in song and word. It is part of its nature to manifest itself, and to do so only as divine and through divine announcement.

In the song that the Muses sing, the truth of the Whole resonates as a reality pregnant with the Divine. That Truth emerges from the depths and shines forth, revealing, even in darkness and pain, the eternal magnificence and serenity of the Divine.

That which is essential and great demands to be sung

Thus the message of the Divine came to the Greeks; it was thus that they might experience the Divine: not as that which categorically commands and demands, not as earthly and otherworldly salvation, but as the Eternal that comforts and reassures not with promises, but by the mere fact of its being. It is the spirit of song that reveals the nature of the Gods, for song is, in its profound essence, their voice. Therefore, man, as a participant in song, can partake in the Divine—albeit within the limits inherent to the human condition. What song raises up to its sacred realm belongs to the Eternal, which means: to the timeless and the divine.

It has been an unending source of wonder that in Homer, men can find comfort, even in the deepest suffering, in the thought that their destiny will one day resound in song. In a passage of the Odyssey (8, 579), it is said that the Trojan War, with all its sorrows and ruin, had to happen to become a song for future generations. How incomprehensible all this may sound to modern man is revealed by Nietzsche’s judgment. Nietzsche calls this thought “horrible,” and so it is indeed, when understood as he understands it: in the sense that the heaviest sufferings had to come upon men so that “there would be material for the poet.” Jacob Burckhardt expressed himself no differently. But can there be an idea more antithetical to the Greek spirit than this: that the poet needs “material” for his song, and that this must be “provided” for him with terrible cruelty by the Gods, as Nietzsche expressly says? The song of the Muses is the divine voice that rises from the very essence of the world. Its substance is the essential, the great. “For what is common descends into the underworld without resonance” (Schiller).

If the spirit of song had not already been present in the depths of that suffering, no Homer could have made it the theme of his song. The essential and the great demand to be sung, just as, according to Greek myth, the being of the world, to reveal itself fully in its truth, required the song of the Muses.

What the verses of the Odyssey mentioned above say about the fate of the heroes of the Trojan War, we hear in the Iliad (6, 357) from the mouth of Helen herself, where she laments the misfortune that has befallen her and Paris: it happened, she says, so that one day both of them would become song. And the words, proud and solemn, that a tragic poet puts on the lips of Hecuba some centuries later, sound no differently. Troy has fallen, and the queen is about to be dragged away to where the miserable condition of a slave awaits her. Troy, she says, was more hated by the Gods than any other city, and the sacrifices we offered to them were in vain; but if the Divinity had not thrown us so deeply into sorrow, “we would disappear without echo, without trace, and we would not be song to future generations” (Euripides, Trojan Women, 1240 ff.).

Despite all that has happened, Hecuba is comforted by knowing that her pain, with all its inner greatness, belongs to the sphere of the eternal, where the Gods reside—her human pain, perhaps even more than her human joys.

This is the meaning of what Hölderlin says about Sophocles’ tragedy: “Many have tried in vain to joyfully express the essence of joy: / here finally it reveals itself to me, here in sorrow.”

The Gods console simply by virtue of their existence and by what they are

The Gods’ consolation is all the greater when they, who are themselves untouched by suffering, encounter men. But the Gods console not so much by virtue of what they give or promise, but by the fact that they exist, and by the very fact of what they are.

This miracle—which can be called such—is not only found among the ancient Greeks, but constitutes a fundamental trait of their religiosity, shedding light on their entire way of feeling and seeing. For the person who has elevated themselves to such a feeling, nothing is more comforting than knowing that the eternally blessed exist: to know this is already a participation—a human participation—in divine bliss.

Hippolytus in Euripides’ play of the same name gives a powerful testimony to this.

The young man, of pure heart, who knows no greater happiness than being near the virgin Goddess Artemis, is presented precisely in this aspect of religious love and devotion. He cannot see the Immortal, but he hears her voice, feels her presence. He has nothing to expect from her: no gift, no promise. Even in the face of the terrifying catastrophe into which his contempt for Aphrodite plunges him, she offers no protection. And yet, when his limbs are broken and he is close to death, he suddenly feels her presence, and a divine light floods his soul, which was already semi-shrouded in darkness:

O divine breath of fragrance! Even in this state
I feel your presence and find relief.
Is the Goddess Artemis here?

Artemis: Yes, unhappy one, she is here, she who holds you dearest among the Gods.

Hippolytus: Do you see, Lady, in what state I am?

Artemis: I see, but my eyes are not allowed to shed tears.

And as death approaches, she must bid him farewell.

Artemis: Farewell! I am not allowed to see the paleness of the dead,
nor to contaminate my eyes with the last breath of the dying;
and I already see you near the end.

Hippolytus knows that no shadow of death can fall upon the happiness of Olympus.

Hippolytus: You are leaving. Farewell to you too, blessed virgin.
From the long tradition that unites us, you detach yourself without pain.

She must leave him, and she moves away like the sun in the evening. But a brightness remains in Hippolytus’ soul. How could he desire her to be different, not be the Goddess who vanishes, happy and luminous as the ether, untouched by human pain, precisely the one he has loved, the one to whom he has dedicated his life?

“From long habit you detach yourself without pain,” says Hippolytus, and there is no bitterness in his words.

The remote and blissful distance of the Gods

These, then, are the Gods, those Gods that Homer calls “the light living” (Iliad 6, 138; Odyssey 4, 805; Odyssey 5, 122). Their existence is “light,” meaning immune from toil and afflictions, like the singing from which they draw their breath, like the melody that, whether serene or sad, is always something agile, festive, and ethereal.

At the close of the Iliad, we see the impetuous Achilles and the old Priam, the king of the enemy city who dared to secretly seek him out at night, crying together over the terrible fate that deprived them both of what they held most dear. But suddenly, Achilles urges an end to the lamentations that, in any case, do not awaken the dead. “This is what the Gods have established for wretched mortals: to live in affliction, but no pain touches them” (Iliad 24, 525–6).

Will the Muses, singing in Olympus for the pleasure of the Immortals, say the same thing? That is what we read in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (190 ff.). The Muses sing “of the eternal happiness of the Gods and the misery of men … foolish and helpless.” What Hölderlin’s Hyperion sings with the most painful intonation resonates in Olympus as a festive song:

You walk in the light
on soft paths, happy Geniuses;
divine breaths of luminous air
lightly touch you
like the fingers of an artist
touching sacred strings.
Outside of Fate
like a sleeping newborn
the Immortals breathe:
pure and protected
in a humble bud
their spirit blooms eternal,
and their happy eyes
shine with a calm
endless clarity.
But it is not given to us
to rest in one place,
the sorrowful mortals vanish, fall
from one hour to another, blindly,
like water from rock
to rock in the years
down, into the unknown.

The first canto of the Iliad opposes, with impressive clarity, the happiness of the Gods to the human fate. The canto begins with the terrible misfortune that strikes the Greek camp and the ensuing dispute among the leaders, the source of indescribable sorrows, and ends with the vision of the feast of the Gods. Laughter, the sound of the lyre, and song fill the entire day; when evening comes, they retire to rest in their homes. Only the Father of the Gods cannot find sleep, as he is troubled by the thought of how to fulfill the promise made to Thetis to bring the Greeks to ruin.

When the concern for humans threatens to darken that serenity like a fleeting cloud, it is quickly dispersed. To Hera’s displeasure over Zeus’ promise to Thetis—a promise that means misfortune for her proteges on earth—Hephaestus (Iliad 1, 573) points out how ugly it would be if Zeus and Hera were to quarrel over mortals and the festivals of Olympus were so disturbed. Smiling then, the queen of heaven takes the cup from her son’s hands. [Equal in meaning], but more forceful and stern in tone, are Apollo’s words to Poseidon, when the latter, who favors the Greeks, challenges him, who protects the Trojans, to battle. “You would not be wise to fight with me for the sake of mortal men, for the sake of that wretched race, which, like leaves, now flourishes lush and soon after, lifeless, dissolves” (Iliad 21, 462).

Thus, the place where these blessed beings dwell is elevated, such that no earthly storm reaches it.

And so speaking, she left, bright-eyed Athena,
towards Olympus, where they say is the ever serene abode of the Gods:
not shaken by winds, never soaked by rain,
snow never falls, but the ether always
spreads cloudless, pure light flows:
there the blessed Gods enjoy the entire day.
(Odyssey 6, 41–46)

Should we then agree with the superficial common judgment that this would be a frighteningly unworthy conception of the Divine and its relationship with the human?

The Greeks can convince us otherwise.

Testimonies of faith in the realm of the Gods of Olympus

Friedrich Schiller—according to his own declaration in a letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt on November 30th, 1795—knew of no vision more divine than that of the luminous realm of Olympus and had no desire more intense than that of being able to translate it into a poetic representation. For this, he felt prepared to “gather all his strength and all that was ethereal in his nature, even at the risk of being literally destroyed.” “Think, dear friend, of the joy of seeing everything mortal cancelled out in poetic representation, of the joy of seeing nothing but pure light, pure freedom, pure creativity, no shadow, no limit, nothing more of all this—I get dizzy when I think of this undertaking, of the possibility of realizing it. To represent a scene from Olympus, oh, supreme happiness!”

Thus even to modern man—even to a spirit of seriousness and nobility like Schiller’s—the realm of the Gods of Olympus can appear as something extremely elevated. But for the Greek, the Homeric vision of the Gods was such a convincing truth that even an Epicurean, in whose materialistic vision of the world there was no room for divine action, nevertheless firmly believed in the existence of the Gods and thought of them as living a blissful life, free from all trouble. But there are certainly testimonies to show that we are not dealing here with a naive idea of primitive times, which was later surpassed and set aside with the maturing of thought. Rather, we will have the opportunity to see how that idea found a radical deepening in the age of tragedy.

It is also significant that figurative art only managed to grasp this idea in its purest form in the post-classical period, after it had freed itself from hieratic severity and solemnity and could therefore dare to represent the Gods in their ethereal distance and calm happiness. G. Rodenwaldt deserves credit for drawing attention to this fact of great relevance.

Previous generations had only recognized the divine where superior beings meet man in an attitude of majesty and power. But a religious prejudice had prevented them from perceiving it where they, veiled in the splendor of their divinity, appear infinitely distant, and yet are visible to the religious eye, which itself becomes blessed at the sight of their eternal happiness. In the face of this image of the divine, every criticism should be silenced. Even the solemn religious rites appear all too human in comparison to it.

The Vatican Apollo, victorious, agilely strides like on clouds like the rising sun, too great in his glory to be touched by anger or wrath, emanating a nobility that transcends even holiness.

Goethe was still a teenager and Mozart was just born (1756) when Winckelmann, standing in front of this statue in the Belvedere of the Vatican, saw Apollo as Homer had seen him and was enraptured. The famous hymn that arose from this experience finds its definitive version in History of Art, but it is worth reading it in its original form, which conveys the first impression. “If the Deity were pleased to reveal himself to mortals in this form, the whole world would be in adoration at his feet. The Indian far from all civilization and the dark inhabitants of countries where an eternal winter prevails would recognize in it a superior nature and would desire to venerate an image that resembles it; the men of the most ancient times would find in these human traits the Deity of the Sun” (Complete Works, ed. von Eiselein, 12, p. 70).

Another hymn to this same Apollo—​The Sun in human limbs array’d​—was raised, more than half a century later, by Lord Byron (Childe Harold, 4, 161).

From Winckelmann, enthusiasm spread throughout the age dominated by great minds. Then came the time—which extends to the present day—in which people laughed at Winckelmann and Goethe’s enthusiasm because they were convinced that they knew more about authentic religiosity and that they were better informed about artistic greatness, thanks to the discovery of works from the archaic and classical period. To be sure, such valuable discoveries have not aroused any fervor of feelings, no germinality of thoughts, no elevation of gaze, even remotely comparable to those that the vision of works from the post-classical and late antique period had provoked in Winckelmann and Goethe. What a difference between this new attitude and that of Winckelmann, when he speaks in the letter of March 20, 1756 of his first encounters with the Apollo of the Belvedere: “The description of Apollo requires the most elevated style, demands that one rises above everything that is human.” And in the final version of his hymn (History of Art, 40, 3): “In front of this prodigy of art I forget everything else and assume myself a dignified attitude to contemplate with dignity. Taken by veneration, my chest seems to expand and rise, as happens to those who I see invaded by the prophetic spirit… I lay at the feet of this statue the idea that I have given it, like the wreaths of those who could not reach the heads of the divinities they wished to crown.”

The past hundred years have had no understanding of such elevated sensibilities. The vision of deities living a blissful and carefree life has appeared, thus, nothing more than a poetic dream or a fairy tale—beautiful, if you will, but absolutely frivolous from a religious point of view. And yet it is precisely this vision that should have been all the more memorable for us the less it aligns with our beliefs, since it was so precious to the Greeks, as reliable witness from Homer onward unmistakably demonstrate.

Where the Muses dwell, where divine voices and melodies from Olympus reside, there is no place for earthly lamentation, as Sappho’s admonition to her grieving daughter admonishes us: “in the house where the Muses serve, / lamentation is not allowed, nor is it fitting for us.”

In the Iliad (24, 90) Thetis hesitates to enter the circle of the Gods of Olympus because of her deep sorrow over her son Achilles.

In the post-Homeric period, this inviolability [of the Olympians] with regard to care and sorrow becomes even more pronounced. In Homer, for example, Apollo does not hesitate to stand by a dead person and protect his body, but in tragedy he is forbidden any contact with death. In Euripides’ Alcestis, he must leave the house of his beloved Admetus on the day when Admetus’ noble wife, Alcestis, is to die, and this is because “no contamination shall touch him” (verse 22). Likewise, in Euripides’ Hippolytus—as we have already seen—Artemis takes leave of her beloved dying youth, saying: “Farewell! It is not permitted me to see the pallor of the dead, nor to contaminate my eye with the last breath of the dying.”

To the modern man, educated in Christianity, it seems incomprehensible that there could be devotion to such deities. He is used to giving the divine Being a higher position the greater the help promised to him in earthly calamities. How, then, could he recognize a God who is not willing to take him by the hand in the last and most feared step? But haven’t we seen how even in what Schiller considered the highest vision of the divine, such concerns were ignored?

Nor, moreover, is it to be believed that death marks for man the loss of all divine presence and a pure fall into emptiness. Precious testimonies from antiquity have come down to us about encounters between Pindar and figures of the Gods. One of these accounts has it that just before his death, Persephone appeared to him. She alone among the Gods—she said to him—had not yet had a song dedicated to her, but he would do so as soon as he reached her. When he died, an old relative of his then saw him in a dream and heard him sing a hymn to the queen of the dead.

The omnipresence of the Gods

What we have said so far only highlights one aspect of how divinity reveals itself in ancient Greek religion.

Blissful distance does not exclude, in the Gods, the trait that is most familiar to us of the Divine: omnipresence. On the contrary, it is a presence so immediate and perceptible that we cannot find its equivalence in any of the ancient religions.

And this is the paradox of ancient religion that is astonishing and perennially worthy of meditation: the Far and Blessed are always Near, the All-Acting; the always Near are the Far and Blessed. One thing is not found without the other. Only the unreachable distance makes the closeness what it is.

The Apollo who plays the lyre at the end of the first song of the Iliad in the festive splendor of Olympus is the same one who, invoked by his gravely offended priest, descended, “like the night,” from the sky to strike with his mortal arrows the Greek camp for nine days and nine nights. The Hera who smiles at her son Hephaestus when he hands her the cup urging her to forget the fate of mortals and to join the joy of the Celestials, is the same one who, in the dispute between the kings, when the angry Achilles is about to draw his sword against Agamemnon, sends Athena “because she loves both and cares for both.” Achilles, burning with anger, is already unsheathing his sword, and suddenly Athena touches him on the shoulder so that he turns and his gaze meets the fiery eyes of the Goddess who warns him to restrain himself. And the impetuous hero obeys: it happens in the flash of a moment. No one else has seen the Goddess.

Therefore, the Gods are present wherever something decisive happens, is done or is suffered. The reader of the Iliad and the Odyssey knows that nothing happens, nothing succeeds or fails, no important thought is conceived, no decision is made, without the intervention of the Gods. In most cases, what the interested party knows is only that “a God” (or “the divine power”) has intervened, although there are cases where the experience takes on the character of a meeting between person and Person, and the God has a specific face and name (however, in this case, only the interested party is the witness of the encounter, no one else but him).

An awareness so alive that there is no thing or event not pervaded by a God, a religious sense so vigilant and intense that it does not allow one to speak of an event of any importance without remembering the Divinity at work, has no equal anywhere in the world; and it is not surprising that those who did not hesitate to pronounce such a contemptuous judgment on the Homeric Gods were at least impressed by the singularity of this relationship with the Divine, feeling the need to take note of it.

What we have been saying so far does not yet sufficiently highlight the singularity of this omnipresent action of the Gods. Certainly, modern religion—on the dogmatic level—affirms that Divinity exists and operates in every place and moment: but the peremptory nature of dogma does not correspond to an equal decisiveness of feeling, for unlike Homer, we do not feel the operating presence of the Divinity everywhere and always. Furthermore, the idea that, in every important action, Divinity is not only the initiator but also the author in the truest sense of the word goes far beyond our usual way of thinking. Strangely enough, this is Homer’s way of seeing things. Just as the Muses are not mere inspirers, but where there is singing and poetry, they themselves—as we have already seen—are the ones who sing and poetize, so in the realm of action, the Gods are not simply those who provoke the decision and give strength and success: the Gods are the true actors. The explicit declaration of this is certainly not frequent, but it is unequivocal. At the beginning of the decisive battle between Achilles and Hector—the one that concludes the entire military action of the Iliad​—Achilles, in the proud consciousness of his strength, does not say, “There is no more possibility of escape for you, because now my spear will strike you to death”; instead, he says, “Pallas Athena will soon strike you down with my spear” (Iliad, 22, 270). Just before (verse 214), this same Goddess had appeared to Achilles and, using the “we” significantly, had said, “We will now defeat Hector and bring great glory.” An explanation of how this cooperation, or more precisely, this elimination of what is personally his, does not diminish the hero’s high sense of self, but rather strengthens it, is a point we will have to come back to.

But even in other situations, human action is properly a divine act. It is precisely in those moments in which we emphasize human agency and place the highest value on it that Homer sees the manifestation of a God. A particularly illuminating example is the above-mentioned passage of Achilles and Athena (Iliad 1, 188 ff.). The account of the incident seems at first entirely in line with the way we would tell it: “The insult dealt to him by Agamemnon struck Achilles with savage pain,” and “his heart was swaying between two opposing impulses: to draw his sword, scatter the assembly and kill the offender, or to control his anger and restrain his impulse. While he was wrestling with these thoughts and was already about to draw his sword from its scabbard, lo and behold…” We would continue: Reason, along with the thought that restraining himself from committing a rash act would obtain for him greater satisfaction for the offense suffered, prevailed. That such was the outcome of the tempestuous swaying would have seemed entirely normal to the listeners. When a man subjects his oscillation between self-control and impulsiveness to rational reflection, there is little doubt about what his decision will be. But a decision has not yet been made. Now, here is how it happened: “…Athena came from heaven…stood behind him and grabbed him by his blonde hair; he turned in amazement and immediately recognized Pallas Athena, since her eyes were shining powerfully.” The decision that we attribute to the personal freedom of the will happens here by virtue of the appearance of a divinity.

Our Life Experience and the Ancient Greek Testimonies: Volitional Choice and Image.

By saying that, unlike Homer, we consider decision-making a personal and free act, we refer only to the conception that has become prevailing doctrine through the work of theology and philosophy, not to our actual experience. Philologists and historians cannot fail to recognize that such free decision-making is not evident in Homer; however, they think that it cannot fail to appear in the post-Homeric period, and they find it inconceivable that the Greeks did not eventually become aware of something so important. Thus, they have been searching for and finding evidence of such a concept in the tragedies, especially in Aeschylus—admittedly more problematic evidence—without considering whether this concept was compatible with the basic attitude of the Greek spirit. But, it was not naive to consider personal freedom of will as a fact of such overwhelming evidence that the Greeks could not fail to pay attention to it, when it remains one of the most controversial issues for us, and everyone knows how many thinkers in modern times have decisively denied it. We need only recall, to mention one name, Luther and his De Servo Arbitrio, an angry response to Erasmus’ De Libero Arbitrio. But let us set aside religious and philosophical theories and ask ourselves with serious frankness what our actual experience tells us; we will then see that our experience is not as different from the ancient Greek testimonies as is generally thought.

We believe that we act according to a moral law, as in Kant’s schema, or in any case according to principles—in obedience to something that binds us. Now, certainly, there are people who act out of a sense of obligation; generally, however, we do not act by following laws, but by following exemplary figures with fidelity and love. Thus, what happens to Achilles in Homer could very well—based on our own experience—be told in terms like these: He was uncertain whether to launch himself at the Atrides or control himself; and while he still wavered, an image of prudent and noble behavior (perhaps in the form of a sacred person) appeared in his soul, and the power of illumination emanating from that image was so strong that personal decision-making was now superfluous.

The Gods manifest themselves in the movements of the human soul

The Homeric depiction of Achilles and Athena allows us to recognize with rare clarity the nature and essence of the intervention of the Gods. But the conviction that not only does every form of power and success come from the Gods, but that the thoughts and decisions of man are also their doing, is unmistakably expressed everywhere in Homer and his successors. The Gods are therefore revealed not only in the phenomena of nature and in the events in which human destiny takes shape, but also in the inner movements of man, in what determines his behavior and action. In the world populated by Gods, the Greek man does not look within himself to find the origin of his impulses and his responsibilities, but looks at being in its vastness, and where we speak of interior disposition and will, he always encounters the living reality of a God. Psychologists, prisoners of the narrowness of their [abstract and acosmic] conception of existence, draw the foolish conclusion that the man of that time had not yet discovered the depths of his inner life. But the truth is that the living experience of objectivity, of the Gods who carry within themselves the totality of being, saved him from that dangerous and unfortunate narcissism that in our time has even become objectified in science. Hence the attitude not only of Homer, but of all the great spirits of Greece.

In the world proper to the Greek man, the forces that dominate human life and that we know as dispositions of the soul, inclinations, enthusiasms, are figures of being, of divine nature, which, as such, have not only to do with man, but, infinite and eternal, dominate the earth and the cosmos: Aphrodite (the enchantment of love), Eros (the force of love and procreation), Aidos (delicate modesty), Eris (discord), etc. The movements of the soul are nothing but the the being-grasped by these eternal forces, which, under the divine figure, are everywhere operative. The same Eros who seizes man is one of the original powers and figures of the cosmos, as shown in the beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony and confirmed by countless other testimonies. The same or something similar also applies to the other divine figures.

Even moral dispositions and behaviors are, according to this understanding, “realities” that is, something that has to do not with the subjectivity of feeling and willing, but with the objectivity of understanding and knowledge. In Homer it is not said that one thinks reasonably or is disposed to friendliness, but that one “knows” what is right, “knows” friendship. Justice, righteousness, morality etc. can therefore always appear with the splendor of real divine figures. As little as our reason may accept this [way of thinking], it is not ultimately alien to us either. It is a fact that we too speak of faith, love, justice as celestial geniuses, and this is certainly not only due to attachment to an ancient tradition. These are thoughtlessly considered to be personifications, and one does not realize that even in our experience there is much more than we tend to account for. In the religious world of ancient Greece, the experience of being in its objectivity and essence was still so powerful that the illusory autonomy of the human soul was still denied a voice.

The peculiar Greek conception of morality

The knowledge of the divine and the truth to which the Greeks refer in their way of life and actions can be obscured. It is the blindness that Homer and the Tragedians often speak of. It too comes from the Gods. There is no autonomy or freedom in the sense that we give to these words. Those who make mistakes do not do so out of bad will. These do not exist at all for the Greeks, who do not even have a term to indicate what we call “will,” “volition.” The whole theory of good or bad will is based, until Kant, on the conception that moral principles are commands that require submission and obedience. For the Greek, they are instead, as already said, reality and truth, whose existence and consistency are inseparable from the cosmic context, no differently from the “rules” that confer order on elementary nature and that we—with an expression tied to a way of thinking that is not at all Greek—call laws. Therefore, they [moral principles] are in themselves and by themselves, and not by the addition of any other element, salutary and beneficial. Socrates can thus teach, with firmness, in the spirit of the original conception, that the so-called good is always useful, not because it corresponds to personal desires, but because it is, in the natural order of things, the right thing to do. The authentic formula would not read: “good is what brings utility,” but rather: “it is in the very essence of the good to be nothing but useful.”

Our ethics, which attributes everything to the will and its supposed freedom, thinks that those who are morally lacking do not want to see the good, and seeks the reason for this in their inner attitude. For the Greek, it is also a decree of the Gods, a sign that they look unfavorably upon someone. They let the wicked make mistakes: a foolish action leads them to ruin.

The orator Lycurgus in his famous speech against a traitor to the country—a traitor who was eventually led by his own recklessness into the hands of justice—says: “The first thing the Gods do to a wicked man is to drive him mad.” (Lycurgus, Against Leocrates, 92) And he quotes some verses that are not otherwise known to us:

Then, when the wrath of the Gods wants to destroy someone,
this is the first thing they do: they take from his spirit
the nobility of thought and pervert it,
so that he knows nothing of his wrongdoing.

But they, who have all power within them, also know when a noble spirit must fall into error or fault, suffer or come to ruin. The chorus, so full of the sense of destiny, in Antigone ends with these words (620 ff.):

A wise man was he who spoke
this famous saying: evil seems
a good to man when a God wants
to obscure his mind: then the time
before ruin is short.

The Scholia to Sophocles report, in relation to this passage, the saying: “When God wants to ruin a man, first he drives him mad.”

Certainly, this does not absolve man of responsibility, as he must atone [for his actions], that is, assume all the consequences. It is indeed he who acts. But remorse and self-condemnation, as if all the blame were attributable to the wickedness of his personal will, are spared him. However the nature and degree of man’s participation is interpreted—this always remains an insoluble enigma in the end—the intervention of the superhuman powers always remains decisive.

In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Clytemnestra boasts with horrifying pride of the murder she, with her own hands, has consummated. But then, when the chorus names the supreme God, Zeus, whose decrees even this horror is to be attributed to, she declares that the murder of Agamemnon was not in truth her own work: the ancient avenging genius that watches over the wicked house [of the Atreids] has taken her figure and, under it, has committed the crime (verse 1497 ff.). And the chorus, while emphasizing her guilt, must agree that the horrid demon has participated in the action. Helen, who by fleeing with Paris provoked the Trojan War with its immense massacres, is indeed called, in the Odyssey (4, 145), “shameless”; however, she also knows that it was the Goddess Aphrodite who precipitated her into misfortune (5, 261). So also in the Iliad, before Hector, she directs the bitterest reproaches to herself, but concludes that it was the Gods, that it was Zeus himself who wanted what happened (Iliad 6, 343 ff.). She could have said with the words of the famous chorus of Antigone, where Eros and Aphrodite are spoken of:

You know how to make even a just soul unjust
And lead it to ruin;
You cruelly raised
This assault of voices
Among men bound
By blood. But the brightness of the eyes
Of the desired maiden triumphs,
Her beauty which is similar
To the supreme laws
In its power. This is
The invincible plaything
Of divine Aphrodite.

Such words sound very alarming to our ethics of free personal will. Already in ancient times, Helen’s self-defense seemed scandalous. In Euripides’ Trojan Women (988), Hecuba retorts: “[My son was of supreme beauty] and it was your own heart that, seeing him, became Aphrodite. All the follies that men commit they call Aphrodite.”

What a danger for morality—we are led to think—when the guilty can ascribe the blame to the Gods instead of taking responsibility!

But let us stop wondering how things stand objectively regarding the problem of human freedom versus divine intervention and ask ourselves this question instead: Was there not more humility and religiosity in not presuming to be the absolute master of one’s behavior? Is there not in the apparent humility of self-condemnation an immoderate pride, that pride which the Greeks would have called hubris? The Greeks. But perhaps a Luther—I add—would have thought differently?

We cannot truly say that the Greeks of the archaic and classical period lived less morally than we do with our concepts of good and evil, of personal freedom of will. Rather, focusing on the Gods raised the soul of the Greek man above vulgarity; and if that man fell victim to a Goddess like Aphrodite, there was still greatness in the error he had to face the consequences of; what reeks of pettiness and vice, as well as the deteriorating demonic aspect of evil, was unknown to them.

Agamemnon expresses himself even more explicitly than Helen when he reconciles with Achilles, whose anger over the insult he received had brought the Greeks to the brink of ruin. How many times—he says—have I been blamed by the Achaeans, but the fault is not mine, but that of Zeus and Fate and the Erinyes who wander in darkness: they, that day, in the assembly, threw into my heart the savage spirit of blindness… but what could I do? Everything is the work of a God: of Ate, the daughter of Zeus who instills terror.

In every significant action of humans, a God acts

In the face of a vision like the Greek one, in which the proximity of the Divine appears so immediate and decisive, our concept of freedom and unfreedom loses its meaning. Actually, it cannot be said that the Homeric man is not free. Rather, it should be said that only in the presence of the God does he acquire the joyful certainty of his own strength, his own ability, of himself. A high sense of self and awareness of divine proximity are one and the same. When Achilles—as we have seen—points to Athena as the true author of his prowess and declares that it will be she who kills his opponent with his [Achilles’] sword, his pride is no less than that of a hero of the Nibelungenlied, who knows nothing in his actions of divine presences. The Greek man, in decisive moments, is, so to speak, taken into the Divine, or the God is so close to him that he feels divine action as his own and vice versa. Hence the fact that the attentive reader of Homer cannot miss and that at first surprises: the fact that in his poems there is never any talk of acts of thanksgiving to the Divinity, and that heroes, to whom the Divinity is always close (think of Athena in relation to Achilles and Odysseus), never think of dedicating a particular sign of veneration to her.

But even where the presence of a God means fatal obscurity, one rarely hears an invective like Achilles’ against Apollo in the opening scene of Book XXII of the Iliad. Apollo, who wants to give the Trojans time to escape, has taken on the appearance of an enemy in Achilles’ eyes, who relentlessly pursues him, and has thus driven him away from the melee. In the end, when the Trojans have already taken refuge within the walls of the city, Apollo makes himself known to Achilles with ironic words; then the deceived hero launches the bitterest invective against the God, who disappears without a word. But Hector, on whom Athena has played a cruel trick, does not get angry with the Goddess: he only recognizes that the Gods have decreed his downfall (Iliad 22, 209 ff.). After the fatal balance of Zeus had announced his death, Athena had appeared to him, who, anguished, was fleeing from Achilles, in the friendly guise of Deiphobus, offering to face his opponent’s frenzied violence together with him. But when, as the fight began, Hector turned to look for his companion, he had disappeared. Then Hector says to himself (5, 297):

Ah! Truly the Gods are calling me to death.
I thought to have the strong Deiphobus by my side:
but he is inside the walls, Athena has deceived me.
The bad death is close to me, it’s no longer far away,
it’s unavoidable now…

He knows that this is what Zeus and Apollo, the Gods who had protected him until then, have decided. It’s hard to believe, but nothing can be said about Athena’s behavior towards Hector other than that it is immoral and unworthy of a Goddess. It would be more useful to ask: what would have happened if she had not deceived the hero, since his death was now inevitable? Apollo had continued to infuse him with strength so he could escape his pursuer, who was stronger than he. But when his destiny appeared to be decided, Apollo had abandoned him. In his flight, Hector would have soon been caught up by Achilles and killed by him. His death would have been inglorious. The divine deception saves his honor as a hero. When he realizes this deception, here are his words (Iliad, 17, 197 ff.):

…Now Fate has caught up with me.
Well then, I will not die without a struggle, without glory,
but having accomplished something great, so that even the future
may know it.

It does not occur to him to be angry with the Goddess whom he immediately understands to be the one who deceived him.

Even through deception, the Gods can show their goodness to a worthy human. Just before (Iliad, 17, 197 ff.), Zeus, in the face of the excessive arrogance of the hero who had forgotten how close death was, had decided to give him a last splendor of greatness, compensation for the destiny that prevented him from returning from this battle to his home. He would thus be allowed to reach a pinnacle of human existence before descending into death.

It is in this spirit that Goethe could speak of a fortunate fate with regard to Winckelmann’s death, where others found only reason to lament. He “had risen among the blessed from the summit of life, taken away from the living by a brief fright, a brief suffering.” The death that befell Winckelmann—unfortunately, it would later fall into the hands of novelistic psychologists—is so close in fundamental points to that of the Homeric Hector that we cannot help but compare the way it appears to us with the way Homer would have told it.

After a stay of more than ten years in Rome, Winckelmann realized his desire to see his homeland again and to embrace the numerous friends to whom he was attached. His fame had in the meantime spread throughout Europe and he could have set foot on the soil of the country he had left as a virtually unknown writer with joyful pride. The letters he wrote before his departure do not mention this, but they do reveal an overflowing, joyful impatience to finally embrace the many people he loves and respects. He had in fact sacrificed the long-cherished dream of a trip to Greece to the poignant longing for his homeland and friends. Thus he travels with a tumultuous heart towards the longed-for goal. But already at the first stop in Germany, a dark sadness assails him, which becomes all the more oppressive the more he tries to oppose it, and this irrationally forces him to suddenly reverse the direction of his journey, taking him where the hand of death awaits him.

Anyone who can relive these disturbing events cannot escape the thought of fate. To see with some clarity and understand is certainly impossible here. But it is not difficult to imagine how Homer would have told these things. Here too, as in the case of Hector, Zeus would probably have weighed him in the scales of destiny, and it would have announced that the moment of ruin had come; and as Hector, deceived by a false figure, fell prey to destiny, so also here the Greek poet would have known how to give a name to the God who had darkened Winckelmann’s mind by instilling in him that one desire to run to the place where destiny could reach him. And yet here too he would have shown how beautiful it is that Divinity allows man, now claimed by destiny, to reach “the pinnacle of human existence” before calling him to death.

We have dwelled on this parallel at length because it is an example of what we would like to demonstrate in these pages: that the religious experience of the Greeks is closer to ours than one might think.

Moral and religious consciousness of the Greeks

Even Agamemnon, who as we have already mentioned, attributed the entire blame for his grave error to Zeus (Iliad 19, 86 ff.), does not accuse the God, but says (verse 137): “Since I fell into blindness and Zeus took my mind, I am ready to make the greatest amends.” Is he humiliated? Can it be said that he is repentant? Not at all. [To read his words this way] would be to completely misunderstand the moral and religious consciousness of the Greeks of the classical age. However strong the regret for the error and however serious the consequences to be borne, man is not overwhelmed when he knows he is in the hands of Divinity. Instead of leading him down the dangerous path of self-accusation and self-disdain, the recognition of the error fortifies him with the certainty of the Divine and preserves his greatness of spirit for courageous undertakings in union with the Gods of light.

Thus man is granted divine protection, even in guilt. And the most comforting thing is that in his human insufficiency, he can turn to the God as one who can be completely what no mortal is allowed to be. So the dying Hippolytus looks, as we have heard, to Artemis. The virgin Goddess can, in the proud consciousness of her own purity, contemptuously regard her antagonist, Aphrodite. Not so Hippolytus, who must perish because he denies Aphrodite reverence and wounds the lovesick Phaedra with disdainful self-righteousness, driving her to death. But the celestial breath of his Goddess does not fail to comfort him even in death. That she is, and is forever, is enough. The Divine remains: he can therefore leave without anguish; he can—with the “fleeting song of life” (Hölderlin) concluded—disappear into the Divine. It doesn’t matter if he himself now belongs only to the realm of what has been.

The Sophoclean Antigone, who violated the law of the state out of “piety”—a “holy crime,” as she says (verse 74)—must bear the consequences of her act without pity, namely death. Nothing and no one can spare her from it, not even the Gods. And yet, it would have taken just a moment for Creon, finally realizing the folly of his own actions, to arrive in time to save her! She must answer for her action, fulfill her destiny, which is also a destiny due to the curse that weighs on her house. A kind of martyrdom, therefore, but without the comfort of a reward in the afterlife. Her hope is different. She hopes to be justified in the underworld, to see the righteousness of her action confirmed (verse 925 ff.), that is, the eternal sanctity of the unwritten laws to which she appealed (verse 454 ff.). And that is enough. The fame of her action (as she foresaw: verse 504) and the inviolability of the Divine will grant her eternal peace in the mystery of the realm of the dead.

The dead and the afterlife

The Homeric conception of Hades, in which the dead wander as vain shadows and, when they briefly awaken to consciousness, lament the lost light of the sun, has been deemed unnatural; it has even been said that those who lived with this belief must have unconsciously longed for a redemptive revelation, which was in fact subsequently provided by the mystery religions and the Orphic-Pythagorean doctrines. But it cannot be forgotten that this belief remained the Greek belief par excellence and that it is found intact and solid in the Tragedians no less than in Homer. Nor can it be said to be an arbitrary innovation of the ancient Greeks, since, on the contrary, it belongs to the oldest thoughts of humanity. As in Homer, so also in the primitives, the idea that the spirit of the departed is something like a forgetful shadow is found, no less firm. This does not prevent them from being feared and honored, from being believed to be present in certain moments, and from having a mysterious power attributed to them. Faith in the dead is in fact naturally full of contradictions, and it remains so even when dogma or philosophical speculation has given it a precise form.

Even in Homer—most extensively in the Nekyia of the Odyssey​—we often find a concept that is completely different from the one that sees the spirit of the departed as a powerless and unconscious shadow. It is only to our logic that these two concepts seem incompatible.

As Erwin Rohde already noted in his Psyche, the Iliad (Book 23) is also familiar with a pompous funeral ceremony, with sacrifices, which show how the dead are powerful figures worthy of religious respect. That the deceased also take part in the events of the earth in the underworld and demand the gifts due to them is unequivocally clear when Achilles, in the act of returning Hector’s body, prays to Patroclus, who is already in Hades, asking him not to be angry, and promises him his rightful share of the rich ransom (Iliad, 24, 591 ff.).

The meaning that sacrificial offerings to the dead had in the pre-and post-Homeric period is well known. The dead not only continue to exist, but are far superior to the living. As with the Gods, the epithet reserved for them is “the most powerful.”

As for the other concept—the dead as shadows—Homeric Greek culture gave this original idea the deepest meaning, making it capable of standing on its own.

The dead are indeed only shadows, but they still exist. They have their own way of being and can even—as seen in the impressive visions of the Nekyia in the Odyssey​—awaken for a brief moment, regaining consciousness and speech, but not the ability to act. This is not a continuation of life, because the kind of being the dead have is that of having been. The Greeks understood that having been is being in the true sense, and this is one of their great insights. As is typical of any authentic insight, this one can still testify to its truth today. Who has not felt—even if only fleetingly—that the dead drink the blood of the living and can suddenly awaken?

Never has the eternal mystery of the realm of the dead been viewed with such contented acceptance and pious reverence, with a more firm and tranquil spirit. And it is significant that Homeric thought has returned to us in Goethe’s passage of Faust’s descent to the Mothers, where:

…images encircle the head
of life, mobile, lifeless.
What once was in the splendid light
moves there; for it wants to be eternal. (lines 6429–6432)

It is the dead themselves who ask to be welcomed into the realm of shadows and to be completely free from the ties with the world of the living. In the Iliad (23, 65 ff.), the dead friend appears to Achilles in a dream, “just as he was, with his eyes, his voice, his clothing,” and begs him to give him a quick burial so that he can finally go to the afterlife with the other departed, and he reaches out his hand to him for the last time. Without doubt, it is in this desire, believed to be that of the dead, that the origin of the use of cremation must be fundamentally sought, and not—as Erwin Rohde thinks—in fear of the dead. In fact, among all peoples and in all times, we find the idea that as long as the corpse has not decayed, the dead person is precluded from the total departure that he ardently desires.

Hades is a place neither of punishment nor of reward. The depictions of the torments of Tityos, Tantalus and Sisyphus (Odyssey 11, 576 ff.)—whose Homeric authorship is contested—are images not so much of expiation as of a tragic fate. Of course, when it is said that the dead exist as shadows and that their being is that of having been, and when their dwelling and the manner of their dwelling is spoken of, not everything that needs to be said has been said. Another possibility exists for some elect, whose being is not exhausted in having been, as testified to the last encounter that Odysseus has in Hades (Odyssey 11, 601 ff.). Hercules appears to Odysseus in Hades exactly as he was on earth; completely turned towards the past, he speaks to him about the labors and sufferings that filled his life. But this is only his appearance (eidolon). He enjoys a happy existence up there—the poet explicitly says—among the immortal Gods.

The serene recognition of the mystery of death found in Homer is not the only nor the last testimony to the sense of security that the divine gave to the Greek man. The numerous tomb depictions of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE that have come down to us allow us to understand with what calmness he looked upon the mystery of death. A thoughtful wonder seizes those who contemplate them: there is no sign of terror in them, but neither is there a trace of hope based on a precise otherworldly faith. The life that was, and that alone, is present, in solemn calm, gathered in the figure; and even today we feel the eternal calm that breathes around it. But an enduring tie with the survivors also finds expression in the loving gesture of reaching out the hand.

The ascent of man to the truth of myth

The divine, which man knows to be his security, is thus not a “wholly other” that serves as a refuge for people who live in a de-divinized reality. Rather, it is precisely what surrounds us, what we live and breathe in, what seizes us, taking shape in the clarity of our senses and our mind. It is omnipresent. All things and all events speak of it in the great hour in which they speak of themselves. But they do not speak of it as a Creator and Lord, but as the eternal Being that manifests itself in them, taking a form. The Divine shines from every living moment: in the ineffable glory of its light, even the saddest destiny is sublime. It always transcends things, events, and moments in which its presence is revealed. It is the form of all forms, a living essence that is ready to speak in a direct encounter to any man who is truly a man. Among all living beings, man is the only one naturally capable of perceiving “forms,” the only one destined for this. Thus, his own nature connects him with the forms of being and their hierarchy, all the way up to the form of the divine.

From this perspective, religious experience has a completely different face—or, more precisely it has a face—in contrast to the opinion that “feeling is everything,” that “the name is sound and smoke, which veils the splendor of the sky,” as Faust says to Margarete (Faust, 3456–58).

The significance of the “name” was well understood by Hölderlin: it is with and in the name that the Divinity reveals itself as a form, becoming visible to the eye of the spirit.

Goethe himself, moreover, wrote to Jacobi: “You speak of faith, I attach great importance to seeing.” And Hölderlin has the divine messenger say to the virgin “Germania”:

Oh! names, daughters of the sacred earth,
Finally the mother. The waters clash against the cliff,
And storms resound in the woods, and at her name
The Divine that has set, echoes from the ancient times.

The dominant opinion today is that the experience of the Divine is possible only in a mysterious emotion by virtue of which the absolutely invisible and unthinkable becomes accessible to the soul on the level of the immediacy of experience. And we are led to believe that this, and nothing else, has always been the way of accessing the authentic experience of the Divine (see R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy), while myth, with the anthropomorphism that characterizes its figures and narratives, would only mean a loss of interiority and truth.

In reality, mysticism only appears in eras when the proximity of the Divine diminishes and uncertainty takes over—in that situation, that is, that Nietzsche characterizes with bitter words: “When skepticism and transcendent aspiration couple, mysticism is born” (Aphorisms from the Time of Zarathustra 117).

Its so-called “anthropomorphism” has always been one of the main objections against the ancient Greek religion. This anthropomorphism is not limited to presenting the Gods in human form but attributes to them actions and deeds so similar to those of men that even ancient thinkers took offense. We know how harshly Socrates and Plato expressed themselves about some ancient myths whose original meaning they certainly could not understand any better than we modern humans can. The saying of the poet-philosopher Xenophanes is often repeated with particular satisfaction: “If oxen and horses had hands and could draw, they would represent the Gods as oxen and horses.” What nonsense! If oxen and horses had hands and could draw—which is absurd—they would be men and, as such, called to do everything that men are called to do.

Such a conception of “anthropomorphism” betrays a strange contempt for the bodily form of man. Strange, considering that in this form is revealed and imaged that which elevates man above all other living beings and that—as has been believed in all times—brings him closer to the divinity so that he is capable of being, as was happily said, a dialogue with God. In this religious sense, ancient peoples (see for example, Ovid, Metamorphoses 1, 82 ff.) agree with Genesis in saying that man is made in the image of God.

“Anthropomorphism” does not therefore mean the degradation of the Divine, but the elevation of man. Goethe saw this very clearly. In the essay “Myron’s Cow,” it is written: “The aspiration of the Greeks is to divinize man, not to humanize the Divine. This is about theomorphism, not anthropomorphism!” And in the essay on Winckelmann, referring to the famous statue of Zeus in Olympia—the statue that still in the late antiquity continued to be for every Greek a source of religious emotion and elevation—“God had become man, to elevate man to God.”

This is the truth of myth! Here is the beating of its heart. Any different discourse, learned or not, that is made about it is irrelevant. Myth is more original and ancient than any mystical inner intuition, which would never have existed if myth had not preceded it.

Over the fourth part of his autobiography, Goethe placed the surprising motto: No one is against God except God himself. The contra can be replaced with its opposite to say: No one is for God but God himself.

The Divine can only speak to the Divine. It is already in man, therefore, if man can perceive it. Here Goethe echoes a Greek motif, saying of the eye:

If the eye were not of the nature of the sun,
It could never see the sun;
If the divine were not within us,
How could the divine captivate us?

But such a rapture for the Divine—for the Divine that already always dwells within man, even if he is not consciously aware of it—is not yet an encounter, a relationship with it. This happens only when the Divine addresses man.

In this event the dialogue between man and the Divine originates. The more intense the Word of the Divine, the more intense the response; and, the more intense such a response, the more the voice and figure of man will assume divine traits. Every authentic revelation occurs thanks to a miracle that takes place within the Divinity itself: the miracle of its becoming human. Only in this way does it become close to man and able to speak to him.

To seek to eliminate the myth in order to replace it with an experience that is presumed to be purer means losing the closeness of God.

The excellent Grönbech, speaking of his Germans (Culture and Religion of the Germans), writes: “The Author’s commitment has been to humanize the Gods, in the ancient, profound sense of the word, the one in which the emphasis lies on identification…”

The joyful sphere of existence

If ancient myth sometimes tells us things about the Gods that clash with our feelings and that were already foreign to Homer, the reason is that its original meaning is closed to contemporary man, just as it was no longer accessible to Homer. Certainly, we must not apply the standards of bourgeois respectability and decency to them. Let just one example suffice. As we will have occasion to see later, even the joyfully adventurous moment of existence, with its gains and losses, agile in tricks and thefts, finds a place among the Gods, becoming a figure in Hermes; and what vastness and depth this divine figure reveals, what wonders and precious mysteries it contains within itself.

Goethe understood well what was divine in this figure. In the most beautiful passage of the tragedy of Helen in the second part of Faust, where the Furies tell of the amazing feats of the newborn Euphorion, the chorus, which knows “the most ancient legends of Hellas—treasure of Gods and heroes,” opposes to those wonders even greater ones: those of Hermes who, just born, escapes the hands of his guardians:

Like the perfect butterfly
that from its rigid chrysalis
unfolds its wings, sets itself free
and daringly flies through the ether
that the sun traverses.
Thus he, the greatest of all,
with the most cunning skills,
demonstrates that he is always
favorable to thieves, to shady characters, and to anyone
who seeks profit for themselves.
(lines 9657–9667)

He steals from all the Gods their most precious insignias, even managing to steal the magical belt from the Goddess of love.

Goethe understood the divine depth of this spirit of cunningness that leads to hidden treasures, including those of knowledge; and his testimony is worth much more than the hypochondriac, presumptuous condemnation of old and new moralists.

Therefore, there is no need to worry about the well-known attacks that ancient philosophers made on Homer’s Gods.

According to the testimony of a late writer, Pythagoras reportedly told of having seen the souls of Homer and Hesiod suffering in Hades for what they had said about the Gods (Diogenes Laertius, 8, 21). And the philosopher-poet Xenophanes is praised for saying that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the Gods everything that is considered dishonorable and reprehensible among men.

But Homer was right about all his “critics.” As far as antiquity is concerned, it is enough to remember the famous statue of Zeus in Olympia, which Phidias created on the basis of Homer’s words, the sight of which could still be said, even in the late centuries of the ancient era, to be enough to illuminate and enliven an entire existence. And as for Xenophanes, the right answer is the one that, according to what is told, was once given to him by King Hiero. To his complaint that, being poor, he was unable to maintain more than two servants, the king replied, “But Homer, whom you denigrate, still maintains an infinite number after his death!” (Plutarch, Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata).

One more point deserves a mention.

Poets of a later age, for whom there was no more enticing subject than a love story, delighted in portraying the father of the Gods as fickle in love—nor did they show any better regard for the other Divinities: but when myth is understood in its authenticity, a very different image emerges. Consider the myth of Zeus descending to visit Alcmene: as is known, it has provided inexhaustible material for funny and risqué scenes to playwrights from antiquity to the present day; but see the dignity with which it is presented in the account of Hesiod (Theogony 28 ff.): Zeus decides to have a son who will be of assistance to men in their calamities and so he is inflamed with love for Alcmene, and she gives birth to Heracles. Not even his descent from the sky to join Cadmus’ daughter, Semele, should be understood as a simple love affair. A mortal woman conceives from him the God who comforts and enchants, who suffers and dies, and must burn in the flame of his unveiled brilliance. No one in modern times has understood the inexhaustible significance of this event better than Hölderlin, where, in the hymn As if on a holiday… he sings:

Just as the poets tell,
when the God desired to be visible,
his lightning struck the house of Semele
and the divinely struck woman gave birth
to sacred Dionysus, fruit of the storm.

We have already seen the significance of the God of heaven choosing Mnemosyne to generate—according to the desire of the Gods—the Muses.

Certainly, those noble ones who traced their family’s origins back to a love of Zeus thought of it not as a casual erotic adventure, but rather with a pious pride.

Therefore, we must once again learn to see the Father of the Gods, as well as the other Divinities, with the eyes of those who most highly revered them. The ancients did not fail to emphasize the sublimity of the scene in the first song of the Iliad in which Zeus on Olympus fulfills the prayer of Thetis and, with a nod of his head, shakes the mighty mountain. How high this God rises above all the prevailing moralism among men in the story of Hector’s end (Iliad 17, 197 ff.)! After Patroclus falls, Hector believes he can also defeat Achilles, while he himself, as the dying man proclaims, is already very close to death. But in the euphoria of victory, Hector does not believe that omen; he is so arrogant that he puts on Achilles’ armor torn from Patroclus and, dressed in it, launches into battle. What would a moralist imagine a God doing here, if not criticizing the presumption and arrogance of the sons of man? But Zeus has greater thoughts. Destiny cannot be averted, and Hector will not return to his loved ones from this battle. But he will live, now, his highest moment.

So, Zeus, as he gathered the clouds, saw him in the distance
arming himself with the divine armor of Achilles,
and shaking his head he spoke, to his own heart:
“Ah! wretched man, don’t you feel in your heart the death
that approaches you? You wear the immortal armor
of a strong man, whom all fear:
you killed his good and brave companion,
and you did not take the arms beautifully from his head and shoulders;
well, now I will give you great victory,
in compensation for this, so that upon your return from battle
Andromache will not have the illustrious arms of Achilles from you.”
(Iliad 17, 197–208).

And let us remember the words of Aeschylus in the first Chant of the Chorus of Agamemnon at the end of the great prayer to Zeus (verse 182 ff.): “Open up to mortals the ways of wisdom, Zeus, by making the law prevail that knowledge is suffering.” He also groans in his sleep, before the remembering heart, remorseful for his guilt, and thus wisdom comes to men, even against their will; and this is the benefit of the Gods, who sit firmly at the sacred helm of the world.

The God who shares and is also blessed

Let us now return, at the end of this section, to what had been said at the beginning.

The Greek Gods, present wherever something is or happens or is even just thought or desired, are so involved that they are not merely promoters but true executors of human actions. Homer calls these gods “serene,” and one of their most important epithets is “the blessed”; and how often we hear of the eternal splendor of their existence, unburdened as it is by sharing in human cares.

But is there not a contradiction here? How can a God rest in his absolute blessedness and at the same time take care of everything?

Are we not here—as many people think—coming up against creation of desire, a beautiful dream born in opposition to the severity and difficulty of life, as their absolute negation? The dream of beauty and accomplished peace, in which desire denies the restlessness, struggle, and disharmony of the real?

Perfect beauty was, for the Greeks, in all times, the characteristic sign of the Divine.

Is beauty just a human ideal? Or is it—as the Greeks believed—a constituent element of cosmic being and therefore, first of all, of divine truth?

Friedrich Nietzsche believed that beauty represented for the Greeks a victory over endless pain. Only because they had suffered the misery of existence inexpressibly, had the miracle of beauty appeared to them. That serene image, which in the wake of Winckelmann—the classicists still preserved of the Greek world—seemed to Nietzsche too naive. It was the famous saying of Silenus that for men, it would be best not to be born that—or so he thought—had allowed him to look deeper into the soul of the Greek man than anyone else before him.

The second half of the last century—the one that, seen from the outside, appeared so self-satisfied in its faith in progress—was actually, when looked at deeply by the most serious thinkers, an age of radical pessimism. Therefore, even the image of the Greek world could not escape the darkest shadow.

Today, after this dark wave has passed and we have learned to look at Greek works with a freer gaze once again, we can say that Nietzsche’s idea, and that of those who thought like him, was based on a fundamental error.

There is no trace here of painful struggles or agonizing tornness. As “light”—according to Homer’s word—as the lives of the Gods are, so too is the budding and flowering of beauty and the divine in Greek works immune from turmoil. Beauty and the divine are not the vision that emerges in man from the darkness of his desire and suffering, but rather the revelation that comes from the being of things and their truth.

“The beautiful is an original phenomenon,” said Goethe to Eckermann (April 18, 1827).

The psychologist, all focused on the interior, always runs the risk of losing the world, of no longer perceiving the voice of being.

It was precisely the Greeks who sensed the connection that unites beauty with truth and goodness, with goodness understood not only as a simple moral value, but objectively as what is revealed in the eternal order of nature and existence.

Recognizing truth in beauty, the fullness of being: is this not still a possibility and a task for us as well?

When we scrutinize nature, there is no part of it, however small, in which the “form” does not shine with its joyful splendor. In human life itself, it is possible to recognize the fundamental meaning of beauty. Do we not speak of a beautiful feeling, a beautiful action, and when we use the term “beautiful,” do we not mean something more than if we used the term “good”? The language of nature is clear and cannot be counterfeited. The true nobility of an action as well as a feeling speaks in the beauty of the gesture, which is inimitable and cannot be confused with the outward attraction of a pleasant movement. How much beauty there is in the spontaneous gesture of giving, blessing, loving understanding, noble modesty, virgin purity. How different the expression and gesture of the egoist, the vulgar, the miserly, the malevolent, the violent!

In genuine goodness, as in the ultimate serenity of authentic religious faith, truth reveals itself as beauty. Even a face marked by pain acquires a moving beauty when suffering does not make the person angry, mean, sour, and malicious, but, as if by miracle, despite all its gravity, lifts them up with the breath of the eternal.

Even Greek tragedy, so aware of the terrible aspects of truth, so merciless in presenting them to humanity, allows the golden glow of joy to shine forth from this truth. Of the same Sophocles who makes the chorus of Oedipus at Colonus sing the mournful words of Silenus, Hölderlin could say “the height of joy in sorrow” is expressed.

Therefore, when the Greek seeks and finds in the essence of things—whether they bring pleasure or pain to humanity—the “form” of beauty or eternal joy, it is not a product of imagination or will, but of a living knowledge.

Here lies the meaning of that event which was reserved for him alone, the Greek man: the revelation of the Olympian Gods. In their unbroken serenity, the original divine mystery of being is revealed. The “lightness” of their living does not remove the omnipresence of their acting and creating, just as, on the other hand, the pain and fatigue that weigh upon existence are not eliminated by the fact that being is, in its ultimate origin, lightness, stillness, joy.

Despite all the troubles, sorrows, and downfalls, existence rests in the Eternal, and the Eternal here are the Gods.

Passion and struggle
are eternal peace in God, the Lord. (Goethe, When the Same Thing in the Infinite)

For the Greeks, as for Goethe, this is not an article of faith, but the deepest of all experiences: an experience made with vigilant senses and clarity of mind. Winckelmann, whom we are now returning to listen to after a long period of neglect, and tortured thinking knew well that perfection and the divine are tranquility. The Greeks had taught him this. “Create a Greek beauty”—he says, addressing the artists (letter of April 14, 1761)—“such as no eye has yet seen, and free it, if possible, from every sign of passion that could disturb the features of beauty. Let it be, like wisdom born of God, immersed in the enjoyment of beatitude, and rise on light wings to divine tranquility.”

Thus, Winckelmann captured the image of the divine in the Greek spirit, an image that Epicurus himself still cherished so dearly that he could not give it up despite his rigid materialism, even if this materialism did not allow him to understand how precisely these Gods, living in the tranquility of an undisturbed beatitude, were the ones who moved events. This seemed to him an unacceptable contradiction.

But only when one knows the Gods from the aspect of blissful tranquility does one also understand their way of acting and creating. And, conversely: only those who understand this action and creation in the authentic Greek sense also see the blissful tranquility of the Gods revealed to them.

Among the moderns, Hölderlin had the greatest awareness of this in his Greek religiosity. Whenever he speaks of perfection, of the divine, of divine beauty, the serenity and serene smile always returns as a hallmark of these.