RELIGION AND ART

IN

ANCIENT GREECE

BY

ERNEST A. GARDNER

PREFACE

Greek religion may be studied under various aspects; and many recentcontributions to this study have been mainly concerned either with theremote origin of many of its ceremonies in primitive ritual, or with themanner in which some of its obscurer manifestations met the deeperspiritual needs which did not find satisfaction in the official cults.Such discussions are of the highest interest to the anthropologist andto the psychologist; but they have the disadvantage of fixing ourattention too exclusively on what, to the ordinary Greek, appearedaccidental or even morbid, and of making us regard the Olympianpantheon, with its clearly realised figures of the gods, as a meresystem imposed more or less from outside upon the old rites and beliefsof the people. In the province of art, at least, the Olympian gods areparamount; and thus we are led to appreciate and to understand theirworship as it affected the religious ideals of the people and theservices of the State. For we must remember that in the case of religioneven more than in that of art, its essential character and its influenceupon life and thought lie rather in its full perfection than in itsorigin.

In a short sketch of so wide a subject it has seemed inadvisable to makeany attempt to describe the types of the various gods. Without fullillustration and a considerable expenditure of space, such a descriptionwould be impracticable, and the reader must be referred to the ordinaryhandbooks of the subject. A fuller account will be found in Dr.Farnell's Cults of the Greek States, and some selected types arediscussed with the greatest subtlety and understanding in Brunn'sGriechische Götterideale. In the present volume only a few examplesare mentioned as characteristic of the various periods. It may thus, Itrust, serve as an introduction to a more complete study of the subject;and may, at the same time, offer to those who have not the leisure orinclination for such further study, at least a summary of what we maylearn from Greece as to the relations of religion and art under the mostfavourable conditions. It is easy, as Aristotle says, to fill in thedetails if only the outlines are rightly drawn—

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