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Authors: Tim Whitmarsh
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by diminishing his. (Being a goddess, Hera is not constrained by the normal protocols of female decorum.) In the event, her submission ensures the opposite outcome. Zeus wins, at her expense. This kind of vigorous striving between peers was not a sign of social breakdown; quite the contrary, it was absolutely central to the normal functioning of Greek society. To be powerful, one needs to display power, and to display power one needs to defeat rivals. 7
So, myths of cosmic war were a means by which Greeks could explore the possibility of a world without gods. They had a special word for “battling the gods”:
theomakhia,
which is anglicized as “theomachy.” It could be used to describe a brawl between gods: toward the end of the
Iliad,
for example, the gods supporting the Trojans and those supporting the Greeks come to blows. But for the Greeks it more commonly described a nondeity taking on a deity. Euripides’s
Bacchae,
one of the best known examples of the tragic drama that blossomed in fifth-century BC Athens, tells of one such
theomakhos,
a young Theban ruler called Pentheus (“Sorrowful”) who will not accept the divinity of Dionysus, a god from Lydia (in western Turkey) who has just arrived in his city. The god’s cult involves women indulging in orgiastic frenzies in the wild mountains beyond the habitable space of the city. (Or, at least, this is how the cult is stylized through the distorting lens of drama: there is scant evidence for any such behavior in reality.) In the play, Pentheus seems to see the god as a rival to his own power within the city and strives to oppose his worship wherever possible. He also pours scorn on the religious activity itself, which he sees as a cover for lewd behavior. His opposition to the new cult is both metaphysical and ritual. Yet he gets his comeuppance. Lured by the disguised Dionysus to go and spy on the women, he finds them turning all of their deranged, ecstatic violence onto him. The final scene shows Pentheus’s own mother, Agave, rejoicing that she has killed a lion with her bare hands—until the Dionysiac illusion wears off and she sees her own son’s head in her hands, probably represented dramaturgically by the mask worn by the actor. Revenge upon the young
theomakhos
is exacted in the grisliest way possible.
Like all myths, those of theomachy can be taken, at the simplest level, as morality tales. The point is a fairly straightforward one: you should not vie with the gods. Pentheus should know how the zero-sum game operates, and that gods’ maintenance of their power depends on exemplary punishment of those who challenge them. But theomachy myths are not just about duty and devotion. This was not a Protestant culture demanding absolute obedience. There is something subtler and more interesting going on underneath the mythic surface. The widespread nature of these myths suggests that Greeks thought that it was in the nature of humans to envy divine prerogative. Rebelling against the gods seems to be expected of us. What the stories tell us about, as well as the gods’ jealous guarding of their privileges, is humans’ deeply ingrained desire to shrug off the shackles of mortality, to approach godliness.
Let us be clear on this point. In ancient Greece, the idea of humans encroaching on the gods’ territory was not inherently blasphemous. It was expected that certain charismatic individuals came closer than most of us to divinity. Homer’s
Iliad
regularly describes the effulgent heroes in their prime as “godlike.” The Phaeacians who help Odysseus return in the
Odyssey
are
agkhitheoi,
“close to the gods.” Many of the heroes of myth, indeed, received real cult honors, as Helen and Menelaus did in the Menelaion at Sparta from the seventh century onward. Hero worship was more than a metaphor in ancient Greece. Nor was this honor limited to mythical figures. The real-life, contemporary athletes praised by Pindar for their success in the Olympics and
So, myths of cosmic war were a means by which Greeks could explore the possibility of a world without gods. They had a special word for “battling the gods”:
theomakhia,
which is anglicized as “theomachy.” It could be used to describe a brawl between gods: toward the end of the
Iliad,
for example, the gods supporting the Trojans and those supporting the Greeks come to blows. But for the Greeks it more commonly described a nondeity taking on a deity. Euripides’s
Bacchae,
one of the best known examples of the tragic drama that blossomed in fifth-century BC Athens, tells of one such
theomakhos,
a young Theban ruler called Pentheus (“Sorrowful”) who will not accept the divinity of Dionysus, a god from Lydia (in western Turkey) who has just arrived in his city. The god’s cult involves women indulging in orgiastic frenzies in the wild mountains beyond the habitable space of the city. (Or, at least, this is how the cult is stylized through the distorting lens of drama: there is scant evidence for any such behavior in reality.) In the play, Pentheus seems to see the god as a rival to his own power within the city and strives to oppose his worship wherever possible. He also pours scorn on the religious activity itself, which he sees as a cover for lewd behavior. His opposition to the new cult is both metaphysical and ritual. Yet he gets his comeuppance. Lured by the disguised Dionysus to go and spy on the women, he finds them turning all of their deranged, ecstatic violence onto him. The final scene shows Pentheus’s own mother, Agave, rejoicing that she has killed a lion with her bare hands—until the Dionysiac illusion wears off and she sees her own son’s head in her hands, probably represented dramaturgically by the mask worn by the actor. Revenge upon the young
theomakhos
is exacted in the grisliest way possible.
Like all myths, those of theomachy can be taken, at the simplest level, as morality tales. The point is a fairly straightforward one: you should not vie with the gods. Pentheus should know how the zero-sum game operates, and that gods’ maintenance of their power depends on exemplary punishment of those who challenge them. But theomachy myths are not just about duty and devotion. This was not a Protestant culture demanding absolute obedience. There is something subtler and more interesting going on underneath the mythic surface. The widespread nature of these myths suggests that Greeks thought that it was in the nature of humans to envy divine prerogative. Rebelling against the gods seems to be expected of us. What the stories tell us about, as well as the gods’ jealous guarding of their privileges, is humans’ deeply ingrained desire to shrug off the shackles of mortality, to approach godliness.
Let us be clear on this point. In ancient Greece, the idea of humans encroaching on the gods’ territory was not inherently blasphemous. It was expected that certain charismatic individuals came closer than most of us to divinity. Homer’s
Iliad
regularly describes the effulgent heroes in their prime as “godlike.” The Phaeacians who help Odysseus return in the
Odyssey
are
agkhitheoi,
“close to the gods.” Many of the heroes of myth, indeed, received real cult honors, as Helen and Menelaus did in the Menelaion at Sparta from the seventh century onward. Hero worship was more than a metaphor in ancient Greece. Nor was this honor limited to mythical figures. The real-life, contemporary athletes praised by Pindar for their success in the Olympics and
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