17b - The individual and the gods

Summary

The late polytheist world-view, as formulated by intellectuals, affords the historian a first orientation amidst an exceptionally complex body of evidence. But daily contact with the gods came to most people not, of course, through philosophy or theurgy, nor even the occult sciences, but through public and domestic cult, dreams, the rites of the dead, and so on. Here, too, the central problem is always how to deal correctly with, and exploit, divine power, in order to maintain personal and communal identity. It is only secondarily, if at all, the pursuit of what we call ‘religious experience’, or of ethical progress. Immersion in the details of cultic practice provides evidence to support these generalizations about mentality, and allows others to emerge.

SHRINES AND CULTS

The building of temples was among the most fundamental human social acts. Temples were at once the distinction (or ‘eyes’) and the essence (or ‘soul’) of any settlement, whether town or village (Lib. Or. xxx.9, 42). As the sixth-century historian John of Ephesus wrote of the mighty ‘house of idols’ at Heliopolis (Baalbek), ‘the adornments of that house were so wonderful that, when the misguided pagans [considered] the strength of that house, they glorified even more in their misguidedness’ (ap. ps.-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle (Chabot (1933) = CSCO 104) 130; tr. A. Palmer). Besides making public statements about the power of the gods and the role of religion in the community, the temples also said something about the structure of the society that made them.