J.-P. Vernant, "The Society of the Gods" -- review summary

Click to jump to Vernant's principles (exam review)


Vernant's article is a useful follow-up, I think, to the role of the gods in the cosmogonic process (Hesiod's Theogony) and to the materials we read earlier on the social structures and concepts of sovereignty in Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece. It is also a 'corrective' to the singularly anthropomorphic divine nature in myths. He is concerned in particular with describing some distinctive features of Greek religious thinking (as opposed to mythical thinking) and its conceptions of a divine 'society.' He organizes his chapter around three common approaches (I,II.III below) to the gods, each of which he finds to be of limited value. What he does find to be distinctive in Greek religion (i.e., the cultic and social importance of the god), cannot always be seen in Greek mythology, where the real nature of the gods is sometimes hidden by their immediate anthropomorphic literary vividness. Much that he says is supported in the myths, but the gods are not limited to myths.

I. Prior attempts to determine the origins of individual deities by their linguistic etymologies and by their correpondence to natural elements or forces are limited and often misleading. The Greeks did not necessarily organize their religion in correspondence with our modern conceptions of the physical universe and its natural bodies or forces.

1. The linguistic/nature approach works best for Zeus, whose Indo-European name does associate him with the bright sky and the light of day, but it doesn't work for other deities, and it fails to account for Zeus' other important association with the Cretan cave god--a version of the yearly dying and reappearing fertility god of Mediterranean cultures. So, at the very least, Zeus is much more than his name!

2. Zeus and all the other major gods as well have significance not only on the level of nature, but also on at least 3 other levels--levels that we 'moderns', though not necessaily the ancient Greeks, consider to be distinct levels of reality:

  • social/political sphere (polis)
  • human/domestic sphere (oikosor family)
  • supernatural/divine sphere

3. In particular, Zeus seems to be the power/principle of SOVEREIGNTY in every conceivable sphere (nature, pp. 104-6; society, p. 106; home, p. 107)--as his scores of epithets (characterizing adjectives) suggest. Zeus is a many-splendored thing! --or rather power, for he is neither a 'thing' nor a mere 'person'--according to Vernant. Better yet, he is the complex network of sovereign power, wherever and whenever it is experienced. [And, on the level of patriarchal social structures, that means he asserts his dominance over females of every class. Zeus, the insatiable sex addict, is just exerting his sovereign power over the less powerful--and exercising an uneasy sovereignty in his own household??? I.e., it's all about POWER?]

4. The Pantheon, or society of gods, is in fact a system of classification, in which the universe is understood as a complex, interdependent network of sacred powers--eminently suitable in its complexity for expressing 'the true texture of reality' (104). The major function of this pantheon is the integration of all spheres of life: natural, social, domestic, and divine--and the integration of the individual human into 'order,' 'hierarchy,' and 'community' (107-8)

5. In Greek religion, each deity, but especially Zeus, constitutes a plurality of powers--despite the singular anthropomorphic depictions that dominate mythic and literary portraits (108-9). Gods in religion are POWERS, not PERSONS.


II. Studying gods in isolation from each other--and trying to determine their individual identities is also of limited usefulness (107).

Since the gods constitute a 'system,' one must look not only at their individual spheres of power, but at their relationships with each other. Each god constitutes a complement to and a limitation on the spheres of power belonging to each other god--i.e, a society, or, if you will, a system of "checks and balances." Some of these connections are especially significant--as I hope the next few weeks will show.

For the moment, consider this: [Zeus is the sovereign who keeps all the other powers in harmonious tension by distributing their timai (privileges, rights)], yet what happens when Zeus either improperly exercises his own timai or has his own timai appropriated by another? Isn't this, from one angle, the problem in Aeschylus' Prometheus? Zeus is clearly a tyrant in the play, but Prometheus' willful re-distribution of timai is surely not unproblematic. If the cosmic sovereign isn't sovereign, then Hesiod's Theogony didn't solve the problem of instability afterall, and the cosmos is at risk.



III. It is also limiting to approach Greek religious life as something separate from social and material culture--that is, as separate from what we might call 'secular' life, for the Greeks did not make the same kinds of distinctions we do among areas of experience and activity.

1. The sacred/secular split is alien to Greek thinking. One of the effects of the Hebrew accounts of creation in Genesis may have been to 'de-sacralize' the world by presenting the Creator (and therefore the locus of the 'holy') as independent and transcendent of the created world, as external to the cosmos and unlimited by it. But the Greek gods are part of the created physical and social structure of the cosmos. Likewise, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, e.g., one may have an internal, personal, 'non-material' relationship with the transcendent god (God, being unlimited by the material world, can be spiritually both transcendent of and immanent in the world), but this is not usually the case with the Greek deities, who are

  • immortal, but not eternal
  • powerful and knowing, but not all-powerful and all-knowing
    --rather representing specific forms of knowledge and power
  • specific powers, each limited by and sometimes opposed by other powers
  • contradictory powers, yet still--each of them--demanding worship by those who don't want to be totally disempowered, as Hippolytus was (113)
  • complementing and opposing each other, yet unified by Zeus' sovereignty
    --thus functioning as contradictory independent agents, yet also as a unit.

2. The gods present some notable contradictions involving human life and expectations:

  • the world we inhabit is filled with tension, struggle, polarity, yet also 'speaks' with unified perspective and authority;
    • Zeus both does and does not control our destiny, AND he is both free and not free to act as he wills; nothing happens contrary to Zeus' will, yet we are accountable moral agents; and Zeus may act to change the determined order of things, but if he does, so he may unleash a host of other changes (because the other gods have their own timai to defend) that would turn the cosmos into a chaos.

      Patroclus may die on the battlefield because that is his fate, because Apollo knocks him senseless, because an enemy spear pierces his liver, because he is a fool, because he has bad luck, etc.;

      thus, many causations may be true simultaneously,
      even if they seem to contradict each other;

      though deity surrounds us and controls us, we must also manage our own lives;
  • humans and gods are separated by an impassable gap or gulf--that which separates the mortal from the immortal--and we must never presume to ignore that difference, to jump over the insurmountable gulf in our seeking for glory and achievement;

  • yet we are also encouraged in some religious experiences (and in some Greek philosophy) to make ourselves 'as much like the gods as possible' (117), to leap over the gap, even to become 'immortal' (whether temporarily or permanently);
  • we are simultaneously encouraged toward both arete (excellence) and sophrosyne (moderation or restraint); god is close, but unapproachable
    --or else god is distant, but reachable (117-18);
  • public religion integrates us into the polis and its social structure (family, society, state) --as worshippers we belong to the community;

  • but in other religious cults--the mystery religions, e.g., --we are attracted away from the polisinto private society or the wild nature beyond the polis.

    This last point (the 'social' and 'anti-social' aspects of Greek religion) we may soon see at work in the cults of Dionysus and Demeter.


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    Vernant's principles: [exam review]

    (isolated from his elaborations concerning Zeus)


    1. The Greek deities may have associations with the natural world, but their significance extends beyond this to spheres that 'moderns' would categorize as those of

    • a. society and politics,
    • b. family and home,
    • c. the supernatural, divine, and metaphysical.

    2. The Greek deities are not so much 'persons' as they are 'powers.' [Perhaps the Nurse intends something like this in Hippoytus when she says 'Cypris, you are no god./ You are something stronger than God if that can be' (Chicago series, 359-60; cf. p. 60 in Roche).]

    3. The major function of the pantheon is to 'integrate' the various spheres of life, and thus to help 'integrate' human individuals into the larger hierarchies and communities of which they are constituents. The individual deities can function, then, to integrate the various spheres of the cosmos through their exercise of specific forms of power. But, more importantly perhaps, the Pantheon as a whole organizes the cosmos through its complex system of complementary, overlapping, and conflicting powers, operative throughout the various spheres.

    4. Each deity is not so much a single entity, as she or he is a plurality of power(s).

    5. The gods constitute a society. Though the attempt to study each god in isolation from the others can be made, the results of such study are quite limited since each god constitutes a complement or contrast to the others, especially certain others--a system of checks and balances, of overlapping powers and dominions, recognizing that the world is a complex and contradictory (perhaps impossible) place.

    6. The Greeks did not clearly distinguish 'sacred' from 'secular.'

    7. The gods contradict each other, but function as a unit.

    8. Zeus does control our destiny, and does not control it (overdetermined causation).

    9. Humans can bridge the gulf between humanity and divinity, and they cannot.

    10. The gods encourage arete (perfection, achievement, exceeding normal limits) and sophrosyne (moderation, observing normal limits). The gods are close, but unapproachable--and also distant, but reachable.

    11. The worship of the gods integrates us into the polis, but also attracts us away from it. That is, Greek gods are both 'socializing' and 'alienating' in their effects on worshippers.


    The first exam will have three parts:
    1. In the first part I will present short quotations, names, or terms, and ask you to name the deity most closely associated with each.
    2. In the second part, I will choose one or two related principles from the list above and ask you to discuss it/them, drawing your details and illustrations from specific texts and myths telling the gods' stories.
    3. In the third part, I will chose an 'area,' such as gender or sexuality, death, nature, marriage, the household, the civic community, justice, travel and mobility, etc., and ask you to discuss briefly the ways in which not just an individual deity, but a 'society' of deities, provides 'governance' for the area.

     

     





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