polytheism in Greece and Rome

In ancient Greece and in Rome, before its conversion to Christianity, religion took the form of polytheism, a belief in many gods. These gods were felt to control all aspects of life. There were gods relating to the important elements of nature and the outer world, for example, the sun, the ocean, thunder and lightning, the weather. There were gods which affected agriculture, the growing of crops, but also there were gods which affected the inner emotional world. Falling in love was not just a personal affair, it was influenced by the god of love and strong desires were also believed to be at the whim of the gods.

With this religious view the people tried to keep the gods happy with rituals, sacrifices and suchlike. Nowadays we tend to laugh at this polytheism, we feel it is ignorant. This is because we have a few hundred years of science behind us, we have figured out many things about the natural world and, somehow, we believe we have demystified nature through this scientific exploration. But actually we are kidding ourselves. Although we may understand some of the causal relationships in nature, underneath it all there is still a deep mystery. In fact there always will be, for the scientific method, in the end, has to be circular. It defines one thing in terms of another. It traces back causal relationships but to where? Sooner or later in this scientific search we reach an impasse, a point beyond which the scientific method cannot go. If we look back in time we come to the Big Bang, what happened before the Big Bang? Why did it happen? These are questions which the scientific method cannot answer, they are outside its domain.

So, life is still a mystery and in day to day life are we really that much advanced in those ancient Greeks and Romans? We can predict the weather a little bit better, for the next few days perhaps, but we still cannot predict very accurately whether a whole crop will be lost because of a drought, or whether floods will destroy our homes. We are still largely at the mercy of the weather.

If nature, if the outer world, still has its mysterious aspects, it is even more true for the inner world, the world of our desires and feelings. These we are not in control of, they arise unbidden. We may like them or dislike them, but they are in us, a mysterious force at play. They determine our life, our feel for life, whether we enjoy life or not, where we go in our life.

So there are still great mysteries on the inside as well as the outside and these polytheistic religions of ancient Greece and Rome reflected these mysteries of life, the mysterious forces at play within us and without. This is a great contribution of those polytheistic religions, they acknowledge that every aspect of life is touched by the mystery of life. They acknowledge that we are not really in control of our lives and what happens to us. It is this great acknowledgement – that there are forces beyond our control and things that we cannot know – this is the contribution of those polytheistic religions. We would do well to remember it.