Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/353

 communicate with men, and having seen that both in form and in spirit the ancient means of communion have been preserved almost unchanged, we have now to consider the means by which men approach the gods and communicate to them their hopes and petitions.

The first and most obvious method, one common to all religions, is of course prayer; but the use of this channel just because it is so universal cannot be claimed as a proof of religious unity between ancient and modern Greece. It is rather in what we should deem the accompaniments of prayer that evidence of such unity must be sought. The ancient Greeks were not in general content with prayer only. It was not customary to approach the gods empty-handed. The poor man indeed, according to Lucian, appeased the god merely by kissing his right hand; but the farmer brought an ox from the plough, the shepherd a lamb, the goat-herd a goat, and others incense or a cake. 'Thus it looks,' he says, 'as if the gods do nothing at all gratis, but offer their commodities for sale to men; one may buy of them health, for instance, at the cost of a calf, wealth for four oxen, a kingdom for a hecatomb, a safe return passage from Ilium to Pylos for nine bulls, and the crossing from Aulis to Ilium for a princess—a high price certainly, but then Hecuba was bidding Athene twelve cows and a dress to keep Ilium safe. One must suppose however that they have plenty of things to dispose of at the price of a cock, a garland, or even a stick of incense .' That this is a fair account of the externals of Greek ritual can hardly be questioned; for Plato too, in more serious mood, says that 'the mutual communion between gods and men' is established by 'sacrifices of all kinds and the various departments of divination .' The 'various departments of divination' are clearly the means by which the gods communicate with men; and 'sacrifices of all kinds' therefore represented to Plato's mind the means by which men communicate with their gods. Prayer, he seems to have felt, was a necessary incident in sacrifice, rather than sacrifice an unnecessary adjunct to prayer.

Now the word [Greek: thysia], which we commonly translate 'sacrifice,' was a term of very wide meaning in ancient Greek. In Homer the word [Greek: thyein] was used of making any offering to the gods, and