Ancient & modern
Government advisers are suggesting that religious education in schools should teach Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh beliefs. The purpose is to encourage 'tolerance and respect', Greeks and Romans would have found this incomprehensible. In the absence of divine and therefore authoritative scriptures, monotheistic, jealous gods did not exist in the ancient world, let alone 'churches' with a 'priesthood', imposing creeds, beliefs and moralities. Religion was a form of cult, hallowed by tradition, centred on rituals carried out in the right way at the right time. At its heart was sacrifice (lit., 'making sacred') when something useful to humans was made over to the god. With luck, the god so honoured would then answer your prayers, the most common of which were to be safe, prosperous, fertile and healthy.
If you met new gods in new cultures, you assimilated them to your own gods, if you could, or added them to the pantheon, So in Britain, for example, we find an altar to Mars, Minerva, Hercules and the local horse-goddess Eporia. As Minucius Felix (3rd century AD) comments, all nations have their own gods, but Rome welcomes the lot. This, he goes on, is why they are so successful: they win the favour of captured gods by sacrificing to them immediately.
Where there was debate in the ancient world, and not much tolerance or respect either, it was between philosophers arguing about what you needed to do to be happy. In his De return natura ('On the Nature of the Universe'), perhaps Latin's most original masterpiece, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius (c.94-5I argues with all the passion of a Christian missionary that, because we are nothing but atoms, we need not fear death; gods, of course, exist, but they live apart from, and have no interest in, us; our soul is mortal and dies with us. 'To live on little, with a contented mind, is man's greatest riches; for "little" is never lacking', he recommends.
Other thinkers, like the Stoics, recommended differently. Taking the view that the divine infused the universe, Stoics argued that only an ethical life, directed towards the end of absolute goodness (even if one did not achieve it), led to happiness. And so they all argued furiously away in a strangely theological vein — but without jealous gods.
Peter Jones
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