The theme of the gods, of their existence, appearance, and interest in human affairs, was an object of constant attention for the Greeks from the most ancient times. As is widely known, Greek religion presents some highly original features compared with present-day religions: there are no religious texts establishing a body of orthodox doctrines, and no figures to whom worship is officially entrusted. Perhaps precisely because of this fluid situation, the element of the divine marks almost all salient moments in the lives of individuals and cities.Footnote 1 This constant presence in itself explains why, from Homer onwards, all writers were so keen to explore the issue of the gods. In particular, many Presocratic philosophers staunchly criticized popular prejudices (often presenting the gods as thieves, adulterers, and seducers) by suggesting alternative and more rigorous conceptions. In doing so, the Presocratics changed the content of the divine, without denying its existence:Footnote 2 they opposed the theology of the philosophers to the theology of the poets. The sophists also fit within this broader movement towards the critical redefinition of traditional religiosity, a movement which engaged many leading personalities of the age: let us think of Euripides, of Thucydides’ analysis of the plague, or of the debate on the ‘sacred disease’ (epilepsy) among Hippocratic doctors. In particular, the sophists stand out on account of what we might term their ‘sociological’ perspective: while criticizing the phenomenon of religion, they acknowledged its importance in human life; searching for its causes, they embarked on enquiries into the nature of the gods, the origin of the belief in their existence, their role in people's lives, and myths as a means to convey traditional values.
The outcomes of these enquiries are often provocative, to the point that (in some cases, at least) they border on atheism, a multifaceted concept:Footnote 3 some sophists are included in the lists of atheists that circulated in the Hellenistic and Imperial centuries.Footnote 4 This partly explains the violent reactions to their teachings in Athens. Given the freedom with which the problem of the divine was investigated from the most ancient times, one might have expected to find a certain degree of tolerance towards debates and criticism even in the fifth century.Footnote 5 Instead, the opposite was the case, especially in the second half of the century, when war raged between Athens and Sparta. While Dodds may have gone too far in describing this as a period of resurgent irrationalism, excesses occurred in both directions.Footnote 6 Probably in 437 bc, Diopeithes’ decree was issued to denounce those who did not believe in the existence of the gods or spoke on celestial matters (ta meteora).Footnote 7 On the opposite side of the spectrum, we know that, a few years later, a club of kakodaimonists (‘companions of the evil daemon’) was founded, whose members would meet to enjoy a banquet on what were regarded as unlucky days. Finally, we have the case of the Hermocopids (those who smashed the Hermes statues in Athenian streets) and the profanation of the Mysteries in 415 bc. Within this context, it appears that many representatives of the new culture were brought to trial.Footnote 8 Then, of course, we have the most famous trial of all: we should not forget that one of the two charges in the trial which led to Socrates’ death was that the philosopher did not respect the traditional gods and had introduced new deities. The sophists appear to have been both a symptom and a cause of this climate of unrest.Footnote 9 Much of their fame, and of the hatred they attracted, depends precisely on their provocations in this field.
Protagoras’ agnosticism
Protagoras’ penchant for sensational statements, capable of seizing the public's attention, is further confirmed by the opening of another text by him, probably entitled On the Gods:Footnote 10
About the gods I am able to know neither that they exist nor that they do not exist nor of what kind they are in form: for many things prevent me for knowing this, its obscurity and the brevity of man's life. (80B4 D.-K. = 31D10 L.-M.)Footnote 11
According to one ancient tradition this statement had a disproportionate effect, far beyond what the sophist could imagine: ‘because of the beginning of his book [i.e. On the Gods], Protagoras was expelled by the Athenians, and they burned his books in the marketplace after they had been collected by a herald from everyone who owned them’ (80A1 D.-K. = 31P19); and ‘while he was travelling from the mainland to the islands and avoiding Athenian triremes, which were deployed on all the seas, he suffered shipwreck while sailing a small boat’ (80A2 D.-K. = 31P21 L.-M.). According to Philostratus, the source of the second quote, Protagoras’ impiety was due to his Persian education – as though it were impossible for a Greek to come up with such ideas.Footnote 12
Be that as it may, the sophist was made the object of unanimous and enduring condemnation, to the point of bringing together traditionally antithetical schools of thought, such as the Christians and the Epicureans: Protagoras of Abdera, the son of Manander, stated that neither gods nor God exist at all (Epiphanius, Against Heresies, 3.16), and
Protagoras of Abdera in effect maintained the same opinion as Diagoras, but he used different words on the idea that he would thereby avoid its excessive temerity. For he said that he did not know whether the gods exist. But this is the same as saying that one knows that they do not exist. (Diogenes of Oenoanda, 80A23 D.-K. = 31R24 L.-M.)
However, the anecdotes we have regarding Protagoras’ life are probably false,Footnote 13 and there is no reason to assume a profession of atheism on his part:
Diogenes crassly conflates a profession of knowledge (‘I know that not-P’) with a confession of ignorance (‘I do not know that P’). To the believer, agnostics may be as bad as atheists; but to the atheists agnostics are not much better than believers.Footnote 14
In other words, this is not an ontological thesis but an epistemological one:Footnote 15 Protagoras is the first thinker to take an agnostic stance, which can hardly be understood as an expression of atheism.
But while it is evident that Protagoras’ statement is not a profession of atheism, its overall meaning is less clear. Some interpreters have even gone so far as to deny that he is doubting the existence of the gods in this passage. This position has been endorsed in particular by Kerferd, who has established a parallel between the use of hos in this statement and in the ‘man-measure’ one: in the latter case, as we have seen, the preposition clearly has a modal meaning (see pp. 17–18); if we assume that it was used in the same sense in the former passage, we must conclude that Protagoras was chiefly interested in the way in which the gods are and present themselves, rather than in their presumed existence or non-existence. He would thus be claiming that we do not know ‘how’ the gods are or are not, and the words that follow (‘nor of what kind they are in form’) would have an almost epexegetic function (or would more concretely refer to the problem of their visible appearanceFootnote 16). This would imply, then, that Protagoras never raised any doubts as to the existence of the gods. Against this reading, however, it must be noted that all the ancient sources, from Plato onwards (see Theaetetus, 162d), unanimously present Protagoras’ thesis as though it concerned the existence of the gods. As there are no reasons to go against such a solid tradition, the most reasonable hypothesis is that the passage discussed both the existence of the gods (‘neither that they exist nor that they do not exist’) and their form (‘nor of what kind they are in form’Footnote 17). Incidentally, it is worth noting that the statement possibly presents the first recorded use of the verb ‘to be’ in an existential sense.Footnote 18
The reasons which Protagoras reportedly adduced in support of his thesis – the obscurity of the problem and the brevity of human life – have been regarded as too banal, or at any rate not particularly relevant.Footnote 19 However, they acquire greater significance when viewed in relation to a concept the importance of which has already been stressed in relation to the ‘man-measure’, namely personal experience: this is the only legitimate criterion to verify our knowledge.Footnote 20 Therefore it seems that, by highlighting the limits of human experience, Protagoras was engaging in a polemic with those Presocratic thinkers, such as Parmenides and Empedocles, who had repeatedly claimed to be able to transcend the limits of human knowledge, as well as the poets, who had based their authority on a privileged contact with the divine world. In this respect, some interesting similarities are to be found between Protagoras and the sixth-century poet and moralist Xenophanes of Elea (21B34 D.-K. = 8D49 L.-M.), who also reportedly criticized human claims to know the truth about the gods (significantly, for Xenophanes too, obscurity is an obstacle to knowledge).Footnote 21 The analogies with Xenophanes become even more striking when we consider the second segment of the first statement, concerning the presumed appearance of the gods. In raising this problem, Protagoras was in all likelihood referring to the anthropomorphic conception, which Xenophanes had already repeatedly censured.Footnote 22 And in doing so, Xenophanes had not been alone either, because we can also add Herodotus’ words:Footnote 23 ‘what appearance the gods have’ is something which Homer and Hesiod had established for the Greeks, but it was only a poetic fiction (Herodotus 2.53.1). The polemic does not concern only the Presocratics but also, and most importantly, traditional forms of religious expression.
One intriguing problem for scholars has been to reconstruct the follow-up to this text. It is difficult to imagine that, after a statement of this sort, Protagoras continued to speak at length about the gods. The structure of the sentence (and in particular the presence of the particle men, which implies a contrasting de) suggests that the author shifted his attention onto human beings: for the Greeks, the notions of god and human were mutually defining.Footnote 24 As Werner Jaeger has suggested, it is likely that, in the continuation of the text, Protagoras discussed not the problem of the gods in itself, but rather the issue of what they represent for human beings, thereby inaugurating an anthropological and sociological approach that considers religion in terms of its function for human civilization and society.Footnote 25 This is no doubt a noteworthy suggestion. What is less convincing is the way in which this hypothesis has been developed. From Jaeger onwards, scholars have believed that, while leaving the problem of the actual existence of the gods open, Protagoras celebrated their importance for human civilization.Footnote 26 Given the silence of fragment B4, this hypothesis is based on the myth that Protagoras relates in the dialogue named after him. Yet, even leaving aside the problem of the Protagorean origin of this page of Plato's (a far from trivial problemFootnote 27), what may be inferred from the myth is in fact the very opposite. In the myth, Protagoras acknowledges the importance of belief in the gods as something specifically and universally human; but the very moment that he acknowledges the presence of the religious dimension, he de facto limits its importance by implying that this belief (or fear) is not enough to provide a foundation for human society. What ensures that people can live together in cities is rather politics, which is the object of the sophists’ teaching. Protagoras’ agnosticism is therefore instrumental for his radical humanism.Footnote 28
The origin of the belief in the gods
As far as we can tell, Prodicus investigated not so much the problem of the gods themselves as the origins of the human belief in their existence (84B5 D.-K. = 34D15–18 L.-M.). In all likelihood, in this respect too it was Prodicus’ interest in names, a distinguishing feature of his activity as a sophist, that conditioned his reflections. According to his perspective, the gods are a human product, insofar as people have chosen to regard as ‘divine’ that which has proven useful to their lives: at first, things such as the sun and moon, rivers and fruits; later, ‘as human wit entered into competition with nature’,Footnote 29 this was also extended to those people who had distinguished themselves with inventions that were particularly useful for the well-being of humanity.Footnote 30 According to Henrichs’ reconstruction, a transition was essentially made from an impersonal stage, in which beneficial objects were deified (e.g. bread or wine), to a personal stage, in which the object of deification were those people to whom the invention could be attributed, or who at any rate had taught others how to correctly employ useful things (as in the case of Demeter and DionysusFootnote 31). The gods and religion, then, are merely a human product resulting from humans’ attempt to make sense of the environment in which they live.Footnote 32 Undoubtedly, the boldness of these ideas, which ‘make the gods come down from their pedestal’;Footnote 33 the parallel reassessment of the human world, which is capable of making sense of reality; and the emphasis on usefulness as the distinguishing criterion to understand and guide one's actions make this theory a typical testimony to the sophists’ way of reasoning.
Not unlike in Protagoras’ case, the limited number of testimonies we have prevents us from precisely reconstructing the context of Prodicus’ theories on the matter. It cannot be ruled out that somehow – and, once again, as in Protagoras’ case – this discussion concerning the gods constituted a prelude to an analysis of human civilization.Footnote 34 Yet, as far as we can infer from a passage by Themistius (a rhetor from the age of Imperial Rome: 84B5 D.-K. = 34D17 L.-M.), Prodicus would appear to have stressed the importance of agriculture rather than politics, as Protagoras did in the Platonic dialogue. It might be hypothesized, therefore, that
Prodicus reconstructed a Kulturgeschichte in which the progressive improvement of humankind's living conditions was first of all connected to the progress made in the cultivation of the land; and that particular attention was devoted to the relation between civilization, agriculture, and religion.Footnote 35
In the context of the Greek world, whose calendar and festivities revolved around the key moments in the agricultural year, the link drawn by Prodicus would have been a particularly incisive one.Footnote 36
With some caution, Prodicus’ view may be regarded as an expression of atheism.Footnote 37 An even more explicit atheistic stance has been recorded in an extensive fragment from a satyr-play entitled Sisyphus.Footnote 38 This text had long been attributed to Critias, and actually constituted one of the main reasons for including this author among the sophists (88B25 D.-K. = Dram. T63 L.-M.). However, the attribution has been disputed, and the name of Euripides has been suggested instead, based on the fact that in 415 bc the tragedian composed a satyr-play entitled Sisyphus to accompany a trilogy consisting of Alexander, Palamedes, and Trojan Women. Footnote 39 Whether the author is Critias or Euripides, it is important to avoid the mistake of assuming that these verses express his personal views: the lines are spoken by a mythological character – and not a great one either, given the sinister reputation surrounding Sisyphus, the deceiver par excellence.Footnote 40 In other words, this long fragment counts as a document that attests to the ideas circulating at the time rather than to any independent theory.Footnote 41
The fragment reconstructs the history of humanity by dividing it into three crucial stages: (1) in its first stage, humankind's life was disorderly and bestial, dominated as it was by brute force (lines 1–4); (2) to remedy the situation, human beings established laws ensuring justice and peace, and yet these laws only partially attained the result that was sought after: while they regulated public actions, underhanded acts of violence continued (5–11); (3) someone, ‘a man who was shrewd and wise in his planning’ (12), then invented the gods: immortal, omniscient, and omnipotent beings capable of reading human beings’ thoughts and of acting upon this knowledge – and fear of the gods finally made city life possible (11–42). What we have here is a first attestation of the theory of religion as an instrumentum regni, a theory destined to enjoy great popularity, first in Rome and then in the modern world.
Even though it is impossible to establish any direct links, it is interesting to note that this passage stands in contrast to the theories of Prodicus and Protagoras that I have just discussed. Unlike Prodicus, the author of these verses traces the origin of the belief in the gods back not to usefulness, but to fear.Footnote 42 Even more marked is his divergence from Protagoras and democratic ideology. While Protagoras celebrates the superiority of politics (and the nomos) over religion precisely because of its capacity to regulate the social life of humans, the very opposite is the case in the Sisyphus: it is religion, understood as fear of the gods, which safeguards human life. But the real point of divergence does not concern so much the analysis of society as the anthropological conception which this analysis implies: whereas Protagoras stresses a ‘collaborative’ anthropology, which underlines the political and social dimension of human life, the Sisyphus passage entails a very different kind of anthropology, which emphasizes the irremovable nature of the passions and of the instinct to overpower others.Footnote 43 One truly experiences here the ‘bottomless’ depth of human nature.Footnote 44
Providence and divine justice: matters of theodicy
One issue which had always been debated in relation to the gods was what in the modern age came to be referred to as the problem of ‘theodicy’, which is to say the problem of the justification of divine justice vis-à-vis the existence of evil. Faith in the gods entailed confidence in a corrective action on their part, as had constantly been stressed by the greatest poets, from Hesiod (Works and Days, 267–73) and Solon (fr. 1, 25–32 D.) onwards. In the second half of the fifth century bc, the Greeks started voicing more and more doubts, reservations, and objections with regard to the effectiveness of this divine intervention, in some case denying its very existence. As a counterpart to Aeschylus’ censuring of those who dared to claim ‘that the gods did not deign to concern themselves / with such mortals’ (Agamemnon, 369–72), it is possible to adduce some verses from Euripides that clearly reflect the anxiety felt by the people of his day: ‘if the gods are <sensible>, you, just man that you are, will be rewarded. And if not, why should we toil?’ (Iphigenia in Aulis, 1034–5). Besides, this was the implicit moral of the Sisyphus: ‘the truth would be that there are no gods and that no unjust man has anything to fear insofar as he can escape the human guardians of law and order’.Footnote 45 Protagoras, too, had dealt with this issue in an original way, by attempting to solve the problem of justice without invoking the gods. It is perfectly reasonable to assume, then, that the sophists contributed to this climate of anxiety through the views they expressed.
Other testimonies confirm this, in addition to the ones already discussed. Consider, for instance, the following statement by Thrasymachus:
‘The gods do not notice human affairs: for otherwise they would not have failed to take notice of what is the greatest good for humans, justice. For we see that humans do not practice this’ (85B8 D.-K. = 35D17 L.-M.).
Generally speaking, this passage has been used to clear Thrasymachus of the charge of immoralism suggested by the Republic: scholars have spoken of the ‘cry of sorrowful pessimism’, of ‘an impassioned denunciation’, and of ‘bitter disillusionment’.Footnote 46 However, these heartfelt verdicts may be making too much of the statement, which lends itself, rather, to a more disenchanted reading.Footnote 47 Indeed, the passage neither delivers any denunciation nor betrays any bitterness for the way in which people scorn justice. First of all, it acknowledges some facts: that the gods are indifferent towards human events and that humans, while affirming the importance of justice, do not actually abide by it. This observation thus succeeds in its goal of establishing the conflict between entrenched beliefs and forms of behaviour: for if humans truly believed in the power of the gods, they would respect the ‘greater good’ of justice. In other words, Thrasymachus sticks to the facts; yet, his observation has a startling outcome. When read in such terms, Thrasymachus’ statement would appear to be not so much a cry of anguish against his own times as yet another attestation of the rationalism of the sophists, who often build their theses in opposition to traditionally accepted ones, as ‘weaker’ arguments prevailing over ‘stronger’ ones.
Whatever the underlying meaning of Thrasymachus’ words, it is evident that they could not be taken as an expression of atheism. Still, atheism remained one possible response to the apparent predominance of injustice in human events. A stance against divine providence has been attributed to Antiphon (87B12 D.-K. = 37D37 and R17). In addition to this, considering that Plato seems to allude to him in Book 10 of the Laws, we might infer that, in Antiphon, a mechanistic view of the universe went hand in hand with the denial of the existence of the divine.Footnote 48 In antiquity, however, the atheist par excellence was not a sophist but a poet, who may have been influenced by the sophists: Diagoras of Melos. Regrettably, not much is known about him, and the little information we have consists of trivial anecdotes which do not really help us to reconstruct his ideas.Footnote 49 So it is impossible to establish whether – as hypothesized by GuthrieFootnote 50 – Diagoras may be the source of theses of the sort we find in a fragment from Euripides’ Bellerophon:
In this case, the argument is based on the incompatibility between the predominance of evil on the one hand and the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent deity on the other. Now, given that apparently there are no reasons to deny the first point, the most reasonable conclusion would be to deny the latter: hence, the gods do not exist.Footnote 52
One interesting element in Euripides’ verses is the allusion to the destruction of ‘small cities’, something which the Greeks unfortunately became aware of during the years of war between Athens and Sparta. One particularly striking episode was the massacre of Melos, Diagoras’ home city, in 415 bc: that this might have been the origin of Diagoras’ atheism is an intriguing hypothesis, yet one impossible to verify.Footnote 53 Certainly, the Melos episode inspired some memorable pages by another great author of the fifth century; once again, this is not a sophist but a writer deeply influenced by the sophists: Thucydides. When introducing the Melos episode in Book 5 of his History, Thucydides imagines a dialogue between the Athenian ambassadors and the representatives of Melos to discuss the surrender of the ‘small city’ to the imperial power of Athens. The structure of what is often referred to as the ‘Melian Dialogue’, arranged according to opposite theses, clearly reflects the influence of sophistic antilogies, as does the content of the arguments: scholars have, for instance, repeatedly observed that the Athenians defend the same notion of justice as the one that Plato attributes to Thrasymachus in the Republic, namely the idea that justice comes from might. By contrast, scholars have often failed to note that the dialogue also includes a most interesting variation on the theme of the divine and of theodicy.
Towards the end of the dispute, when it is clear that any settlement between the two parties is impossible, the Melians openly accuse the Athenians of injustice, while voicing their faith in a providential intervention of the gods (who are expected to somehow force the Spartans – whose colonists the Melians are – to come to their aid):
Melians: We, too, be well assured, think it difficult to contend both against your power and against fortune, unless she shall be impartial; but nevertheless we trust that, in point of fortune, we shall through the divine favour be at no disadvantage because we are god-fearing men standing our ground against men who are unjust…
Athenians: Well, as to the kindness of the divine favour, neither do we expect to fall short of you therein. For in no respect are we departing from men's observances regarding that which pertains to the divine or from their desires regarding that which pertains to themselves in aught that we demand or do. For of the gods we hold the belief, and of men we know, that by a necessity of their nature wherever they have the power they always rule. And so in our case since we neither enacted this law nor when it was enacted were the first to use it, but found it in existence and expect to leave it in existence for all time, so we make use of it, well aware that both you and others, if clothed with the same power as we are, would do the same thing. And so with regard to the divine favour, we have good reason not to be so afraid that we shall be at a disadvantage. (Thucydides, 5.104–5)
While one might disagree with the Athenians’ words, their originality can hardly be disputed: to defend themselves, they did not simply reject the belief that any providential divine intervention was possible, as Thrasymachus might have done, for instance; neither did they deny the existence of the gods, like the Bellerophon or Diagoras; nor yet did they endorse an agnostic stance like Protagoras. On the contrary, the Athenians affirmed their ‘piety’ by developing a sort of ‘negative’ theology. The starting point of their reasoning is the opposition between knowledge and opinion, which draws upon the reflections of thinkers such as Protagoras and Xenophanes: certainty only concerns human facts, whereas when it comes to the gods we can only rely on opinions – the kind of opinions which make up the Greek tradition. But what can be inferred from these opinions? What is their teaching? Whether we read Homer or the theogonies, lyric poems or tragedies, the moral is always the same: the gods rule because they are more powerful; and this is the conclusion which we (undoubtedly, in all certainty) reach if we consider human events. Hence, in the light of shared opinions, as well as of the actual behaviour of human beings, the Athenians find confirmation of their thesis: the justice of humans and gods consists in the predominance of those who are stronger; and if justice consists in the exercising of strength, then it must be concluded that the Athenians are those who most faithfully follow the gods, precisely insofar as they impose their own might.Footnote 54
What are we to make, then, of this negative theology? Clearly, we cannot attribute it to Thucydides, nor must we necessarily attribute it to the anonymous Athenians of his text, given that the latter dialectically inferred it from traditional morality. Be that as it may, what we have here is one of the most revealing examples of the way in which many fifth-century authors reasoned, especially the sophists. Its hallmarks are an inquisitiveness and desire to investigate problems to their utmost limits, and a taste for provocation. The historian Gregory Crane has claimed that Thucydides ‘writes to shock’: the same description perfectly applies to the sophists as well.Footnote 55
