When one considers a book excellent, it is easy and enjoyable to write a review. When average, the job of reviewing is more complicated because nuances are required. When a book can be considered truly bad, the task may seem hopeless, since it becomes very difficult to produce a nuanced assessment. Unfortunately, the third scenario applies to the book under review, whose author is an emeritus professor of Greek at the University of Rennes 2.
Without going into the details of my disagreements, which are innumerable, I will highlight three fundamental problems, from which everything else follows. First, the foundation of this project is a Christianocentric idea of religion and the ‘divine’. For the author, the latter is fundamentally unique and associated with light (he makes much of the etymology of the name of Zeus and translates agathos daimon as ‘Bon dieu’, which in French is a typical label of the Christian god). The rest of the Greek pantheon is nothing more than a heterogeneous collection, and the numerous divine cult-epithets ‘un saupoudrage de grandeur divine’ (p. 33). Homeric thought is considered ‘secular’ (p. 61) since it is obvious for the author that a ‘religion véritable [est] supposée pouvoir apaiser l'esprit de qui s'interroge sur la vie, la mort, le destin et un éventuel Au-delà’ (p. 80). Hence the choice to devote three chapters to ‘Les mystères’, ‘Orphée’ and ‘La vie après la vie’ respectively.
Second, the work's relationship to history is questionable. Ancient developments are assumed, of which we basically know almost nothing (the author postulates the existence of a ‘monothéisme primitif’, the action of ‘clercs mycéniens’, the mixture of an Indo-European and Pelasgian heritage etc.), while the chronology is totally collapsed, as if nothing had changed for over a millennium, from Homer to Plotinus (this is particularly striking in the chapter on ‘génies’, an unfortunate translation of δαίμονες). When a historical change is mentioned, it concerns the alleged decline of civic religion after Chaeronea (p. 45) and the spiritual aspirations of those who can no longer be satisfied by a religion too closely tied to social life (p. 47). All these presuppositions have been challenged for decades by numerous works on Greek and Roman polytheism (e.g. J.D. Mikalson, Religion in Hellenistic Athens [1998]; J. Scheid, The Gods, the State, and the Individual [2016]).
Third, the bibliography used by the author is vast and varied, but never addressed as such. There is no scholarly conversation in this book. The same applies to ancient texts cited: everything is juxtaposed regardless of the type of information or the context from which it emanates.
This book is a prime example of the way in which many classical philologists have misunderstood Greek religion and Greek gods. One would have hoped that those days were over. If you are fluent in French, do not waste your time. Instead, read the three recent collections of papers in French entitled Les dieux d'Homère (Kernos suppl. 31, 33, 38). If you approach French with difficulty, read On Greek religion by R. Parker (2011), whose third chapter, about gods, is a beautiful dialogue with French scholarship.
