This book offers an original contribution to the study of Presocratic theology, examining if and how god(s) were conceptualised in the thinking of the first Greek philosophers. As recent studies show (E. Eidinow, J. Kindt, R. Osborne [edd.], Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion [2016]), ancient ‘theology’ encompassed a wide range of areas, including beliefs, cult practices, speculation, storytelling and (I would add, in the light of Saetta Cottone's volume and its title) any ‘thinking about the gods’.
In her chapter R. Wright contends that ‘the Presocratics were basically atheists’. In her view, for example, Anaximander secularises the principle of the apeiron by depriving it of its ‘temporal’ limits, while Anaximenes, in a similar vein, regards the ‘spatial lack of definition’ of air as evidence that it is the primary substance of the cosmos. Atheistic claims also characterise Xenophanes’ notion of theos and Heraclitus’ alleged secular conception of logos, understood as the coincidence of opposites. However, I find it significant that the language of ‘steering’, which is traditionally associated with Zeus and divine attributes, often qualifies Presocratic principles and that the first philosophers neither radically dismiss the name of divinities nor explicitly refuse rituals of purification; rather, they are arguably committed to encouraging a profound understanding of people's actions and words (H. Granger, AncPhil 33 [2013]). Even Democritus, who might be regarded as the most materialistic of the Presocratics, shows, as Wright acknowledges, a keen interest in ethics and, I would add, in theology, as suggested by fragments B175 and B217 DK.
G. Most's contribution considers how Hesiod transforms the figure of Chaos, which Homer sees primarily as a geographical place, into a cosmological idea (Th. 695–700). Indeed, when Hesiod introduces the figures of Chaos, Gaia and Eros, he arguably portrays ‘a succession rather than a direct generation’. Chaos, in the neuter gender and lacking any epithet, sounds almost abstract. In contrast, Gaia and Eros, who evince an abundance of feminine and masculine attributes, evoke a cosmogony based on sexual union. Two other passages appear to corroborate the idea that Chaos, in Hesiod's mind, was a primordial dimension representing the ‘condition of possibility of a place rather than the place itself’. Considering that no parallels for this Hesiodic definition of Chaos can be found in other ancient cultures and that Ovid would later understand Chaos as ‘disorder’, Most suggests that Hesiod was alone in advancing such a definition.
P. Rousseau identifies a concentric structure in the Hesiodic hymn to the Muses, which provides the incipit to the Theogony and whose focal point is the figure of the poet and his divine investiture by the Muses. In Rousseau's view this central episode, when read alongside the core story of the Theogony – the mythical tale of Zeus and Prometheus –, foreshadows the narrative of the Works and Days. The events that took place between Zeus and Prometheus would henceforth impose a cosmic order on human lives, thus neatly demarcating the boundary between gods and humans. The Works and Days would purposely recast the myth of Pandora and Prometheus to portray the condition of mankind: to be forever subjugated to the social order of marriage as the only means of perpetuating their no longer divine race.
As A. Bernabé remarks, the commentator of the Derveni Papyrus tries to draw philosophical meaning from the Orphic text, which encrypts cosmological thinking. The names of conventional divinities, as Bernabé observes, conceal cosmological principles and phenomena, and address different phases in the creation of the world. Nyx, then, would represent the pre-cosmogonic state of mixed particles, and Ouranos would symbolise the moment when these particles begin to heat and separate until the heat (Kronos) becomes excessive. This is then balanced by cooling thanks to an ‘intelligent air’ (Νοῦς-ἀήρ). This is the phase of Zeus, in which the power of air ensures the birth and maintenance of ‘things as they are’.
L. Reboredo analyses the concept of the ‘unlimited’ (apeiron) in Anaximander, arguing, based on a comparison with Aristotle, that it refers to a divine principle and is material in nature. In Physics 3.4.203b the philosopher describes the concept of the ‘infinite’ with two adjectives: ‘immortal’ and ‘indestructible’. Although these usually refer to the gods, in this context they denote the endlessness of the cosmological task of governing all things. At this juncture Aristotle quotes Anaximander, which, for Reboredo, makes it plausible that Anaximander understands the apeiron as a material principle with the divine attribute of being imperishable. Reboredo suggests that later sources confirm this reading of the apeiron, for they record the use of the plural theoi in a material sense, namely as ‘celestial things’, ‘living beings’ or ‘multiple successive worlds’.
F. Montevecchi highlights the coexistence, in Presocratic philosophy, of what Nietzsche calls the Dionysian and the Apollonian. She suggests that the Presocratics promoted a rather practical view of philosophy, for they encourage conveying one's enlightened knowledge into active and awakened life. Heraclitus, for example, while encouraging, through his riddling style, his auditors to discover the inner structure of everything (λόγος), including man and the cosmos, does not reject the quest for a virtuous life in which thought and action are aligned. Likewise, Parmenides, according to Montevecchi, shows the same interest in both contemplative and active life, as his involvement in politics attested by later sources suggests. By contrast, Zeno opens the way to the all-intellectual experience of dialectical discourses.
L. Rossetti reflects on Parmenides’ insistence on the feminine in the preface to his poem. The presence of mares, instead of the more frequent horses, and the proliferation of female divine entities, including the goddess whom Parmenides meets, and Alêtheia, a female personification of Truth, suggest, in Rossetti's opinion, that Parmenides intentionally emphasised the world of women. In addition, Rossetti attributes to Parmenides a peculiar sensitivity to the issue of sexual identity, arguing that the philosopher attempts to ‘adopt the viewpoint of the subject’ in B18 DK. A literal translation of the lines in question (vv. 5–6) would, however, seem to indicate otherwise: if the seeds of both male and female are not mixed properly, they will ‘disturb’ (vexabunt) the ‘sex’ (sexum) of the baby. This, in my opinion, is a rather negative statement.
C. Santaniello examines different theories on the nature of the daimon of Empedocles’ B115 DK and proposes a non-materialistic understanding of this entity. Santaniello rules out the following three hypotheses: (1) that the daimon is composed of a mixture of the four elements, for it would be liable to the same disaggregation as the body; (2) that the daimon can be identified with one or two elements (air, fire), for this theory relies on a misinterpretation of B9 DK; (3) that the daimon is a mixture of particles of Love and Strife, for this would contradict the statement in B115 DK that one of the gods committed a crime and was therefore downgraded to the condition of man. Santaniello ultimately sees B115 DK as ‘the daimon's story of crime and redemption’: the fragment would, overall, seem to offer a mythical paradigm for the human condition, suggesting a unitary reading of Empedocles’ poems (daimonology and cosmology), one alluding to the other by analogy and both encouraging a holistic knowledge of oneself and the cosmos.
F. Teisserenc investigates Protagoras’ epistemology, concluding that his thinking on the gods reveals a ‘contingent atheism’ and arguing that Protagoras’ relativism also informs his theology. If we attain knowledge through our personal experience of the world (pathos), three theological positions might follow: (1) absolute atheism: all men cannot have direct experience of god(s); (2) relative negative atheism, which we would call ‘agnosticism’; (3) relative positive atheism, which is restricted to Protagoras’ personal experience and which does not pertain to all individuals who could have experienced some form of the divine in their life. If we accept the last option, Plato's Protagoras would not contradict himself in recounting the myth of Prometheus, for this proves itself to be useful to the community, whether or not one believes in the gods.
V. Piano's work highlights the intersections between ancient Orphism, early Greek philosophy and drama, as represented by Euripides (Alcestis, Helen, Bacchae, Phoenissae), showing that they were all involved in a novel discourse on the gods that opposed, to differing degrees, an ‘enlightened’ model of religion to the traditional one. Piano reads some passages of Euripides’ plays in dialogue with Orphic texts, such as the Gold Leaves and the Derveni Papyrus. Surprisingly, they display not only impressive rhetorical commonalities (for example, the use of conventional names of the gods to express abstract principles or a reflection on the power of language, and argumentative structures resembling the manner of the Sophists) but also a similar trust in reason as a tool to better interpret divine signs and oracles and to distinguish true knowledge from empty beliefs.
Saetta Cottone sheds more light on the similarities between ancient drama and early Greek philosophy in her analysis of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris and Xenophanes’ critique of anthropomorphic conceptions of the gods. Iphigenia criticises the contradictory prescriptions of Artemis who, on the one hand, requires human sacrifices and, on the other, advocates abstention from bloodshed. Aeschylus highlights the ‘logical fault’ in the myth of Tantalus, in which the gods inadvertently eat Pelops’ flesh at a banquet. The playwright moreover stages some contradictory features of the worship of the Delphian Apollo in the third stasimon of the same play. Iphigenia's discourse, Saetta Cottone suggests, bears meaningful affinities to Xenophanes’ critique of traditional representations of the gods, evaluating the mythical account against the categories of logical consistency and ethical fittingness.
A. Stavru shows that studying the scene of Socrates psychagogos in Aristophanes’ Birds (1553–64) against the background of Socratic and Pythagorean literature casts new light on a passage that, at first glance, seems disconnected from the rest of the narrative. Indeed, Stavru highlights the comic effect that this passage should have had on the audience. The Homeric word skia contained in the place name Skiapodes evokes the Orphic and Pythagorean practice of recalling souls from the underworld; the adjective ‘unwashed’ ascribed to Socrates alludes, by contrast, to the same religious matrix; Aristophanes plays on the etymology of the verb psychagogein, which, in a Socratic context, connotes the philosopher's mission as a soul-leader, and that here turns into the task of a soul-evoker. The soul evoked sarcastically appears in the shape of a bat.
This volume articulates the relationship between Presocratic thought and religious and mythical beliefs about what we would now call cosmology, epistemology, psychology and theology. It reveals meaningful areas of overlap between the first Greek philosophical thinkers and authors who were not philosophers senso strictu – such as Hesiod, playwrights and, I would add, lyric poets – who are usually associated with archaic wisdom. The volume will be of considerable interest to scholars of philosophy and of ancient literature and religion.
