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jprussellI've been hearing a lot about The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, and I finally got around to reading it. Very short version is that it's a good and interesting book, but unless it intersects with some particular interests of yours, you might be fine with a summary. Here's my attempt at such a summary, with some thoughts on what I got out of it (and wanted to, but didn't).
As always, any and all thoughts are most welcome.
As always, any and all thoughts are most welcome.
The spooky side of ancestor worship
Date: 2024-09-25 06:11 am (UTC)1. I think his surname was actually "Fustel de Coulanges," three words starting with a capital "F" rather than just "de Coulanges." At any rate, that's how the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica alphabetizes him, with the F's. See link here. (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Fustel_de_Coulanges,_Numa_Denis)
2. Apparently his motive in writing the book (or one of his motives) was that Napoleon III kept making speeches about his Empire as a restoration of the Roman Empire, and F de C wanted to make the point, "No, you have no idea what you are talking about." đ
3. I totally agree with the connection you make between the rule of the dead in F de C and JMG's description of the same thing in his chapter on vampires from Monsters. But you can take the idea a lot farther.
Walter Otto, in his book The Homeric Gods, argues that the Olympian Gods were genuinely new gods, and that we can see the traces of a (largely undocumented) religious revolution in Greek prehistory. He traces vestigial survivals of the older forms of worship, in a variety of sources but most dramatically in Aeschylus's Eumenides. And he insists that the older worshipâworship of the Titans and other powers like themâwas a worship tied to the earth and to blood, a worship that bound together the living and the dead and the natural powers in a single community. He says that as long as you lived in line with that community it could be very nurturing; but step out of line, and the powers were implacable and terrifying. He also adds, almost as an aside, that "This belief presupposes interment, by which the body returns to the bosom of the earth whence it came." (p.26)
So far, this sounds almost identical to the regime that F de C describes. But Otto goes on to remind us that the Olympians, by contrast, had a horror of the dead and never approached them. Liminal deities like Demeter and Persephone, or Dionysus, might have some connection with the dead. But the primary OlympiansâZeus, Apollo, Athene, and others like themâwere clearly the Undying Ones. What is more, Olympian religion involved cremating the dead!
Put these three authors togetherâI mean F de C, Otto, and JMGâand you get a very clear picture of what might have happened, maybe in the Mycenean period or a little before, and maybe in other times here and there across Europe. The picture starts with a religiosity of earth and blood and the dead, among people who inter their dead in the ground and then worship them. Over time, the air gets thick with predatory spirits, spirits who drink the blood that is poured out (as the Erinyes were said to do) and who harass the living to demand ever more etheric nourishment. Then finally there is a revolution and even a war (remembered in myth as the Titanomachy), in the name of new gods who are disgusted by the dead and who have a very ambivalent reaction even to bloodâand the revolutionaries announce their sharp break with the old ways by burning their dead so that the bodies cannot possibly be used as a home for hungry ghosts!
[FOOTNOTE: The picture is not quite complete, because it does not explain why the Olympians were still worshipped with animal sacrifice. But it is possible that Walter Burkert can answer that question when he says that men still needed the permission of the gods to perform butchery even for food, because the awe and terror that they felt instinctively at the act of killing and shedding blood were otherwise so debilitating. In any event, I think this last part is not critical for the rest of it.]
Anyway, I don't know if the story I've told here is correct as history, but I find it a compelling story all the same. I'd love to hear your feedback.
Hosea Tanatu
I wish there were a way I could subscribe to comments, so I'd be notified if you reply. As it is, I'll try to check back from time to time. Also you can find me at hosea DOT tanatu AT gmail DOT com.
Re: The spooky side of ancestor worship
Date: 2024-09-26 01:07 am (UTC)Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts!
1) Ah, thanks for the correction! I wasn't sure how to parse his full name, so this is useful. I'll go in and fix it and update the post accordingly.
2) Hah! I didn't know that, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. I assumed his comments about folks of his day assuming they knew things about the ancients that were wrong were entirely aimed at fellow academics, but I guess not.
3) I'll have to check out Otto's book, it sounds very interesting, though if your hypothesis building on his is correct, I'd be inclined to move it back quite a bit, possibly before the Indo-European speakers split up into groups, for the simple reason that the Olympian Gods have clear parallels in the bodies of other Indo-European myths. A sky father who is king of the Gods, a thunderer who beats up monsters and protects humans, a sexy Goddess of sovereignty, and so forth. Also, burial practices seem to have switched back and forth between inhumation and cremation, with some variation, from a very long time back, which implies that the switch from Mycenaean inhumation to Classical cremation might not have been a dramatic one-time thing for cause. All that being said, one way to maybe reconcile the old, old stuff I'm talking about Otto's more recent proposal is some kind of interaction between the religion of the folks who were already in Greece when the Greeks showed up (the Pelasgians and whoever else, whose names we might not even have). As for Burkert, I haven't read Homo Necans since becoming religious, so it might be worth revisiting. Also, I'd be interested in comparing with a wider range of looks at indigenous practices around killing animals, since the mid to late twentieth century had a lot of well-known and oft-cited literature on things "intrinsic to humans" that haven't held up super well (a nearby example: S.L.A. Marshall's report that most soldiers didn't directly fire their weapons at human targets and the supporting studies for it have all come under a lot of fire for problems with their methods).
4) As for subscribing to comments, yeah, unfortunately, the only way I know how is with a dreamwidth account (free, but you do have to give them your email address), and even then, it's painfully inconsistent. It seems to do alright notifying about direct replies by the post owner, but everything else is hit or miss, even with a paid account.
Cheers,
Jeff
Re: The spooky side of ancestor worship
Date: 2024-09-26 05:19 am (UTC)I was thinking about the Indo-European parallels as I was writing my earlier post, but I didn't have time to re-read all the relevant chapters to remind myself whether or how Otto addressed them. He has to have been aware of the research that was being done on the early Indo-Europeans: apparently he finished his doctoral work in 1911 and died in 1958, so his floruit overlapped Georges Dumézil (who was 24 years younger). Yes, presumably the Pelasgians would be one way to make the story work. But also, Otto recognizes that some of the Olympians seemed to change their nature and function over time. He argues that Poseidon seems more archaic than Zeus in a number of his attributes, as well as being wilder, more chaotic, and more closely tied to natural phenomena. He also makes similar arguments about, for example, Demeter and Hermes. So I could imagine "rescuing" my story also by suggesting that in some cases, perhaps, some gods may have "changed sides," if you will.
Also, remember that the story I advanced makes no claims to scholarship. It is more of a jeu d'Ă©sprit, where I am burbling, "Oh look how cool it is if you take these three authors and mash them up together just so!" đ If it turns out that my story doesn't work, I haven't invested a lot in it.
Best as always,
Hosea