"Religion and patriotism were bound together in a thousand impressive rites; the god or goddess most revered in public ceremony represented the apotheosis of the city... In all these ways Greek religion was used as a defense by the community and the race against the natural egoism of the individual man. Art, literature, and philosophy first strengthened this influence, and then weakened it. Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles poured their own ethical fervor or insight into the Olympian creed, and Pheidias ennobled the gods with beauty and majesty; Pythagoras and Plato associated philosophy with religion, and supported the doctrine of immortality as a stimulus to morals. But Protagoras doubted, Socrates ignored, Democritus denied, Euripides ridiculed the gods; and in the end Greek philosophy, hardly willing it, destroyed the religion that had molded the moral life of Greece."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. VIII The Gods of Greece, Sec VI Oracles P.264
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
The Story of Civilization
288 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by The Story of Civilization →
Related Quotes
"The Argives ascribed the foundation of their city to Pelasgic Argus, the hero with a hundred eyes; and its first flou…"
"Apparently the legislators felt that to alter certain customs, or to establish new ones, the safest procedure would b…"
"When an advanced thinker asked Lycurgus to establish a democracy Lycurgus replied, “Begin, my friend, by setting it u…"
"He [Solon] laid it down that those who remained neutral in seditions should lose their citizenship, for he felt that …"
"I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little space as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to…"
"Man is not willingly a political animal. The human male associates with his fellows less by desire than by habit, imi…"
"If the average man had had his way there would probably never have been any state. Even today he resents it, classes …"
""For barbarism is always around civilization, amid it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms, or mass migration, …"
"The civilization of Babylonia was not as fruitful for humanity as Egypt’s, not as varied and profound as India’s, not…"
"He [Solon] made it a crime to speak evil of the dead, or to speak evil of the living in temples, courts, or public of…"