Kernos

Revue internationale et pluridisciplinaire de religion

grecque antique
1 | 1988
Varia

Divine Personality and Personification

Bernard C. Dietrich

Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/77
DOI: 10.4000/kernos.77
ISSN: 2034-7871

Publisher
Centre international d'étude de la religion grecque antique

Printed version
Date of publication: 1 January 1988
ISSN: 0776-3824

Electronic reference
Bernard C. Dietrich, « Divine Personality and Personification », Kernos [Online], 1 | 1988, Online since 31
January 2011, connection on 30 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/77 ; DOI :
10.4000/kernos.77

Kernos
Kernos, 1(1988), p. 19-28.

DIVINE PERSONALITY AND PERSONIFICATION

The Greeks thought of their gods as personal beings in human

shape. They shared their belief in anthropomorphic gods with other
and older cultures, sorne of which had contributed to Greek
religious thought. But their intense personal quality set the Greek
gods apart from others and brought them close to their mortal
. subjects. Eastern gods were also conceived of in the image of man
but far removed from his level 1. The deep gulf between human and
divine therefore deprived oriental gods of the most typical and
endearing characteristic of the Romeric and Greek Olympians.

The Sumerian gods, for example, despite their human shape,

remained vasdy superior cosmic powers with only rudimentary
persona! characteristics. The gods of Egypt, too, were devoid of
personality. The names of most major Egyptian deities are
particularly interesting in contrast with Greek practice because their
meaning is generally transparent. They translate as divine functions
rather than personal tides. They describe the common activity, or
nature, of a particular god and not his personality. The ithyphallic
figure of Min, for 'example, symbolized the generative force of
nature 2. Amun means 'The Hidden One', that is the invisible god of
the air. Chons again translates as 'He Who Passes Through' namely
the Moon-god who moves across the sky3.

There are worlds of difference between this conception of the

gods and that of the highly personal man-oriented figures of
classical Greek times. In this respect Greek gods appear to have
been exceptional in the Meditetranean world. I doubt whether it is
often understood that, with aIl their dependence on Greek divine
myth and tradition, Italian and Roman gods also lacked this

1 E.g. Babylonian Creation Epie, Tablet, VI, 11.5-8, ANEr3, (1969), p.68.
2 H. FRANKFORT, Ancient Egyptian Religion, Harper Torch Book, 1961,
p.25-26.
3 S. MORENZ, Agyptisehe Religion, Stuttgart, 1960, p.22.
20 Bernard C. DIE1RICH

peculiarly Greek personal quality. In concept Italy was more closely

akin to Egypt than Greece. The divine names also reflected functions
which a god perforrned or symbolized. But for their masculine or
ferninine gender such titles remained lifeless abstracts. Sometimes a
name began as the adjectival description of a function.' Parca, for
example, the goddess of birth, was forrned from the verbal stern
*par-, 'to give birth', Genius from *gen-, 'to produce', Aius from
the root *ag-, 'to speak', and so on, Even the venerable Ceres,
goddess of corn, and the equivalent of the Greek Demeter in myth
owed her name to the verbal stern *ker-, 'to grow, to nurture'4,
Contrast that etymology with the personal name of Demeter,
whatever the meaning of her name5. The Romans thought nothing
of elevating partièipial nomina agentis to divine status, Pollens,
valens, or gens easily became the gods Pollentia, Valentia or
Geneta6 , They were inanimate forms, aIl of them, no more than
value concepts like Virtus, Victoria, Spes, Honos and the like, aU of
whom received cuIts in Roman Italy. It would be wrong to describe
such figures as personifications because they lacked a true persona
up.like the similar literary creations in Homer and Hesiod. Eris,
Hebe, Charis may not have been ancient figures of cult but the two
poets endowed them with genealogies and gave them life by fitting
them into a family relationship. Eris was amongst Hesiod's
primordial forrns, mother of Toil, Pain, Hunger and of other similar
personifications 7, She was also sister of Ares like Hebe 8 , They
were aUegories like Homer's Prayers 9, or his invention of Charis as
Hephaestus' wife because, as one scholiast put it, it is right that
Skill, techne, should be together with Grace, charis lO • Even when

4 G. RADKE, Die Gatter Altitaliens, Münster, 1965, p.37, 59, 85-86, 138
with further modern literature.
5 The old explanatîon as Ge Meter, 'Mother Earth', is no longer accepted, e.g.
W. BURKERT, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche,
Stuttgart, 1977, p.247-248.
6 = Italian Genita, defval gental on a tablet from Agnone, VETTER, Hanab.d.
ital. Dial., l, nO 147.
7 HES., Theog., 225-232.
8 Il., IV, 441; HES., Theog., 922, sister of Ares and Eileithyia.
9 Il., IX, 502.
10 HOM., Il., XVIII, 382-383.
DIVINE PERSONALITY AND PERSONIFICATION 21

Hesiod split Eris into the two figures of Good and Evil Strife as a
kind of moral paradigm for men, neither lost her family ties ll . The
institution of a cult to lifeless ideas or values was extremely rare in
Greek religion and generally late: The famous altars in Athens to
Pity, Shame and Good Repute, Eleos, Aidos, and Pheme were
probably not set up before late Hellenistic times l2 .

The opening verse of Pindar's Sixth Nemean Ode speaks of one

and the same race of men and gods. Bury explains that the poet
wished to insist on the 'ultimate primaI unity' of both 13. Men were
drawn into the same family of gods and men l4 . The poet was
speaking figuratively of course. He pointed to the close bond
between the two worlds without suggesting that a blood relationship
existed between Zeus and rrten l5 , any more than Lactantius intended
to be taken literally in his definition of a Christian's pietas as nihil
aliud quam parentis agnitio 16. First and foremost Zeus' title marked
out his 'patemal' dominance over aIl gods and men l7 • But beyond
that even metaphorical membership of one family implies that man
also shared unity of nature and form with the gods. This oneness
could actually be looked at from both sides : either the gods were
anthropomorphic or men were theomorphic l8 •

11 HES., Erga, 11-26. For the probable relative chronology of this passage and
Theog., 225-232, see M.L. WEST's ed. of the Theogony, Oxford, 1966,
p. 44. Cf. his discussion on the genealogy of abstract divine concepts on
p.31-34.
12 H. DORRIE, S.v. Gottervorstellung, in Reallexikon fUr Antike und
Christentum, fasc. 89(1981), p. 117.
13pINDAR, Nem. Odes, J.R. Bury ed., London, 1890, p. 103.
14 E.g. Il., l, 544; Od., I, 28; XX, 201. :
15 Ed. DES PLACES, Syngeneia, Paris, 1964, p. 21; C. COLFE, Gottessohn, in
RassegnAntCI., 89(1981), p.27-28.
16 LACT., /nst. Div., m, 9.
3
17 Cf. M.P. NILSSON, Geschichte , l, Munich, 1967, p. 417; BURKERT, Gr.
Rel., p.204-205. For the same reason El has the title of 'Father of Men' in
Ugarit.
18 J. ADAM, The Vitality of Platonism and other Essay s, Cambridge, 1911,
p. 124 : 'Anthropomorphism implies theomorphism'. DES PLACES
(Syngeneia, p.21) suggests that the notion of Zeus the Father gave rise to
anthropomorphism. The reverse process seems more likely, however, namely
that Zeus' fatherhood was only possible in an already established anthropo-
morphic pantheon.
22 Bernard C. DIElliICH

It is a question of attitudes. The Judaic Yahwe was also

imagined as anthropomorphic. But he was too far removed and
divinely spiritual to be represented in physical form. Man was made
in His image 19 and acted as a symbol of his God. Man strove to be
righteous and just. In other words, the relationship was God-
oriented, God-focal, to coin an ugly anthropological term. The
Jewish attitude to Yahwe is paralleled elsewhere, in ancient Persian
Zoroastrianism, for example. The righteous king was the earthly
symbol and image of Ahura Mazda20 . The God himself, however,
existed without material form and therefore could not be shown21 .
S uch eastern beliefs 22 contrast with Greek, or l should say
Homeric, gods who were fashioned in the image of man. Concepts
of the gods' moral superiority, or absolute moral standards, which
man should seek to equal, complicated but did not fundamentally
alter such epic values. In his Protrepticus Aristotle still recognizably
preached the same. The formula homo-deus mortalis was clearly
based on the ancient notion of the gods' living personality and their
oneness with men 23 .

Epic values do, of course, presuppose literary rather than cultic

divine figures. Epic heroes were special men: they lived in the past,
were better, stronger and larger than mortals of existing
generations24 . Aiso they were doser to, and more familiar with, the
gods, meeting with them and sometimes even sharing a common
table with therp25. The easy perioche, or communication, then
between heroes and gods in the Homeric tradition belonged to a
legendary past and not to a realistic present26 . It would not be

19 Gen., 1,26-27; 9, 6; Testament of Naphtal, 5, 2; Wisdom of Solomon, 2, 23.

Cf. A. HULTGARD, Man as Symbol of God, in Religious Symbols and their
Functions, ed. H. BIEZAIS, Proc. Symp. on Rel. Symbols & their Funct. (Abo
28th-30th Aug. 1978), Uppsala, 1979, p. 110-116.
20 Cf. PLUT., Vit. Them., 27.
21 See HULTGARD, op. cit., p. 114-115.
22 For the confusion in the relationship between man and god in Babylonian
religion see H. RINGGREN, The Symbo/ism of Mesopotamian Cult 1mages, in
ProcSympAbo (supra n. 19), p. 105-109.
23 Fr. lOc Ross:;; fr.61 Rose 3; CIC., De fin., 2, 40; cf. DORRIE, in Rassegn-
AntCl, 89(1981), p.137.
24 1/., V, 304; XII, 383, 449; XX, 287, etc.
25 HES., fr. 82 Rzach; PAUS., VIII, 2, 4-5.
26 See F. PFISTER, s.V. Epiphanie, in RE Suppl. IV(1924), c. 283-284, 291.
DIVINE PERSONALITY AND PERSONIFICATION 23

representative of ordinary men who were distinct from the hero with
his divine or semi-divine qualities 27 . Nevertheless there is no doubt
that the epic, that is the Homeric and Hesiodic, concepts of divinity
and divine human relationship directed the accepted religious
thought of Greece from archaic times. This is surprising for two
reasons in particular. Firstly Homer's heroic figures were generally
not the same as the hero of cult. Secondly Homeric epic could
hardly be described as religious poetry28 when compared with
Akkadian, Hittite or U garitic epics sorne of which, like the
Babylonian Creation Epie, constituted basic elements of cultic ritual
and also contributed their ideas to the west29 .

In a sense the archaic Greek was irreverent enough to allow

thoughts of political expediency to govem his notion of the gods.
Homer insured that they should be conceived of as universal pan-
Hellenic beings and not as localised cult figures. In fact locally
bound cult and cult buildings are rarely mentioned in either Iliad or
Odyssey. Apollo and Athena alone possessed temples by virtue of
their universal nature as city gods. Hence Athena was also
worshipped on the acropolis of the enemy city of Troy30. Hesiod's
view of the gods followed very much along the same lines, albeit for
somewhat different reasons. Cult gods were subordinate to general
divine figures and concepts 31 . Small wonder that man's view of the
gods was also eminently practical : he visualized them like himself in
appearance but greater in power.

Everyone is familiar with Xenophanes' criticiSm of Homer's

anthropomorphic gods. According to the epic poets the gods looked,
acted and dressed like men32. His attack was directed not so much
against the fact of anthropomorphism as the arrogance of imagining

27 Dietrich ROLOFF, Gottahnlichlœit, Vergottlichung und ErhOhung zum seligen

Leben, Berlin, 1970, p.3-101, 151.
28 Cf. the view of P. MAZON, Introduction à l'I/iade, Paris, 1942, p. 294.
29 E.g. Enuma Elish. The epic... was ... the most significant expression of the
religiousliterature of Mesopotarnia', E.A. SPEISER, in ANET, p. 60.
30 See E. VERMEULE, Gotterkult, Gottingen, 1974, p. 105-112; AJA, 79(1975),
p. 294, my review of the book.
31 Cf. DORRIE, in RassegnAntCI, 89(1981), p.99-102.
32 XENOPHANES, Bl1; B12; B14.
24 Bernard C. DIEmICH

the gods in one's own fonn 33 . Thus the Thracians saw theirs as
blond with blue eyes, the Ethiopians black with snub noses 34 . If
cattle and horses had hands and could paint with them, they would
depict their gods in their own shape35 . The modern theologian
Martin Buber explains the anthropomorphism as man's need to
preserve the 'sense of concreteness of the meeting. with God'36. He
is speaking of the one Christian God, of course, but his views,
though no doubt unconsciously, seem tinged with Homeric man-
oriented values. They envisage the possibility of direct confrontation
between god and man in human fonn. How real this meeting must
be imagined is another matter which cannot be precisely answered.
Our Christian God, too, for most remains no more than a vague
notion derived from the Renaissance conception of divine fonn
modelled on human physical ideals. These incidentally are quite
Homeric. The most perfect example and model for later ages has
been Michel Angelots painting of God in the Sistine Chapel in the
appearance of a seated bearded man with great physical strength and
beauty37.

Outside the special cuIts of Demeter and Dionysus divine

epiphanies were quite rare events. In Homer, too, direct physical
confrontation between god and hero was uncommon. On almost
countless occasions of divine contact with mortal men in epic
communication was spiritual more often than actual. Or the
description of the encounter is confused, unclear and quite simply
impossible in nonnal physical tenns. In those many instances the
epiphany had no religious content but revealed itself as an
extraordinary poetic device designed to enliven the narrative 38 .
Curiously later reports of epiphanies in the historians or in lyric
composition were based on the Homeric model and thereby
undennine any claims on our credibility. Even the accounts in Acts

33 W. JAGER, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Oxford, 1947,

p.42-47.
34 XENOPHANES, B16; B15.
35 XENOPHANES,BI5.
36 M. BUBER, Gottesfinsterniss, ZUrich, 1953, p. 19.
37 R. HOLTE, Gottessymbol und soziale Struktur, in ProcSympAbo (supra
n. 19), p.4.
38 See my Divine Epiphanies in Homer, in Numen, 30(1983), p.53-79.
DIVINE PERSONALITY AND PERSONIFICATION 25

·14 in the New Testament (11-13) of Paul's rniraculous healing of

the cripple in Lystra still demonstrates the overwhelming force of
Homeric tradition in matters of divine visitation. As in our Christian
faith the idea of such a meeting \vas not unreasollable in itself, but
very few people had ever experienced one. The main reason for the
phantastic form of many Homeric epiphanies is the poet's lack of
data regarding divine appearance. Gods change from human to
animal or bird to smoke or night. At one moment Athena manifests
herself in anthropomorphic shape only to change into a swallow
while brandishing her aegis. There were, so to speak, no absolute
iconographie norms which could be applied to the Olympians.
However, the poet worked on the assumption that their natural
shape is human, because that is what he had been taught. The
concept of anthropomorphic gods was in fact pre-Homeric and at
least as old as the Late Stone Age. But the contribution of the
Homeric epic was to impose human standards on the gods not
human form.

Homer depieted the gods as human, but as ideal human types

rather than as a palpable physical presence which ordinary men must
expect to seein their everyday lives. The distinction is important if
one is not to misunderstand Herodotus' much quoted remark that
Homer and Hesiod describe the gods' shape or form 39 . The
Homeric eidos of the gods established the criteria for sculptors of
divine images in the archaie age which consequently were equally
idealized. But the Homeric Olympians lacked special individual
characteristics beyond their superlative strength, size, beauty, etc.
Epithets like dark-haired Poseidon, grey-eyed Athena, cow-eyed or
white-armed Hera, no doubt reaected survivaIs from the past when
the deity's power manifested itself in theriomorphic or sorne other
form 40 . But for epic purposes such descriptions rarely carried any
special significance beyond their poetic adornment4 1. The Homeric
poets did, however, in this way create a vocabulary of divine
attributes which signalled areas of special functions for individual
gods and also made them instantly recognizable. The painter gladly

39 HDT, II, 53.

40 M.P. NILS SON, MinMycRel 2 , p.501; G.S. KIRK, The Songs of Homer,
Cambridge, 1962, p.35, 116; cf. BURKERT, Gr. Rel., p. 197.
41 E. SIMON, Die Gotter de; Griechen 2, Munich, 1980, p. 7.
26 Bernard C. DIElliICH

accepted this new convention and depicted Athena with her aegis,
Hennes with staff and winged sandals, Apollo with bow and lyre,
Zeus brandishing the thunderbolt, and so on42 . The sculptor, too,
followed the same precedent when modelling cult statues for
sanctuary and temple. Thus the fini shed product presented
something new and to sorne extent artificial in religion along the
lines of the mechanics and fonn of epiphanies.

The older 'idealised' fonns were fast becoming personal figures.

Homer also frrst defined their separate functions and mythology, for
their 'Sagenbild' had largely been created for them by epic43 • The
progressive 'personification' of the Olympians is particurlarly weIl
illustrated by their names which no longer described the function or
general characteristic of a deity. Sorne minor figures like Helios and
Hestia always retained their obvious significance as god of Sun and
goddess of the Hearth. But the names of the major gods were
etymologically obscure44 , sometimes non-Greek or even non Indo-
European. Even the patently Indo-European figure Zeus had become
a 'person' to the classical Greek and was no longer identified with
the Sky-god. The Greek practice does not fit into the normal,
etymologically transparent, categories of divine nomenclature
according to function, invocatory title45 , locality, or simply the
predicative address of 'god'. The Greek went one step further. For
him Zeus was a ｰ･ｲｳﾷｾＩｏ｡ｬ experience not the personification of a
natural phenomenon. When it rained, he tautologically said, Zeus
hyei. It is impossible to determine whether the personal evolved
from the impersonal concept46 . This was Usener's principle that
personal gods were the result of a quirkish linguistic development47.
But if, as seems certain, the Greeks were unaware of the ancient and

42 BURKERT, Gr. Rel., p. 198; cf. F. CHAPOUTHIER, in La lWtion du divin

depuis Homère jusqu'à Platon, Genève, 1952 (Fondation Hardt, 1), p. 85.
43 See K. SCHEFOLD, Myth and Legend in Greek Art, London, 1966, passim,
and K. FrrrSCHEN, Untersuchungen zum Beginn der Sagendarstellungen hei
den Griechen, Berlin, 1969, passim; BURKERT, Gr. Rel., p. 197.
44 BURKERT, Gr. Rel., p.282-283.
45 RC. DIETRICH, The Origins of Greek Religion, Berlin, 1974, p. 189; RhM,
121(1978), p.17.
46 C. KERÉNYI, Zeus and Hera, transI. C. Holme, London, 1975, p. 10.
47 H. USENER, Gotfernamen, Bonn, 1896, p. 316: 'die Bedingung für die
Entstehung personlicher GoUer ist ein sprachgeschichtlicher Vorgang'.
DIVINE PERSONALITY AND PERSONIFICATION 27

widely differing origins of their 'borrowed' gods, they may weIl

have missed out on the first step of this evolutionary ladder.

Greek divine etymologising generally followed the reverse order

from personal name to norrien agentis. Their ears were sensitive to
possible concealed meanings in what were uItimately non-Greek
divine names. Cassandra in the Aga11Jemnon of Aeschylus called the
god Apollo her destroyer, apollon emos 48 . The function is familiar
enough from Apollo's past as destroyer and bringer of the plague.
But to Cassandra the god was a very personal figure 49 . However,
Cassandra's theological pun conceals a fairly intractable problem. If
Homer assigned to the gods their functions 50 , when did their names
first become known and linked with their cuIts as we know them in
the Greek world ? Chronologically these were two distinct events,
because the association of an Olympian name with one particular
cult, even his or her oldest Greek cuIt, was generally much later than
the origin of the name itself. In Cyprus, for example, Aphrodite's
name had become firmly established by the 8th century B.C.,
because both Homer and Hesiod connected her with the island.
However, her name replaced the older title of Wanassa, or Queen,
much later in Paphos. The change came perhaps as late as the 5th
century RC. when Cimon's campaign spread Athenian influence
across Cyprus 51 . Aphrodite was of eastem descent but had aIfeady
been subject to Greek epic influence when she lent her name to the
cuIt goddess in Paphos and elsewhere on the island.

However, Homer did not reflect the spread and nature of archaic
cuIts with their particular deities. There was little contact in epic with
the varied historical past of individual gods. The god had no regard
for history or politics. So his Olympian pantheon, which became
common coinage in the polis, in a sense existed in an historical
vacuum. The nature of these Olympians was govemed by literary

48 AESCH., Eum., 1081. L.R. PALMER suggests that the form of the name
(Apollon) arose through the influence of apollumi, (Mycenaean Religion : the
theological choices, in Colloquium Nürnberg 1981, p.361).
49 AIl etymologies are unsatisfactory including BURKERT, Gr. Rel., p.227.
50 HDT., II, 53.
51 S.T. PARKER, Cimon's Expedition to Cyprus, in A1P, 97(1976), p.30-38;
C. BENNETT, The CuIts of the Ancient Greek Cypriotes, Diss. Univ. of
Pennsylvania, 1980, p.319.
28 , Bernard C. DIE1RICH

criteria and revolved about their proximity to man. Their functions

arose from myth and from their duties as community deities. The
Homeric contribution therefore was intensely personal. In this
context the creation of one divine power from another like Athena
from thev head of Zeus, or Hephaestus and Ares from Hera is
unusual and.wayward. ICwas only subsequent to epic, 1 believe,
that the Grèek worshipper saw his god as a person in the true
anthropomorphic sense as 'man' or 'woman', so to speak, and not
as sexless numinous power. Obviously only then could myths like
Zeus' seduction by Hera or the adulterous union of Ares and
･ｴｩ､ｯｲｨｰｾ become amusing as weIl as meaningful.

Bernard C. DIETRICH
Department of Classics
Hugh Owen Building
The University College ofWales
ABERYSTWYTH
Dyfed SY23 3DY
England