The Contrariness of Speech and Polytheism

Abstract

The ancient Greeks never speak of themselves as polytheistic, of their religion as polytheism. Certainly, thinkers comparing various world-views must have given place to this one early on. Sextus Empiricus, ca. A.D. 200, notes that, if one looks around, some people assume one god, hena theon, some many, pollous; such an observation could probably have been made hundreds of years before.1 Yet from here to the labels polytheistic and polytheism is big step. They are met in no text B.C. It is Philo, outsider and critic, who first employs them. The ground was prepared in that the adjective was current long before, though not descriptive of creed. Significantly, the noun is not traceable earlier at all, nor the nominal use of the adjective, what we translate as a polytheist. Here is the passage with the adjective from Aeschylus.2 The daughters of Danaus flee from Egypt to Greece with their father in order not to be forced into marriage by their cousins. Expecting the latter to pursue them, they take refuge at the sanctuary of Argos, favoured-the father explains3-by quite few of the mightiest Olympians; and they implore the king not to let them be dragged from this manygodded seat. Even for Lucian, Philo's junior by over century, the adjective has much the same meaning and, of course, there is no noun. Zeus worries, having presently to chair meeting of the immortals about fateful threat, and he is particularly unnerved by