DU'ers with more Classical knowledge than me!

[FunBobbyMucha]

I'm preparing for an argument with a Freeper pal this weekend, and I wanna be loaded for bear. I've been thinking about how the glaring hypocricy of the ManGods (Bennett, Rush, FlightSuit Chimpy) has the average Freep bending over backwards to justify their flagrant behaviors.

So my question is:

What specific behaviors did people engage in when the Greek and Roman Gods of mythology were de-bunked. I realize it was a faith that eroded slowly, but how off-their-nut did the Freepers of old go, and in what ways?

[Kamika]

1. hmm

The romans had alot of orgies, err and killed alot of christians

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. They didn't.....

Any educated Roman or Greek was in all probability

a.) an adherent of one of the many philosphies -- Stocism, Epicureanism, etc. -- that had a rather nuanced view of the gods -- they were useful tools of social control, they were literary expressions of forces of nature, etc.

b.) an adherent of one of the mystery religions -- Isis-worship, Mithraism, the cult of the Sun, etc.

The Greek and Roman Gods of mythology were never de-bunked as such.

Every so often, in late antiquity, you'd get pissing matches over the statue of Victory in the Senate, for example -- for which see here, for Gibbon's version.

[noonwitch]

3. The greeks were pedophiles

They were big on the whole man-boy love thing.

You could read "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" for more ideas. The romans tried to occupy the world and could only do it for so long before the people they were occupying rebelled against their rule.

[Kamika]

4. well sortof

The greek wise men said that the only "intelligent" beings were the men, so for some reason that meant the best love was between a man ad a boy.

[ozymandius]

5. It's more complicated than your question implies.

First, too many of the stories of Gods and Goddesses were told as metaphor of a deity's personality. Such as Zeus mating with a woman in the form of a swan, and a beam of light, in another case, were regarded more as "good fiction" than anything else. These stories were just popular tales that boosted the enormity of any deity's presence.

In even broader terms, these deities of Rome and Greece resided side-by-side with other deities of many different cultures and cults. In fact, in Rome for example, one could go shopping for a wide variety of religious paths originating from all around the world. One did not supplant the other, in other words. Rome even borrowed deities from conquered Greece.

These different faiths and traditions co-existed relatively peacefully. They were allowed to do so by imperial decree. Of course, a number of conditions had to be met for them to do so. First, the organization was not allowed to usurp the cult of the Emperor of Rome (which was for centuries, the Cult of Mithras). Second, any religious organization allowed to reside in Rome's borders was not allowed to foment political change, or revolution. There are other conditions for official recognition that escape me now. Christians got into trouble because they had a political agenda and they violated the rule concerning usurping the emperor's personal faith.

By the way, Christians were killed in very small numbers during the reign of old Rome. The remnants of the Coliseum and its cruciform marking the location of the emperor's seat were erected in honor of the Christians killed there - saving the Coliseum from planned demolition. It is estimated that among the total number of people dramatically executed at that site, Christians accounted for about 2% of those who perished.

The old ways did not perish all at once. The cities and other major population centers were first to be converted to the new ways - either Christian or some flavor of pagan. Egyptians were extremely resourceful in that as they were conquered repeatedly toward the end of the New Kingdom - leading up to the age of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies - they adopted the pantheon of deities into their own culture. Just as you will find in New Orleans today, voodoo deities and Catholic saints co-habitating quite peacefully under the same roof.

This intermingling is a form of cognitive dissonance to some - but then it is a form of religious harmony to others. So there was never any serious de-bunking of the old gods. They just adopted an "underground" existence.

Religions are much like languages. A language is a dialect with an army. Religion is a cult transported by military means.

[democrat in Tallahassee]

6. well, they killed socrates for corrupting the youth with his

philosophy. Aristophanes "Clouds" is also full of allusions to philosophy overtaking religion--read that play if you want a sample of the arguments that were going on in the late 5th century

[Az]

7. The gods of old

Were always more of an intellectual explanation for nature. Sort of an externalized back story to hold the current understanding in place. The stories were always being updated and changed along with the times. It was the advent of authoratative monotheistic religions that eclipsed the pagan gods eventually. During the time the monotheist sects were rising the pagan powers would contend with them by forcing them to swear fealty to their gods.

[Eccho]

8. Checkout 'Hero with the Thousand Faces'

or something else by Joseph Campbell such as his series of interviews with Bill Moyers. Campbell goes into a lot of detail about what happens to a society/civilization when it loses it's religion.

[alwynsw]

9. Off their collective nut is spot on.

The deities were used as a means of control by the leaders of the time. Sadly for the pols and the wealthy, lead was used for plates, goblets, etc. The poorer folks used mostly wood. An occasional splinter beats lead poisoning every time. Even relatively mild lead buildups caused diminished mental cpacity in adults. The consequences for the offspring of those with even mild cases were devastating.

[Bridget Burke]

10. The "Freepers" of those days were anti-pagan....

As other posters have noted, the Greco-Roman religion had become mostly symbolic. The philosophic schools had adherants (like the emperor Marcus Aurelius), but the "mystery" religions were widely popular. Mithras, Demeter & Isis all had their devotees.

Christianity was another of the mystery religions. Christians had been persecuted--although not consistently, not by all emperors. After they achieved power, the real persecutions began. Schools of philosophy were closed, libraries were destroyed, the remaining pagans fled the empire--although some of their ideas survived.

There's a vast amount of scholarship on the end of the Ancient World; here's a sample:

www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1b.html

[pippin]

11. Az and Ozymandius are right

about the metaphoric (and therefore personalized) nature of the gods of old. With the Romans, one of the things that deprsonalized and politicized the whole business of deities were the leaders and emperors who elevated themselves to god status, erecting stautes of themselves, demanding expensive temples built in their honor etc., etc., Most of them were who did this were either hugely power hungry (Augustus) or plain loony (notably Nero and Caligula). Ordinary people didn't give up their personal or household gods, but the intrusion of humans trying to force themsleves into the pantheon of gods really irritated the masses. Think of what we'd do if GWB decided he was divine, and wanted public statues, churches etc ., built in his honor, extorting heavy taxes in the mean time to pay for all this.

I have always loved the books by Robert Graves I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Fiction, but basd on very good Roman history about Claudius, the lame, idiot grandson of the emperoro Augustus who against all odds becomes emperor. There are lots of instances in both books regarding Caligula or "Little Boots" (who has been compared to GWB) and his aspirations at being elevated to god status and how that bankrupted the Roman coffers. Graves is a classic and the books are a great way of getting a lot of history while enjoying it at the same time. Read his books as a kid and became permanently hooked on ancient Rome and Greece :-)

[Bozola]

12. Were they "debunked"?

Their religions weren't "debunked" but subsumed. Just as Catholicism absorbed and changed the bloody religion of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples, Christianity fed and grew upon the Classical civilizations. We still have Aegypto-Greco-Roman echos flaunted in present day Christian holidays. What's the next holiday, now only three days away?