Atheism is fashionable and on the rise, at least in the West. It is not surprising, therefore, that scholars have turned to ancient Greece and have tried to discover atheism there as well.[1] In the wake of Tim Whitmarsh’s stimulating, if not always persuasive, study Battling the Gods,[2] there have been a number of studies approaching the problem from various angles.[3] Ford’s book aims to improve on the earlier studies by focusing not on atheists but on atheism, and by confronting Lucien Febvre’s thesis about the impossibility of atheism in the embedded religion of the Middle Ages, which has also been applied to Greece.
According to Ford, the Polis religion model and the focus on ritual by the Cambridge ritualists have led scholars to look for atheists,[4] but the focus on belief has impeded the study of unbelief. Instead, he suggests that we should study atheism by applying the following definition: ‘atheism is the various forms of unbelief in the right gods and/or the failure to worship them in appropriate ways’ (17). He arrives at this definition in a somewhat meandering way that is not without errors and misunderstandings. One of Ford’s basic ideas, following Susan Reynolds,[5] is that atheism is as natural to humans as is belief (3, 17). However, the most detailed study of atheism and unbelief in the Middle Ages concludes that atheism was virtually unheard of, but doubt and questioning of certain dogmatic principles very normal. In fact, atheism as a term was initially used as a very negative quality,[6] whereas in the present book it is seen as something positive. This alone should warn us against a rather unreflective use of the term. Equally, what exactly does unbelief mean? Does it presuppose that the Greeks had ‘belief’ or, perhaps better, ‘beliefs’?[7] Ford rightly notes that ‘practical atheism’ was rare (11), but what exactly does a failure to worship gods in the right way mean? It is clear that Ford sees atheism primarily as a question of thought rather than practice, but that choice should have been argued. In short, the introductory chapter lacks a certain conceptual sharpness.
Chapter 2 presents a well-informed overview of the religious education and socialisation of children in ancient Greece.[8] Traditional practices in this respect became partially undermined by the sophists, but it is probably somewhat one-sided to see the prosecution of Socrates as the culmination of longstanding anxieties about the effectiveness of traditional religious education (p. 39). In the end, we simply cannot be certain of the motives of the jurors, but it is worth noting that the later Greek tradition hardly paid any attention to the religious charge in Socrates’ trial, except for the Christians.[9]
In Chapter 3, Ford outlines the gradual convergence of morality and piety, as it seems to have developed with the result that ‘by the end of the fifth century atheism was commonly listed as part of a set of values that are harmful to the state and the individual, such as immorality, injustice and lawlessness’ (54). It does not follow, though, that we should translate atheon in the Bacchae (995, 1015) as ‘atheist’ (54). This introduces a modern category into the text, as Ford seems to realise himself, since on the same page he translates the term in the Andromache (491) and Helen (1148) as ‘godless’, which is not the same and is more to the point. Moreover, while it is true that immorality and atheism not always go together, we should also bear in mind that accusations of atheism often date from later sources and are not always based on actual facts. Ford mentions Diagoras as atheist (56), but he has overlooked the fact that according to a newly edited Herculaneum fragment ‘Diagoras maintains that the gods are always good’.[10] The new reading supports the case that Diagoras was not an atheist, even though Epicurus grouped him together with Critias and Prodicus as such.[11] Nevertheless, as Ford argues, following recent trends, it is clear that the moral system of Athens was coming under increasing pressure in the late fifth century, as the witness of names such as Prodicus, Protagoras, Socrates and Critas attests, although the latter’s famous fragment of the Sisyphus can hardly be called marginalised in scholarship, given the recent attention it has received.[12]
In Chapter 4, Ford examines what he calls traces of atheism through discourses of theology and theodicy. He is right not to emphasise that the Greek theological world was open and improvisatory and not to focus only on the most outrageous statements when studying atheism. But it is not true that there was no sharpening of critical powers since Xenophanes (91). Ford clearly underestimates the impact of literacy, which enabled people to accumulate and evaluate arguments differently than in the mainly oral period. In Chapter 5, Ford concentrates on unknowability, which he sees as breaking down ‘the imagined clear distinction between belief and unbelief’ (113), but he does not distinguish sufficiently between reflected and unreflected unknowability, with the latter being part of everyday religious life, but the former, as with Protagoras, being part of a philosophical discourse that would undermine belief in the traditional gods.
Chapter 6 concentrates on ‘the other’, but curiously uses outdated terms such as ‘shaman’ (125) to describe private religious entrepreneurs, such as Hermotimos. Moreover, Ford does not prove, as suggested (135), that accusations of magic, superstition, or religious deviance strengthened the accusation of atheism. There is also a neglect of chronology here, as accusations of magic preceded those of superstition, which date only from the later fourth century.[13] Chapter 7 covers the familiar ground of the accusations against philosophers in the later fifth century, but unconvincingly interprets Socrates as a pharmakos, ‘scapegoat’, since his death bears no resemblance to scapegoat rituals (contra Ford, 151-55). Nor can we connect figures such as Phryne with atheism or corrupting the youth (155-56),[14] let alone speak of an ‘established atheistic movement’ (157), something that, pace David Sedley, still has to be demonstrated rather than merely asserted.
In the Conclusion, Ford states that ‘atheism is indispensable for the study and the mechanics of ancient religion and it has incredible explanatory value in many of the major ‘mysteries’ of the Greek world’ (168). Unfortunately, he has not demonstrated the truth of this rather hyperbolic idea of ancient atheism. To call atheism ‘a focus of civic discourse’ (169) misrepresents the evidence and stretches the idea of atheism beyond believability. Ford has rightly drawn attention to questions of doubt and unknowability in Greek religion and its plasticity, but to associate all these features with atheism is not really helpful. A less ideologically driven study of ancient atheism remains desirable.
Notes
[1] I should mention here that I myself have also published on ancient atheism and am sometimes criticised in the book under review.
[2] T. Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods. Atheism in the Ancient World (New York, 2015), to be read with the reviews by K.W. Yu, Journal of Religion 97 (2017) 446-48 and J.N. Bremmer, CPh 113 (2018) 373-79.
[3] See, most recently, in addition to Whitmarsh (note 2): A. Meert, Positive Atheism in Antiquity. A Social and Philosophical Analysis (500 BC – 200 AD) (Diss. Ghent, 2017) = https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8513548/file/8513552.pdf, accessed 14 April 2024; the thematic issue of Philosophie antique 18 (2018: ‘L’athéisme antique’); J.-B. Gourinat, ‘L’athéisme antique, entre accusation et réalité’, in B. Collette-Ducic et al. (eds), L’esprit critique dans l’Antiquité. I. Critique et licence dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 2019) 167-89; B. Edelmann-Singer T. Nicklas, J. Spittler and L. Walt (eds), Sceptic and Believer in Ancient Mediterranean Religions (Tübingen, 2020); R. Soneira Martínez, ‘The Νόσος of Declaring that Gods do not Exist in Plato’s Laws. Isolated Cases or Groups of Ἄθεοι?’, Arys 18 (2020) 309-43 and ‘The Notion of Unbelief in Ancient Greece: Condemning and Persecuting Atheistic Positions in Classical Athens’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 23/1 (2022) 79-105. None of these is mentioned by Ford.
[4] Ford does not engage with Robert Parker’s spirited defence of the idea of polis religion in his ‘Religion in the Polis or Polis Religion?’ (2018), which Parker has now reprinted in his Cleomenes on the Acropolis and Other Studies in Greek Religion and Society = Kernos, Suppl. 42 (Liège, 2024) 139-53.
[5] S. Reynolds, ‘Social Mentalities and the Cases of Medieval Scepticism’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1 (1991) 21-41.
[6] For the, by and large, lack of atheism in the Middle Ages, its terminological genealogy and later developments, see D. Weltecke, “Der Narr spricht: Es ist kein Gott”. Atheismus, Unglauben und Glaubenszweifel vom 12. Jahrhundert bis zur Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 2010); Th. Lienhard, ‘Athéisme, scepticisme et doute religieux au Moyen Âge’, Revue de l’IFHA 3 (2011) 188-205.
[7] See J.N. Bremmer, Youth, Atheism and (Un)Belief in Late Fifth-Century Athens’, in Edelmann-Singer, Sceptic and Believer, 53-68.
[8] For adolescent priests and priestesses (Ford, p. 26), see J.N. Bremmer, Becoming a Man in Ancient Greece and Rome (Tübingen, 2021) 133-36
[9] See, most recently, O. Karavas, ‘Le procès et l’exécution de Socrate chez trois auteurs de l’époque impériale’, Mouseion III 15 (2018) 369-88 J.N. Bremmer, ‘Religion and the Limits of Individualisation in Ancient Athens: Andocides, Socrates and the Fair-breasted Phryne’, in M. Fuchs et al. (eds), Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives (Berlin and Boston, 2019) 1009-1032 at 1016-20.
[10] Phld. On Piety, PHerc. 1428, col. 333 (olim fr. 19) Vassallo, cf. C. Vassallo The Presocratics at Herculaneum (Berlin and Boston, 2021) 140-41.
[11] Philodemus, On Piety, 525 Obbink.
[12] In addition to Tim Whitmarsh’s well-known article of 2014, see G. Alvoni, ‘Die Rhesis des Sisyphos über den Ursprung der Religion (Kritias, Fr. 19 Sn.-K.), Paideia 72 (2017) 467-81; G. Giorgini, ‘The Man Who Invented God: Atheism in the Sisyphus Fragment’, in id. and E. Irrera (eds.), God, Religion and Society in Ancient Thought: From Early Greek Philosophy to Augustine (Baden-Baden, 2023) 97-124. Add also the new mention of Critias’ name in connection with Diagoras in Philodemus: C. Vassallo, ‘The “Pre-Socratic” Section of Philodemus’ On Piety: A New Reconstruction = Praesocratica Herculanensia X (Part II)’, Archiv f. Papyrusforschung 64 (2018) 98-147 at 139-41.
[13] R. Parker, Miasma (Oxford, 1983) 206.
[14] For Phryne, see Bremmer, ‘Religion and the Limits of Individualisation’, 1020-24; J. Curbera, ‘Thoughts on Phryne’s Name’, in A. Alonso Déniz et al. (eds), Contacts linguistiques en grèce ancienne. Diachronie et synchronie (Lyon, 2024) 243-53.