Anthropomorphism

An owl with it's own darting/gleaming
eyes, is this Athena in true form?

Anthropomorphism is a fascinating topic; cultures have been partaking in humanising gods well before the Greeks. But why would we depict something that we consider a superior and in-human being…as human? The notion seems absurd. Yet it is undeniably a truth that most people (including myself) might make that mistake to envisage the Greek gods in humanised forms. I am fully aware that Ares is not only the god of war…but he also embodied war as a concept. And this is the same with many of the gods and their simplified attributes- Hades as the underworld, Nike as victory, Zeus as thunder. Yet I still picture them in their human counterparts. Is this the same for the Greeks? And what are the gods ‘true forms’ if they even exist? These are questions I want to try and answer in this posting.

Gods and goddesses can be portrayed in many ways; these different depictions tend to serve different contexts. They can embody an attribute (as above) or they can be personified in a weapon (Zeus as a thunderbolt, Poseidon as a trident etc.) and even as an animal in zoomorphism (Zeus as a swan/eagle, Diana as deer.) In the latter, these animals can be portrayed with the deity or as the deity. And so is this animal an agent for the god, or is the god an animal? We know that when a deity takes human form, they have human attributes (such as lust and hate) so when they are zoomorphised are they simply impersonating this beast or do they literally become the beast? This is addressed in the myth of Leda and the swan. Zeus, in swan form, seduces/rapes Leda, which leads to her laying eggs, a truly bird thing to do! It could be argued that if Zeus were simply acting as a swan then his offspring would be birthed normally. How can we ever know which is the correct form? In which case, do the gods have no true form?

Athena Tetradrachm. 
Athens, approx 450 BC. British Museum

Aniconic images are particularly holy in ancient Greece. These simple images were thought to have fallen from heaven and so were sacred, they were thought to depict the ‘true’ divinity. One example is the Xoanon, or the wooden Athena. It was thought to be the crude image of Athena, but also Athena herself. Is this her true form? Often the gods represented animals or objects that they were meant to symbolise. Athena was often accompanied by an owl, as was she often depicted as such. Both Athena and the owl are known to be wise. They embodied the same qualities. She is frequently described in literature as Athena Glaukopis, which roughly translates into darting/gleaming eyes. This image is of an Athenian Tetradrachm. It depicts Athena on one side and an owl on the other. It is interesting to see that the humanised depiction has similar attributes to the animal counterpart- large ‘darting’ eyes and a beaked nose. These animal representations show the gods known traits. In a further example, Deacy discusses how Hera is described as Bo-Opis (Doe-eyed) advocating modesty and femininity.

One thing to consider is how the Greeks took myth. Did they truly believe them in the literal sense? This is once again connected to Christianity; do they believe that the bible is full of truth, or more of a metaphor? This is something that can arguably never be fully discovered nor understood from the Greeks.

However, one thing for certain is that human forms are much more accessible to humans beings. By anthropomorphising Athena, it makes her far more familiar, attainable and understandable. Humans fear the unknown and having a physical and ‘constant’ image of a deity allows them to recognise features and attributes on vases and paintings and thus allows them to worship not only the deity, but also their image.  It is also key to note that as Lefkowitz discusses, many Greeks traced their ancestry back to the gods (the Spartans to Hercules) and by anthropomorphising them; it makes this claim far more realistic.

By depicting Athena and her fellow deities in a human form, it allowed the Greeks to have a much greater scope of deities and their powers. Their gods had an essence or particular energy about them that couldn’t only be shown with anthropomorphism. It makes the divine dangerous.

It is also very important to point out the convenience of having humanised gods; it is the same in Christianity. As I said earlier, it is familiar and easier to make gods in the form of humans in certain situations. It creates a binary opposition of reachable human depictions versus the ‘other’ unknown and dangerous depictions. It shows that Greek gods can be inferior and superior (breaking human laws such as incest yet they are divine.) This sets them apart from our Christianised God, who is omnibenevolent, yet still in human form. Anthropomorphism is not Greek deities true form in my opinion. Xenophanes in the 6^th Century even claims the absurdity of anthropomorphism as a concept, stating that ‘if oxen had gods, they would be in the forms of oxen’. They are familiar and convenient. Yet it isn’t always for convenience as we have previously discussed. The gods had varied representations for varied reasons. 

My next topic of discussion will be the Olympic gods vs. the Chthonian gods.