The tripod and serpent represent the old order of the goddess temple, while the sword represents the new order of Apollo
The tripod and serpent represent the old order of the goddess temple, while the sword represents the new order of Apollo
After the Fall of the Temple, or
rather the end of the Minoan hegemony, leadership of the Mediterranean
fell to the Greeks. This was the beginning of the Hellenistic Period.
The leading city-states assumed the goddess religion that went before,
but made some important changes- most notably, the god Apollo assumed
the role that was previously performed by the goddess and her ally Hermes.
This transition was difficult to explain to the common people, but Homer
had a try. In a lengthy poem, Homer has Apollo, inventor of music and
owner of herds, present when Hermes is born. Hermes amazes the other gods
by being adult at birth, and by successfully stealing some of Apollo's
cattle. Apollo forgives Hermes when Hermes teaches him how to make music
from a tortoise shell. The contradictions in this story are evident. Hermes
was around throughout the Goddess period, the goddess was the source of
all the arts, and Apollo was a johnny-come-lately. In this era, Hermes
acquires a new reputation as a thief and a trickster, while Apollo takes
all. The goddess is no longer queen of heaven but she is far from forgotten.
All her rites are preserved, but in a more circumspect form. Consider
this verse by Euripedes, about the founder of Athens, Erechtheus, which
implicitly recognises the true fount of Greek religiosity:
| Happy of old were the sons of Erechtheus
Sprung from the blessed gods, and dwelling In Athen's holy and untroubled land Their food is glorious wisdom, they work With springing step in the crystal air. Here, so they say, golden Harmony first Saw the light, the child of the Muses nine |
An overall view of religious history in ancient Greece might be that popular worship moved from the adoration of a beautiful mother (the goddess) to the adoration of a beautiful man (Apollo), and eventually to the adoration of the more masculine Zeus, whose place in heaven was originally only that of a honoured guest of the goddess. In the later phase, the goddess (Dionyssian) worship assumed the form of a mystery religion centred on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. These Orphic Mysteries, which have at their heart a ritual representation of the proper relationship between man and the goddess, have survived to modern times thanks to esoteric societies and periodic revivals by scholars.
These religious changes were gradual, though some observers see a clear distinction between the two periods, while others see nothing at all:
"my good friend Carlos Ribas studied the civilisation of Apollonian Greece and Dionyssian Greece all his life without once realising the critical difference between them...Salvador Dali in Diary of a Genius
