II. ASEBEIA: IMPIETY IN GREECE
The Greeks did not know heresy: they knew asebeia,
as opposed to eusebeia, which is the proper behavior
towards the gods, the parents (and the native land), and
the dead. The word asebeia first appears in a line of
Theognis (line 1180). Theognis tells his friend Kyrnos
that fear of the gods prevents the doing and the saying
of “impiety.” Thus, in the sixth century B.C., the Greeks
knew that man can either do or say something asebes,
impious, but the term is not explained more precisely.
A fragment of Pindar (132, Schroeder) would be much
more interesting: it says that the souls of the impious
hover between earth and sky. Unfortunately this frag-
ment is almost certainly spurious (late Hellenistic?).
Fifth- and fourth-century evidence about asebeia is
much fuller. It confirms that asebeia was not confined
to offenses against gods. One might be asebes, impious,
in relation to the dead, to one's own parents, to ambas-
sadors of foreign countries, etc. In the criminal law
of Athens asebeia was a technical term. Felling of
sacred trees was probably treated as asebeia just as
much as parody of mysteries. The wrong type of
sacrifice for a given occasion might be asebes. We also
have evidence that the introduction of new gods into
the polis was, at least in certain cases, considered a
crime. On the whole one gathers the impression that
asebeia was an offense against established religious
customs rather than a denial of accepted dogmas.
About 430 B.C. a law was passed that extended the
scope of the crime of asebeia and penalized opinion
in religious matters as such. The decree of Diopithes
which was directed against Anaxagoras penalized both
atheism and the introduction of new doctrines about
celestial phenomena (Plutarch, Pericles 32; cf. [Pseudo-]
Lysias, 6, 10). This was, no doubt, the law that made
possible the prosecution, and in certain cases the con-
demnation, of philosophers living in Athens during the
late fifth century and the fourth century B.C. The list
of names includes Protagoras, Socrates, Stilpo, Theo-
dorus of Cyrene, Aristotle, and Theophrastus. Aspasia,
too, was probably accused of impiety under this law.
Doubts about the existence of the gods had become
fashionable among the Sophists, and this law tried to
cope with the new situation. It is, however, worth
noticing that there are political reasons for all these
accusations. Anaxagoras and Protagoras (not to mention
Aspasia) were accused because they were friends of
Pericles; Socrates was accused because he was a friend
of the oligarchs; the later philosophers were all pro-
Macedonian. Furthermore, it must be observed that
we have no evidence of persecution of philosophers
in Athens after the fourth century B.C. In the Greek
world outside Athens, evidence of persecution for
impiety is limited, as far as we know, to some obscure
allusions. They refer to the persecution of the pessimist
Hegesias in Alexandria; to the expulsion of one or more
philosophers from Thrace under Lysimachus, and to
the expulsion of philosophers in general from Syria,
possibly under Antiochus VI, and from Messene. The
reasons for the persecutions are never given, except
in the case of Hegesias, whose pessimistic lectures
increased the rate of suicides in Egypt (Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations I, 83). The goddess Asebeia, to
whom the notorious admiral of Philip V, Dicaearchus,
is said to have built an altar about 200 B.C., was not
the goddess of freethinkers, but of pirates.
Thus our evidence suggests that the incrimination
of persons for their religious opinions as such was a
peculiarity of Athens. Even there it was used as a
political weapon not earlier than about 430 B.C. and
not later than the end of the fourth century B.C. It
is, however, possible that some of the persecutions of
philosophers during the Hellenistic age were due to
genuine religious motives.
The Athenian prosecutions of the philosophers are
the historical precedent for the penalization of reli-
gious opinions advocated by Plato in his Laws. Plato
proposes to punish a man who believes that the gods
do not exist or that the gods exist but are indifferent
to mankind or that they are to be easily won over by
the cajolings of offerings and prayers. Plato's opinion—
altogether remarkable for a pupil of the persecuted
Socrates—is made even more remarkable by the fact
that he does not uphold the traditional city-state reli-
gion, with its Olympian gods, but his own theological
tenets. Furthermore, Plato elaborates a system of moral
pressure before actual punishment that reminds us of
later ecclesiastical practices. Even in this case we
cannot speak of repression of heresy because the no-
tions of revelation and apostolic tradition are absent.
Yet there is no doubt that Plato helped to keep alive
the notion that opinion on theological matters can and
must be penalized. Though it would be difficult to
indicate the channels through which Platonic thought
percolated—and it would be unjust to make Plato alone
the fountainhead of intolerance—it is certain that he
encouraged uniformity of opinions in religious matters.
Plato contributed to the notion of heresy insofar as
he contributed to the idea of intolerance.
On the other hand, the evidence makes it very
difficult to assume a direct influence of the notion of
asebeia, as defined by Diopithes, on the origins of
heresy. Intolerance in religious matters was not wide-
spread in the Hellenistic age. The difficulties are in-
creased by an internal analysis of the notion of asebeia.
There are certainly analogies between the accusations
against philosophers in Athens and the accusations
against heretics in Christianity. The city claimed an
authority comparable to that of the Christian Church
insofar as it decided who were the people with the
right kind of opinion. But the differences are obvious.
In Athens a man was not incriminated because he
disagreed with the majority about the nature of god,
but because he denied the existence of the gods of the
polis or offended them by introducing competitors or
behaved improperly towards them. The punishment of
unorthodox opinions about heavenly bodies was in fact
the condemnation of doctrines that denied their divine
nature. Furthermore, as the Greeks had no sacred
books—Homer was not one—the problem of deciding
who were their authorized interpreters did not exist.
While the essential feature of heresy is opposition to
the official interpretation of a religious doctrine by a
Church, the essential feature of impiety as described
by Diopithes' decree is either denial of the existence
of the gods of the polis or offense given to the gods
of the polis. It follows that the corporate body primar-
ily concerned with the repression of impiety is not that
of priests or theologians, but that of ordinary citizens.
