Greek writing shows a general unpredictability on the part of their gods, and recommends wariness on the part of man. Hesiod, a Greek author from the 8th century BC, says that the Muses directly tell him the history of the gods, which he wrote into his book “Theogony.” But he also states that sometimes they lie, and provides no way to know when they lie or tell the truth, immediately invalidating everything he writes. On the assumption that what he writes is true, he writes in his book “Works and Days” that men ought to pay attention to particular days of the week and month, and that the world had, was, and would get worse with every successive generation. Since most of his property was taken from him by the Greek courts of law, he claims the gods are a far better source of justice, despite admitting that the gods are not predictable in who they reward or punish, or even for what acts they will reward or punish. The major reason for this that Hesiod, and later Aeschylus, give is that the gods are at war with one another, and by honoring one, you slight another. Aeschylus in particular depicted a struggle in his trilogy “The Oresteia” between the old gods, known as the Furies, who condemned murder within a family, and the new gods, known as the Olympians. Zeus demands a king sacrifice his daughter, and Apollo defended the consequences of that murder in direct defiance of the Furies. There is no way to know what the right thing to do is in Greek literature, as there is always punishment for your actions, and often for inactions as well.
The Romans are quite similar, though they don’t respect the gods as much. Livy (59 BC – 17 AD) said, unlike the Greeks, the gods did not interfere with important activities directly, such as the founding of cities, meaning man is responsible for the important goings-ons in the world. Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD) took a similar view, saying Man was “more perfect and more sanctified” than the Olympian gods. He suggests that Nature itself is a god that created the world, the lesser gods, morality, and was responsible also for the creation of Man. While Ovid does admit that these lesser gods have more power than men, he claimed it was possible for some men (such as Julius Caesar, Octavian Caesar, and Aeneas) to have enough power to be considered a god, and even be superior to the Olympians. For every injustice that Hesiod had admitted the gods might make, Ovid claimed two more, far worse crimes. Not just by spurning certain gods are men punished, but simply for prospering men are tortured and killed. Both Livy and Ovid sucked up to Octavian, the emperor of Rome at the time, Ovid because he wanted to return from exile, and Livy because he was paid by the emperor. They both generally took the Greeks view that both mankind and the world were deteriorating, but unlike the Greeks, claimed that during the reign of Octavian (and emperors who imitated him) the world would not get worse, but that the deterioration would eventually continue.
Hebrew Literature, the Old Testament of the Bible, is a pretty stark contrast to the Greek writing, insofar as predictability goes. The Old Testament claims only one god, and that he rewards the Hebrews when they are faithful to him, and punishes them when they are unfaithful. God is said to have created the entire world, and is sovereign over it. The New Testament reaffirms Gods sovereignty over everything, but includes the idea of Jesus Christ as God, meaning Christ is also sovereign. Jesus affirms that all men are now ranked as the Hebrews once were exclusively, and that all authority that men have comes from God. More specifically, they are seen as worthy of authority through their faith in Christ as God, and those that are worthy of it, receive it. Thanks to the sacrifice of Christ and forgiveness of sin, men are no longer believed to be in danger of being destroyed by God for their sins, as the Greeks had been for nothing. A huge difference from the Greek/Roman views is the inheritance of man, as not only were individual cases unpredictable in their outcomes, there was considered a constant downgrading of the world. The New Testament stated that every case was predictable, good deeds rewarded and bad ones punished, as well as hope for a brilliant future. The west embraced Christianity with the fall of Rome, starting the Medieval Age. This time period lasted from about 476 to 1346, and without the uncertainty of the past gods, flourished.
The Black Plague rocked the Medieval world to its core in 1346 AD, a disease that killed half of Europe, arriving in Florence, Italy, where Boccaccio (1313 – 1375) wrote his book, the “Decameron”. This book rejected a great deal of the Christian ideas that Augustine and the Martyrs spread through the Western World in the early Medieval years, mostly due to the entirely unpredictable nature of the Plague. The clergymen of the church died, the robbers and brigands died, men died, women died, children and adults died, sinners and saints suffered the same death. Boccaccio described all this in the intro of the Decameron, and said that people took all sorts of actions to combat the plague, such as excessive self-punishment for imagined sins, and excessive wantonness in order to be as happy as possible before death. In the bulk of the Decameron, Boccaccio describes 10 fictional people who leave Florence and live in an abandoned country home just outside the city. There they trade stories, 10 per day for 10 weekdays, resulting in a hundred stories, hence the name Decameron (which translates roughly to “10 day holiday”). No thought is given to what will happen after, and when the idea of honor crops up, one of the characters says that as long as they obey what they believe is right, they need not fear judgment. God is not considered as the ultimate authority in the world, but, very similarly to the Romans, considered beneath nature, since nature’s disease killed God’s men. The hundred stories are filled with smut, direct insults to the clergy, and quippy characters who insult people, miraculously changing the insulted man’s whole way of life. Though God is not directly insulted, his morals and promises of justice are not respected by Boccaccio or his characters.
This trend continues with the “Canterbury Tales” of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400), another short story collection. It is far less extreme, and Chaucer does not go against the Church in the same way as Boccaccio, but unpredictability is still core to many of his stories. In one, an innocent girl is killed by her father simply because a corrupt state official contrived to marry her. There was no way for his plan to have worked, but the girl was murdered anyway. In another, a rapist is condemned to death by King Arthur, but is saved if he can tell the Queen what all women want. This has no fbearing on repentance, guilt, or the punishment, but his life is saved, and he lives happily ever after. Some attacks are made against the church, such as against the pardoner, a character who forgave men’s sins for money and used that money to sin. There is a general dismissiveness as to the rule of God, and instead a huge respect for “Fortune.” Sheer chance, then, is the god of the early Renaissance.
The Black Plague started the Renaissance by shaking men from the promise of predictability and justice from God, driving them back to the older Greek and Roman ideas of unpredictable fortune and random sanctions. Like the Romans, the reasoning of men was seen as the only moral system worth pursuing. This is, of course, merely an overview of these different eras of writing, with examples that merely indicate the ideas of the time, and are by no means exhaustive.
School Essays 