In this monograph (revised from a 2017 doctoral thesis) F. recommends a new research paradigm for the scholarship on ancient atheism in the Archaic and classical periods: (1) a social history of ancient atheism that shows how atheism was ‘embedded’ into the structure of Greek religion; and (2) a novel and broadened definition of atheism that aligns with similar approaches in the recent historiography on atheism outside of Classics.
F. justifies this new method and definitions in Chapter 1. Although previous scholarship often demonstrates an interest in ‘diagnosing’ whether certain individuals were ‘really’ atheists (e.g. Diagoras, Prodicus), F. argues that this approach tends to overlook the wider social dynamics of Greek atheism (p. 3). Less persuasively, he claims that this method is epistemologically defective, since we cannot verify the private, hidden religious beliefs of individuals (pp. 6–7). (In fact, Classics discussions on individual ‘atheists’ often interrogate whether they were publicly outspoken freethinkers with writings or actions that promoted atheism, e.g. A. Henrichs on Prodicus’ Seasons.) Next, against defining ‘atheism’ as the hardline denial that any gods exist (the modern definition employed in M. Winiarczyk) – a variety of atheism that classical scholars often claim was ‘rare’ or ‘non-existent’ in classical antiquity –, F. argues that this view is ‘too narrow’ and ‘not representative’ (p. 8) and should be broadened to include religious doubt and non-conformity (e.g. agnosticism, heterodox theologies).
Chapter 2 explores the trial of Socrates in efficient detail, but F.'s main focus is how traditional education in classical Greece played a significant role in Greek religious socialisation. F. argues that an early acquaintance with contradictory myths and conceptions about the gods meant Greek children ‘were not taught a single, doctrinal account’ (p. 32). Chapter 3 traces a tension between the autonomy of Greek morality from religious dogmatism and the growing and reactionary link between atheism and ‘moral deviancy’ in the late fifth century (particularly evident with Aristophanes’ immoralist/atheist caricatures of Socrates and Euripides). Chapter 4 explores how atheism on the basis of the ‘problem of evil’ (in Euripides’ Bellerophon and Aristophanes’ Clouds) stems from considerably earlier Greek discourses that were critical of divine justice (esp. ‘Archaic pessimism’). This chapter is rich in historical background and is essential reading for future scholarship.
Chapter 5 charts the problem of divine ‘unknowability’ in Greek theology: that from Homeric poetry all the way to theological speculation in late antiquity ‘[t]he Greek conception of their gods depended on the vagueness of divine identity’ (p. 99). F. outlines how divine unknowability could have pious manifestations (e.g. prayer formulae, preserving pious conceptions of the gods from radical doubt) and impious manifestations (e.g. Protagorean agnosticism; but more discussion is needed here, pp. 110–11). Next, Chapter 6 is a good treatment of ‘religious othering’ and hostile discourses surrounding magic, superstition and atheism. Chapter 7 concludes on fifth-century impiety trials as a form of ritually ‘scapegoating’ ‘atheists’ in moments of civic crisis, and advocates the historicity of the trial of Anaxagoras and Protagoras’ expulsion. F. is generally sceptical that classical Athens was as liberal and tolerant as some previous scholarly characterisations, and the comparison between the ‘crisis of religion’ during the Athenian plague years and a similar phenomenon in the First World War is illuminating (p. 147).
F.'s overview of topics adjacent to ancient atheism (divine justice, othering discourses, impiety trials) offers sensible insights that are grounded in the wider mechanics of Greek religion, and in particular Chapters 3, 4 and 6 are excellent syntheses. Certainly F. is right, and demonstrates, that ancient atheism needs more studies on this synoptic, social level. Conceived as a whole, however, the method and ultimate aims in the volume exhibit fundamental problems about how to conceptualise atheism. The root of the problem is F.'s broad redefinition of atheism as ‘the various forms of unbelief in the right gods and/or the failure to worship them in appropriate ways’ (p. 17). F. is confident that radical atheism is unrepresentative of Greek thought and that we should scarcely expect to find such an ‘extreme’ position in many sources at all. In fact, to demonstrate their fluid conception of ancient atheism, he adduces the charges of impiety against Socrates (pp. 8, 15). But it is here that a clearer definition is most needed, since in his version of the trial Plato makes Socrates knowingly mock their imprecision. A moralised and diffuse understanding of atheism was also rampant in 1600s England, in a climate where converting to Islam or betraying one's country was ‘atheism’. Be it Greece or England, the frequent discursive imprecision surrounding atheism does not show that there were no earnest discussions or adherents for positive atheism (there likely were), and it is surely a valuable hint that in his defence speech Socrates mentions positive atheism in the first place (Ap. 26c).
Evidence to this effect challenges F.'s contention that defining atheism narrowly as naturalism is ‘prejudicial’, ‘othering’, ‘defines atheism out of existence’, is ‘inapplicable to ancient polytheism’ and has ‘arrested the study of historical atheism’ (pp. 17, 113, 171). The classical testimonia indicate in plausible detail that some Greeks did subscribe to the global denial of the existence of the gods, which F.'s treatment undersells; and his methodological preference for softer forms of doubt is sufficiently encompassing that even the important naturalist/materialist doctrine critiqued in Plato's Laws (esp. 10, 889b–c) is not cited or discussed. This also introduces difficulties for mapping the historical trajectory of ancient atheism, since a broad definition can risk introducing an implausible ‘continuity thesis’ that never ends. In Chapter 2 F. claims traditional Greek education had already fostered critical attitudes towards religion; for him ‘atheism’ (broadly conceived) was present from the start. But this redefinition leads F. to express puzzlement about why sophist educators were associated with atheism at all; he supposes that their educational models were not more anti-religious than traditional alternatives (p. 35). This is surprising, since F. also accepts that some sophist pupils turned to atheism as a ‘youth movement’ (from Plato's Laws, pp. 36–7). Has nothing changed here from Greek children doubting the myths that their mothers and nurses told them? Surely the naturalistic atheism nourished on late fifth-century sophistic was markedly more sceptical than previous expressions of unbelief, which a broad and non-modern definition of atheism risks eliding; surely even the cool opt-out of Protagoras is not the same thing as forging a positive materialist world view that negates the ontological foundations of religion. Still, to give F.'s work due credit, I suspect the normative force in his definition (‘right gods’, ‘appropriate ways’) will have enduring utility for talking about the ancient ‘othering’ discourses directed against non-conformists and adversaries of intellectuals (e.g. Hippocratic doctors against traditional healers, pp. 131–2). This suggests that F.'s theoretical scope generally presents, in modern terms, a history of ancient Religionskritik and hostile discourses surrounding ‘atheism’. The study treats these topics admirably; but, except for Chapter 4, the idea of doxastic atheism itself is left underexplored (which was, nonetheless, as authentically classical an idea as Socratic virtue).
Some fairly minor points of detail. In Sophocles’ Women of Trachis (1036) Heracles does not refer to Hera as ἄθεος (p. 9), but his poisoner Deianira (rightly DGE s.v. ἄθεος I.1); in this sense ἄθεος refers to human criminals and never the gods, and Hera is not Athena's mother. ‘Prose-writers’ should be read instead of ‘ordinary people’ (pp. 11, 36) at Plat. Leg. 10, 890a (see D. Sedley, in: V. Harte and M. Lane [edd.], Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy [2013], p. 333 n. 16). This reading leads F. to conclude (p. 37) that Plato accuses sophist teachers of young men of fostering atheism, but it is surely interesting that, correctly translated, Plato also inveighs against sophistic authors (i.e. a literary culture for atheism).
