Free Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World by Tim Whitmarsh Page A

the gods by replacing them as the objects of religious worship. Their particular type of theomachy consisted in denying the gods by setting themselves up as substitutes. 12
    Salmoneus, the brother of Sisyphus and Alcyone, was perhaps the most intriguing of them all. In this case we have a fuller papyrus fragment detailing the
Catalogue
’s account of his misdeed, which can be filled out with later accounts. Here is how one late version summarizes the story (enough details correspond to confirm that it is the same version as in the
Catalogue
):
And being arrogant and wishing to put himself on an equality with Zeus, he was punished for his impiety; for he said that he was himself Zeus, and he took away the sacrifices of the god and ordered them to be offered to himself; and by dragging dried hides, with bronze kettles, behind his chariot, he said that he was making thunder, and by flinging lighted torches at the sky he said that he was making lightning. But Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt, and wiped out the city he had founded with all its inhabitants. 13
    This marvelous story has comic features: the idea of using kitchen utensils to compete with Zeus the Thunderer looks more like a jokey parody than a worked-up statement of philosophical atheism. Yet the story does also have a theoretical dimension. Divinity, from this perspective, is reduced to a list of easily imitable signs: a name, a noise, a flash in the sky. The implication of Salmoneus’s performance is that there is nothing more to the gods than these, and if humans can replicate them, humans can achieve everything that the gods can. There is something that verges on the postmodern in Salmoneus’s replication of “brand Zeus,” in much the same way as a forger would the logo of a clothes designer. Indeed, other ancient authors who tell the story of Salmoneus emphasize that his crime was, precisely, to
imitate
Zeus: the Greek concept of
mim
ē
sis
carries hints of fabrication and deception. It is possible, then, that the original version of the Salmoneus myth was a parable about the dangers that lurked in humans’ capacity to fabricate gods through ritual, drama, and statuary (which was spreading through Greece at exactly this time, in the sixth century). If gods can be fashioned by mortal imitation, how real can they be? 14
    We can push the argument further. Two ingenious scholars have made the observation that the way in which Salmoneus’s kettles and hides are described is almost identical to later accounts of the
bronteion,
the theatrical device for replicating the sound of thunder (
bront
ē ) when plays called for it. Now, when the
Catalogue
was composed, theaters probably did not exist in any significant sense in Greece; the earliest evidence we have is from a little later, at the turn of the sixth and fifth centuries. But dramatic forms certainly preexisted the theater proper, and surely these early forms of drama will have involved imitation of the gods. The
bronteion
will have been used for ritual purposes prior to the spread of theater, and this is probably how the poet of the
Catalogue
knew the device. We might add that there is evidence also that the theater had a device called a
keraunoskopeion,
which generated the effect of lightning; again, this may have its roots in older, ritual action. In other words, the Salmoneus story was not just a joke: it was a meditation on the metaphysical implications of a culture that was beginning to manufacture divinity in the human realm, through sculpture, painting, and theater. If gods can be constructed, the story wonders, do they really exist at all? 15
    The answer that the
Catalogue
gives is a (literally) resounding “yes.” Zeus’s booming thunderbolt reasserts his power against the upstart
theomakhos.
It is significant that Zeus punishes Salmoneus with a thunderbolt, the very object that the mortal thought he could replicate: this action is not only a punishment, it is also a reenactment of