Source A: fragments of Xenophanes of Colophon, a poet and thinker of the late 6th century BC, quoted by later writers.
'But mortals suppose that gods are born, and that they have clothes and a voice and a body like their own.'
'The Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed and black; the Thracians say theirs have pale blue eyes and red hair.'
'But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, and could draw and make works of art as men do, horses would draw the shapes of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods' bodies just like their own.'
'Homer and Hesiod have given the gods everything that brings shame and blame among men: stealing, adultery and deceiving one another.'
To what extent did the Greeks imagine their gods as being like human beings? Use Source A as a starting point and your own knowledge.
Model answer
Source A shows that most Greeks did imagine their gods as like human beings. Xenophanes complains that 'mortals suppose that gods are born' and have 'clothes and a voice and a body like their own', and that each people pictures gods like themselves. His last fragment shows that the gods were thought to behave like humans too: Homer and Hesiod give them 'stealing, adultery and deceiving'.
My own knowledge supports this. In art the gods have human bodies: the Artemision bronze is a bearded, muscular man, and on the Parthenon frieze the gods sit chatting and relaxing like Athenian citizens. In myth they have human families and feelings: Hera is jealous of Zeus' affairs and persecutes Heracles, Hephaistos is lame and is made a laughing-stock when he catches his wife Aphrodite with Ares, and Ares whines to Zeus when Diomedes wounds him.
However, the gods were not simply human. They were immortal and had ichor instead of blood, and they could change shape: Zeus became a cuckoo to win Hera, and Dionysos turned into a lion. Their power over nature - Zeus' thunderbolt, Poseidon's earthquakes - is far beyond any human. Artists showed this by idealising them and making them huge: Pheidias' gold and ivory Zeus at Olympia was so large that it seemed he would break through the roof if he stood up. Some gods were even honoured in non-human forms, such as Hestia in the hearth fire and Hermes in the herms.
Overall, the Greeks imagined their gods to a great extent as human in form and personality, which made them easier to understand and pray to. But they were idealised, immortal and far more powerful humans, so Xenophanes' criticism is only partly fair: the Greeks believed the gods were like humans, but greater in every way.
Explanation
Xenophanes is a useful starting point because he criticises the very anthropomorphism that was normal in Greek religion. Top answers balance the human features of the gods (bodies, families, emotions, failings) against what made them divine (immortality, power, size, shape-changing) and reach a clear judgement. Simply listing human-like myths without weighing them keeps an answer in Level 2.
