Ten Great Religions Part 23

Such physical conditions as we have described are eminently favorable to a free and full development of national character. But this word "development," so familiar to modern thought, implies not only outward circ.u.mstances to educate, but a special germ to be educated. So long as the human being is regarded as a lump of dough, to be moulded into any shape by external influences, no such term as "development" was needed.

But philosophical historians now admit national character to be the result of two factors,--the original ethnic germ in the race, and the terrestrial influences which unfold it.[205] A question, therefore, of grave moment concerns the origin of the h.e.l.lenic people. Whence are they derived? what are their affinities? and from what region did they come?

The science of Comparative Philology, one of the great triumphs of modern scholarship, has enabled us now, for the first time, to answer this question. What no Greek knew, what neither Herodotus, Plato, nor Aristotle could tell us, we are now able to state with certainty. The Greek language, both in its grammar and its vocabulary, belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, of which the Sanskrit is the elder sister. Out of eleven thousand six hundred and thirty-three Greek words, some two thousand are found to be Sanskrit, and three thousand more to belong to other branches of the Indo-European tongues. As the words common to the Greek and the Sanskrit must have been in use by both races before their separation, while living together in Central Asia, we have a clew to the degree of civilization attained by the Greeks before they arrived in Europe. Thus it appears that they brought from Asia a familiarity with oxen and cows, horses, dogs, swine, goats, geese; that they could work in metals; that they built houses, and were acquainted with the elements of agriculture, especially with farinaceous grains; they used salt; they had boats propelled by oars, but not sails; they divided the year by moons, and had a decimal notation.[206]

The Greeks, as a race, came from Asia later than the Latin races. They belonged to that powerful Indo-European race, to which Europe owes its civilization, and whose chief branches are the Hindoos, the Persians, the Greeks, the Latins, the Kelts, the Teutonic tribes, and the Slavi. The original site of the race was, as we have seen in our chapter on Brahmanism, in Bactria; and the earliest division of this people could not have been later than three thousand or four thousand years before the Christian era. When the h.e.l.lenic branch entered Europe we have now no means of saying. It was so long anterior to Greek history that all knowledge of the time was lost, and only the faintest traditions of an Asiatic origin of their nation are to be found in Greek writers.

The h.e.l.lenic tribes, at the beginning of the seventh century before Christ, were divided into four groups,--the Achaians, aeolians, Dorians, and Ionians,--with outlying tribes more or less akin. But this h.e.l.lenic people had been preceded in Greece by another race known as Pelasgians. It is so difficult to say who these were, that Mr. Grote, in despair, p.r.o.nounces them unknowable, and relinquishes the problem. Some facts concerning them may, however, be considered as established. Their existence in Greece is p.r.o.nounced by Thirwall to be "the first unquestionable fact in Greek history." Homer speaks (Iliad, II. 681) of "Pelasgian Argos," and of "spear-skilled Pelasgians," "n.o.ble Pelasgians,"

"Pelasgians inhabiting fertile Larissa" (II. 840; X. 429). Herodotus frequently speaks of the Pelasgians. He says that the Dorians were a h.e.l.lenic nation, the Ionians were Pelasgic; he does not profess to know what language the Pelasgians used, but says that those who in his time inhabited Crestona, Placia, and other regions, spoke a barbarous language, and that the people of Attica were formerly Pelasgic. He mentions the Pelasgians as remaining to his time in Arcadia, after the Dorians had expelled them from the rest of the Peloponnesus; says that the Samothracians adopted the mysteries of the Kabiri from the Pelasgians; that the Pelasgians sacrificed victims to unknown G.o.ds at Dodona, and asked that oracle advice about what names they should give their G.o.ds.

These names, taken from Egypt, the Grecians received from them. h.e.l.las was formerly called Pelasgia. The Athenians expelled the Pelasgians from Attica (whether justly or unjustly, Herodotus does not undertake to say), where they were living under Mount Hymettus; whereupon the Pelasgians of Lemnos, in revenge, carried off a number of Athenian women, and afterward murdered them; as an expiation of which crime they were finally commanded by the oracle at Delphi to surrender that island to Miltiades and the Athenians. Herodotus repeatedly informs us that nearly the whole Ionian race were formerly called Pelasgians.[207]

From all this it appears that the Pelasgians were the ancient occupants of nearly all Greece; that they were probably of the same stock as their h.e.l.lenic successors, but of another branch; that their language was somewhat different, and contained words of barbaric (that is Phoenician or Egyptian) origin, but not so different as to remain distinct after the conquest. From the Pelasgian names which remain, it is highly probable that this people was of the same family with the old Italians.[208] They must have const.i.tuted the main stem of the Greek people. The Ionians of Attica, the most brilliant portion of the Greeks, were of Pelasgic origin.

It may be therefore a.s.sumed, without much improbability, that while the Dorian element gave the nation its strength and vital force, the Pelasgic was the source of its intellectual activity and success in literature and art. Ottfried Muller remarks that "there is no doubt that most of the ancient religions of Greece owed their origin to this race. The Zeus and Dione of Dodona, Zeus and Here of Argos, Hephaestos and Athene of Athens, Demeter and Cora of Eleusis, Hermes and Artemis of Arcadia, together with Cadmus and the Cabiri of Thebes, cannot properly be referred to any other origin."[209]

Welcker[210] thinks that the ethnological conceptions of Aeschylus, in his "Suppliants," are invaluable helps in the study of the Pelasgic relations to the Greeks. The poet makes Pelasgos the king of Argos, and represents him as ruling over the largest part of Greece. His subjects he calls Greeks, and they vote in public a.s.sembly by holding up their hands, so distinguishing them from the Dorians, among whom no such democracy prevailed.[211] He protects the suppliant women against their Egyptian persecutors, who claimed them as fugitives from slavery. The character a.s.signed by Aeschylus to this representative of the Pelasgian race is that of a just, wise, and religious king, who judged that it was best to obey G.o.d, even at the risk of displeasing man.

It is evident, therefore, that from the earliest times there were in Greece two distinct elements, either two different races or two very distinct branches of a common race. First known as Pelasgians and h.e.l.lenes, they afterwards took form as the Ionian and Dorian peoples. And it is evident also that the Greek character, so strong yet so flexible, so mighty to act and so open to receive, with its stern virtues and its tender sensibilities, was the result of the mingling of these antagonist tendencies. Two continents may have met in Greece, if to the genius of that wonderful people Asia lent her intellect and Africa her fire. It was the marriage of soul and body, of nature and spirit, of abstract speculation and pa.s.sionate interest in this life. Darkness rests on the period when this national life was being created; the Greeks themselves have preserved no record of it.

That some powerful influence from Egypt was acting on Greece during this forming period, and contributing its share to the great result, there can hardly be a question. All the legends and traditions hint at such a relation, and if this were otherwise, we might be sure that it must have existed. Egypt was in all her power and splendor when Greece was being settled by the Aryans from Asia. They were only a few hundred miles apart, and the ships of Phoenicia were continually sailing to and fro between them.

The testimony of Greek writers to the early influence of Egypt on their country and its religion is very full. Creuzer[212] says that the Greek writers differed in regard to the connection of Attic and Egyptian culture, only as to How it was, not as to Whether it was. Herodotus says distinctly and positively[213] that most of the names of the Greek G.o.ds came from Egypt, except some whose names came from the Pelasgians. The Pelasgians themselves, he adds, gave these Egyptian names to the unnamed powers of nature whom they before ignorantly worshipped, being directed by the oracle at Dodona so to do. By "name" here, Herodotus plainly intends more than a mere appellation. He includes also something of the personality and character.[214] Before they were impersonal beings, powers of nature; afterwards, under Egyptian influence, they became persons. He particularly insists on having heard this from the priestesses of Dodona, who also told him a story of the black pigeon from Egypt, who first directed the oracle to be established, which he interpreted, according to what he had heard in Egypt, to be a black Egyptian woman. He adds that the Greeks received, not only their oracles, but their public processions, festivals, and solemn prayers from the Egyptians. M. Maury admits the influence of Egypt on the worship and ceremonies of Greece, and thinks it added to their religion a more serious tone and a sentiment of veneration for the G.o.ds, which were eminently beneficial. He doubts the story of Herodotus concerning the derivation of G.o.ds from Egypt, giving as a sufficient proof the fact that Homer's knowledge of Egyptian geography was very imperfect.[215] But religious influences and geographical knowledge are very different things. Because the mediaeval Christian writers had an imperfect knowledge of Palestine, it does not follow that their Christianity was not influenced in its source by Judaism. The objection to the derivation of the Greek G.o.ds from Egypt, on account of the names on the monuments being different from those of the h.e.l.lenic deities, is sufficiently answered by Creuzer, who shows that the Greeks translated the Egyptian word into an equivalent in their own language. Orphic ideas came from Egypt into Greece, through the colonies in Thrace and Samothrace.[216] The story of the Argive colony from Egypt, with their leader Danaus, connects some Egyptian immigration with the old Pelasgic ruler of that city, the walls of which contained Pelasgic masonry. The legends concerning Cecrops, Io, and Lelex, as leading colonies from Egypt to Athens and Megara, are too doubtful to add much to our argument. The influence of Egypt on Greek religion in later times is universally admitted.[217]

-- 2. Idea and General Character of Greek Religion.

The idea of Greek religion, which specially distinguishes it from all others, is the human character of its G.o.ds. The G.o.ds of Greece are men and women, idealized men and women, men and women on a larger scale, but still intensely human. The G.o.ds of India, as they appear in the Sacred Books, are vast abstractions; and as they appear in sculpture, hideous and grotesque idols. The G.o.ds of Egypt seem to pa.s.s away into mere symbols and intellectual generalizations. But the G.o.ds of Greece are persons, warm with life, radiant with beauty, having their human adventures, wars, loves. The symbolical meaning of each G.o.d disappears in his personal character.

These beings do not keep to their own particular sphere nor confine themselves to their special parts, but, like men and women, have many different interests and occupations. If we suppose a number of human beings, young and healthy and perfectly organized, to be gifted with an immortal life and miraculous endowments of strength, wisdom, and beauty, we shall have the G.o.ds of Olympus.

Greek religion differs from Brahmanism in this, that its G.o.ds are not abstract spirit, but human beings. It differs also from Buddhism, the G.o.d in which is also a man, in this, that the G.o.ds of Greece are far less moral than Buddha, but far more interesting. They are not trying to save their souls, they are by no means ascetic, they have no intention of making progress through the universe by obeying the laws of nature, but they are bent on having a good time. Fighting, feasting, and making love are their usual occupations. If they can be considered as governing the world, it is in a very loose way and on a very irregular system. They interfere with human affairs from time to time, but merely from whim or from pa.s.sion. With the common relations of life they have little to do.

They announce no moral law, and neither by precept nor example undertake to guide men's consciences.

The Greek religion differs from many other religions also in having no one great founder or restorer, in having no sacred books and no priestly caste. It was not established by the labors of a Zoroaster, Gautama, Confucius, or Mohammed. It has no Avesta, no Vedas, no Koran. Every religion which we have thus far considered has its sacred books, but that of Greece has none, unless we accept the works of Homer and Hesiod as its Bible. Still more remarkable is the fact of its having no priestly caste.

Brahmanism and Egypt have an hereditary priesthood; and in all other religions, though the priesthood might not be hereditary, it always const.i.tuted a distinct caste. But in Greece kings and generals and common people offer sacrifices and prayers, as well as the priests. Priests obtained their office, not by inheritance, but by appointment or election; and they were often chosen for a limited time.

Another peculiarity of the Greek religion was that its G.o.ds were not manifestations of a supreme spirit, but were natural growths. They did not come down from above, but came up from below. They did not emanate, they were evolved. The Greek Pantheon is a gradual and steady development of the national mind. And it is still more remarkable that it has three distinct sources,--the poets, the artists, and the philosophers. Jupiter, or Zeus in Homer, is oftenest a man of immense strength, so strong that if he has hold of one end of a chain and all the G.o.ds hold the other, with the earth fastened to it beside, he will be able to move them all. Far more grand is the conception of Jupiter as it came from the chisel of Phidias, of which Quintilian says that it added a new religious sentiment to the religion of Greece. Then came the philosophers and gave an entirely different and higher view of the G.o.ds. Jupiter becomes with them the Supreme Being, father of G.o.ds and of men, omnipotent and omnipresent.

One striking consequence of the absence of sacred books, of a sacred priesthood, and an inspired founder of their religion, was the extreme freedom of the whole system. The religion of h.e.l.las was hardly a restraint either to the mind or to the conscience. It allowed the Greeks to think what they would and to do what they chose. They made their G.o.ds to suit themselves, and regarded them rather as companions than as objects of reverence. The G.o.ds lived close to them on Olympus, a precipitous and snow-capped range full of vast cliffs, deep glens, and extensive forests, less than ten thousand feet in height, though covered with snow on the top even in the middle of July.

According to the Jewish religion, man was made in the image of G.o.d; but according to the Greek religion the G.o.ds were made in the image of men.

Herac.l.i.tus says, "Men are mortal G.o.ds, and the G.o.ds immortal men." The Greek fancied the G.o.ds to be close to him on the summit of the mountain which he saw among the clouds, often mingling in disguise with mankind; a race of stronger and brighter Greeks, but not very much wiser or better.

All their own tendencies they beheld reflected in their deities. They projected themselves upon the heavens, and saw with pleasure a race of divine Greeks in the skies above, corresponding with the Greeks below. A delicious religion; without austerity, asceticism, or terror; a religion filled with forms of beauty and n.o.bleness, kindred to their own; with G.o.ds who were capricious indeed, but never stern, and seldom jealous or very cruel. It was a heaven so near at hand, that their own heroes had climbed into it, and become demiG.o.ds. It was a heaven peopled with such a variety of n.o.ble forms, that they could choose among them the protector whom they liked best, and possibly themselves be selected as favorites by some guardian deity. The fortunate hunter, of a moonlight night, might even behold the graceful figure of Diana flashing through the woods in pursuit of game, and the happy inhabitant of Cyprus come suddenly on the fair form of Venus resting in a laurel-grove. The Dryads could be seen glancing among the trees, the Oreads heard shouting on the mountains, and the Naiads found asleep by the side of their streams. If the Greek chose, he could take his G.o.ds from the poets; if he liked it better, he could find them among the artists; or if neither of these suited him, he might go to the philosophers for his deities.

The Greek religion, therefore, did not guide or restrain, it only stimulated. The Greek, by intercourse with Greek G.o.ds, became more a Greek than ever. Every h.e.l.lenic feeling and tendency was personified and took a divine form; which divine form reacted on the tendency to develop it still further. All this contributed unquestionably to that wonderful phenomenon, Greek development. Nowhere on the earth, before or since, has the human being been educated into such a wonderful perfection, such an entire and total unfolding of itself, as in Greece. There, every human tendency and faculty of soul and body opened in symmetrical proportion. That small country, so insignificant on the map of Europe, so invisible on the map of the world, carried to perfection in a few short centuries every human art.

Everything in Greece is art; because everything is finished, done perfectly well. In that garden of the world ripened the masterpieces of epic, tragic, comic, lyric, didactic poetry; the masterpieces in every school of philosophic investigation; the masterpieces of history, of oratory, of mathematics; the masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and painting. Greece developed every form of human government, and in Greece were fought and won the great battles of the world. Before Greece, everything in human literature and art was a rude and imperfect attempt; since Greece, everything has been a rude and imperfect imitation.

-- 3. The G.o.ds of Greece before Homer.

The Theogony of Hesiod, or Book of Genesis of the Greek G.o.ds, gives us the history of three generations of deities. First come the Uranids; secondly, the t.i.tans; and thirdly, the G.o.ds of Olympus. Beginning as powers of nature, they end as persons.[218]

The substance of Hesiod's charming account of these three groups of G.o.ds is as follows:--

First of all things was Chaos. Next was broad-bosomed Earth, or Gaia. Then was Tartarus, dark and dim, below the earth. Next appears Eros, or Love, most beautiful among the Immortals. From Chaos came Erebus and black Night, and then sprang forth Ether and Day, children of Erebus and Night.

Then Earth brought forth the starry Heaven, Uranos, like to herself in size, that he might shelter her around. Gaia, or Earth, also bore the mountains, and Pontus or the barren Sea.

Then Gaia intermarried with Uranos, and produced the t.i.tans and t.i.tanides, namely, Ocean, Koeos, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe with golden coronet, and lovely Thethys. Lastly came Kronos, or Time; with the Cyclopes and the hundred-headed giants. All these children were hid in the earth by Uranos, who dreaded them, till by a contrivance of Gaia and Kronos, Uranos was dethroned, and the first age of the G.o.ds was terminated by the birth from the sea of the last and sweetest of the children of the Heaven, Aphrodite, or Immortal Beauty,--the only one of this second generation who continued to reign on Olympus; an awful, beauteous G.o.ddess, says Hesiod, beneath whose delicate feet the verdure throve around, born in wave-washed Cyprus, but floating past divine Cythera. Her Eros accompanied, and fair Desire followed.

Thus was completed the second generation of G.o.ds, the children of Heaven and Earth, called t.i.tans. These had many children. The children of Ocean and Tethys were the nymphs of Ocean. Hyperion and Theia had, as children, Helios, Selene and Eos, or Sun, Moon, and Dawn. Koeos and Phoebe had Leto and Asteria. One of the children of Krios was Pallas; those of Iapetus were Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Atlas. Kronos married his sister Rhea, and their children were Hestia, Demeter and Here; Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus,--all, except Hades or Pluto, belonging to the subsequent Olympian deities.

The Olympian G.o.ds, with their cousins of the same generation, have grown into persons, ceasing to be abstract ideas, or powers of nature. Five were the children of Kronos, namely, Zeus, Poseidon, Here, Hestia, and Demeter; six were children of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis, Hephaestos and Ares, Hermes and Athene. The twelfth of the Olympian group, Aphrodite, belonged to the second generation, being daughter of Uranos and of the Ocean. Beauty, divine child of Sky and Sea, was conceived of as older than Power.

These are the three successive groups of deities; the second supplanting the first, the third displacing the second. The earlier G.o.ds we must needs consider, not as persons, but as powers of nature, not yet humanized.[219]

The last, seated on Olympus, are "fair humanities."

But now, it is remarkable that there must have been, in point of fact, three stages of religious development, and three successive actual theologies in Greece, corresponding very nearly to these three legendary generations of G.o.ds.

When the ancestors of the h.e.l.lenic race came from Asia, they must have brought with them a nature-worship, akin to that which subsequently appeared in India in the earliest hymns of the Vedas. Comparative Philology, as we have before seen, has established the rule, that whatever words are common to all the seven Indo-European families must have been used in Central Asia before their dispersion. From this rule Pictet[220]

has inferred that the original Aryan tribes all worshipped the Heaven, the Earth, Sun, Fire, Water, and Wind. The ancestors of the Greeks must have brought with them into h.e.l.las the worship of some of these elementary deities. And we find at least two of them, Heaven and Earth, represented in Hesiod's first cla.s.s of the oldest deities. Water is there in the form of Pontus, the Sea, and the other Uranids have the same elementary character.

The oldest hymns in the Vedas mark the second development of the Aryan deities in India. The chief G.o.ds of this period are Indra, Varuna, Agni, Savitri, Soma. Indra is the G.o.d of the air, directing the storm, the lightning, the clouds, the rain; Varuna is the all-embracing circle of the heavens, earth, and sea; Savitri or Surja is the Sun, King of Day, also called Mitra; Agni is Fire; and Soma is the sacred fermented juice of the moon-plant, often indeed the moon itself.

As in India, so in Greece, there was a second development of G.o.ds. They correspond in this, that the powers of nature began, in both cases, to a.s.sume a more distinct personality. Moreover, Indra, the G.o.d of the atmosphere, he who wields the lightning, the thunderer, the G.o.d of storms and rain, was the chief G.o.d in the Vedic period. So also in Greece, the chief G.o.d in this second period was Zeus. He also was the G.o.d of the atmosphere, the thunderer, the wielder of lightning. In the name "Zeus" is a reminiscence of Asia. Literally it means "the G.o.d," and so was not at first a proper name. Its root is the Sanskrit _Div_, meaning "to shine."

Hence the word _Deva_, G.o.d, in the Vedic Hymns, from which comes Te?? and ???, ???? in Greek, Deus in Latin. ?e?? ?ate? in Greek is Jupiter in Latin, coming from the Sanskrit _Djaus-piter._ Our English words "divine,"

"divinity," go back for their origin to the same Sanskrit root, _Div_. So marvellously do the wrecks of old beliefs come drifting down the stream of time, borne up in those frail canoes which men call words. In how many senses, higher and lower, is it true that "in the beginning was _the Word_."

This most ancient deity, G.o.d of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, favorite divinity of the Aryan race in all its branches, became Indra when he reached India, Jupiter when he arrived in Italy, Zeus when in Epirus he became the chief G.o.d of the Pelasgi, and was worshipped at that most ancient oracular temple of all Greece, Dodona. To him in the Iliad (XVI.

235) does Achilles pray, saying: "O King Jove, Dodonean, Pelasgian, dwelling afar off, presiding over wintry Dodona." A reminiscence of this old Pelasgian G.o.d long remained both in the Latin and Greek conversation, when, speaking of the weather, they called it Zeus, or Jupiter. Horace speaks of "cold Jupiter" and "bad Jupiter," as we should speak of a cold or rainy day. We also find in Horace (Odes III. 2: 29) the archaic form of the word "Jupiter," _Diespiter_, which, according to La.s.sen (I. 755), means "Ruler of Heaven"; being derived from Djaus-piter. _Piter_, in Sanskrit, originally meant, says La.s.sen, Ruler or Lord, as well as Father.

In Arcadia and Boeotia the Pelasgi declared that their old deities were born. By this is no doubt conveyed the historic consciousness that these deities were not brought to them from abroad, but developed gradually among themselves out of nameless powers of nature into humanized and personal deities. In the old days it was hardly more than a fetich worship. Here was worshipped as a plank at Samos; Athene, as a beam at Lindus; the Pallas of Attica, as a stake; Jupiter, in one place, as a rock; Apollo, as a triangle.

Together with Jupiter or Zeus, the Pelasgi worshipped Gaia or Mother Earth, in Athens, Sparta, Olympia, and other places. One of her names was Dione; another was Rhea. In Asia she was Cybele; but everywhere she typified the great productive power of nature.

Another Pelasgic G.o.d was Helios, the Sun-G.o.d, worshipped with his sister Selene, the Moon. The Pelasgi also adored the darker divinities of the lower world. At Pylos and Elis, the king of Hades was worshipped as the awful Adoneus; and Persephone, his wife, was not the fair Kora of subsequent times, but the fearful Queen of Death, the murderess, h.o.m.ologous to the savage wife of civa, in the Hindoo Pantheon. To this age also belongs the worship of the Kabiri, nameless powers, perhaps of Phoenician origin, connected with the worship of fire in Lemnos and Samothrace.

The Doric race, the second great source of the h.e.l.lenic family, entered Greece many hundreds of years after[221] the first great Pelasgic migration had spread itself through Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. It brought with it another cla.s.s of G.o.ds and a different tone of worship.

Their princ.i.p.al deities were Apollo and Artemis, though with these they also worshipped, as secondary deities, the Pelasgic G.o.ds whose homes they had invaded. The chief difference between the Pelasgic and Dorian conception of religion was, that with the first it was more emotional, with the second more moral; the first was a mystic natural religion, the second an intellectual human religion. Ottfried Muller[222] says that the Dorian piety was strong, cheerful, and bright. They worshipped Daylight and Moonlight, while the Pelasgians also reverenced Night, Darkness, and Storm. Funeral solemnities and enthusiastic orgies did not suit the Dorian character. The Spartans had no splendid processions like the Athenians, but they prayed the G.o.ds "to give them what was honorable and good"; and Zeus Ammon declared that the "calm solemnity of the prayers of the Spartans was dearer to him than all the sacrifices of the Greeks."[223]

Two facts are to be noticed in connection with this primitive religion.

One is the local distribution of the different deities and modes of worship through Greece. Every tribe had its own G.o.d and its own worship.

In one place it was Zeus and Gaia; in another, Zeus and Cybele; in a third, Apollo and Artemis. At Samothrace prevailed the worship of the Heaven and the Earth.[224] Dione was worshipped with Zeus at Dodona.[225]

The Ionians were devoted to Poseidon, G.o.d of the sea. In Arcadia, Athene was worshipped as Tritonia. Hermes was adored on Mount Cyllene; Eros, in Boeotia; Pan, in Arcadia. These local deities long remained as secondary G.o.ds, after the Pan-h.e.l.lenic worship of Olympus had overthrown their supremacy. But one peculiarity of the Pre-Homeric religion was, that it consisted in the adoration of different G.o.ds in different places. The religion of h.e.l.las, after Homer, was the worship of the twelve great deities united on Mount Olympus.

The second fact to be observed in this early mythology is the change of name and of character through which each deity proceeds. Zeus alone retains the same name from the first.[226]

Among all Indo-European nations, the Heaven and the Earth were the two primordial divinities. The Rig-Veda calls them "the two great parents of the world." At Dodona, Samothrace, and Sparta they were worshipped together. But while in India, Varuna, the Heavens, continued to be an object of adoration in the Vedic or second period, in Greece it faded early from the popular thought. This already shows the opposite genius of the two nations. To the Hindoos the infinite was all important, to the Greeks the finite. The former, therefore, retain the adoration of the Heavens, the latter that of the Earth.