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4 stream he really believed that he heard the sighing or the laughter of a nymph—how should the stream move and speak if it were not so possessed? The clouds gathered and the lightning flashed, not of themselves, or in obedience to laws of nature—of those mysterious powers the Greek had never heard—but simply because some person moved the clouds and hurled the lightning; and this was Zeus, or Jove.

Living thus with no anxieties; surrounded by the constant presence of deities who showed themselves to him through every form of natural beauty; reared on sunny hills amid the olive and the vine, and looking out always on bright bays and islands of the eastern sea; trained in every exercise of health; beautiful in face and person as the gods he believed in,—every Greek was in his measure an Apollo, always young in spirit, and cheerful and strong. The epochs of his simple life were the seasons of seed-time and harvest, of pruning and vintage; and they were marked by rustic ceremonies in honour of the gods of fruit and flowers and corn and wine.

Of all these seasons, those connected with the grape were naturally the merriest and most famous. When the rich clusters were carried home, all the country-side would gather round a rustic altar of Bacchus, at the foot of the warm hills on which the vines grew so richly, and there they danced, and sang, and played games,—simple indeed, but marked by the grace and beauty which seems inseparable from the nature of a Greek. This Bacchus whom they worshipped was not, as he is to us, a statue, or a picture, or a name, but a