Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/18

 4 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS could not have been grafted upon the Homeric manners ; and centuries elapsed before there emerged from the political ruin a state of things favorable to refine- ment and to progress in the Greece of history ; which though in so many respects of an unequalled splendor, yet had a less firm hold than the Achaian time upon some of the highest social and moral ideas. For example, the position of women had greatly declined, liberty was perhaps less largely conceived, and the tie be- tween religion and morality was more evidently sundered. After this sketch of the national existence which Homer described, and to the consolidation of which he powerfully ministered, let us revert to the state in which he found and left the elements of a national religion. A close observation of the poems pretty clearly shows us that the three races which combined to form the nation had each of them their distinct religious traditions. It is also plain enough that with this diversity there had been antagonism. As sources illustra- tive of these propositions which lie at the base of all true comprehension of the religion which may be called Olympian from its central seat I will point to the numerous signs of a system of nature-worship as prevailing among the Pe- lasgian masses ; to the alliance in the war between the nature-powers and the Trojans as against the loftier Hellenic mythology; to the legend in Iliad, i.,.396 412, of the great war in heaven, which symbolically describes the collision on earth between the ideas which were locally older and those beginning to sur- mount them ; and, finally, to the traditions extraneous to the poems of competi- tions between different deities for the local allegiance of the people at different spots, such as Corinth, to which Phoenician influence had brought the Poseidon- worship before Homer's time, and Athens, which somewhat later became pecul- iarly the seat of mixed races. I have spoken of nature-worship as the Pelasgian contribution to the composite Olympian religion. In the Phoenician share we find, as might be expected, both Assyrian and Egyptian elements. The best in- dication we possess of the Hellenic function is that given by the remarkable prayer of Achilles to Zeus in Iliad, xvi., 233-248. This prayer on the sending forth of Patroclus is the hinge of the whole action of the poem, and is preceded by a long introduction (220232) such as we nowhere else find. The tone is monotheistic ; no .partnership of gods appears in it ; and the immediate ser>ants of Zeus are described as interpreters, not as priests. From several indications it may be gathered that the Hellenic system was less priestly than the Troic. It seems to have been an especial office of Homer to harmonize and combine these diverse elements, and his Thearchy is as remarkable a work of art as the terres- trial machinery of the poem. He has profoundly impressed upon it the human likeness often called anthropomorphic, and which supplied the basis of Greek art. He has repelled on all sides from his classical and central system the cult of nature and of animals, but it is probable that they kept their place in the local worships of the country. His Zeus is to a considerable extent a monarch, while Poseidon and several other deities bear evident marks of having had no superior at earlier epochs or in the countries of their origin. He arranges them partly as a family, partly as a commonwealth. The gods properly Olympian correspond with