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 had ceased to believe in the old mythology. Even the sober piety of Herodotus had questioned some miracles and rejected others; and the keen common-sense of Thucydides had applied the historical test to the "Tale of Troy," looking upon it as a political enterprise, and accepting the catalogue of ships "as an authentic muster-roll." Then Euemerus had allegorised these myths; and Palæphatus had softened them down into commonplace narratives of actual facts: thus the wings of Dædalus became a swift sailing vessel, the dragon which Cadmus slew was King Draco, and the dragon's teeth were the ivory of commerce. And philosophy had aided this progress of rationalism. More than a century before Plato, Xenophanes had pointed out the discrepancies involved in the popular mythology, and had declared emphatically that there was "one God, not to be compared to mortals in form or thought—all eye and all ear—who without effort rules all things by the insight of his mind." So again Empedocles had recognised, amidst the crash of warring elements, one holy impalpable Spirit, whom none could come near, or touch, or see; and even Anaxagoras, with all his materialism, had paid homage to a sovereign Mind which ruled the universe.

"But," says Professor Maurice, "there lay in the very heart of the faith of the Greek a seed of unbelief which was continually fructifying." While many clung with unwavering faith to the religion of their fathers; while a few (as we have seen) professed a