Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/168

 162 THE CITY. BOOK 111. origin of this religion neither a propliet nor a body of priests. It grew up in different minds by an effort of their natural powers. Each man created it for himsell In his own fashion. Among all these gods, sprung from different minds, there were resemblances, because ideas were formed in the minds of men after a nearly uni- form manner. But there was also a great variety, because each mind was the author of its own gods. Hence it was that for a long time this religion was con- fused, and that its gods were innumerable. Still the elements which could be deified were not very numerous. The sun which gives fecundity, the earth v/hich nourishes, the clouds, by turns beneficent and destructive — such were the different powers of which they could make gods. But from each one of these elements thousands of gods were created ; because the same physical agent, viewed under different aspects, received from men different names. The sun, for ex- ample, was called in one place Hercules (the glorious) ; in another, Phoebus (the shining) ; and still again Apollo (he who drives away night or evil) ; one called him Hyperion (the elevated Being) ; another, Alexicacos (the beneficent) ; and in the course of time groups of men, who had given these various names to the brilliant luminary, no longer saw that they had the same god. Indeed, each man adored but a very small number of divinities ; but the gods of one were not those of another. The names, it is true, might resemble each other ; many men might separately have given their god thenameof Apollo, or of Hercules; these words belonged to the common language, and were merely adjectives, and designated the divine Being by one or another of hia most prominent attributes. But under this same name the different groups of men could not believe that