Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/204

 ins THE CITY. BOOK III. gence had for a long time the character of domestic or local divinities. At lirst meti did not conceive of these gods as watching over the whole hnman race. They be- lieved that each one of them belonged in particular to a family or a city. Thus it Avas customary for each city, without count- ing its heroes, to have a Jupiter, a Minerva, or some other divinity which it had associated with its first Penates and its sacred fire. T])us there were in Greece and in Italy a multitude of city-guarding divinities. Each city had its gods, who lived within its walls.' The names of many of tliese divinities are forgotten ; it is by chance that there have remained the names of the god Satrapes, who belonged to the city of Elis, of the goddess Dindymenc at Thebes, of Soteira at ^gium, of Biitomartis in Crete, of Ilyblfea at Hybla. The names of Zeus, Athene, Hera, Jupiter, Minerva, and Nepttme are better k"nown to us, and we know that they were often applied to these city-guarding divinities ; but because two cities happened to apply the same name to their god, we are not to conclude that they adored the same god. There was an Athene at Athens, and there was one at Sparta; but they were two goddesses. A great number of cities had a Jupi- ter as a city-protecting divinity. There were as many Jupiters as there were cities. In the legend of the Trojan war we see a Pallas who fights for the Greeks, and there is among the Trojans another Pallas, who receives their worship and protects her worshippers.* ' Herodotus, V. 82. Sophocles, Phil., 134. Tliucyd, II. 71. Eurip., Electra, C74r. Pausanias, I. 24; IV. 8; VIII. 47. Arnio^h., Birds, S,2^ Knights, b'l. Virgil, IX. 246. Pollux, IX. 40. Apollodoius, III. 14. « Homer, Iliod, VI. 88.