Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/479

 CHAP. I. NEW BELIEFS PHILOSOPHY. 473 national ancestors, founders, and heroes. They con- tinued to keep up this fire, to have public meals, and to sing the old hymns — vain ceremonies, of whieh they dared not free themselves, but the sense of which no one understood. Even the divinities of nature, which they had as sociated with the sacred fire, changed their character. After having commenced by being domestic divinities^ after having become city divinities, they were trans- formed again. Men finally perceived that the different beings whom they called by the name of Jupiter, might be only one and the same being; and thus of other gods. The mind was oppressed with the multitude of divinities, and felt the need of reducing their number. Men understood that the gods no longer belonged each to a family or to a city, but that they all belonged to the human race, and watched over the universe. Poets went from city to city, and taught men, instead of the old hymns of the city, new songs, wherein neither Lares nor city-protectiug divinities ai)peared, and where the legends of the great gods of heaven and earth were related; and the Greek people forgot their old domestic and national hymns for this new poetry, which was not the daughter of religion, but of art and of a free imagi- nation. At the same time a few great sanctuaries, like those of Delphi and Delos, attracted men, and made them forget their local worship. The mysteries and the doctrines which these taught accustomed them to disdain the empty and meaningless religion of the city. Thus an intellectual revolution took place slowly and obscurely. Even the priests made no o])position, for as long as the sacrifices continued to be offered on desig- nated days, it seemed to them that the ancient religion was preserved. Ideas might change, and faith perish