Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/202

170 BOOK II. Zeus Ouranion. The my- thical and spiritual Zeus.

between them and their worshippers there was no real and direct connexion. Of the Eupatrid families among the Greeks the greater number, perhaps, traced their descent from Zeus himself or from some other god : no Roman patrician ever thought of proclaiming himself as the offspring of the cold and colourless beings who in solitary state presided over the processes and working of the visible world. Nay, even in Rome itself the Greek deities remained only a fashion, and were honoured with an exotic worship. The true Roman ritual was that which had for its object the worshipping of the household gods ; and these were practically the spirits of the founder of the house and of those who had followed him in true hereditary succession. The religion of Roman life was influenced by the worship, not of the bright and joyous Phoibos, or of the virgin daughter of Zeus, but of the Lares and the Penates before that altar of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, which was the common heritage of the whole Aryan race. But in the literature of Rome the genuine deities of the country are so strangely confused or even jumbled up with the importations from the East, that it becomes difficult sometimes to assign each portion of material to its proper place. In some cases the characteristics of a Greek god have been fitted on to a Latin god with whose character they are inconsistent ; but it is probable that even in the days of Ovid or Horace this con- fusion never troubled the country folk of Samnium or Calabria The idea of brightness was, however, not the only one suggested by the sight of the clear heaven. If the sky beams with light, it is also spread as a covering over the earth which lies beneath it, and Zeus was thus Ouranion who spread his veil over his bride ; but before he came to be spoken of as son of Kronos, the attribute had suggested the idea of a person, and the Western Ouranos corre- sponded with the Vedic Varuna. In this case the name remained more transparent in the West than in the East. The Vedic Varuna becomes the moral ruler of the universe, and the Father and friend of man ; but in the Hellenic land the starry Ouranos is the son to whom Gaia gives birth in order that he may cover everything and be a steadfast scat for the blessed gods,^ and we look in vain for the ' spiritual attributes which belong to Varuna in the hymns of the Rig Veda.

But the developcment of a personal Zeus was followed necessarily by two results, which long continued astonishingly distinct the one from the other. The thought of Zeus as the one God and Father gave birth to a religion. The many names employed to denote the

' Ilcsiod, Thcosr. 128.