Closely related in form to the sacrifices in time of need (sphagia), which have just been consid ered, were the rites of purification for murder and for sacrilege. In the Homeric poems there is no trace of these sacrifices. In later times the mur derer must flee out of the land, and, unless the murder were accidental, he could never return. lf, however, the act were unintentional, he must first seek purification in a foreign land. The man who conducted the rites slew some animal, pref erably a young pig, and applied its blood to the murderer, after which its body was burned and other sacrifices were offered to the gods. Before engaging in certain religious rites, e.g., in the mys teries celebrated at Eleusis, it was also necessary for the individual to purify himself with the blood of a young pig. In contrast with this, the im purity which came from contact with the dead re quired only ceremonial washings to set it aside.
If it were a city that demanded purification, the rites were far more complex. It was first neces sary to remove the cause of impurity, as the graves were all removed from the island of Delos, or again as the Alkmaionidai were all driven from Athens before the city could be purified from their sacrilegious act. In the latter instance, we read, the next step was to bring black and white sheep to the altars where the sacrilegious murders had been committed; there they were released, and wherever one lay down it was sacrificed on the spot to the god in whose precinct it was. A hu man sacrifice is also mentioned by some writers. By these means the city was purified and the plague was stayed.
Thus by water and by blood, as in special cases by different herbs or by burning sulphur, the taint of evil was removed, and men might again ex pect favor from the gods.
2. General Character of Greet Religion— Its Place in the History of Religion.
It is the work of religion to explain the world in its spiritual meaning as science explains it from the purely intellectual side.
In the first place, Greek religion furnished a spiritual interpretation of nature. The nature side of most of the greater gods has been so ob scured that we cannot be confident what it' was; indeed, in many instances, we cannot be quite sure that they ever did represent powers of nature. We do know, however, that the Greek peopled all nature with spiritual beings; the hills and the woods, the rivers, the sea. the winds he regarded as the expression. in each instance, of a life like his own, only superior. Thus he felt a kinship be tween all that was useful; beautiful, wonderful, terrible, in nature and his own spirit. The world was made intelligible and human by religion; to use the happy phrase of a recent writer. religion
made man at home in the world. In such a world not only could his mind work freely and use the objects of nature with confidence, but the spiritual side of his nature could also expand. For the Greek gods were not merely personified powers of nature, but full and coinplete persons, with the emotions and passions of man, so that a broad spiritual relation connected them with man. Alan felt himself also to be a part of nature, and the deification of his own powers—his love in Aphro dite, his intellect in Athena, his warlike impetu osity- in Ares—contributed farther to "make him at home in the world." Secondly, Greek religion met man's needs di rectly by creating beings which watched over particular phases of his life and activity. Sosipolis, Orthopolis, Alalkomencis were "city-protecting divinities ;" Auxesia, Phytos, Phorbas, gods of growth, as Erichthonios, "earth-breaker," was a god of plowing; AI y I linzalis, .41phito were named from the grinding of the wheat, latros and Paian from their aid in healing; Taraxippos kept the charioteer's horses from fright, and Telcsid romos brought them speedily to the goal of the race. Such gods find no distinct place in the Greek pantheon, although as Koztrotrophos, "child-nurturer," became one phase of Demeter's being, so many of these special gods were in a manner taken up into the great gods of Greece. And these gods. like the divinities of nature, fur nished an environment for the development of man's spiritual nature.
Thirdly, the social order was reflected in the world of the gods. All the elements of civiliza tion and of culture were taken up into the Greek gods, so that' they became the embodiment of all that was truly Greek, the concrete expression of the excellencies, and the faults also, of Greek life. The gods were so closely connected with the state that patriotism received the sanction of religion; art and literature became all but religious modes of expression; and at length philosophy made the daring attempt to re-create the gods—an attempt that was logical enough, for the gods were what man had made them, but yet it was necessarily all destructive. The result of the intimate relation between Greek culture and the Greek gods was a peculiar sympathy between god and worshiper. Greek religion not only brought' order into the world, but this order was along the lines of every day Greek life, and it responded to every act of the individual, intellectual, xsthetic, or distinctly religious. As the natural world developed the body and the senses, so the divine world was a home for man's spirit.