GREEK RELIGION (ANCIENT), the most poetical and most humane of polytheisms, presents itself in historical times as a plastic worship of nature, with its visible objects and its invisible powers; of abstract notions, sensations, propensities, and actions; of tutelary Numina, household or family gods; and of exalted men or heroes. Composed of such widely discordant elements, this great Hellenic pantheon offers yet a unity so harmonious and consistent in its minutest parts, that its origin is even more difficult to trace than that of the people itself, which, front a conglomeration of heterogeneous races and tribes was fused in an incredibly short space of time into one great family of equal propensities and of equal gifts. This question of the origin of the Greek religion has indeed been a point at issue from the time of Herodotus to our own. While he, together with many others, pronounced it to be almost completely an importation front Egypt, a strong antochtlionic school held it to be homesprung; and these two antago nistic views—the east and Hellas—have, in a more or less modified form, found their foremost representatives in modern days, in Creuzer on the one side, and Otfried Muller on the other. The new and all-important science of comparative mythology, however, may be said to have set this point at rest; for it- -proves almost to demonstra tion, that the fundamental ideas of the Greek religion are due to the regions n.w. of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock (see AltYAN RACE); while subsequent col onists introduced gods from Peenicia, Egypt, and other parts of the east. All these, with the host of personified fancies and ideals begotten by the poets at home, were soon amalgamated into one great system. Yet those foreign elements, so far from detract ing from the originality of the Greeks, show in a still stronger light what brilliancy of conception and power of imagination, what harmony and plasticity, had fallen to the share of the inhabitant8 of Hellas; a land which in itself, by the immense variety of glorious scenery of sea and sky, wood and mountain, river and bay, rock and island, contributed not a little to quicken that immortal youthfulness by which they were so aptly and strikingly called throughout the east the people of Yavan (Sanscr. Vuvan = Juvenis = Young). The gods, from the moment they touched these shores, from dead symbols became living realities, with all the qualities and sensations, aims and actions, of a living individuality, and that of the highest, most noble, and divine frame exist ing—man. Anthropomorphism, indeed, is the chief characteristic of Greek religion. The brute creation—which to the cast was something to be exalted, and to be adopted as the type of divinity—furnished the Greeks only with a few attributes for their humanly-shaped gods. But man, the ideal of creation, was deficient iu one thing: the duration of his life was limited—and in this the gods differed from him: they were immortal. In all other respects, they were likehimself: they loved and hated, they " trans gressed" and suffered. No ideal moral code existed with the Greeks, the first essentially ethical people though they are; consequently, their gods, when they could not attain the objects of their many and strong desires in a straightforward manner, had unscrupu lous recourse to stratagem and cunning, and through their questionable practices. not uufrequently brought themselves into very undignified positions. And yet the influ ence of such unworthy conceptions of the gods was not so detrimental to the believer as at first sight might be supposed; for the Greek deities were not to be patterns for humanity; they were, through their mighty origin, their almost unbounded powers, and their immortality, exempt from the ordinary laws which must rule the dealings in the commonwealth of low, weak, dying humanity. They were a kind of exalted aris
tocracy, who could not be judged by a human standard, much less be imitated by human beings; and, after all, even they had to submit to a supreme fate (Moira) which found out their guilt, and punished it. The mortal, however, was subject to them individually; and it was his special province to fulfill the duties of piety and modesty towards them, of righteousness andjustice towards his equals. On this con dition alone, the undisturbed enjoyment of life with all its most glorious gifts was his. Retribution for evil doings followed, with rare exceptions, speedily `and irrevocably, on the earth he trod, not at some future period or in other realms. There was a hereafter, but it was a shadowy thing without life and blood, a miserable nether world of cheer less twilight. Only for very extraordinary crimes was there something like a real, fearful, and everlasting punishment in store in the hades, or the still more terrible tar tarus; while, on the other hand, only the most exalted heroes are, after their death, endowed with a new body and enjoy the pleasures of elysium. But these are very exceptional cases: " When a man is dead," says the shade of Anticled, " the flesh and the bones are left to be consumed by the flames, but the soul passes away like a dream." We cannot attempt here to enter minutely into this vast subject of Greek theology— to trace its historical development from the days when the early Pelasgians invoked, like their Persian and German kinsman, the highest god without image or temple, and the minor deities as the " Great Ones," the " Unknown Ones," the "Merciful Ones," without distinct name and shape—to the time when every sound and every sight, every thought and every deed, had a sublime significance, caused and inspired as it was by a god; when the prodigious number of clearly defined, and individually and most sumptu ously worshiped gods formed one of the mightiest impulses to the development of the arts; and from that period down to the days when the poets put prophecies of the speedy death of the gods into the mouths of their heroes; when philosophers openly declared " these things to be fancies and dreams," and religious persecutions hastened the downfall of a creed which had become adulterated by foreign elements no longer to be amalgamated—until Christianity stepped in, and not satisfied with deposing the gods of Greece, sent them, branded with the names of "evil powers," or "demons," in the sense of eastern " Satans," to perdition. Much less can we attempt here a minute enumeration and description of all the deities, their genesis and history, with the myths and legends, traditional or invented in historical times by poets and philosophers, or dwell on the immense influence of Greek religion on other religions, the Christian among them. It is only desirable here to trace a faint outline of the divine common wealth, and the outward forms of the religious worship of the Greeks, in the so-called classical period. Some account of the principal deities will be found hi special articles.