Without entering into the principal division of the gods into heavenly, terrestrial, and maritime, we will briefly mention the supreme council of the 12 national gods, who, together with a vast male and female retinue, dwelt on the heights of Mt. Olympus, around its highest peak. This, reaching into the sky, (Ouranos), was inhabited by Zeus, the son of Chronos, the highest, mightiest, and wisest being, king and father of gods and filen: who watches over all human doings, principally over hospitality and the sacredness of oaths. Second in power is his brother Poseidon, the shaker of the earth, the ruler of the sea and all the waters of the earth. Next stands Apollo, the son of Zeus and Selo (darkness); he is (as Phoibos) the sun, and darts his rays or arrows as god of the chase, as god of destruction, as well as of beneficence. But he is not god only of the physical, but also of the mental light; hence to him belongs the insight into future events. He is the god of oracles, but, as such, equivocal (loxias); further, god of poetical inspiration, song, and music—leader of the muses. He is one of the sublimest figures among the gods. In his love and in his hatred, he is always enshrouded in a sacred dignity and majesty, of which even the most ribald fiction stood in awe. • The god of the terrestrial fire, which in his person has been thrown from heaven to earth, is Hephmstus. His workshops are volcanoes, where metals are forged and wrought by him into artful forms; and as volcanic soil best matures wine, to him was assigned the office of cupbearer of the gods. Ares presides over war. Battles, slaughter, rapine, and the doom of cities are his delight. Hermes—originally, perhaps, the symbol of animal generation—appears as patron of the herds. He is the guardian of the roads and the messenger of the gods; he is, moreover, the invente• of the lyre and gymnastics. He is the presiding genius of commerce, and, as such, a knave, even a thief. With Zeus is coupled Hera, his sister and wife—beautiful, majestic, but exacting and quarrelsome. The foremost daughter of Zeus, and who sprang from his head in full armor, is Athene, who stands in a twofold relation to the light, physical as well as mental— whence she becomes the goddess of understanding and wisdom—and to the water (Tritogeneia); hence also her rivalry with Poseidon. The two elements, the warm and the moist, giving rise to the fertility of the earth, she is the goddess of the grain and of the crops; she is likewise goddess of war, and presides over female handiwork. Artemis, the twin-sister of Apollo, shares with him the chase and the light; her attri butes are a torch and the moon. The Phenician goddess Astarte had risen from the foamy waves on the Greek shores as Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty, of love, of voluptuousness. Her counterpart was the chaste maiden-goddess Hestia, in whom was personified the hearth as the center of the house and family. From the ever lasting fire on her altar, the colonists took the flame which was to accompany them to their new settlements. The list of the Olympians closes with Demeter or Gaia. She is the goddess of agriculture, and, consequently, of settled institutions and laws.
An indefinite number of other gods followed, some of them little inferior in power and dignity to the 12, and who sometimes, like Dionysus, the god of goat-herds and wine growers, and others, acted as the special deities of certain classes. We may men tion here Hades. •Ifelios, Hecate, Leto. Dioue, Persephone, Themis, Eos; the Charities, the Muses, the Moen% ,Protetts, the and other daimons—partly primeval local deities, partly deified powers of nature; river, mountain, and forest gods; or personified abstract notions—such as Tyche, Psyche, Hebe, Thanatos, Phobos, Hypnos, Kratos, Bia, and the like conscious or unconscious allegories. Besides these, there is a mob of deities, or rather monsters, begotten by gods—the Harpies, the Gorgons, Pegasus, Chimtera, Cerberus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx, etc.
A palpable link between gods and men is found in the heroes or demigods—i.c., men deified after death—a race sprung from the embraces of gods and the beautiful daughters of man. They became either, like Heracles (the Phenician Melkarth), founders of races, who were thus considered the sons of gods, or patrons of special trades and professions, like •Daxialus, the hems of artificers and others. The entire absence of that dark and terrible, essentially eastern, notion of an evil principle, co existent with the good, between which two rival powers the world is divided; the undaunted geniality of the Greek nature; the tendency towards humanizing the whole universe and its gods, who, again, had not disdained to ally themselves with mankind; and above all, the emancipation from an all-ruling hierarchy such as swayed the east, made the Greek religion dogmatically, as well as practically, one of the brightest and Most joyous, no less than the mildest and most tolerant, of ancient creeds. The out ward as well as the inward worship of the gods was with them purely a personal affair. No mediator stood between the individual and the deity; every freeborn man,
woman, and child had the undisputed right to pray and to sacrifice when and where the heart prompted. The only office of the priests consisted in the care of certain sacred property, in providing for the service of the temple, in the performance of certain traditional rites, the recitation of certain ancient formulas handed down in the priestly families, and the expounding of the divine will expressed by oracles. The sacrifices (q v.), which in earlier days had consisted in the votive offering of a lock, a garland, a tablet, or such simple fruits as were yielded by the soil, gradually, as hills and groves no longer sufficed, and temples, stately and sumptuous, adorned with gorgeous statues, had been erected, grew into splendid feasts, of which the gods were invited to partake, together with those who sacrificed. Of the periodical festivals held in honor of special deities, the games and sports, the scenic representations and musical contests connected with theta, and of their peculiar influence in raising the literature, arts, and philosophy of the Greeks above that of all mankind, we have spoken under FESTIVALS, and we may further refer for particulars to such articles as DIONYSIA, PANATTIKNEIA, THESMOPITORIA, ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES (where also the subject of the Mysteries is touched upon), as also to the headings OLYMPIAN, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, and other GAMES.
One of the most characteristic provinces of the Greek cult was that belonging to the mantics or diviners. The Greek, looking upon the gods as his omnipresent friends, who were anxious to caution him against threatening dangers, or, in other words, firmly convinced by his own strong sympathy with nature, that a derangement of his own affairs, however unknown to himself, must produce a corresponding derangement in nature, could not but give some credence to the foreboding significance of natural or "supernatural" prodigies or signs. The ether or space between heaven and earth, would be the principal scene of these revelations; the storms that swept through it, the thunder that rolled around it, and the birds that floated in the blue abyss, were all so many divine omens. No less would the gods speak in the offerings immediately addressed to thenf—in the innermost entrails of the sacrificial animal—in the flame that rose from their altar—in dreams of the night, and strange sounds and portents by day; thus, in the midst of the assembled people, an ominous animal appeared, they speedily dispersed. Yet the free and clear Greek mind could hardly be suspected to have more than tolerated such practices, much less could it be supposed that it ever sank to the low level of groveling imbecility, as was the case in this matter of augury with the Etrus cans (q.v.); and Homer—though to the astonishment of Xenophon—puts into the mouth of Hector the momentous words: "One omen only is significant—to fight for one's country!" The growth of culture did indeed early free the Greeks from the vague awe of every day phenomena, and the science of mantieism fell accordingly into the hands of the lowest jugglers and soothsayers, believed in only by the herd. But in the same degree, there rose into highest importance another and exalted kind of prophecy—the oracles (q.v.). In this, the god Jupiter—afterwards principally Apollo, his son, the partaker in his counsels—spoke himself: first, in the rustling of leaves, in the clangor of brass basins, later, in distinct human words. He chose the weakest vessels—women, girls, to whom the divine gift was a burden and a pain. The Sibyl herself does not under stand what the god says through her mouth; she is unconscious—in a state of somnam bulism—of mania. But here the priests step in; they act as interpreters, as prophets, as evangelides (the progeny of some erangelos), "bringers of good tidings." Their influence, socially and politically, increased with that of the oracles themselves, espec ially when these latter, by degrees, from being casual and unforeseen, became frequent and regular. The richest gifts poured in from all parts, as it grew matter of piety to have recourse to them as means of grace. They thus rose into an institution, the importance of which. principally for the unity and consequent rise of Greece as a politi• cal power, cannot well be overrated. Besides the oldest ora*—tkat of .Jupiter at Dodoua—we may mention, Out of the 260 'which were counted throughout Greece, those of Didyma, Delos, Alm, Klaros. Larissa, Tegyra, of Tronhonius—in a subter ranean cavern—anti of Amphiareus, near Oropus, hi Attica, where the answers were revealed in dreams. But by far the most famous, and of highest import for the whole nation as such, was that of Delphi (q.v.), where the Amphietyonie council was held; where everything connected with the public worship throughout the country was settled; where the calendar itself was regulated; where, in fact, for a very long time was the real central power of Greece.—Its voice ceased under Julian the apostate.