GREEK GODS, The. Until within the last half century our earliest knowledge of the gods of Greece was obtained from the Homeric poems, but the excavations which were inaugu rated at Troy by Schliemann in 1871, and con tinued by him and many others at Mycenn and at numerous other sites in Greece proper, and which more recently have been prosecuted in Crete and on the western coast of Asia Minor, have revealed to us many monuments of the second and some even of the third millenium before our era. These monuments show us that in the second millenium, B.C., the inhabitants of these lands had already conceived of some at least of their divinities in anthropomorphic forms; that is to say, they thought of their gods and represented them in the fashion of human beings, so that when the Hellenic civili zation of the later period developed, the people were in many ways in an advanced religious stage.
On the other hand there survived the ancient Greeks to the latest period many primi tive elements, such as the worship of sacred stones, trees, symbols, etc. The monuments of the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations seem to give evidence of widespread animal worship and of the cult of monsters, part man and part beast. This worship survived in part into the historic period; probably some of the sacred animals of later times bear witness to it; even in the 5th century, the god Dionysus was cele brated in song as a divine bull. In agricultural festivals also many primitive rites survived, such as the widespread phallos worship. There fore Greek religion of the classical period and through all the centuries to the end of antiq uity contained much that belongs to the lower strata of religious development side by side with higher concepts of divinity.
The Origin of the As to the origin of the Greek gods, it is impossible to speak with certainty on many points. Without question the worship of natural phenomena, of inanimate objects, of ancestors, and of sacred animals and trees all contributed to make up the sum total, but this list does not exhaust all the factors £which entered into Greek religious thought and expression. To the Greek the
world was filled with a multitude of super human beings who were responsible for all phenomena. Most of these divinities were limited and local, but since some were mani fested in every field of activity, man was always in social relations to them; he was obliged to seek their favor, or to propitiate them by offer ings and by prayer. A few gods among the total attained to a universial character, so that they were worshiped in every part of the Greek world; but, even so, most of these gods had seats to which their worship was especially attached, as Athena to Athens, or Hera to Argos.
Their Character and In the 'Iliad) and 'Odyssey) we find a group of gods bound together in an organization similar to that of the Homeric state. At the head is Zeus, the father of gods and of men, whose power far surpasses that of any other divinity, but who, however, is not wholly omnipotent or omniscent. To him the elements are subject and his nod makes the universe tremble. He is th.. chief of all: he presides over his aristo cratic state like a Homeric king, while the other Olympian divinities make up the council, and the minor gods form the popular assembly. With him Apollo and Athena hold the first rank. Hera, the sister and wife of Zeus, however, be longs in the second with Poseidon, the god of the sea. Ares and Aphrodite represent the two passions of rage in battle and of sexual love. Artemis, the sister of Apollo, is of lower rank, as is Hephaestus, the god of fire. Hermes is a kind of upper servant of the great gods, who executes their commissions; there are still other divinities of inferior position.
Demeter and Dionysus, who are so important in later centuries, have not yet been admitted to Olympus in the Homeric epics. The god of the lower world is Hades; he presides in the realm of the dead, which is conceived to be beneath the earth.