All these divinities are represented as stronger, larger, and wiser than mortals; but not wholly superior to them, for like them they are subject to the passions of the mind and body. Their pre-eminence over mortals con sists chiefly in their immortality. This Homeric pantheon seems to have been created in part by a selection, made from the greater local divinities, who were universalized by the= and given the characters which his art for all later time. The Homeric poems ac quired such universal influence wherever Greeks went, that the chief local divinity was assimi lated to one of the Homeric gods and given the characteristics which that divinity possesses in the epics. At Olympia Phidias fashioned his Zeus after the Homeric description, and at Athens he represented Athena in the manner in which the epic bard had made her.
These great epics then represented the gods, in a sense, in an artificial organization. Hesiod, however, introduces us to a somewhat different world and to conditions as they really existed. We find in him many divinities not mentioned in Homer; and the worship of the dead and of heroes, which the epic poet passed over, is made much of by the later writer.
It is evident that Zeus was, from an un known period, the most universal of the Greek gods. The superior position which he occupies in Homer was still further exalted, until he became altogether supreme, and even appears as the all-embracing divinity including all minor gods, comprehending within himself all divine powers. Indeed at times the Greeks approached monotheism. Yet it is necessary to bear in mind that to the ordinary Greek his local gods were most important, and although he might recognize a similarity between his divinity and the same divinity in some other place, his at titude remained very much like that of the Greek peasant to-day toward his local saint.
The greater gods like Zeus and Athena doubtless absorbed countless numbers of local divinities, and yet even these gods retained in a way their local habitations to the end of paganism. Olympus was the home of Zeus above all other places. The Athenians, at least, regarded Athens as the home of Athena, while Hera was domiciled in Argos from unknown antiquity. Apollo had two homes, at Delphi and at Delos; the former was his chief oracular center from which for centuries his pronounce ments, as interpreted by his priests, influenced affairs to the remotest borders of the Greek world; at Delos the god presided over the ancient religious centre of the J'Egean. As clepios had his great home at Epidaurus in Argolis. To this place for centuries the sick and cripples came to be healed by a vision or a miracle, and in later times by regular thera peutic treatment. A branch was established on the island of Cos, and early in the 3d cen tury the Romans induced the god to begin the practice of his art on the island in the Tiber.
At Eleusis, northwest of Athens, there was celebrated at an early period an agricultural festival in honor of Demeter and her daughter. Out of these agricultural rites, intended to secure abundant crops through the favor of the goddesses, arose the Eleusian mysteries in which the initiates received assurance of a happy life hereafter. Similar mysteries, presided over by these two divinities, or by others, existed in many parts of Greece, but none attained to the importance of those at Eleusis.
The heroes formed a class of superhuman beings midway between mortals and the gods, often half-divine by origin; they received celestial honors after death. The most famous of these were Hercules and Theseus, both of whom undertook severe toils for the advan tage of mortals and so conferred lasting benefit on mankind, in return for which they received divinity.
In the Minoan and Mycenean periods it is clear that the spirits of the dead were wor shipped or propitiated by offerings at the tombs; these practices were universal in later Greece. Gifts of wine, milk, and honey were regularly made, and the nearest of kin cele brated anniversary meals in honor of the de ceased. In general the spirits of the dead were regarded as baneful powers rather than benefi cent divinities.
With the rise and development of philo sophic thought the enlightened Greeks greatly modified their belief in the gods of the common people, so that in Plato we find something very akin to monotheism. Later philosophies, like the Stoic, provided for a multitude of gods, al though they asserted the supremacy and all comprehensive character of the divine prin ciple, so that under the Roman Empire the educated part of the ancient world held to a henotheistic view, which, however, did not ex clude an elaborate polytheism that is to say, they believed that the divine was one, but that it manifested itself in countless ways and in countless places, and that for convenience it was allowable to give to these various manifesta tions of the One the names of the many gods of popular belief. Such views, however, were limited to the more highly educated, for com mon men continued to believe in a vast number of individual divinities throughout antiquity, and indeed brought this belief over into aris tianity. See GREEK MYTHOLOGY; GREEK RE LIGION.
Bibliography.— Adam, J., 'The Religious Teachers of Greece) (2d ed., 1909); Campbell, L., (Religion in Greek 'Literature) (1898) • banks, A. 'A Handbook of Greek Religion) (1910) ; Farnefl, L. R., (The Cults of the Greek States) (5 vols., 1896-1907) and (The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion) (1912) ; Gruppe, 0., (Griechische Mythologie and Religionsges chichtel (2 vols., 1897-1906); Moore, C. H., (Religious Thought of the Greeks) (1916); Stengel, P., (Die griechischen (2d ed., 1898).