RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS.
132
Nature was peopled for him with volition, and design. a countless multitude of such invisible powers, some inhabiting the earth, some the heaven, some the sea, some the dark and dreadful region beneath the earth, into which the sun's " Of such beings," as Mr. Grote rays could not penetrate. life,
observes,*
" there were
numerous
varieties,
and many grada-
tions both in power and attributes ; there were differences of age, sex, and local residence, relations, both conjugal and filial, between them, and tendencies sympathetic as well as repugnant. The gods formed a sort of political community of their own, which had its hierarchy, its distributions of ranks and duties, its contentions for power, and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals. The great Olympic gods were, in fact, only the most exalted amongst an aggregate of quasi-human or ultra-human personages daemons, heroes, nymphs, eponymous genii, identified with each river, mountain, cape, town, village, or known circumscription of territory, besides horses, bulls, and dogs, of immortalbreed and peculiar attributes, monsters of strange
lineaments and combinations 'Gorgons, and Hydras, and and besides ' gentile and ancestral deities,' Chinueras dire and 'peculiar beings whose business it was to co-operate or impede in the various stages of each trade or business.' Numerous additions might be made to this list. Not only had each mountain chain and mountain-top a separate presiding god or goddess, but troops of Oreads inhabited the mountain regions, and disported themselves among them not only was there a river-god to each river, a Simois and a Scamander, an Enipeus and an Achelotis, but every nameless stream and brooklet had its water nymph, every spring and fountain its naiad ; wood-nymphs peopled the '
;
glades and dells of the forest regions air-gods moved in the zephyrs and the breezes each individual oak had its dryad. To the gods proper were added the heroes, gods of " :i lower grade, and these are spoken of as thirty thousand in number, guardian da>mons, spirits of departed heroes, who are continually walking over earth, veiled in darkness, watching the deeds of men, and dispensing weal or woe." f It is this multiplicity of the objects of worship, together ;
;
" t
"
History of Greece," vol. i. pp. 403-466. " of Greece," vol. i. p. 235. Thirlwall,
History " Works and Days," 1. 250
Compare Hesiod,