Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



worship of Venus seem just the opposite of 

 death ; moreover it is very hazardous to imagine 

 that to any wide or popular extent among the 

 old peoples such an idea could find entrance 

 as that the giving of life includes the taking 

 away of life, and therefore that a goddess of 

 fertility includes the idea of a goddess of death. 

 Such abstract ideas were undoubtedly familiar 

 to philosophers at remote epochs, but what is 

 doubtful is the possibility of a general use of 

 any symbol representing such ideas among the 

 people. 



Italy seems to have retained some of the 

 earliest ideas common to the myths of Greece, 

 Asia Minor and the ^Egean Islands, just as it 

 affords some of the earliest alphabets of the 

 ^gean region which have disappeared from 

 the East. One might readily argue that before 

 the Greek tribes took possession of Greece and 

 the Etruscans of large parts of Italy the great 

 peninsulas which form those two countries, 

 together with most of the islands, were inhab- 



