8 Eafael Karsten. [N:o 1 



value as a source of pleasure ^). Poisouous herbs, or potions 

 made of them, were considered divine on account of their 

 harmful or health-giving efFects on the human body 2). Simi- 

 larly sulphur seems to have been called divine, as Plutarch 

 tells US, because of its wonderful smell which is similar to 

 that which bodies struck by lightning emit, such bodies being 

 by the Grreeks generally regarded as sacred 3). 



In a systematic study of early Greek religion it may, 

 however, be proper to begin by examining the stock- and stone- 

 worship which, no doubt, marks the most primitive stratum of 

 it. The early Greeks, like all uncivilised peoples ia ancient 

 or modern times, did not make the same distinction between 

 animate and inanimate matter or between man and the lower 

 creation as a more advanced mind would do. They not only re- 

 garded the animals as practically on a lootiug of equality witli man, 

 but even treated inanimate things as responsible agents, endowed 

 with conscious will. When, after his defeat in Europé, Xerxes 

 commanded that the Hellespont should be stricken with three 

 hundred lashes as a punishment for the calamity it had 

 brought upon the Persian fleet *), he was certainly not in the 

 eyes of the Greeks yielding to a ridiculous superstition which 

 they themselves had long ago rejected. The classical Hellenes 

 themselves shared the same primitive view. Pausanias relätes 

 that when Theagenes died, one of his enemies went up to 

 his statue every night and whipped the brass. At last, howe- 

 ver, the statue checked his insolence by falling on him ; but 

 the son of the deceased prosecuted the statue for murder 

 herein following one of the laws of Draco ^). The same author 

 writes that „lifeless things are said to have inflicted of their 

 own accord a righteous punishment on men", and mentions 



^) Unknowa Trag. 570: olvög f^tneioe öaijjiövcov vjtéQtaTog. Aelian- 

 Vnr. hist. XII, 31. 



^) So, for instance, the poisonous herb helleborc, which was given to 

 melancholy and fraatic persons, being a nobel errhine and purgcr of the brain. 

 (Apul. Metamorph. X, 25.) 



') Plut. Q^cesf. convio. IV, 3 ; p. 665. 



*) Herod. VII, 35. 



') Paus. VI, 11, 6. Cf. V, 27, 10. 



