XLIX| Studies in primitive Grreek religion. 9 



as a famous instance of this the sword of Cambyses ^), At Athens 

 there was a special tribunal for the purpose of punishing in- 

 auimate objects which had accidentally beeu the cause of in- 

 jury or death^). Demosthenes stares that if a stone or a piece 

 of wood or iron or any such tliing fell and struck a man, 

 that object was brought to trial at the court of Prytaneum ^). 

 Plato, in his Laws, lays down the following rule: „lf any 

 lifeless thing deprive a man of life, except in the case of a thun- 

 derbolt or other fatal dart sent from the gods, — whether a man 

 is killed by lifless objects falling upon him, or by his falling 

 upon them, the nearest of kin shall appoint the nearest neigh- 

 bour to be a judge, and thereby acquit himself and the whole 

 family of guilt. And he shall cast forth the guilty thing 

 beyond the börder" *). 



Bearing this in mind, we shall easier understand even 

 the worship of inanimate thing, like stones, stocks caves and 

 trees, which seems to have played such an important part in 

 the earliest Greek religion. Not always is uncivilised man dar- 

 ing enough to treat the inanimate object as in some of the 

 iustances just mentioned. Where there is a mysterious power 

 contained in a thing which is considered strong enough to in- 

 fluence effectively human welfare, the said object is in fact 

 raised to the rank of a deity and far from attempting to 

 compel and intimidate him by foul means the savage endea- 

 vours to attain his good-will by prayers and offerings. 



For a traveller in ancient Greece in classical times and 

 even låter it was probably a most common thing to meet 

 natural objects and places which in one way or another were 

 indicated as sacred. Here and there, as Apulejus ^) intimates, 

 there was an altar encircled with flowers, a cave covered 

 with leaves, an oak laden with horns, a beech-tree adorned 

 with hides, a hillock consecrated by a precinct, a tree-stump 

 roughly formed into an image, a mound still smoking from 



') Paus. I, 28, 11. 



2) Arist. De rep. Athen. c. 57. Pollux, VIII, 90; 120. Paus. L 28, 10 



ä) Demosth. Ädv. Aristocr. c. 76; p. 645. 



*) Plato, Legg. IX, 873. 



*) Apul. Florid. c. 1. 



