XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion. 27 



is that what to the former is merely a figure of speech is to 

 the latter sincere reality. So it was also to the early Greeks. 

 With regard to water, as with other moving objects and phe- 

 nomena of nature, they probably did not begin by assuming 

 real „spirits" who dwelt in the sea, the lake, the river. Origi- 

 nally the water was, no doubt, looked upou simply as a 

 living element, vagaely endowed with human consciousness, and 

 as divine or supernatural in the same degree as it showed its 

 power in influencing human welfare. We recognise a reminis- 

 cence of this primitive view in the reflection of Strabo when 

 he says that „the sea resembles the living creatures; just as 

 these constantly breathe in and out, so also the sea is in con- 

 stant motion with its recurring tide flowing to and fro" ^). 

 When, during the Persian war, Xerxes tried to subdue the 

 Hellespont by iron-chains, commanded that it should be stric- 

 ken with lashes and addressed it in threatening words, the 

 Greeks evidently found nothing absurd in this undertaking 

 although it may have seemed to them an outrage and a wicked 

 piece of insolence ^). Before undertaking long and dangerous 

 voyages they themselves often found it necessary to pro- 

 pitiate with valuable sacrifices the powerful deity to whose good- 

 will they were going to entrust themselves. The offerings 

 made to the sea, were of course, closely connected with those 

 made to the winds. Yet there are many direct evidences 

 of propitiatory sacrifices offered to the powerful sea-deity 

 itself 3), a custom wliich, however primitive it is, seems to 

 have lingered on throughout the whole of Antiquity. Thus 

 according to an Athenian writer the colonists who first went 

 to Lesbos were by an oracle directed to throw a virgin into 

 the sea as an ofiering to Poseidon *). Herodotus tells us that 

 Cleomenes during the Persian war sacrificed a buU to the 



^) Strabo, I, 3, 8: totxe };ä() Toig Qcöois, y^o.1 ya&åji£Q ixtlva avvex<JiS 

 åvanveZ re xat éxnvel, rov avröv rgönov xal aérr) é^ avTfjS re xai é; tavv^v 

 avvex&s i?rdAti' bgopLiKijv riva xtvovfiévi] yclv^icnv. 



^) Cf Herod. VII, 54. 



') The custom of sacrificiug to Poseidou and river-gods on altars (Hora. 

 11. XI, 728, XXIII, 146 sqq. Od. III, 6. Xenoph. Hell. IV, 5, 1. Paus. I, 

 34, 2) was evidently of låter origin. 



*) Athen. XI, 15. 



