XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion 29 



Of all water-deities, however, the river-gods were the 

 most important, and of their worship the literary records of 

 the Greeks give us the largest number of instances. Ever- 

 changing, with constant motion and murmur, sometimes rising 

 as if in passion över their banks, sometimes shrivelling and 

 decaying as if in despair, rapid rivers are, in fact, more likely 

 than any other natural forces to suggest life and activity to 

 a mind which sees a living conscious agent in everything that 

 moves. Among all uncivilised races they have, accordingly, 

 been looked upon as powerful deities which are to be pro- 

 pitiated by any body who dåres to defy their course ^) and the 

 classical peoples in this respect formed no exception, We 

 know that the sacerdotal office of the po7itifices among the 

 Romans probably originated in the necessity of performing 

 certain rites in honour of the Tiber, whose anger was provoked 

 every time its current was traversed by bridges ^). But among 

 the Greeks, as will be presently seen, similar ideas largely 

 prevailed. 



Among the motley crowd of divinities who meet us in 

 the Homeric songs the river-gods hold an important place. It 

 is true that these songs do not display a reallj^ primitive stra- 

 tum of religions thought. The Homeric gods are not vaguely 

 conceived spirits but plastically formed personal divinities who 

 appear on the earth and interfere in the affairsofmen. How- 

 ever the purely animistic origin of many of these divinities is most 

 obvious and this especially holds good with regard to the river- 

 gods. Thus we cannot fail to recognise the belief of lower barbaric 

 culture, poetically transformed, in Homer's description of the 

 great Olympian assembly in the hall of cloud-compelling Zeus, 

 to which, among others, came all the Rivers, save Oceanos, 

 as well as the nymphs who dwell in lovely groves and at 

 the springs of streams ^). We may detect the same primitive 

 traces in the record of the contest of Achilles with the outraged 



') See Tylor, Primitive Culture, II, pp. 191, 192. 



^) Cf. Varro, 1. 1. V, 83: Pontifices . . . ego a ponte arbitror, nani ab 

 his sublicius est factus primum et restitutus saepe, cum ideo sacra et iils et 

 cis Tiberira non mediocri ritu fiant. See also Dion. Halic. II, 73; III, 45. 

 Compare Preller, Römische Mythologie, II, p, 134. 



') Horn. 11. XX, 7 sqq. 



