XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion. 43 



had a TSi^ievöc re xai ^ioifiög at its sources ^). These which, as 

 it were, gave birth to the whole river, were of course, also the 

 sources af its supernatural power. For a similar reason the 

 river Cephisus had a temenos at the lake Copais into which 

 it emptied itself 2). 



With these statements we may compare a passage in 

 Plato's Laws, where it is prescribed how religions worship 

 should be instituted. Plato here enacts that the legislator 

 „should assign to the several districts some god, or demon, 

 or hero, and in the distribution of the soil should give to 

 these first their chosen domain with all things fitting, and that 

 the inhabitants of the several districts should meet at iixed 

 times", and perform sacred rites ^). As a matter of fact such 

 sacred places soon grew into religious centres and temples 

 were raised on them. But temples are of comparatively late 

 appearance in the history of religion. Here we have to note 

 that the téi-ISVoi were not originally combined with personal 

 deities whose conneetion with them was more or less incidental, 

 but were made in honour of the invisible nature spirits, the 

 permanent dwelling-places of which they were supposed to be. 



There was another primitive ceremony among the ancient 

 Greeks which has some bearing ou their animistic belief. The 

 Greeks, like many other primitive peoples, were in the habit 

 of raising stones or stakes on the boundaries of fields or on the 

 frontiers of countries upon which occasions certain rites were 

 performed, There has been a diversity of opinion as to the 

 real meaning of this ceremony and the cause of the religious 

 awe and veneration with which these boundary-marks were 

 regarded. Whereas some writers have found a simple ex- 

 planation in the interest which everybody felt in preserving his 

 boundaries unaltered, Dr. de Visser believes that these stones 



M Horn. 11. XXIII, 147. 



*) Pind. Pyth. XII, 27: Ttutvoi liacpiOLÖog. — It was considered 

 especially necessary to establish a cult of the local spirits at places where 

 new towns were founded. Probablj- it was for this reason that the Acropolis of 

 Athens became a sacred place and was called the Tifievo; of Pallas (Anstoph. 

 Lysistr. 483), just as Pyrsanos, „the town abounding in wheat" was called 

 the T. of Demeter (Hom. II. II, 696), and Syracuse the t. of Åres (Pind. 

 Pyth. II, 2). 



^) Plato, Legg. V, 738. Cf. VI, 771. 



