98 Eafael Karsten. [N:o 1 



the Olympian deities are for instance with Aeschylus called 

 „younger gods" vsdorsQOL d^eoi, and thought of as new comers 

 who bad thrust from their thrones the older chtonian åj- 

 nasty ^). Such myths of the G-reeks are probably something 

 more than an arbitrary plaj' of their imagination. In fact, 

 we know that in the course of Greek religions evolution the 

 lower chtonic and hypochtonic beings were to a certain de- 

 gree overlaid by the heavenly deities, who became by and by 

 personal gods and in the same degree more important in the 

 cults of the Greek states. To examine in detail the rise of 

 Greek polytheism and the wanderings of the Olympian cults 

 would fall outside the scope of the present inquir3\ But 

 there is a good deal of probability in the theory set forth by 

 Dr. Kern, that the supreme god, Zeus, was origiually nothing 

 but a Thessalia,n local god, being created by those princeh' 

 families who in the beginning of the heroic era settled and 

 founded their sovereignties in that land. From thence the 

 cult of the highest Olympian god was gradually extended to 

 other Hellenic states, especially through the Homeric poems, 

 until at last he became the official god of all Hellenes 2). On 

 the other hand we have to take into consideration that the 

 laws which have been at work in the development from the 

 animistic to the polytheistic stages have been purely psycholo- 

 gical as well. In the human mind itself there is an inherent 

 tendency to simplify, to unite and to systematise the various 

 elements of its perception. Only at somewhat higher stages 

 of culture, after having attained to a comparatively develo- 

 ped power of abstraction and generalisation, is man able to 

 combine those individual ideas which together constitute 

 tbé notion of personality. Im Greek religions evolution 

 these principles have been at work for instance in the 

 gradual transition from the divine impersonal sky to its 

 anthropomorphic deity. There were, then. no longer spe- 

 cial supernatural beings for thunder and lightning, rain 



Stob. I, p. 484. Porph. De nntro Nymph. c. XI: Aia^e^atovvTai öé ZLveg xal 

 lä ev åÉQi xal ovgavM åT[J.ois iQicpea&ai éx vafidrcov xal Ttoxafi&v xal räv 

 åXXcov åva9vfiLdaecov. Cf. supra, p. 59. 



') Aesch. Eumen. 153, 164. 



''■) Kern, Die Anfänge der hellenisehen Religion, p. 24, 



