XLIX] Stndies in primitive Greek religion. 99 



and hail, the clouds, the ouranian winds and so forth. 

 There was developed one mighty supreme being who be- 

 came the ruler of all these and other celestial pheno- 

 mena, who thundered and sent the lightning, who snow- 

 ed, who hailed, who gathered the clonds, who let loose 

 the winds; a being whose honour naturally grew as his po- 

 wer increased. And Zeus, having once become the highest 

 god for the Greek people, it is easy to understand that 

 his cult to a certain degree threw the cult of the lower 

 nature spirits into the shade. There appeared a tendency to 

 connect Zeus and all manifestations of his activity with terres- 

 trial phenomena, a tendency which was aided by the fact that 

 there really existed or seemed to exist numerous connections 

 between heaven and earth. The lightning which struck the 

 ground, a stone or a tree; the rain, the hail, winds which 

 seemed to communicate between the upper and the nether re- 

 gions, meteors falling from the heavens, such phenomena as 

 well as other innumerable incidental associations of ideas 

 which easily occur to an undeveloped mind, may have given 

 rise to various combinations of this kind. T hus we hear of a 

 Zsvg x^ovwg, and a Zeus connected with various groves, trees 

 caves, stones, waters; Zeus was superimposed upon oracular 

 deities, there arose a Zsvg oqioq and a Zevg oQxiog to whom 

 tho Greek peasant began in time to appeal instead of to the 

 local nature spirits. Similarly the sun-god and the moon-god, 

 Apollo and Hecate, came to have their chtonic aspect and 

 were connected with certain localities and chtonic cults. 



But on the other hand it must be borne iu mind that 

 the Olympian cult never entirely overlaid the worship of lo- 

 wer chtouic and hypochtonic beings and that Greek poly- 

 theism never existed in the sense that all deities worshipped 

 were thought of as personal beings. As pointed out in 

 the introductory chapter and as shown in the course of this 

 inquiry the animistic stage was never wholly superseded. Even 

 with regard to the heavenly bodies and ^phenomena, out of 

 which the principal gods were developed, we may say that 

 anthropomorphism never became as complete as, for in- 

 stance, the Homeric songs seem to indicate. Mythological per- 

 sonification and poetical fancies must not be confounded with 



