100 Rafael Karsten. [N:o 1 



practical religion. Bearing this in mind we can understand 

 why these poems, although they mark the beginning of litera- 

 ture seem to reveal a far more advanced stage of religion tlian 

 many låter Greek literary records. Thus in Homer we meet 

 with the comparatively advanced notion that the winds are 

 seni by Zeus ^), the sole ruler of all heavenly phenomena, and 

 yet there are evidences that in much låter times the winds were 

 still propitiated with primitive rites as independent living 

 agents. Similary in post-classical times at Trapezountia in 

 Arcadia Pausanias witnessed a primitive worship of lightning, 

 hurricanes, and thunder without any reference being made to 

 a personal thundergod as their originator ^). We hear of a 

 personal god of the sea, Poseidon, and yet the fact that through- 

 out the whole of Antiquity there existed a very simple wor- 

 ship of the element of water itself gives us to understand that 

 this personification rather belonged to mythology than to 

 religion. 



It has been established that after the invasion of the 

 Olympian deities the Greeks recognised two forms of ritual 

 which they were careful to separata from each other. Signi- 

 ficant on this point is a passage trom Isokrates, the Orator, 

 wherein an explicit distinction is made between two different 

 kinds of gods, those who are the souroe of good things to 

 men, called Olympians, and those who are the authors of ca- 

 lamities and who have harsher titles. The former, Isocrates 

 says, are honoured with altars and temples and burnt-sacri- 

 iices, to the latter on the other hand ceremonies of aversion 

 are performed ^). The same point is brought out in a state- 

 ment in Plato's Laivs, where it is prescribed in what order the 

 gods should be worshipped in a state. In the first place the 

 due service has to be paid to the Olympian gods, the gods of 

 the state ; next to these honour should be given to the chtonic 

 gods. Moreover a wise man would do reverence to the demons, 

 after which should follow the cult of heroes and the private 

 cult of ancestral gods *). Considering that it is the ideal of a 



>) Cf. Horn. 11. XII, 253, 278. XIII, 795. XVI, 297, 3fi4. 



*) Paus. VIII, 29, 1. 



*) Isocr. V, 117. 



*) Plato, Legg. IV, 717. 



