324 ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE 



deified, as in Ares, the god of war, in Aphrodite, of 

 love, and in the god of wine, Dionysios. 



But the Greek religion, like that of so many other 

 nations, was especially a religion of cities, and, indeed, 

 was of the essence of the city. For a city may be said to 

 have been a collection of men adoring the same god by 

 rites which were deemed effective for securing the exclu- 

 sive or predominant aid and protection of the power so 

 worshipped. Hence, to neglect the due worship of such 

 a supernatural patron, was to be unfaithful to the 

 interests of the city, and even to be more or less of a 

 traitor. Any recognition of such a thing as a " right of 

 conscience" justifying a dissent from established prac- 

 tice was impossible. It could not, indeed, well have 

 been even conceived of. 



Worship was made up of prayers, processions and 

 mystic movements, the sacrifice of animals, and offerings 

 of food, and various more or less precious objects, with 

 incense, music, and song. But religion consisted in such 

 acts themselves, and not at all in morality, save in so 

 far as it was " moral " to do what was serviceable to the 

 State. To do what had to be done, not for the pleasure 

 of doing it, but because it was a thing religion demanded, 

 had necessarily to some extent a moral character, even 

 though the action in itself might have been an immoral 

 one. 



But the morality of Greece was exceedingly different 

 from our own, above all as regards the relations of the 

 sexes. This was doubtless in part the effect, and in part 

 the cause, of the great multitude of fantastic and often 

 gross fables which were related and believed concerning 

 the actions of the gods worshipped. The Greek religion 

 was not a religion of definite dogma, but of recognised 

 ritual practices, and it did not profess to give any 



