TREE-WORSHIP 31 



gods of Greece had taken human form, when 

 the statue had replaced the tree or pillar, and 

 the mere fence or dolmen-shrine had been 

 superseded by the temple, traces of the earlier 

 worship still survived, especially where the 

 Mycenaean element in the population of classi- 

 cal Greece was the strongest. "The Pelasgic 

 Zeus," he says, ''still abode among the oaks 

 of Dodona. Beside the Castalian Spring the 

 sacred plane-tree of Zeus Agamemnon and 

 the holy stone of refuge beneath it might claim 

 precedence of the bay and omphalos of the 

 Delphic God. The plane of Helena at Sparta 

 and that of Menelaos at Kaphyae in Arcadia 

 take us back to the same prehistoric stratum of 

 the population. The great Arcadian Zeus, 

 whose only shrine was the oak-woods of Mount 

 Lykaeos, otherwise found his material shape in 

 the twin columns that rose upon its topmost 

 height towards the rising sun, in front of the 

 mound that stood for his altar." 



We may be straying into a by-path — which 

 may be pardonable, however, in such a book as 

 this — when we note that in these earlier beliefs 

 we find the reason why the Greek attributed 

 life to the statues he had made. The Mycen- 



