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Greek thought hung precariously between the two, and was
always more or less at the mercy of the individual interpreter and of the
relative strength of his tastes and passions. So we shall find it all
through the course of these studies. It would be preposterous to deny
some sort of idealism to almost any pagan who has ever lived. The
contrast between pagan and idealist is largely a matter of proportion
and preponderating tendency: yet the lines are clear enough to enable
us to work with this distinction and to find it valuable and illuminating.
The fundamental fact to remember in studying any of the myths of
Greece is, that we have here a composite and not a simple system of
thought and imagination. There are always at least two layers: the
primitive, and the Olympian which came later. The primitive
conceptions were those afforded by the worship of ghosts, of dead
persons, and of animals. Miss Jane Harrison has pointed out in great
detail the primitive elements which lingered on through the Olympian
worship. Perhaps the most striking instance which she quotes is the
Anthesteria, or festival of flowers, at the close of which the spirits were
dismissed with the formula, "Depart, ye ghosts, the revels now are
ended." Mr. Andrew Lang has suggested that the animals associated
with gods and goddesses (such as the mouse which is found in the hand,

or the hair, or beside the feet of the statues of Apollo, the owl of
Minerva, etc.) are relics of the earlier worship. This would satisfactorily
explain much of the disreputable element which lingered on side by
side with the noble thoughts of Greek religion. The Olympians, a
splendid race of gods, representing the highest human ideals, arrived
with the Greeks; but for the sake of safety, or of old association, the
primitive worship was retained and blended with the new. In the
extreme case of human sacrifice, it was retained in the form of
surrogates--little wooden images, or even actual animals, being
sacrificed in lieu of the older victims. But all along the line, while the
new gods brought their spiritual conceptions, the older ones held men
to a cruder and more fleshly way of thinking. There is a similar blend
of new and old in all such movements as that of the Holy Grail and the
Arthurian legends, where we can see the combination of Christian and
pagan elements so clearly as to be able to calculate the moral and
spiritual effect of each. Thus we have in the early Greek mythology
much of real paganism involved in the retention of the old and
earth-bound gods which attached themselves to the nobler Olympians
as they came, and dragged them down to the ancient level.
This blending may be seen very clearly in the mythology of Homer and
Hesiod. There it has been so thorough that the only trace of
superposition which we can find is the succession of the dynasties of
Chronos and Jupiter. The result is the most appalling conception of the
morality of celestial society. No earthly state could hope to continue for
a decade upon the principles which governed the life of heaven; and
man, if he were to escape the sudden retributions which must inevitably
follow anything like an imitation of his gods, must live more decently
than they.
Now Homer was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as society
improved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlessly
towards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of the
gods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of the
sixth century B.C. led to various ways of explaining the old stories.
Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving religion in a sunny good temper
which will make the best of the situation whatever it is. Æschylus is

sombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side of
the gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name of
humanity his scepticism rises in protest.
It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at the various
theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths. The
commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalities stand for
the individual powers of nature. Most especially, the gods and
goddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning,
summer and winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny
that the personification of Nature had a large share in all mythology.
The Oriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The
Baals of Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the
manifestations of the fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese
dragon is the symbol of the spiritual mystery of life