17. The Greeks of the Heroic Age were distinguished by strong domestic attachments, generous hospitality, and a high sense of moral obligation. Every stranger was welcomed and supplied with the best cheer before he was asked his name or errand. If he came to seek protection, the family were under a still stronger obligation to receive him, even if he were an enemy; for Zeus had no mercy on him who turned away from the prayer of a suppliant.

18. The manners of the age were simple and homely. The sons of the gods cooked their own dinners, and were proud of their skill in so doing. Ulysses built his bed-chamber and constructed his raft, beside being an excellent plowman and reaper. The high-born ladies, in like manner, carded and spun the wool of their husbands' sheep, and wove it into clothing for themselves and their families; while their daughters brought water from the wells, or assisted the slaves to wash garments in the river.

19. Though simple, these people were not uncivilized. They lived in fortified towns, adorned by palaces and temples. The palaces of the nobles. were ornamented with vases of gold, silver, and bronze, and hung with rich Tyrian draperies. The warriors were protected by highly wrought and richly embellished armor. Agriculture was highly honored. Wheat, flax, wine, and oil were the chief productions.

20. The arts of sculpture and design had already made some progress. Poetry was cultivated by minstrels, who wandered from place to place singing songs of their own composition, and were sure of an honorable welcome in every palace. In this way, doubtless, the blind Homer* related the brave deeds done before the walls of Troy, and praised the heroes of that epoch in the houses of their descendants.

21. The religion of the Greeks had some of its first elements in common with that of the Hindus. Zeus, the king of gods and men, who reigned upon the snowy summit of Olympus, was doubtless the same conception with Dyaus', the Bright Ether or Serene Heaven of the Brahmin worship. But as the forces of Nature were the objects of adoration, each system borrowed its distinctive features from those of the country in which it was developed, and that of the Greeks became incomparably the more delicate and refined. The Asiatic origin of their faith was recognized by the Greeks themselves, in the fable that Zeus had brought Euro'pa, daughter of Age'nor (the same with Canaan), in her early youth, across the Hellespont and

Homer was an Asiatic Greek who lived probably about B. C. 850. Seven cities claimed the honor of his birth, which ancient critics commonly accorded to Chios, and modern, to Smyrna. Many legends describe his sorrowful and changeful life, shadowed by poverty and blindness; but we can be sure of little except that he was the author of some of the earliest and yet greatest poems in the world's literature.

through Thrace. An old tradition said that the people of the ante-Hellenic age worshiped all the gods, but gave names to none; a mystical expression of the truth that the Greeks, like most other ancient people, had descended from the worship of One God to the belief in many.

Watching with keen eyes the various and apparently conflicting operations of Nature, the Greeks, unaided by revelation, were led to believe in many distinct and sometimes hostile gods; for their science, as imperfect as their religion, had not yet arrived at a perception of unity beneath the apparent variety, nor taught them that all forces may be resolved into one. Hence we read of conflicts and jealousies among the divine inhabitants of Olympus, of which the most ignorant child should be ashamed. In more enlightened ages, philosophers severely censured this ascription of unworthy passions to the gods, and taught that they should only be conceived as serene, beneficent, and superior to human excitements.

22. Much of the mythology of the Greeks belonged merely to poetry, and had no religious character whatever. Many stories of the gods may be explained by the familiar appearances of nature. E'os, the dawn, was the sister of Helios, the sun, and Sele'ne, the moon. She dwelt upon the banks of Ocean, in a golden-gated palace, whence she issued each morning to announce to gods and men the approach of her greater brother. She was the mother of the Winds and of the Morning Star. I'ris was the messenger of the gods. The many-colored rainbow was the road over which she traveled, and which vanished, when she no longer needed it, as suddenly as it had appeared.

23. The twelve who constituted the Olympian Council were Zeus, the supreme; Posi'don, the god of the sea; Apollo, the sun-god, and patron of music, poetry, and eloquence; A'res, the god of war; Hephaes'tus, of fire and the useful arts; Her'mes, the herald of the gods, and promoter of commerce and wealth; Hera, the great goddess of Nature; Athe'na, the favorite daughter of Zeus, and patroness of all wisdom, civilization, and art; Artemis, the goddess of the moon or of hunting; Aphrodi'te, of beauty and love; Hestia, of domestic life; and Deme'ter, the bountiful mother of harvests, six gods and six goddesses.

24. Beside these, and in some cases equal in rank, were Hades, the god of the under-world; Helios and Hec ́ate; Diony'sus, the patron of the vine, whose rites bore some resemblance to the drunken So'ma worship of the Hindus; the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Memory, who presided over music, literature, and all the arts; the Oceanids and the Nereids, daughters of Posidon; and multitudes more, whom to enumerate would require a volume, instead of a few pages.

25. The religion of the Greeks, properly so called, consisted in reverence toward a moral Ruler of the world, ever present and actively concerned in human affairs; and in obedience to him by truthfulness in thought, word,

and deed. Zeus

himself was believed to watch over the sacred performance of all oaths. Athena was the divine Wisdom, especially as exercised in civil affairs. Nem'esis was the divine Justice, as heard either in warnings of conscience within or the reproaches of the world without. The Erin'nyes, or as they were flatteringly called, Eumenides, * were the avengers of crime, older than all the Olympian divinities, and dreaded alike by gods and men. The cries of the injured aroused them from their dark abode in Tartarus; and to the guilty man they appeared as fierce, implacable furies, with flaming eyes and extended talons, who never slept, but walked or waited constantly by his side from the moment of his crime till its punishment; while to the innocent victim, whom they avenged, they wore the form of serene and stately goddesses, with faces beautiful though

stern.

26. At a later period, new elements entered into the religious life of the Greeks, through their intercourse with other nations, especially with Egypt, Asia Minor, and Thrace. The most important of these was the idea of purification for sins, which was unknown to Homer and Hesiod, and was probably borrowed from the Lydians. The earliest sacrifices were merely expressions of gratitude, or means of obtaining the favor of the gods, and had nothing of the character of sin-offerings. In case of crime, it was impossible to turn aside the wrath of the Eumenides, either by prayers or sacrifices; the guilty person must suffer the extremest consequences of his guilt. But under the new system it was believed that the divine anger might be averted, and the stain of sin removed.

Persons guilty of homicide, whether intentional or accidental, were excluded from the society of man and the worship of the gods until certain rites had been performed. In earlier times, a chief or king might officiate in the ceremony of purification, but later it was intrusted to priests, or to persons supposed to be specially marked for the favor of heaven by holiness of life. In case of public calamity, such as plague, famine, or defeat in war, whole cities or states underwent the process of purification, with a view to appease the supposed wrath of the gods for some hidden or open crime.

27. Among other foreign observances were the ecstatic rites in honor of various divinities. Such were the Bacchanalian dances, celebrated at Thebes and Delphi, in honor of Dionysus, in which troops of women spent whole nights upon the mountains in a state of the wildest frenzy, shouting, leaping, clashing noisy instruments, tearing animals to pieces and devouring the raw flesh, and even cutting themselves with knives without feeling the wounds. Those who abandoned themselves freely to this excitement were

The word Erinnyes meant curses, and hence the angry or persecuting goddesses. Fearing to call these terrible beings by their real name, the Greeks substituted the term Eumenides, which meant soothed or benevolent.