In a more developed state of society, roads lead- ing from city to city were probably put under Divine protection in a similar way ; and the sacred stones were commonly made useful to human re- quirements by having distances engraved on them, thus becoming milestones.* But such stones
* Curtius, Gesch. des griech. Wegebaus.
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generally belonged to a more advanced stage of thought, when men refused to consider a stone the abode of Divine power. On the Roman Imperial roads they were dedicated to the Emperor, and thus placed under the guardianship of the Imperial god incarnate in human form on the earth. The god and the stone are in this stage separated in thought, but the stone remains sacred in a new ay as the property of the god.
meeting of three roads or streets, as an im- portant point, was placed under the guardianship of the Divine power. When the anthropomorphic tendency had become strong, the Divine guardian of the triple crossing was represented as the goddess (under the name Hekate in Greece) with three faces, looking to the three ways (just as in Italy the god protecting the archway and the door was represented with two faces looking in the two directions). But before the anthropo- morphic idea had gained full strength, there was doubtless some other way of symbolizing the Divine guardianship of the meeting of the ways; and the suggestion seems obvious that the symbol was the ¢riskeles, three human legs and feet, diverging from a common centre, and typify- ing the walking of men along the three ways which radiated from the meeting-place (compitum). Little is known with regard to this form of cultus, except in Rome, where the feast of the Compitalia was an important part of the city-religion; but few will doubt that, as streets and roads became important, a cultus corresponding to the Compitalia developed in primitive Anatolia. In the coinage of Anatolia the ¢riskeles is almost entirely con- fined to the cities least affected by Hellenic cul- ture, in Pisidia, Isauria, and early or inner Lycia. Moreover, the epithets rpxdpavos, rerpaxdpavos, ap- plied to Hekate-Selene, are doubtless to be under- stood as applying to the goddess who guards the trivium or the guadrivium.*
It may therefore be reasonably maintained that in many other places, where we know only that in primitive thought a stone was regarded as sacred and made the object of worship in the Greek world, the fundamental character was the same. The stone was worshipped as home and symbol and proof of Divine power—a power able and ready to respond to human needs. See also below, (2), and g IV (1).
As Greek thought developed in the direction of anthropomorphism and polytheism, there arose an opinion that the old sacred stone was either a representation and image of a god, the rudest be- ginning of a statue, or an altar dedicated to the god. Such views seem not to be original and genuine religious conceptions, but merely philosophic in- terpretations by which more developed thought tried to bring primitive religious facts into con- formity with itself. Thus the pillars, mentioned above, in streets and open places, which were originally called agyiat or agyieis, were regarded as altars or representations of a Deity, sometimes Helios, sometimes Dionysos, but most commonly Apollo; and Agyieus was then usually regarded as an epithet of Apollo. The Greeks themselves hesitated whether to call the pillars altars or statues of Apollo, a sure proof that neither de- scription was complete and true. The pillars or stones in open places and gymnasia, by roads, at boundaries, originally and commonly styled Hermai, i.e. embodiments of Hermes, came to be regarded rather as statues of Hermes, and were developed accordingly in art, as we shall see in the ensuing paragraph.
The institution of sacred stones was modified by another influence. Art was engaged in the service
*See Hermes, iv. p. 64; Ramsay, Hist. Com. on Galatians, p. 219.
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of the anthropomorphic tendency in religion, and wrought out ideal expression in human form of the various gods: the types of gods and god- desses were elaborated, and distinguished from one another, in the ruder stage to a considerable extent by symbols and equipments, but in the more de- veloped and perfected stage by the varying artistic expression of the idealized conception of each deity as an individual character. Alongside of this rapid progress in the artistic presentation of dif- ferent types of Divine character as different per- sonal gods in human form, there was another line of development, through which the sacred pillars (which still continued to be erected in numbers during this more developed period) were made to assume more resemblance to the human form. The top of the pillar was carved into a bust, and parts of the body were indicated on the sides: such figures were commonly called Hermai, and Greek art developed the type at a later time in various ways, making the busts portraits of real human persons. In all such cases art takes the view that the pillar is a rude statue of some deity or hero, and makes additions or modifications to bring out this character more clearly.
The epithet of meteoric stones, dvorerijs, was sometimes transferred to certain very archaic statues, about which the legend grew that vee had fallen from heaven: such was the case with the rude figure of barely human form in which Artemis of Ephesus was represented (Ac 19%). The nature of those rude old idols will be more fully considered in § III (1) and § V (1).