In truth, the Hellenic religion in its most typical form could not permanently maintain its hold on human nature. It was the evanescent, rare, and delicate product of a peculiar period and of special conditions in human history. It was the belief of an aristocracy of talents and opportunities, filled for the moment with the delight of activity and expansion, and the mere joy of living. It required the Hellenic City-State for the theatre of its development, and the existence of a class, sup- ported and set free from mere drudgery by a large enslaved population, but too numerous and too various in worldly circumstances to be only a narrow, privileged, and idle aristocracy of birth. But such conditions are rarely possible, and can never last long. Where an approximation to them occurs for a time in any considerable section of the population of any land, there results a tendency to a similar artistic development of religion. But there has never been elsewhere an experiment on such a scale as in Greece, where economic and social facts, natural surroundings, and relation to foreign nations, conspired to give a glory and an intoxicated consciousness of life to the small, energetic, busy, keenly competing cities of the Hellenes.
But even there the conditions soon ceased. Greece sank into its inevitable place as a third- rate province in some larger empire. It was essential to true Hellenism that it should be sup- ported by the spirit of a self-governing people ; its proud self-consciousness and joy in its own life and activity were inconsistent with servitude.
A mournful consciousness that the ‘gods of Greece’ were dead is often apparent in the later Greek literature, as, for example, in the well-known story preserved by Plutarch (de Defectu Orac. 17), that in the reign of Tiberius, when a ship sailing from Greece to Italy was among the Echinades Tslands, off the Acarnanian coast, a voice was heard summoning by name a certain Egyptian pilot who chanced to be on board ; and, when he answered the third summons rather reluctantly, the voice bade him announce when he reached Palodes that ‘Pan the great isdead”
It is a fitting conclusion to Hellenic religion that the Oracles became dumb ; and especially that the Delphic Oracle, which had played so important and, for a time, so noble a part in guiding its development, lost first its influence and finally its
voice. As a force in history it had long lost all power; in the Ist cent. after Christ, Delphi and Ammon had given place to Chaldean astrologers, as Strabo and Juvenal agree in saying, and Plu- tarch wrote a treatise inquiring into the reason ; * and in the 4th cent., when Julian sent to consult the Delphic Oracle, the last response was uttered for him: ‘Tell the king, to earth has fallen the beautiful mansion ; no longer has Phoebus a home, nor a prophetic laurel, nor a fount that speaks: gone dry is the talking water.’ +
elrare TH Bach, Xapat méoe Saldados av\a* ovKxért PolBos Exer KahUBav, ov udvrida Sagyny, ob mayav Aad€ovoav’ améoBero Kal Addov Udwp.
The religious forms of Greece had served their day; they were now antiquated, and the world passed on to other forms. The alternatives pre- sented to the people were Christianity or vulgar superstition, while a steadily diminishing remnant of the educated class clung to a philosophical form of paganism.
LirERATURE.—Besides the many general Dictionaries and works on Greek Antiquities, which usually include Religious Antiquities, such as Daremberg-Saglio’s Dict. des Antiqwités gr. et rom. (A-M published in 1902), Pauly-Wissowa, Real- Encyclopeedie (A-Dem. in 1902), Smith (who includes Mythology under Biography, and Ritual under Antiquities), etc., the works devoted expressly to Greek Religion (ander which some casual information is given about cults of Asia Minor), either gener- ally or in some particular department or aspect, are extremely numerous, and complete enumerations unnecessary and hardly possible. The reader who looks at the discussion of any detail in a few of the following works will find in them sufficient indications to guide him to the vast literature (much of it not in itself valuable) that has accumulated round most of the chief topics. Owing to the capricious and subjective nature of the treatment (which can hardly be avoided), the information which is most important for an investigator from a novel point of view may, however, be passed unnoticed in several of the most elaborate works, and may be found only by looking into some of the older or the less important and honoured works. The old-fashioned and unpretending Handworterbuch der griechischen wu. rém. Mythologie of Jacobi (Coburg, 1835), with its bare and bald lists of references to ancient authorities, is still often most practically useful for the investigator, because there he gets facts unencumbered with opinions: in the voluminous and indispensable, and in many respects far more complete, work of Koscher, Leawicon der griech. und rom. Mythologie (still unfinished: A-Par, published in November 1902), facts are apt to be concealed by opinions: but the variety of writers in the Lexikon on cognate topics often supplies a useful diversity of opinion. Those who desire to study the history of modern opinion will find the following list, while inadequate, yet a sufficient introduction from which to make a beginning (only, as a rule, one work by any author is named: the most recent writers as a rule are given, and the older can be followed up from them).—