her gods are either far away, or they have no
ears, or they exist not, or have no care for us. But we see thee, a
present deity, not of wood or stone, but real; therefore we pray to
thee." It is true that such materialistic and atheistic expressions were
probably reprobated by many at the time, as well as by later writers;
but the mere possibility of their public enunciation shows how far the
Athenians had gone from their old religious beliefs.

[Footnote 7: Athen., VI, 63.]

Allegorical impersonations, such as that of Antioch, are religious
conceptions of a high order compared to this. Nevertheless, one feels
that such impersonations can have no separate divine existence apart
from the city or the people whom they represent. They are on a different
plane of religious belief from Athena, for example, as the goddess of
the city. The goddess was, indeed, in some ways representative of what
was best in her chosen people; but she was not a mere symbol of its
character and its greatness. She existed before it, and would continue
though it should disappear from the earth, unlike the Fortune of
Antioch, whose very existence was bound up with that of the city she
represented.

Another example of personification may be seen in the recumbent figures
of river-gods--notably that of the Nile, with his sixteen cubits, as
babies, playing around him. River-gods were indeed an object of worship
from early times in Greece, and so appear on coins and elsewhere; but
this figure of the Nile, a product of Alexandrian art, is not like the
earlier gods, who were looked upon as the givers of increase and
fertility; it is a mere allegorical impersonation of the river, such as
might be made by a modern artist who made no pretence to believe in the
existence of such an anthropomorphic river-god. It cannot be counted as
religious art at all. And the attributes and accessories of such a
figure, the crocodile and hippopotamus, the sphinx and corn and horn of
plenty, are all of them symbolic allusions such as are suitable to such
a frigid personification. The art of Alexandria is full of such devices;
that of Pergamon is more vigorous and dramatic; but in both alike we
find the influence of a learned study of mythology, full of quaint and
far-fetched allusions and symbols. The culmination of this learned
mythology is to be seen in the great altar of Pergamon, on which the
gods who are in combat with the giants include not only all figures,
appropri