a and Charybdis, the centaurs, the sphinx, and others.

(M319) It will be seen that these gods and goddesses represent the powers
of nature, and the great attributes of wisdom, purity, courage, fidelity,
truth, which belong to man's higher nature, and which are associated with
the divine. It was these powers and attributes which were
worshiped--superhuman and adorable. Homer and Hesiod are the great
authorities of the theogonies of the pagan world, and we can not tell how
much of this was of their invention, and how much was implanted in the
common mind of the Greeks, at an age earlier than 700 B.C. The Orphic
theogony belongs to a later date, but acquired even greater popular
veneration than the Hesiodic.

(M320) The worship of these divinities was attended by rites more or less
elevated, but sometimes by impurities and follies, like those of Bacchus
and Venus. Sometimes this worship was veiled in mysteries, like those of
Eleusis. To all these deities temples were erected, and offerings made,
sometimes of fruits and flowers, and then of animals. Of all these deities
there were legends--sometimes absurd, and these were interwoven with
literature and religious solemnities. The details of these fill many a
large dictionary, and are to be read in dictionaries, or in poems. Those
which pertain to Ceres, to Apollo, to Juno, to Venus, to Minerva, to
Mercury, are full of poetic beauty and fascination. They arose in an age
of fertile imagination and ardent feeling, and became the faith of the
people.

(M321) Besides the legends pertaining to gods and goddesses, are those
which relate the heroic actions of men. Grote describes the different
races of men as they appear in the Hesiodic theogony--the offspring of
gods. First, the golden race: first created, good and happy, like the gods
themselves, and honored after death by being made the unseen guardians of
men--"terrestrial demons." Second, the silver race, inferior in body and
mind, was next created, and being disobedient, are buried in the earth.
Third, the brazen race, hard, pugnacious, terrible, strong, which was
continually at war, and ultimately destroyed itself, and descended into
Hades, unhonored and without privilege. Fourth, the race of heroes, or
demigods, such as fought at Thebes and Troy, virtuous but warlike, which
also perished in battle, but were removed to a happier state. And finally,
the iron race, doomed to perpetual guilt, care, toil, suffering--unjust,
di