No one has anything to say in explanation of the marvellous
disappearance of demigods and heroes, why miracles are ended, or why
human actions alone are now to be seen in the world. An ignorant public
demands the instant punishment of every suspected man. In their
estimation, to distrust the traditions of the past is to be guilty of
treason to the present.

[Sidenote: Attempts at a reformation.]

But all this confusion and dissent did not arise without an attempt
among well-meaning men at a reformation. Some, and they were, perhaps,
the most advanced intellectually, wished that the priests should abstain
from working any more miracles; that relics should be as little used as
was consistent with the psychical demands of the vulgar, and should be
gradually abandoned; that philosophy should no longer be outraged with
the blasphemous anthropomorphisms of the Olympian deities. Some, less
advanced, were disposed to reconcile all difficulties by regarding the
myths as allegorical; some wished to transform them so as to bring them
into harmony with the existing social state; some would give them
altogether new interpretations. With one, though the fact of a Trojan
War is not to be denied, it was only the eidolon of Helen whom Paris
carried away; with another expressions, perhaps once intended to
represent actual events, are dwindled into mere forms of speech.
Unwilling to reject the attributes of the Olympian divinities, their
human passions and actions, another asserts that they must once have all
existed as men. While one denounces the impudent atheists who find
fault with the myths of the Iliad, ignorant of its allegorical meaning,
another resolves all its heroes into the elements; and still another,
hoping to reconcile to the improved moral sense of the times the
indecencies and wickednesses of the gods, imputes them all to demons; an
idea which found much favour at first, but became singularly fatal to
polytheism in the end.

[Sidenote: Inveterate superstition of the vulgar.]

[Sidenote: Their jealous intolerance of doubts.]

In apparent inconsistency with this declining state of belief in the
higher classes, the multitude, without concern, indulged in the most
surprising superstitions. With them it was an age of relics, of weeping
statues, and winking pictures. The tools with which the Trojan horse was
made might still be seen at Metapontum, the sceptre of Pelops was still
preserved at Chaeroneia, the spear of Achil