be. To understand this is to come
closer to a true conception of the evolution of Greek faith and art than
we can reach by any other path. Yet to insist on this is not to ignore
the unmeasured advance of the Greeks in development of society and art.
On that head the Hymns, like all Greek poetry, bear their own free
testimony. But, none the less, Greek religion and myth present features
repellent to us, which derive their origin, not from savagery, but from
the more crude horrors of the lower and higher barbarisms.

Greek religion, Greek myth, are vast conglomerates. We find a savage
origin for Apollo, and savage origins for many of the Mysteries. But the
cruelty of savage initiations has been purified away. On the other hand,
we find a barbaric origin for departmental gods, such as Aphrodite, and
for Greek human sacrifices, unknown to the lowest savagery. From
savagery Zeus is probably derived; from savagery come the germs of the
legends of divine amours in animal forms. But from barbarism arises the
sympathetic magic of agriculture, which the lowest races do not practise.
From the barbaric condition, not from savagery, comes Greek hero-worship,
for the lowest races do not worship ancestral spirits. Such is the
medley of prehistoric ideas in Greece, while the charm and poetry of the
Hymns are due mainly to the unique genius of the fully developed Hellenic
race. The combination of good and bad, of ancestral rites and ideas, of
native taste, of philosophical refinement on inherited theology, could
not last; the elements were too discordant. And yet it could not pass
naturally away. The Greece of A.D. 300

"Wandered between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born,"

without external assistance. That help was brought by the Christian
creed, and, officially, Gods, rites, and myths vanished, while,
unofficially, they partially endure, even to this day, in Romaic folk-
lore.

HOMERIC HYMNS

HYMN TO APOLLO

[Silver stater of Croton (about 400 B.C.). Obv. Hercules, the Founder.
Rev. Apollo shooting the Python by the Delphic Tripod: lang103.jpg]

Mindful, ever mindful, will I be of Apollo the Far-darter. Before him,
as he fares through the hall of Zeus, the Gods tremble, yea, rise up all
from their thrones as he draws near with his shining bended bow. But
Leto alone abides by Zeus, the Lord of Lightning, till Apollo hath
slackened his bow and closed his quiver. Then, taking