usly pertained to the clan gods of the various regions. In many
cases these had been identified with old animal-gods or had been
interwoven into the general later scheme and had been merged with the
great gods of the developed pantheon.[1095] The functions ascribed to
various deities in the Veda suggest a similar origin for them. When we
find that many of them are credited with the same larger or smaller acts
of creation, protection, or blessing, we may suspect that they were
originally clan gods that have been incorporated in the great theologic
system, and that "henotheism" is mainly a survival from this earlier
scheme or an extension of it.[1096] Similar local gods appear in
Peru[1097] and Mexico.[1098]

+652+. One class of _Greek "heroes"_ may be considered as belonging in
the category of clan gods.[1099] When the hero appears to be originally
a god his worship is identical in character with that offered to local
deities; so in the case of Achilles and many others.[1100] Such an one
is often a divine patron of a definite (usually small) territory, has
his sacred shrine with its ministers, and his specific sacrificial cult.
A trace of this type may perhaps be recognized in Hesiod's
"halfgods,"[1101] the heroes of the Trojan war and others, whom he
places just after the age of bronze and just before his modern age of
iron; their origin is thus made relatively late, as was natural if they
descended culturally from old gods.

+653+. A similar view appears in the fact that a hero is sometimes of
mixed parentage--his father or his mother is divine: a local god,
standing in close cultic connection with a greater deity, is easily made
into a son of the latter. In general, in the popular worship there seems
to be no distinction between old heroes and gods. Where such a hero
stood in close relations with a community--if, for example, as was
sometimes the case, he was the patron or tutelary divinity of a family,
or a mythical ancestor--there was doubtless a peculiar tenderness in the
feeling for him. But his general function probably was simply that of
local patron.[1102]

+654+. Clan gods are specially important in the history of worship--they
form the real basis of the great theistic development. Ghosts and
spirits continue to be recognized and revered or dreaded, but they are
not powerful social bonds--it is the local deity about whose person
organized public worship grows up, and it is he whose functions are
gradually e