nd the wisdom they contain are brought together from
many quarters by long accumulation. And in the same way the accounts
they give of the gods individually and of their relations to each
other are not thrown together at haphazard, but are the result of a
work of unconscious art which must have been carried on for centuries
before it issued in this form. Homer does not by any means repeat all
the stories he knows about the gods. He passes over many local myths,
especially those of the more repulsive order, which were known for
centuries after, and undoubtedly existed in his day; only what is
"worthy of a pious bard" does he reproduce. A pious bard, however,
had considerable latitude; and the phrase does not represent all that
Homer was. He was an entertainer of the public at royal courts, where
a feast was incomplete without him (_Odyssey_ viii.); he had to
produce his songs at banquets or in the open air at festivals; what
he gave had to be entertaining. This could not but influence his
choice of materials even when the gods were his theme. He could not
deal in what was most terrible about the gods, nor could he enter
into speculations or mysteries, nor could he make use of a legend
which, though it had point for the locality it belonged to, was not
generally interesting. What was powerful and dramatic, what all men
could understand, what was curious and piquant, what met the general
sentiment, that he would be led to adopt and to work up into a
telling form; he naturally sought after broad pictures, amusing
conversations, simple and true emotions, curious incidents connected
with well-known characters. Religion, it is plain, could not gain in
depth and intensity from the treatment of such poets; many of the
thoughts men had about the gods could not find expression in their
lines. But, on the other hand, we have the fact that the Greeks
accepted the Homeric representation of their religion as the standard
one; not till it had existed for centuries were voices raised against
it. And this is not strange. Homer took away nothing from the
religion of any Greek; no local worship was in any way infringed upon
by him; and on the other side he gave to the Greek world, whose
belief consisted formerly in a multitude of disconnected or even
inconsistent legends, a united system of gods, in which there was at
that stage rest for the mind, and for the imagination an
inexhaustible spring of ideal beauty.

The Homeric Gods.--What, t