aker out of Olympus to the
earth. Taking them together, we do not find the Olympians an
impressive set of beings. Taking them, however, one by one, we judge
of them quite differently. The individual gods represent lofty ideals
and are not unworthy of worship. Whatever they were once, powers of
nature, fetishes or men, whatever village legends they have brought
with them from their native place, or whatever traits of savage life
still cleave to them, to the poet they are the embodiments of various
moral excellences. Zeus, father of gods and men, combines in his
character the attributes of righteousness and of kindness; he is the
founder of social order and the defender of suppliants, he possesses
all wisdom. Hera is the matron of fully unfolded beauty and matchless
dignity; Apollo is the faithful son who carries out his father's
counsel; Athene is the warrior-maiden skilled in battle but equipped
with every kind of skill, best counsellor and guide for the mortal
whom she favours; Aphrodite is the goddess of love, in whose girdle
are contained all charms; Ares is the impetuous warrior, Hermes the
trusty messenger, of the heavenly circle; Hephaestus, the lame and
awkward smith, is the artificer for the gods of all manner of cunning
work in metal. Around and under the Olympians are many other deities;
such as Hebe, the budding girl, and Ganymede, the youth born of human
race but taken up to heaven for his beauty to minister to the gods at
their banquets. Aphrodite is attended by the graces, Apollo by the
Muses, and the world is not stripped by Homer of its local deities,
although the chief deities now dwell aloft; mountains, rivers, caves
and isles of ocean, all have their immortal occupants.

Worship in Homer.--The gods being of such a nature, what relations
does man keep up with them, and how do they affect his life? Worship
follows the simple practice of the early world. It is not priestly.
There are priests, and they offer sacrifices regularly at the shrines
of which they have charge, but the king can sacrifice, or the head of
the house; and while one or two temples are mentioned in the _Iliad_,
sacrifice may be offered anywhere. Temples first appear in Greece
merely as shelters for images, but in the _Iliad_ the god is
generally worshipped not by means of an image but as himself directly
present; the need of temples has not yet arisen. In the _Odyssey_
temples of the gods are spoken of as buildings no town could be
wi