llo is one of the highest forms of Greek religion.

Change of the Greek Spirit in the Sixth Century B.C.--But the time
was at hand when the worship of the gods of the poets was to prove,
in spite of all that art had done for it, inadequate to meet the
spiritual needs of Greece. Civilisation advances in the sixth century
B.C. with immense rapidity; the Greeks, no longer prompted by any
foreign influence, quickly learn to exercise their own powers, and to
apply them in new directions. Life grows richer and deeper, new modes
of sentiment appear, the nation grows more conscious of its unity,
and at the same time the individual learns to value himself more
highly and to assert himself more strongly. On one side thought
awakes to an independent career and traditional beliefs are subjected
to criticism; on the other spiritual needs are felt which the old
worship does not satisfy, and for which religion has to find new
outlets.

It is far beyond our scope to deal with the religious movements of a
people thus passing into the self-conscious stage, and unfolding with
unparalleled freshness and power all the various activities of the
human mind. We can only point out a few of the lines of development
which become prominent at this period. And firstly we notice the rise
of _rationalism_, that is of the impulse to criticise belief and to
ask for that element in it which approves itself to the reflecting
mind. Reason asserts its right to judge of tradition; the doubter
suggests emendations in the legend; the piously inclined turn their
attention to those parts only which are capable of lofty treatment.
This tendency is fatal to polytheism. As reason knows not gods but
only God, the gods can only hold their place on condition that they
are what God must be, and so they all tend to become alike in their
character; attention is turned most of all to Zeus, the highest god,
and when others are worshipped, it is as his prophets or delegates.
The poets of the fifth century reflect the conviction which all the
higher minds of their country were now coming to hold, that the world
is under the rule of one god. From this they are led to take up the
questions of theodicy or of the principles of the divine government.
Aeschylus and Sophocles, writing perhaps about the same time as the
author of the Book of Job, are full of problems of this nature. Why
is Prometheus, though the noblest benefactor of the human race,
doomed to undergo such sufferi