s gave bad examples to men.
The Greek philosophers were already saying this and were inveighing
against the poets who had published these stories. A disciple of
Pythagoras affirmed that his master, descending to hell, had seen the
soul of Homer hanging to a tree and that of Hesiod bound to a column
to punish them for calumniating the gods. "Homer and Hesiod," Said
Xenophanes, "attribute to the gods all the acts which among men are
culpable and shameful; there is but one god who neither in body nor in
soul resembles men." And he added this profound remark: "If oxen and
lions had hands and could manipulate like men, they would have made
gods with bodies similar to their own, horses would have framed gods
with horses' bodies, and cattle with cattle's.... Men think that the
gods have their feelings, their voice, and their body." Xenophanes was
right; the primitive Greeks had created their gods in their own image.
As they were then sanguinary, dissolute, jealous, and vain, their gods
were the same. Later, as the people became better, their descendants
were shocked with all these vices; but the history and the character
of the gods were fixed by the ancient traditions, and later
generations, without daring to change them, had received the gross and
dishonest gods of their ancestors.

THE HEROES

=The Hero.=--The hero in Greece is a man who has become illustrious,
and after death a mighty spirit--not a god, but a demi-god. The heroes
do not live on Olympus in the heaven of the gods, they do not direct
the life of the world. And yet they, too, possess a power higher than
that of any human, and this permits them to aid their friends and
destroy their enemies. For this reason the Greeks rendered them
worship as to the gods and implored their protection. There was not a
city, not a tribe, not a family but had its hero, a protecting spirit
which it adored.

=Different Kinds of Heroes.=--Of these heroes many are legendary
persons (Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon); some without doubt never
existed (Herakles, OEdipus); others like Hellen, Dorus, AEolus are only
names. But their worshippers regarded them as men of the olden time;
and, in fact, the most of the heroes lived at one time. Many are
historical personages: generals like Leonidas, Lysander; philosophers
like Democritus and Aristotle; legislators like Lycurgus and Solon.
The people of Croton adored even one of their fellow-citizens, Philip
by name, because he had been in hi