s' (2.
53). The date of this wholesale proceeding was, he thinks, perhaps as
much as four hundred years before his own day (_c._ 430 B. C.) but not
more. Before that time the Pelasgians--i. e. the primitive inhabitants
of Greece as opposed to the Hellenes--were worshipping gods in
indefinite numbers, with no particular names; many of them appear as
figures carved emblematically with sex-emblems to represent the powers
of fertility and generation, like the Athenian 'Herms'. The whole
account bristles with points for discussion, but in general it suits
very well with the picture drawn in the first of these essays, with its
Earth Maidens and Mothers and its projected Kouroi. The background is
the pre-Hellenic 'Urdummheit'; the new shape impressed upon it is the
great anthropomorphic Olympian family, as defined in the Homeric epos
and, more timidly, in Hesiod. But of Hesiod we must speak later.

* * * * *

Now who are these Olympian Gods and where do they come from? Homer did
not 'make' them out of nothing. But the understanding of them is beset
with problems.

In the first place why are they called 'Olympian'? Are they the Gods of
Mount Olympus, the old sacred mountain of Homer's Achaioi, or do they
belong to the great sanctuary of Olympia in which Zeus, the lord of the
Olympians, had his greatest festival? The two are at opposite ends of
Greece, Olympus in North Thessaly in the north-east, Olympia in Elis in
the south-west. From which do the Olympians come? On the one hand it is
clear in Homer that they dwell on Mount Olympus; they have 'Olympian
houses' beyond human sight, on the top of the sacred mountain, which in
the _Odyssey_ is identified with heaven. On the other hand, when
Pisistratus introduced the worship of Olympian Zeus on a great scale
into Athens and built the Olympieum, he seems to have brought him
straight from Olympia in Elis. For he introduced the special Elean
complex of gods, Zeus, Rhea, Kronos, and Ge Olympia.[45:1]

Fortunately this puzzle can be solved. The Olympians belong to both
places. It is merely a case of tribal migration. History, confirmed by
the study of the Greek dialects, seems to show that these northern
Achaioi came down across central Greece and the Gulf of Corinth and
settled in Elis.[45:2] They brought with them their Zeus, who was
already called 'Olympian', and established him as superior to the
existing god, Kronos. The Games became Olympian and