rung. Further and further the crystal
parapets were retreating. Dimmer and more dim the gorgeous host
became. In words of perfect piety Epicurus pictured them in the
felicity of the ideal. There, they had no heed of man, no desire for
worship, no wish for prayer. It was unnecessary even to think of them.
Decorously, with every homage, they were being deposed.

But if Epicurus was decorous, Evemerus was devout. It was his
endeavour, he said, not to undermine but to fortify. The gods he
described as philanthropists whom a grateful world had deified. Zeus
had waged a sacrilegious war against his father. Aphrodite was a
harlot and a procuress. The others were equally commendable. Once they
had all lived. Since then all had died. Evemerus had seen their tombs.

One should not believe him. Their parapets are dimmer, perhaps, but
from them still they lean and laugh. They are immortal as the
hexameters in which their loves unfold. Yet, oddly enough, presently
the oracle of Delphi strangled. In his cavern Trophonios was gagged.
The voice of Mopsos withered.

That is nothing. On the Ionian, the captain of a ship heard some one
calling loudly at him from the sea. The passengers, who were at table,
looked out astounded. Again the loud voice called: "Captain, when you
reach shore announce that the great god Pan is dead."[40]

[Footnote 40: Plutarch: de Oracul. defect. 14.]

It may be that it was true. It may be that after Pan the others
departed. When Paul reached Athens he found a denuded Pantheon, a
vacant Olympos, skies more empty still.

VII

JUPITER

The name of the national deity of Israel is unpronounceable. The name
of the national divinity of Rome is unknown. To all but the
hierophants it was a secret. For uttering it a senator was put to
death. But Tullius Hostilius erected temples to Fear and to Pallor. It
may have been Fright. The conjecture is supported by the fact that, as
was usual, Rome had any number of deified epithets, as she had also a
quantity of little bits of gods. These latter greatly amused the
Christian Fathers. Among them was Alemona, who, in homely English, was
Wet-nurse.

Tertullian, perhaps naively, remarked: "Superstition has invented
these deities for whom we have substituted angels." In addition to the
diva mater Alemona was the divus pater Vaticanus, the holy father
Vatican, who assisted at a child's first cry. There was the equally
holy father Fabulin, who attended him in his ea