lo and Artemis. At Samothrace prevailed the worship of the
Heaven and the Earth.[224] Dione was worshipped with Zeus at Dodona.[225]
The Ionians were devoted to Poseidon, god of the sea. In Arcadia, Athene
was worshipped as Tritonia. Hermes was adored on Mount Cyllene; Eros, in
Boeotia; Pan, in Arcadia. These local deities long remained as secondary
gods, after the Pan-Hellenic worship of Olympus had overthrown their
supremacy. But one peculiarity of the Pre-Homeric religion was, that it
consisted in the adoration of different gods in different places. The
religion of Hellas, after Homer, was the worship of the twelve great
deities united on Mount Olympus.

The second fact to be observed in this early mythology is the change of
name and of character through which each deity proceeds. Zeus alone
retains the same name from the first.[226]

Among all Indo-European nations, the Heaven and the Earth were the two
primordial divinities. The Rig-Veda calls them "the two great parents of
the world." At Dodona, Samothrace, and Sparta they were worshipped
together. But while in India, Varuna, the Heavens, continued to be an
object of adoration in the Vedic or second period, in Greece it faded
early from the popular thought. This already shows the opposite genius of
the two nations. To the Hindoos the infinite was all important, to the
Greeks the finite. The former, therefore, retain the adoration of the
Heavens, the latter that of the Earth.

The Earth, Gaia, became more and more important to the Hellenic mind.
Passing through various stages of development, she became, successively,
Gaia in the first generation, Rhea in the second, and Demeter ([Greek: De
meter]), Mother Earth, in the third. In like manner the Sun is
successively Hyperion, son of Heaven and Earth; Helios, son of Hyperion
and Theia; and Phoebus-Apollo, son of Zeus and Latona. The Moon is first
Phoebe, sister of Hyperion; then Selene, sister of Helios; and lastly
Artemis, sister of Apollo. Pallas, probably meaning at first "the virgin,"
became afterward identified with Athene, daughter of Zeus, as
Pallas-Athene. The Urania Pontus, the salt sea, became the Titan Oceanos,
or Ocean, and in another generation Poseidon, or Neptune.

The early gods are symbolical, the later are personal. The turning-point
is reached when Kronos, Time, arrives. The children of Time and Earth are
no longer vast shadowy abstractions, but become historical characters,
with biographies and