733. An example of a god leaping from an inferior position to the highest place in the pantheon is afforded by Vishnu, a nature god of some sort, described in the early documents as traversing the universe in three strides. Relatively insignificant in the earlier period and in the Upanishads, he appears in the epic, and afterwards, as the greatest of the gods, and, in the form of his avatar Krishna, becomes the head of a religion which has often been compared with Christianity in the purity of its moral conceptions. By his side in this later time stands his rival Civa, the chief figure in a sect or system which shared with Vishnuism the devotion of the later Hindus. The rise of these two gods is to be referred probably to the dissatisfaction in the later times with the phenomenal character which still clung, in popular feeling, to the older deities. Varuna, once supreme, sank after a while to the position of a god of rain, and Indra, Agni, and Soma were frankly naturalistic, while the impersonal Brahma was too vague to meet popular demands. What the later generation wanted was a god personal and divorced from physical phenomena, supreme, ethically high, but invested with warm humanity. These conditions were fulfilled by Vishnu and Civa, and particularly by Krishna; that is, the later thought constructed these new deities in accordance with the demand of the higher and the lower religious feeling of the time: the two sides of the human demand, the genial and the terrible, are embodied, the first in Vishnu, the second in Civa.

734. The primeval pair, Heaven and Earth, though represented as the parents of many gods and worshiped with sacrifices, play no great part in the Hindu religious system. Dyaus, the Sky, never attained the proportions of the formally identical Zeus and Jupiter. His attributes are distinctly those of the physical sky. The higher role is assigned to Varuna, who is the sky conceived of as a divine Power divorced from merely physical characteristics;[1270] the mass of phenomena connected with the sky (thunder, lightning, and such like) are isolated and referred to various deities. Prithivi, the Earth, in like manner, retains her physical attributes, and does not become the nourishing mother of all things.[1271]

With a partial exception in the case of Ushas[1272] (Dawn) the early Hindu pantheon contains no great female figure; there are female counterparts of male deities, but no such transcendent personages as Isis, Athene, and Demeter. Whether this fact is to be explained from early Hindu views of the social position of women, or from some other idea, is uncertain. In certain modern religious cults, however, the worship of the female principle (Cakti) is popular and influential. It is probable that in early times every tribe or district had its female divine representative of fertility, an embryonic mother-goddess. If the Aryan Hindus had such a figure, she failed to grow into a great divinity. But the worship of such deities came into Aryan India at a relatively recent date, apparently from non-Aryan sources, and has been incorporated in Hindu systems. Various forms of Cakti have been brought into relation with various gods, the most important being those that have become attached to the worship of Civa.[1273] To him is assigned as wife the frightful figure called Durga or Kali (and known by other names), a blood-loving monster with an unspeakably licentious cult. Other Cakti deities are more humane, and there is reason to suppose that the ground of the devotion shown to Kali, especially by women, is in many cases simply reverence for the female principle in life, or more particularly for motherhood.[1274]

735. The original character of the Hindu lord of the Otherworld, Yama, is obscured by the variety of the descriptions of him in the documents. In the Rig-Veda he appears both as god and (as it seems) as man. He is the son of the solar deity Vivashant (Vivashat); he is named in enumerations of gods, and Agni is his friend and his priest; he receives worship, and is besought to come to the sacrifice.[1275] On the other hand, he is never called "god," but only "king";[1276] he is spoken of as the "only mortal," and is said to have chosen death; he is associated in heaven with the "fathers."[1277] The modern interpretations of his origin have followed these two sets of data. By some writers he has been identified with the sun (particularly the setting sun), and with the moon.[1278] But these identifications are set aside for the Veda by the fact that in lists of gods he is distinguished from sun and moon.[1279] By others he is regarded as the mythical first man, the first ancestor, with residence in the sky, deified as original ancestors sometimes were, and, as the first to die and enter the world beyond, made the king of that world.

Though Yama is not the sun in the Veda, it is possible that he was so regarded in the period preceding the Vedic theological construction, and in support of this view it may be said that the sun setting, descending into the depths, is a natural symbol of the close of man's life,[1280] and rising, represents the man's life in the beyond—thus the sun would be identified with man, and not unnaturally with the first man, the first to die. In support of the other view may be cited the great role ascribed by many peoples to the first man: in savage lore he is often the creator or arranger of the world,[1281] and he is sometimes, like Yama, the son of the sun.[1282] Such an one, entering the other world, might become its lord, and in process of time be divinized and made the son of the creator sun.[1283] The Hindu figure is often compared to the Avestan first man, Yima; but Yima, so far as appears, was never divinized, and is not religiously of great importance. Nor do the late Jewish legends and theosophical speculations bear on the point under consideration: in Paradise, it is said, Adam was waited on by angels, the angels were commanded by God to pay him homage (so also in the Koran), and he is described as being the light of the world; and Philo and others conceived of a first or heavenly man (Adam Kadmon), free from ordinary human weakness, and identical with the Logos or the Messiah—therefore a judge in the largest sense of the word.[1284] But, while these conceptions testify to the strong appeal made to the imagination by the figure of the mythical first man, they throw little light on the original form of Yama—the early constructions do not include the judge of the other world, and the later ones are too late to explain so early a figure as the Vedic king of that world.

736. In the Rig-Veda Yama is specifically the overlord of the blessed dead—the pious who were thought worthy to dwell in heaven with the gods and to share to some extent their divinity; with the wicked he seems to have nothing to do. The general history of the conception of the future life suggests that in the earliest Indo-Iranian period there was a hades to which all the dead went.[1285] If there was a divine head of this hades (originally an underground deity, like Osiris, Allatu, and Ploutos) he would accompany the pious fathers when, in the later Hindu theologic construction, they were transported to heaven; and if the first ancestor occupied a distinguished place among the dead,[1286] he might be fused with the divine head into a sort of unity, and the result might be such a complex figure as Yama appears to be. However this may be, the Vedic Yama underwent a development in accordance with the changes in the religious ideas of the people, becoming at last an ethical judge of the dead.[1287]

737. Persia. The Mazdean theistic system presents special difficulties.[1288] The nature of its divine world is remarkable, almost unique, and the literature that has come down to us was edited at a comparatively late period, probably not before the middle of the third century of our era, so that it is not always easy to distinguish the earlier and the later elements of thought. It is generally regarded as certain that the two branches of the Aryan race, the Indian and the Persian, once dwelt together and formed one community, having the same general religious system: the material of spirits is substantially the same in the two and they have certain important names in common—to the Indian Asura, Soma, Mitra, the Persian Ahura, Haoma, Mithra correspond in form exactly. But in the way in which this material was modified and organized the two communities differ widely.

738. The peculiarity of the Persian system is that it practically disregards all the old gods except Mithra and Anahita, substituting for them beings designated by names of qualities, and organizes all extrahuman Powers in two classes—one under the Good Spirit (Spenta Mainyu), the other under the Bad Spirit (Angro Mainyu). The former is attended by six great beings, Immortal Spirits (Amesha-spentas): Good Mind, Best Order or Law, Holy Harmony or Wisdom, Piety, Well-being, Immortality.[1289] In the Gathas, which are commonly held to be the most ancient Zoroastrian documents, these attendants of the supreme god are often nothing but qualities, but on the other hand are often personified and worshiped. The rival of the Good Spirit is surrounded similarly by lying spirits (drujas), among whom one, Aeshma, holds a prominent place. The two divine chiefs stand side by side in the earliest literature almost as coequal powers; but it is explained that the wicked one is to be destroyed with all his followers.

739. In some of the early hymns (Yacnas) Mithra is closely attached to Ahura Mazda—the two are called "the lofty and imperishable ones." The goddess Anahita, first mentioned in an inscription of Artaxerxes II, and described only in the late Fifth Yasht, appears to have been originally a deity of water. It was, doubtless, her popularity that led to her official recognition by Artaxerxes; possibly her formal recognition by the Mazdean leaders was a slow process, since she does not appear in the older Avesta. In the Yasht she receives worship (being in the form of a beautiful young woman) as the dispenser of all blessings that come from pure water; she is said to have been created by Ahura Mazda, and is wholly subordinated to him. Besides these two a great number of lesser gods are mentioned; the latter, apparently the old local gods and spirits here subordinated to the supreme god, are unimportant in the official cult. The souls of the departed also become objects of worship.

740. It thus appears that Zoroastrianism was a reform of the old polytheism. The movement closely resembles the struggle of the Hebrew prophets against the worship of the Canaanite Baals and other foreign gods. In both cases there is evidence going to show that popular cults continued after the leaders of the reform had thrown off the offensive elements of the old system: the Hebrew people continued to worship foreign gods long after the great prophets had pronounced against them; and the official recognition of Ahura Mazda in the Achaemenian inscriptions[1290] by no means proves that lower forms of worship were not practiced in Persia by the people.[1291]

741. If we ask for the grounds of this recoil from the old gods, we must doubtless hold that ethical feeling was a powerful motive in the reform, though economic and other considerations were, doubtless, not without influence.

Since Ahura Mazda is ethically good and his worship ethically pure, there is clearly in its origin hostility to low modes of worship and to materialistic ideas. Possibly also we have here a struggle of a clan for the recognition of its own god, as among the Israelites the Yahweh party represented exclusive devotion to the old national god. If there was such a clan or party in Persia, it is obvious that it produced men of high intelligence and great moral and organizing power, and all that we know of the religious history leads us to suppose that the establishment of the supremacy of Ahura Mazda was the result of a long development.

742. As to the provenance of the Mazdean supreme lord, not a few scholars of the present day hold that he was identical with the Indian Varuna. It is in favor of this identification that the qualities of the two deities are the same, and there is also the noteworthy fact that Ahura Mazda is coupled with Mithra as Varuna is coupled with Mitra; according to this view the Mazdean deity was originally the god of the sky, by whose side naturally stands the sun. In a case like this, involving a general agreement between two systems of thought, there are two possible explanations of the relation between them: it may be supposed that one borrowed from the other (in the present case the borrowing would be on the part of the Persians); or the explanation may be that the two communities developed original material along the same general lines, though with local differences. In the absence of historical data it is perhaps impossible to say which of these explanations is to be preferred. There is, however, no little difficulty in the supposition that one community has actually borrowed its religious system from a neighbor; the general probability is that each followed its own line.

743. Nor is it probable that the rejection of the old divine names by the Persians was the result of hostility toward their Indian neighbors. It is doubtless a curious fact that the Indian name for 'evil spirit,' asura, is in Persian the name of a good spirit, Ahura, while the Indian diva, the general term for a god, is in Persian the designation of a wicked spirit, daeva. The Persian employment of daeva for 'evil spirit' may be explained as a protest not against Indian gods, but against the deities of their own land; so the Hebrew prophets or their editors apply opprobrious names, "no-god" and other terms, to deities regarded by them as inadequate. The abstractions of the Mazdean system have been referred to above. They seem to have been resorted to from a feeling of profound disgust at the worship of some class of people. Unfortunately we have not the historical data that might make the situation clear. In the Gathas the people of Ahura Mazda are suffering from the incursions of predatory tribes, and the greater part of the appeals to the deity are for protection for the herds against their enemies. We thus have a suggestion of a struggle, political and religious, between the more civilized Aryans and the savage Tataric tribes around them.

744. In the later period of Mazdeanism the old titles of supreme deity were succeeded (though not displaced) by the terms "Boundless Time" and "Boundless Space," the latter doubtless suggested by the vault of heaven. These generalizations, however, had little influence on the development of the theological side of the religion, which has continued to regard Ahura Mazda and Angro Mainyu as the two heads of the world and the determiners of human life. The rituals of the Mazdean and Hindu faiths were influenced by the ethical developments of the two, becoming simpler and more humane with the advance toward elevated conceptions of God and man.

745. In view of such facts as are known it may be surmised that the Mazdean system originated with an Aryan agricultural tribe or body of tribes dwelling near the Caspian Sea, in contact with hostile nomads. These Aryans, we may assume, had the ordinary early apparatus of spirits and nature deities (gods of the sun, water, etc.), but, at the same time, a disposition to concentrate worship on a single god (probably a sky-god), who became the chief tribal deity and was naturally regarded as the source of all things good, the Good Spirit; the phenomena of life led them (as it led some other early peoples) to conceive of a rival spirit, the author of things hostile to life. With economic conditions and intellectual characteristics very different from those of their Hindu brethren, they developed no capacity for organizing an elaborate pantheon—they were practically monolatrous, were content with an all-sufficient Good Spirit (the Bad Spirit being tolerated as an intellectual necessity), gradually subordinated to him such gods as the popular feeling retained, and relegated to the sphere of evil the host of inferior hurtful spirits or gods (daevas) whose existence they could not deny.[1292] The religious leaders, representing and enforcing the tribal tendency of thought, in the course of time gave more and more definite shape to the cult; perhaps Zoroaster was a preeminent agent in this movement. Ethical purification, as a matter of course, went hand in hand with cultic organization. The old gods or spirits, associates of the supreme god, became embodiments of moral conceptions, and a ritual of physical and moral purity was worked out. Such may have been the general history of the official system; data for a detailed chronological history are lacking.[1293]

746. China. Chinese religion is characterized by a remarkable restraint in ecclesiastical development: simple religious customs, no native priestly order, few gods, almost no myths. The basis of the popular religion is the usual material, comprising ancestors, spirits (including tutelary spirits), a few departmental gods (of war, of the kitchen, etc.), some of which are said to be deified men. The system is thus nearly the same as that of the central Asiatic Mongolians.[1294]

747. The reflective movement (which must have begun long before the sixth century B.C., the period of Confucius and Lao-tsze) is marked by the attempt to perfect the social organization, regard being paid mainly to visible, practical relations. Stress is laid on the principle of order in family and state, which is held to reflect the order of the universe;[1295] speculation is avoided, there is a minimum of religion. In the more developed religious system the two prominent features are, first, the dominant conception of the unity of the family and of the state led to the emphasizing of the worship of ancestors—a cult which, going back to a very early time, has been interwoven in China with the individual and communal life in a thoroughgoing way, with a constant infusion of moral ideas; and in the next place, the order of society and of the external world is represented by Heaven.[1296]

748. Originally, doubtless, Heaven was the physical sky (as among the Hindus and Persians and many other peoples), but at an early period came to be practically the supreme god. A sort of monotheistic cult has thus been established as the official religion. The emperor is the Son of Heaven and the High Priest of the nation, and in the great annual sacrifices performed by him the host of minor powers is practically ignored and worship is addressed to the controlling powers of the world. This official worship does not set aside the cult of the various spirits, whose existence is recognized by the minor officials as well as by the people. The cult of local spirits has grown to extraordinary dimensions. They fill the land, controlling the conditions of life and demanding constant regard; and the experts, who are supposed to know the laws governing the action of the spirits (for example, as to proper burial-places), wield enormous power, and make enormous charges of money. These spirits are treated as of subordinate importance in the official religion. The process by which China has reached this religious attitude must have extended over millenniums, and, as is stated above, the intellectual movement in the direction of simplicity and clearness has been attended by an advance in ethical purity.

749. The tendency of Chinese thought is illustrated by the two systems of philosophy which in the sixth century B.C. formulated the conception of a universal dominant order:[1297] Confucius represents the extreme logical development of natural order in human life as a product of cosmic order—he is content absolutely to deal with the practical affairs of life and discourages attempts to inquire into the nature of gods or into the condition of men after death. Lao-tsze, on the other hand, similarly taking the Way (tao), or Universal Order, as the informing and controlling power of the world, appears to have laid the stress on the relation between it and the human soul—a conception that has affinities with the Stoic Logos. But it is Confucianism that has remained the creed of educated China. Taoism, beginning, apparently, as a spiritual system, did not appeal to the Chinese feeling, and speedily degenerated into a system of magical jugglery. Thus the Chinese, with the feeblest religious sense to be found in any great nation, have nevertheless reached the grandiose conception of the all-embracing and all-controlling supreme Heaven. In their case the governing consideration has been the moral organization of social life, and Nature has swallowed up all great partial deities.

750. Japan. Japan has produced no great god;[1298] out of the mass of nature gods reported in the Kojiki not one becomes preeminent. There is recognition of Heaven and Earth as the beginning of things, and of the sun as a deity, but neither the sky-god nor the sun-goddess becomes a truly high god. Japanese theistic development appears to have been crippled at an early period by the intrusion of Chinese influences; the very name of the national religion, Shinto, 'the Way of the Gods,' is Chinese. The emperor was deified, and ancestor-worship became the principal popular cult;[1299] but Confucianism and Buddhism overlaid the native worship at an early period. The later forms of Shinto have moved rather toward the rejection of the old deities than toward the creation of a great national god.

751. Semitic peoples. Among the various Semitic peoples there is so marked a unity of thought that, as Robertson Smith has pointed out,[1300] we may speak of the Semitic religion, though there are noteworthy local differences. Generally we find among these communities, as elsewhere, a large number of local deities, scarcely distinguishable in their functions one from another.[1301] A noteworthy illustration of the long continuance of these local cults is given in the attempt of the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, to centralize the worship by bringing the statues of the local deities to Babylon; the result was a general popular protest. Similarly an attempt was made by King Josiah in the seventh century B.C. to centralize all Israelite worship in Jerusalem, but the history of the succeeding generations shows that the attempt was not successful. The local gods represent the clannic and tribal organization, to which the Semites appear to have clung with peculiar fondness.

752. Semitic religion shows an orderly advance through the medium of tribal and national feeling in conjunction with the regular moral and intellectual growth of the community. First one god and then another comes to the front as this or that city attains leadership, but these chief gods are substantially identical with one another in functions. The genealogical relations introduced by the priestly theologians throw no light on the original characters of the deities and are often ignored in the inscriptions. A natural division into gods of the sky and gods of the earth may be recognized, but in the high gods this distinction practically disappears.

753. Turning first to the Tigris-Euphrates region, we find certain nature gods that attained more or less definite universal character.[1302] The physical sky becomes the god Anu, who, though certainly a great god, was never so prominent as certain other deities, and in Assyria yielded gradually to Ashur. Why the Semites, in marked contrast with the Indo-Europeans and the Chinese, have shown a relatively feeble recognition of the physical heaven we are not able to say; possibly the tribal feeling referred to above may have led to a centering of devotion on those deities that lay nearer to everyday life, or in the case of Babylonia it may be that the city with which Anu was particularly connected lost its early importance, and its deity in consequence yielded to others.[1303] The sun is a more definite and more practically important object than the expanse of the sky, and the Semitic sun-god, Shamash, plays a great role from the earliest to the latest times. The great king Hammurabi (commonly placed near the year 2000 B.C.), in his noteworthy civil code, takes Shamash as his patron, as the inspirer of wisdom and the controller of human right; and from this time onward this deity is invoked by the kings in their inscriptions. The worship of the sun was established in Canaan at an early time (as the name of the town Bethshemesh, 'house of Shemesh,' shows), and under Assyrian influence was adopted by a large number of Israelites in the seventh century B.C.; the prophet Ezekiel represents prominent Israelites as standing in the court of the temple, turning their backs on the sacred house and worshiping the sun;[1304] but as to the nature of the sun-god and his worship in these cases we have no information. Other nature deities that rose to eminence are the moon-god, Sin, and the storm-god, Ramman.

754. The other deities of the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheons seem not to be connected by their names with natural phenomena. They are attached to particular cities or districts, and each district or city, as it becomes a great religious center, raises its favorite god to a position of preeminence. Generally the choice of a special deity by a particular city lies back of historical documents, and the reason for such choice therefore cannot be definitely fixed. The attributes and functions of the resulting great gods, as has already been remarked, are substantially everywhere the same, and where one function becomes prominent, it is often possible to explain its prominence from the political or other conditions.

755. Moreover, as in all theological constructions that follow great political unifications, it was natural to extend the domain of a principal god to whatever department of life or of nature appealed especially to the theologian. When we find certain gods invested with solar functions it does not follow that they were originally sun-gods—such functions may be a necessary result of their preeminence. Out of the great mass of Babylonian and Assyrian deities we may select a few whose cults illustrate the method of development of the religious conceptions. As non-Semitic (Sumerian) religious and other ideas and words appear to have been adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, it is not always easy to distinguish between Semitic and non-Semitic conceptions in the cults as known to us.

756. Babylonia. The god Ea appears to have been originally the local deity of Eridu, a city which in early times stood on the Persian Gulf. This proximity to the sea may account for the fact that Ea was generally associated with water (in Babylonia, as elsewhere, there were many deities of waters). It is not certain that this was his original role, but it was, in any case, assigned him in the course of the theistic construction. It is not improbable that in the original form of the Babylonian epic it was Ea who sent the flood and saved one man—a natural representation for the god of Eridu; in later recensions of the poem it is first Bel and then Marduk who assumes the principal role. As Eridu was probably a prominent political center, Ea, as its chief god, naturally became the creator, the bestower of wisdom, the author of the arts of life, in general a universal god. As the political center shifted, the popular interest changed and Ea yielded more or less to other gods, continuing, however, throughout the whole Babylonian and Assyrian period to receive high consideration.

757. Enlil, the god of Nippur, had a similar career; originally local, he became supreme. A peculiar feature of his history is the fact that the title Bel, 'lord' (which is the Semitic equivalent of the non-Semitic Enlil), clung to him in a peculiar way and practically ousted the original name. This title was assigned to various gods (so in Canaan the title Baal), and its special appropriation by the god of Nippur must be referred to the preponderant importance of that city in the period before the rise of Babylon. In the Babylonian system he is lord of the lower world, that is, apparently, the divine king of the earth; his original domain, the district of Nippur, was extended to embrace the whole world—a sort of extension that was common in all ancient religions. His importance is evident from the fact that he was a member of the early triad, Anu, Bel, Ea, names that have been supposed to represent three divisions of the world into heaven, earth, and ocean. It seems probable, however, that this triadic grouping was the work of relatively late constructionists; it is more likely that the original prominence of these three deities was due to the fact that they represented the more important political communities.[1305]

758. A particularly good illustration of the dependence of a god's position on the political position of his region is furnished by the god Marduk, a name the meaning of which is uncertain. He is first clearly mentioned in the inscriptions of Hammurabi (ca. 2000 B.C.), but mentioned in such a way that his cult must go back to a much earlier time. From the devotion paid him by Hammurabi, and much later by Nebuchadrezzar II (sixth century B.C.), it is generally assumed that he was the local god of Babylon. He rose with the fortunes of this city, finally becoming supreme: he was regarded as creator, and invested with all the highest functions; in the later astronomical constructions he is represented as the arranger of the zodiacal system and all that was connected with it, but, as is pointed out above, this is no ground for regarding him as having been originally a sun-god. A glimpse into the method of theological reconstruction is afforded by the representation in the cosmogonic epic where he is invested with supreme power by the older gods—this investiture is with probability regarded by Assyriologists as representing the leadership attained by the city of Babylon (ca. 2000 B.C.), whose religious hegemony lasted throughout the existence of the Babylonian state.

759. Assyria. The Assyrian pantheon is in general identical with that of Babylon, but has certain features which are due to the peculiar character of the Assyrian civilization. The god Ashur, originally the local god of the city or district of Ashur, and then the chief god of Assyria, was naturally a war-god—Assyria was essentially a military nation, differing in this regard from Babylonia. He is, however, more than a mere god of war—he has all high attributes, and came to represent in Assyria that approach to monotheism which in Babylon was embodied in the later cult of Marduk.

760. Babylonian and Assyrian female deities are of two classes: those who are merely consorts of the male deities, and those who represent fertility. The first class we may pass over—the goddesses of this class are vague in character and functions and play no important part in the religious system; they appear to be artificial creations of the systematizers. The deities of the second class, however, are important. From a very early time the fertility of nature has been referred appropriately to female Powers, and in the Semitic pantheon a large number of such divinities occur. A deity of this sort naturally becomes a mother-goddess, with all the attributes that pertain to this character; in some cases a mother-goddess becomes supreme.

761. A very early female divinity is Bau, worshiped particularly at the city Lagash and by King Gudea. Her function as patron of productiveness is probably indicated in the spring festival held in her honor on New Year's Day, in which she is worshiped as the giver of the fruits of the earth. There are several local female deities that seem to be substantially identical in character with Bau. Innanna (or Ninni) in Uruk (Erech) was the mistress of the world and of war, and Nana is hardly to be distinguished from her.[1306] In Agade Anunit has a similar role; in Lagash Nina was the determiner of fate, and the mother of the goddesses.

762. These names appear to be titles signifying 'mistress,' 'lady,' and this is probably the meaning of the name of the great goddess who finally ousted or absorbed her sisters, Ishtar.[1307] In the earliest form in which Ishtar appears, in the old poetry, she is the deity of fertility; when she goes down to the Underworld all productiveness of plants and men ceases; and her primitive character at this time appears in the account of her marriages with animals, in which there is to be recognized the trace of the old zooelatrous period; but as patron of fertility she becomes in time a great goddess and takes on universal attributes—she is the mother of gods and men, universal protector and guide. Where war was the chief pursuit she became a goddess of war; in this character she appears in Babylonia as early as the time of Hammurabi, and later in Assyria. In the genealogical constructions she was brought into connection, as daughter, wife, or other relation, with any god that the particular conditions suggested. As the Assyrians grew morally she was endowed with all the highest virtues (so in the Penitential Psalms), and occupied so preeminent a position that under favorable circumstances she might perhaps have become the only god of the land.

763. If her name signified originally 'lord' or 'lady,' the occurrence of several Ishtars in Assyria (particularly Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela) is easily understood; so in Canaan, as we learn from the Old Testament, there was a great number of local Ashtarts.[1308] We can thus also explain the male deities Ashtar in Moab and Athtar in South Arabia.[1309] None of these, however, attained the eminence of the Babylonian and Assyrian Ishtar; her supremacy in Mesopotamia was due doubtless in part to the political importance of the cities that adopted her. She had her rivals, as we have seen, in Marduk and Ashur and others; and that she was able to maintain herself is to be ascribed in some measure to the importance attached by her worshipers to the fertilizing power of nature.

764. The other Semitic peoples, with the exception of the Hebrews, offer little material for tracing the development of the great gods. For the Aramean region the records are sparse; Aramean deities appear to be of the same character as the Canaanite.[1310] In Canaan (including Phoenicia) out of the vast number of local divinities, the Baals and Ashtarts, few attained to eminence, and it is doubtful whether any one of them deserves the title "great."[1311] The divine patrons of cities were locally powerful; such were the Baal of Tyre, called Melkart ('the king of the city'), the Ashtart of Sidon, and Tanit of Carthage;[1311] these owed their reputation to their official positions, and there is no other record of their development. The same thing is true of the Moabite Kemosh, the Ammonite Malkom (Milkom), and the Philistine Dagan (Dagon) and Baalzebub. None of these became ethically great or approached universality. The Phoenician Eshmun was known to the Greeks, and was identified by them with their Asklepios (AEsculapius), probably because among the various functions attaching to him as local deity healing was prominent; but of his theologic history little is known.[1312] Several North Arabian deities, especially Dusares (Dhu ash-Shara) and the goddesses Al-Lat and Al-Uzza, were widely worshiped, their cults extending over the whole Nabatean region; but the communities to which they belonged never produced a great civilization or attained great political significance, and these deities always retained traces of their local nature.[1313] The same remark is to be made of the South Arabian gods known to us; they were locally important, but we have little information concerning their characters.[1314]

765. The clearest example of the orderly advance of a deity to preeminence is afforded by the Hebrew Yahweh (Jehovah). Originally, it would seem, a local deity, the god of certain tribes on the northern boundary of Arabia,[1315] he was adopted by the Hebrews under conditions which are not quite clear, and was developed by them in accordance with their peculiar genius. At first morally and intellectually crude, he became as early as the eighth century B.C. ethically high and practically omnipotent.[1316] For many centuries he was regarded merely as the most powerful of the gods, superior to the deities of other nations, and it was only after the beginning of our era that the Hebrew thought discarded all other gods and made "Yahweh" synonymous with "God." In each period of their history the conception that the Hebrews had of him was in accord with the economic and intellectual features of the time.[1317]

766. A word may be added respecting the Semitic titles Ilu, or El, and Elohim, which have been supposed by some recent writers to prove the existence of an early monotheism, particularly in Southern Arabia. The terms mean simply 'god,' and were applied by early Semitic communities to any deity, particularly to the local god. In the Arabia of Mohammed's time a tribe would call its deity simply "the god," a sufficient designation of him for the place;[1318] this designation, in Arabic al-ilahu, came to be pronounced "Allah," and this familar term, as is remarked above, was adopted by Mohammed and expanded (probably under the influence of some advanced Arabian circle of thinkers of his time) into the conception of the one only god, which he and others had derived from Christians and Jews. In certain parts of the Old Testament also "Elohim" stands for the national god, conceived of as all-sufficient. But these are late conceptions. There is no proof that in South Arabia or in Babylonia the term Ilu meant anything else than the local deity, though such a deity would naturally receive all the attributes that his worshipers demanded in their religious constructions. Most of the appellations of Semitic deities are epithets, and while this mode of conceiving of the gods militated against the development of them into distinct personalities and the construction of a pantheon, it was favorable, on the other hand, to isolation and to the tendency to elevate any favorite deity to a position of preeminence.

767. Greece. The Greeks, with their rich imagination and artistic feeling, filled the world with divine figures, well-defined types of Greek character, ideals of Greek thought. Greece alone has constructed a true pantheon, a community of gods all individualized, but all compacted into a family or a body of government. The question of their historical development involves great difficulties, partly because the wide diffusion of their cults in Hellas occasioned many local expansions of the original conceptions in the various regions, partly because most of the deities appear fully or almost fully formed in the earliest literary monuments, so that we are dependent on cultic procedures and passing allusions for a knowledge of their preliterary character. Without, then, attempting an investigation of the obscure prehistoric theogonic period, the general lines of growth of some of the principal divine personages may be followed (as far as the data permit) as examples of the way in which the great gods were gradually created.[1319]

768. Zeus, originally doubtless a sky-god (not the sun), represents an old Indo-European divine conception, found substantially also among all the great peoples of antiquity, as well as in many half-civilized tribes. But nowhere has he attained so eminent a position as in Greece. The Hindu Dyaus (the 'shining one')[1320] is not prominent in the Vedic mythology or in later times, and the Mazdean Ahura Mazda, if he was originally the sky, had dropped his physical characteristics and become only a spirit; the Latin Jupiter approaches Zeus most nearly in name and character. A sky-god is naturally conceived of as universal ruler,[1321] but in any particular region he assumes the characteristics of the ruling human personages of the place and time. Zeus appears first as a barbarian chieftain with the ordinary qualities of such persons. Stories that have come down about him reflect a period of what now seems immorality, though it was the recognized morality of the time; he is deceitful and changeable and completely unregardful of any definite marriage laws. His cult in some places (for example, in Arcadia) had savage features. Whether he had originally in the Hellenic world a special home, and if so what it was, cannot now be determined.[1322]

769. In the historical period he appears as a chief god in many places in Greece, gradually absorbs the functions of other gods, and receives numerous titles derived from places and functions. He is the father of gods and men, but not the sole creator of the world. His gradual rise in moral character may be traced in the literature. In Homer he is a universalized Agamemnon, with very much the intellectual and moral qualities of Agamemnon; a process of growth in the conception of him in the Homeric poems is indicated by the incongruities in his portraiture—at one time he is a creature of impulse and passion, at another time a dignified and thoughtful ruler. In Pindar and the tragedians of the fifth century he has become the representative of justice and order in the world, and in later writers he comes to be more specifically the embodiment of everything that is good in the universe. He represents the Greek conception of civic authority, and thus the nearest approach to monotheism discoverable in the Greek mythological system; and as embodying the finer side of religious feeling he both punishes and forgives sin.

770. Next in importance to Zeus as representative of Greek religious thought stands Apollo. The meaning of the name and the original seat of the god are obscure; he appears to have been a Pan-Hellenic deity; he was definitely shaped by the whole mass of Hellenic thought. Originally, perhaps, the local deity of some hunting and pastoral region, and possessing the quasi-universal attributes of such deities, the wide diffusion of his cult (through conditions not known to us) brought him into relation with many sides of life. While he shares this many-sidedness with several other gods, the Greek genius of theographic organization assigned him special headship in certain distinctively Hellenic conceptions. Zeus embodied the theocratic idea, and Apollo the ideas of Pan-Hellenic civic unity, artistic feeling, and the more intimate ethical and religious experience. He became the patron of the Amphictyonic assembly and of literature and art, and, especially in connection with the Delphic oracle, the fosterer of ethical conceptions of ritual and of sin. How it came to pass that these particular departments were assigned him it is not possible to say. Such specialization was natural to the Greeks, but the determining conditions in particular cases have not been recorded, and can only be surmised. His growth kept pace with that of the Hellenic people—in the Iliad he is a partisan, and his words and deeds do not always command our respect, but in the later theological constructions he throws off his crudeness. His connection with the sun was a natural consequence of his rise to eminence; he is not a sun-god in the earliest literary remains.

771. Poseidon, second only to Zeus in power, is also of obscure origin.[1323] His specific marine character is certain, though as a great god he had many relations and functions.[1324] Possibly he was originally the local deity of some marine region, and by reason of the importance of his native place, or simply through the intimate relationship between the Greek communities, and in accordance with the Greek spirit of organization, came to be generally recognized as the god of the ocean.[1325] Though he was widely revered he remained largely a nature god—he never attained the majesty and moral supremacy of Zeus, never, indeed, represented specifically any refined moral or religious conception. Whether this ethical and religious meagerness was a consequence of the vagueness of the relation between the sea and human life, or of some other fact, is a point that can hardly be determined.

772. Hermes, to judge from his history, was the creation of some pastoral community, an ideal of rustic excellence: fleet of foot, a leader in popular amusements, skilled in simple music, eminent in an art much valued in early times—the art of stealing cattle. When he was taken into the circle of Greek theological thought his swiftness recommended him to the position of messenger of the gods,[1326] and his function as psychopompos, the guide of souls to the other world, would then follow naturally; from this function it cannot, however, be inferred that he was originally a chthonic deity—a character that does not accord with the early portraitures of him. Like other gods he grew morally, but he never reached ethical distinction. Skill in theft was in early times often regarded as a virtue,[1327] and in general he who got the better of his fellows was esteemed a master of good luck and prosperity; and a bestower of outward prosperity Hermes came to be.[1328] His main quality was cleverness, in contrast with the intellectual power of Apollo.

773. On the other hand, another rustic figure, the Arcadian herd-god Pan,[1329] never developed into a great Hellenic god. His worship was widely diffused; he appears often in artistic representations, and Pindar thought him worthy of a hymn (of which, unfortunately, only fragments survive), but in general he remained uncouth and half savage, a goatlike figure, the companion of satyrs, or (as the Homeric hymn depicts him) a merrymaker. He seems to have been an embodiment of the lower rustic pleasures, a local god, probably not a divinized goat.[1330]

774. His name, however, taken to mean 'all,' gave occasion to fanciful interpretations. He was so called, it was said, because he gave delight to all the Immortals;[1331] or his person and his musical and other instruments were supposed to represent universal nature—his horns the rays of the sun and the horns of the moon, his spotted fawnskin the stars, his pipe of seven reeds the harmony of the heavens, his crook the year, which returns on itself, and so on.[1332] The Stoics and the Orphic writers made him Universal God, the creator of the world.[1333] In the popular cult, however, he remained the merry patron of herds. The most satisfactory explanation of his name is that which derives it from the stem pa, 'feed'—he is then "the goatherd."[1334] The story told by Plutarch, of a voice heard crying on the coast of Epirus, "Great Pan is dead," arose from some misapprehension, but no precise explanation of its origin has been given.[1335] Poets like Pindar and Vergil, disposed to preserve and dignify the old traditions, treat Pan respectfully and sympathetically, but such constructions are nonpopular.[1336]

775. Ares seems to be the creation of a war-loving tribe; in the Iliad he is a fierce warrior, armed cap-a-pie, delighting in battle and slaughter. Through the machinations of Hera and Athene he is overcome by human heroes, the poet's feeling being, possibly, contempt for the mere savage fighter; in fact, Ares in the Iliad is, from our point of view, hardly a respectable character—he violates his promise, and when wounded cries out like a hurt child. But as war-god he was widely revered in Greece; in Thebes especially he was honored as one of the great gods. Hesiod makes him the son of Zeus and Hera,[1337] but he never attains moral or other dignity; in the popular cult he remained, probably, merely the patron of war. In the later artistic representations he is the ideal of warlike vigor and grace. In the Homeric hymn (which may be of Orphic origin) he is transformed into a lover of peace and a source of all pure and lofty aspirations—a violent procedure, induced by the poet's unwillingness that an Olympian should represent anything but what was morally good.

776. The process of development of a god's character is illustrated with special clearness by the history of Dionysus. It is generally agreed that he was of foreign origin, an importation from Thrace. The features of his earliest cult known to us are marked by bald savagery. His worshipers indulged in wild orgies, probably excited by intoxicating drinks, tore to pieces a goat (as in Thrace) or a bull (as in Crete) and ate the flesh raw;[1338] and the evidence goes to show that they practiced human sacrifice. All these procedures have parallels in known savage cults. Omophagic orgies are described by Nilus (among the Saracens), and such customs are reported as existing or having existed in the Fiji Islands and elsewhere.[1339] Among many tribes intoxication is a common preparation for the work of the shaman; and human sacrifice has been practiced in all parts of the world. There is nothing peculiar in the office of soothsayer that accompanied the Dionysiac cult; mantic persons and procedures have formed a prominent part of the constitution of the lower peoples everywhere.

777. Dionysus, in a word, was originally the local god of a savage community; the data are not sufficient to fix precisely his original place and the original conception of him. His mantic function does not necessarily show that he was a ghost. It is true that the dead were often consulted (and necromancy long survived among civilized peoples), but any spirit or god might take possession of a worshiper and make him the vehicle of revelation. Nor is the phallus-cult peculiar to Dionysus; this cult is widely diffused, and its origin is to be referred not specifically to the recognition of the general generative power of nature, but to the mystery of human life.[1340] In his original home Dionysus seems to have represented everything that touched the life of his people. When, at a certain time, he passed into Hellas (carried, doubtless, by immigrants), he took on the character necessitated by his new surroundings—a process of transformation began. Exact chronological data are lacking, but as in the Iliad[1341] he is the son of Zeus, he must have been adopted by the Greeks very early. In his new home he became the patron of the vine.[1342] In a vine-growing region any prominent deity may become a wine-god;[1343] but the special connection of Dionysus with wine in Greece suggests that in his earlier home he was somehow identified with intoxicating drinks. With vegetation in general also he may have been connected in Thrace—such a relation would be natural for a clan god—and in that case his Hellenic role as god of vegetation would follow as a matter of course; or, if he advanced from the vine to the whole of vegetable nature, the development is intelligible.

778. When and on what grounds he was accepted as one of the Olympians is not clear;[1344] perhaps it was on account of the importance of vine culture, perhaps from the mysterious character of his cult, the enthusiasm of divine inspiration reflected in the frenzy of the worshipers, or from these causes combined; his later name, Bacchus, which seems to refer to cultic orgiastic shouting, would appear to indicate this element of the cult as a main source of his popularity. Once established as a great god he was credited with various functions. The Greek drama arose in connection with his worship, and at Eleusis the old element of seizure by the god was transformed by the higher thought of the time into the conception of ethical union with the deity. Thus the old savage god came to stand for man's highest aspirations.

779. As among other peoples, so among the Greeks the government of the Underworld was gradually organized, and a head thereof appointed.[1345] Already in the Iliad and in Hesiod[1346] the universe is divided into three parts under the rule of the Kronids Zeus, Poseidon, and Aides respectively; the earth, however, and Olympos, says Poseidon, are the common property of them all—there was no complete governmental separation between the Underworld and the Upperworld. The Greeks, with their joy in the present, gave comparatively little prominence to the future (being herein sharply contrasted with the Egyptians).

780. The title generally given to the underground chief, Hades (apparently 'the invisible one'), indicates the vagueness that attached to this deity.[1347] In the Iliad he is a dark and dread divinity. The precise significance of his title Plouton[1348] is uncertain; but under this name he is connected in the myths with processes of vegetation—it is Plouton who carries off Persephone, leaving the world in the deadness of winter. The figure of the underground deity appears to have taken shape from the combination of two mythological conceptions—the underground fructifying forces of nature, and the assemblage of the dead in a nether world or kingdom.[1349] His only moral significance lay in his relation to oaths, wherein, perhaps, is an approach to the idea of a divine judge below the earth.[1350]

781. The female deities of the Greeks are no less elaborately worked out than the male gods, and, like these, are types of human character and representatives of human pursuits.[1351]

782. The great goddess Hera is in Homer attached especially to Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, but at a very early time was Pan-Hellenic. The meaning of her name and her origin are uncertain. There is no good ground for regarding her as having been originally a moon-goddess (Selene was the real moon-goddess). What is certain is that she had a special relation to women and particularly to childbirth; but such a function is so generally attributed to some goddess that we can only suppose that she rose to eminence through local conditions unknown to us. The most interesting point about her is that she came to be the representative of the respectable Greek matron, jealous of her wifely rights, holding herself aloof from love affairs, a home person, entitled to respect for the decency of her life, but without great womanly charm.

783. By a natural mythological law she was regarded as the consort of Zeus, and gradually acquired dignity without, however, ever coming to be a distinct embodiment of any form of intellectual or moral life. As Zeus embodied the conception of civil and political headship, so Hera appears to have embodied the idea of the wife as controller of the purely domestic affairs of the family, her business being the bringing up of children and the oversight of servants—duties that may have seemed at an early period not to require great moral and intellectual power.

784. A distincter form is that of Demeter, who, whatever the meaning of her name,[1352] certainly represents the fertile earth—a figure similar to hundreds of others in the world, and doubtless existing at various points in Greece under local names; she probably represents a unification of the different conceptions of the fertile earth, a process that went on in the natural way in Greek thought, and was formulated by the poets. Her historical connection with the great Asian earth-goddess, the Mother-Goddess, is uncertain. Demeter, however, never became the great earth-mother; she remained attached to the soil, except that in the Eleusinian mysteries she (probably as patron of fertility) was allegorized into a representation of those moral conceptions of the future that gradually arose in Greece.

785. The group of deities that may be called maiden goddesses is of peculiar interest. A maiden goddess is originally an independent deity who, for whatever reason, has not been brought by the myth-makers into marriage relations with a male deity. Generally such independence is a result of the fact that the goddess is the representative of fertility. She may, in accordance with early customs of human society, choose temporary consorts at will (as is the case with Ishtar); she may be in her sole person (like the Dea Mater) the productive power of the world; or she may remain a virgin, occupied only with the care of some department of life (so Athene and Artemis). Which of these characters she takes depends on early social conditions and on the nature of the local theistic organization. In Greece these goddesses assume various shapes.

786. There is first the primitive divine Power of vegetation, called simply the Kore, the Maiden, a figure ultimately identical with Demeter and in the later constructions represented as her daughter. She is not necessarily to be regarded as a development out of an original corn-spirit. Her title "maiden" may be compared with the Semitic title "mistress," mentioned above, and with the names expressing family relations, "sister," "mother"—only this particular designation defines her simply as an unmarried female divinity. The "corn-maiden" of modern European folk-lore may be the cultic degradation of an old deity.[1353] The title Kore became almost a proper name, though the designation was not so definite as in the cases of Bel and Ishtar.[1354]

787. As the Kore is the representative of vegetable life, so Hestia stands in general for the indoor life, the family. She long retained this local character, but gradually assumed the position of the great goddess of the home center, the hearth,[1355] and was connected with the household fires and festivals. She represents the more intimate social life of the family in contrast with Hera, who stands for the government of the household.

788. The development of the functions of Artemis is comparatively clear. The origin of the name is doubtful, but in the earliest records she is connected with the fertile earth, with vegetable and also with animal life.[1356] This character indicates that she was at one time a local, all-sufficient deity, though it is hardly possible to determine her original seat. As a local goddess in the hunting area she was naturally connected with the chase, and as a female divinity she was the patroness of marriage and the protector of human birth. Her original nature as the maiden appears in the representation of her as a virgin which occurs in Homer.[1357] There is no contradiction between this character and her function of presiding over marriage and birth if we consider her as a local goddess who from one point of view was regarded as a simple maiden, from another point of view as the protector of women.[1358] Thus invested with the control of these important features of life she naturally became a general patroness, a guardian. Later she was connected with Apollo as his sister, exactly by what steps we do not know; and in the mythical constructions she was represented as the daughter of Zeus and Leto.[1359]

789. The Hellenic goddess Artemis is to be distinguished from the Ephesian deity to whom the Greeks gave the same name, though when the Greeks came into close contact with Asia Minor the two were identified. And in fact, though in historical origin the two deities are to be kept apart, they doubtless go back to the same conception. The Ephesian goddess was the Great Mother—she stood specifically for the idea of maternity which lies at the basis of the world; the Greek divinity, beginning as a local protectress, took on larger functions which gave her general resemblance to the universal mother.

790. The relation between Artemis and Hekate is an illustration of the process of cooerdination and harmonization that went on continually among the Greeks. Hekate does not appear in Homer, but in Hesiod she has the full form of a great deity—she exercises control over heaven, earth, and sea;[1360] and at a later period she becomes similarly connected with the Underworld. This variety of functions can be explained only by the supposition that she also was a local deity, who, like all local deities, was regarded as universal.[1361] As the meaning of her name is uncertain and her original region unknown, it can be only surmised that her cult spread gradually in Greece through the growing unification of the Hellenic states. Like Artemis she presided over human birth. The functions of the two goddesses being so nearly the same (they appear to represent similar conceptions arising at different centers), it was natural that in the later times they should be identified or closely associated.

791. Athene is said in a late myth (not in the Iliad) to have been born from the head of Zeus, a representation that has led many recent scholars to regard her as the goddess of the thunderstorm, the lightning that cleaves the clouds, the divine warrior that slays the dragon. But ingenious and attractive as this interpretation is, to determine the origin of the goddess it is safer to go to the earlier forms of her cult. At a very early period she is connected with ordinary social occupations.[1362] She is the patroness of the cultivation of the land; in Athens, where the olive was important, it was she who bestowed this tree on the city; here she is the maiden, the genius, the divine patron of vegetation. She presided over the domestic employments of women, spinning and weaving—that is, she is the goddess of household work.[1363] As is the case with so many divine patrons of men's early simple employments, she grew with the community and became gradually a great goddess, and necessarily a patroness of cities. In her character of general patroness she became a goddess of war—a necessity for all ancient states. On the other hand, in a community (like Athens, for example) where intellectual insight was highly esteemed she would naturally become the representative of cleverness and wisdom.

792. The peculiar nature of the wisdom that is prized by men depends on time and place. In the earliest periods what Athene bestows is a high degree of common sense and skill in devising ways and means, such as Odysseus shows. In later times of larger cultivation she bestows wisdom in the higher sense, intellectual breadth. Exactly how it came to pass that the two figures Artemis and Athene developed on such different lines we are unable to say—the beginning of the divergence goes back to times of which we have no records; but, as gods represent the elements of human life, it was natural that a gradual differentiation should take place; the same general conception would be particularized in different ways in different places, just as divergent forms of the same original word acquire different significations in speech.[1364] As for the later combination of these deities with heavenly bodies and many other things, these are to be regarded as the product of later poetical imagination and the tendency to universalize all great deities.

793. Aphrodite exhibits more clearly than any other deity the process or the direction of the Hellenization of a foreign god. Her titles Cypris, Paphia, Cytherea, as well as her connection with Adonis, point, as is generally held, to a Semitic origin[1365]; she seems to have been identical with the great Babylonian, Assyrian, and Syrian goddess Ishtar (Astarte)[1366]. Received into the Greek pantheon at a very early time (already in the Iliad she is one of the Olympians), she yet shows the main characteristics of the Semitic deity[1367]—she is especially the representative of fertility and sexual passion, and also has relation to war. The lines of development, however, were different in different communities. In Babylonia and Assyria Ishtar became a great universal national deity, charged particularly with the care of all the interests of the state, while in Syria and Canaan the corresponding figures (Attar, Ashtart) remained to a great extent local, and were especially prominent in festivals.

794. In Greece the conception of Aphrodite was worked out in a non-Semitic way in two directions. By poets and philosophers she was made the beneficent producer of all things, shedding her charm over animate and inanimate nature;[1368] and the sentiment of love, for which she stood, was exalted into a pure affection, the basis of married life. The baser side of her cult, with its sexual license (Asiatic of origin), remained along with the higher conception of her,[1369] but the latter was the special contribution that the Greeks made to her development.

795. The theistic scheme of the old Greek polytheistic period is the broadest and finest that the ancient polytheism produced. It recognized a divine element in all sides of human life, from the lowest to the highest; it marked out the various directions of human feeling and effort, and in its final outcome it reached the conception of a unity in the divine government of the world, and gave expression to man's best aspirations for the present and for the future. True, it gave way at last to philosophy; but it had recognized those elements of thought on which philosophy was based. The Persian and Hebrew systems expressed more definitely the idea of a divine monocracy, and lent themselves easily to the formation of a religious society, a church, but they did not escape the limitations of mere national feeling. The Greeks founded no church—they formulated universal ethical and religious conceptions, and left the development to the individual. All the great ancient religions reached a high ethical plane and a practical monotheism, but the Greek was the richest of all in the recognition of the needs of humanity.

796. Rome. The Roman pantheon (if the Italian divine community can properly be called a pantheon) had not the fullness and fineness of the Greek—in accordance with the Roman genius it included only deities having special relations with the family and its work and with the state.[1370] The rich Roman development of specific gods of the home is referred to above.[1371] The old nature gods long retained their place, doubtless, in popular worship, but were gradually subordinated to and absorbed in the larger divine figures. And the great gods themselves began at an early time to be assimilated to Greek deities and to assume their functions and even their names.[1372]

797. The most important of the nature gods are Sol, Luna, and Tellus (primitive figures that soon gave way to deities divorced from the physical sun, moon, and earth), and the patrons of agricultural work, Consus and Ops, Liber and Libera, Silvanus and Faunus. The natural features represented by these deities did not disappear entirely from the greater deities, but were purified and elevated. Anna Perenna, for example, as representative of the round of years, remained by the side of Janus, but he embodied this conception in a larger civic way.

798. The greatest of the Roman gods, Juppiter[1373] or Jupiter, is identical in name with Zeus, but differs from him in mythological development and in the final form of his character. As sky-god he was connected with atmospheric phenomena (rain and lightning) and so naturally with wine and other crops. But as chief god of the state he speedily rose above these connections, and as Optimus Maximus became the representative of all Roman virtues. Along with this native development he was in later times more or less identified with Zeus. By his side stood the national deity Quirinus, who remained a local patron and never rose to large proportions. Related to him are Sancus and Dius Fidius, who represented some primitive conceptions similar to those belonging to his early form, but they did not develop into great gods. These three were practically absorbed by him, but the history of this process is obscure.

799. Janus, the guardian of the entrance to the house (janua)—a function of prime importance in early times, had a prominent place in the cult. He was invoked at the beginning of the day, the month, and the year; in the Salian hymn he is called "god of gods" and "good creator"; he was served by the rex sacrorum, who was the first in priestly dignity. He may thus have been a chief god in the oldest Latin scheme.[1374] Yet he seems never to have come to stand for anything intellectually or morally high except in late philosophical thought. Though the guardian of public as well as private houses, he was not the patron of the city. He remained in the cult a sort of family and clan god, and represented only the ideas of a primitive mode of life, the great role being assigned to the sky-god.[1375]

800. To judge from the old rituals Mars was in the earliest time of which there is any record a god of vegetation. The Arval Brothers, who were charged with the care of crops, addressed their petitions to him, and it was to him that the Roman husbandman prayed for a blessing on his labors.[1376] What may have been his still earlier character we have no means of determining with certainty. The view that he was originally a god of the fructifying sunlight[1377] seems to rest mainly on a precarious etymology, the derivation of his name from a stem mar meaning 'to shine'; but it does not appear that ancient peoples attributed the growth of crops to the sun.[1378] Analogy would rather lead us to regard him as an old local deity, naturally connected with vegetation. However this may be, the importance of agriculture for the life of the community raised him to a position of eminence, his priestly college, the Salian (traditionally referred to Numa), was one of the greatest, he was connected with various departments of life, and for the warlike Romans he naturally became the patron of war. The cult of the old war-goddess Bellona maintained itself, but she never attained the highest rank; she is not the equal of Mars, with whom in the later constructions she was brought into connection. In the Hellenizing period he was identified with Ares.[1379]

801. The name Saturn is generally connected with the stem sa (sero, satum, sata), to sow, and he is accordingly regarded as an agricultural deity, the special patron of agricultural work. Whether or how he differed originally from Mars is not clear—perhaps in original differentiation of functions, he being attached to the work of sowing, Mars to vegetation in general; or perhaps they were two similar deities belonging originally to different regions, and differentiated when brought together in the same system. Information on this point is lacking. That Saturn was an ancient Latin god is probable from the fact that he was traditionally said to be an old king of Latium. Of his earliest cult in Rome little is known. The feast that bears his name, the Saturnalia (held on December 17 and some following days), was a time of popular festivity, when social distinctions were laid aside (slaves were on an equality with masters). Similar festivals are found elsewhere.[1380] Midwinter, when the work of gathering in the harvest was over, was a natural time for festivities.[1381] Saturn, or the figure from which he arose, may have presided over this season originally, or he may have been gradually connected with an old ceremony. The process of Hellenizing him began early. He was identified with Kronos, made the father of Jupiter and the head of a pre-Jovian divine dynasty, and, in accordance with the tendency to regard the former days as better than the present, the Saturnia regna became the golden age of the past.[1382] Apart from this he seems to have had no ethical significance.

802. In the case of certain deities, as Volcanus, Neptunus, Mercurius, Sancus, a pronounced Roman development cannot be traced, partly because of the lack of full data, partly, in the case of Volcan, Neptune, and Mercury, because of an early and complete identification with the Greek gods Hephaistos, Poseidon, and Hermes.

803. The Roman female deities[1383] are far less developed than the Greek—their functions are simple, their mythological interest small. The members of the group representing the productive power of the earth—Bona Dea, Dea Dia, Libera, Fauna, Ceres, Proserpina,[1384] and others—were not worked up by the Romans into great personalities.

804. Juno, an independent deity, originally not the wife of Jupiter, is, in the developed cult, the special patron of the maternal side of the life of women, and, as such, is a great domestic power, the embodiment of a large part of family life. It was probably as great sky-goddess that she attained this position—the chief female deity is naturally the protector of women. The name came to designate the woman's personality as childbearer, and more generally her inner essence or self, as "genius" came to designate the male essence.[1385] Whether this usage was simply an extension of the idea of 'protectress' to that of 'self,' an identification of woman with her specific function in the family, or rested on some older conception, is not clear. However this may be, she became a great goddess, in the later construction the wife of Jupiter, and was identified with Hera, to whom in fact she is nearly related in function and character. Though her name appears to contain the same stem (iu) as 'Jupiter,' and her epithet 'Lucina' the stem luc, 'to shine,' there is no proof that she was, in early times, regarded as a light-deity, or particularly as moon-goddess. She was sky-goddess, but not, for that reason, necessarily light-goddess.

805. The importance attached by the Romans to the family life is expressed in the cult of Vesta, the guardian of the hearth as the center of that life.[1386] The Penates, however, the divine protectors of the household, were no less important in the family cult than she. The state also had its Vesta and its Penates. To this character of sacredness stamped on the life of the private family and the larger family, the state, ethical significance and influence must doubtless be ascribed.

806. Diana appears to have originated in the time when life was spent largely in forests, and trees were a special object of worship; she was in historical times connected with groves.[1387] Her cult was widely diffused in Italy, and she became (perhaps because she embodied the common feature of the old life) the representative of Italian unity. As great female deity she was the helper of women in childbirth. Her name is based on the stem di, 'to shine,'[1388] which appears in 'Jupiter' and 'Juno'; but she is not a sky-goddess—the "shining" in her case is that of trees and plants, the green color that gleams in the light, so that the grove is called lucus, the 'shining mass.'[1389] Diana was soon identified with Artemis, and was endowed with her attributes.

807. Another Italian goddess, Minerva, stood, probably, in the earlier time for the simpler arts of a simple community—she was the patroness of manual work and of the healing art. The expression omnis Minervae homo, descriptive of a man capable in his line of work, almost reduces her to an abstract idea. The name (as the older form, Menerva, more clearly indicates) is based on the stem man (found in Latin mens), and appears to mean 'endowed with mind' (or, 'spirit'), though exactly what was the range of this conception in the earliest times is not clear.[1390] Later her function was extended to embrace intellectual capacity, but it was not until her identification with Athene (not later than the third century B.C.) that she attained her full cultic significance.[1391]

808. Venus, though an old Italian deity (as her name and her ancient temples show), was so early Hellenized that her proper native development was cut short. The fact that she was in early times the patroness of gardens[1392] suggests that she was originally a deity of the productive field; probably she belonged in the group of goddesses (Libera, Bona Dea, and others)[1393] who presided over fertility. It would seem that every region in Italy had such a numen loci (naturally mainly agricultural). It is not clear to what particular spot Venus was originally attached,[1394] or how she came to be revered over a wide region. Under ordinary Italian conditions she might have become a deity like Ceres. But in Sicily, at Mount Eryx, according to tradition, her cult came into contact with that of Aphrodite, whose qualities she soon assumed.[1395]

809. In the third century B.C. the cult of the Sicilian Venus (Venus Erycina) was brought to Rome by direction of the Sibylline Books, and from this time onward her advance to prominence was continuous. As a great goddess she became (like Ishtar and Aphrodite) in a warlike community the patron of war (Venus Victrix). When the AEneas myth was adopted in Rome she took the place of Aphrodite as mother of that hero (who became the founder of the Roman state), and was honored by Julius Caesar and others as Venus Genetrix. The old Roman moral feeling appears in the dedication of a temple (114 B.C.) to Venus Verticordia as atonement for the unchastity of three Vestals.[1396] In general the later functions and cult of Venus were reproductions or imitations of those of Aphrodite. Such a divine figure, it seems, the Romans would never have developed out of their own resources.

810. The general characteristics of the great ancient national religions are indicated in the preceding descriptions. In the sacrificial cult and the general apparatus of worship there is no important difference between them, but they differ notably among themselves in the construction of the divine world. The simplest theistic system is the Chinese, which regards the world as order controlled by Heaven. The western cults fall into two divisions, the Egypto-Semitic and the Indo-European. The Egyptian and the Semitic, though they differ in collateral points (divinization of kings, idea of the future life), agree in lacking a true pantheon. On the other hand, notwithstanding resemblances between the Hebrew and the Persian, the difference between the Semitic group and the Indo-European is well-defined. This difference may be indicated by pointing out certain peculiarities of the Semitic theistic system.

811. Features of Semitic theism. 1. Paucity of departmental gods and absence of highly specialized gods. Of this latter class, so prominent in Greece and Rome, there is no clear trace in Semitic cults.[1397] Departmental deities are not found in Arabia, Canaan (including Israel and Phoenicia), and Syria. The Hebrew Yahweh obviously controls all departments of nature and life. The Phoenician Eshmun (a name of uncertain meaning) was identified by the Greeks with their Asklepios as god of healing, but no special function of this sort is attributed to him in Semitic records. As he was somehow connected with the Kabiri, the "great gods," it is probable that he was a local divinity credited with general powers.[1398] There is more ground for recognizing real departmental gods in Babylonia and Assyria, though even there the evidence is not quite satisfactory. The great gods, Ea, Bel, Sin, Shamash, Marduk, Ishtar, Ashur, preside over all human interests. Nabu stands for agriculture as well as for wisdom, and Ea for wisdom as well as for the great deep. Nergal is not the only god of war. Perhaps the distinctest case of specialization is Ramman (Ninib, Adad), the storm-god[1399]: the "thunderbolts of Im [Ramman]" are mentioned in "The War of the Seven Evil Spirits"; yet Shamash stands with him against the storm-spirits. In general it appears that the recognition of special departments for gods is inchoate and feeble in Babylonia and Assyria. There is a separate deity for the Underworld, sometimes a goddess, sometimes a god, but they are vague figures.[1400] The connection of certain gods with certain stars was a late construction, and seems to have had no significance for worship except a general deanthropomorphizing tendency.

812. 2. There is no trace of a cult of heroes in the Semitic area. The Babylonian Etana, Gilgamesh, and Nimrod (an enigmatical figure), and the Old Testament Nephilim do not receive worship.[1401] The dead were consulted, but there was no cult of the great ancestors.[1402] The divinization of Babylonian kings, referred to above,[1403] seems not to have carried worship with it.

813. 3. The Semitic material of malefic spirits, while in general the same as that found elsewhere in the world, has a couple of special features. In Babylonia there was a sort of pandemonium, a certain organization of demons,[1404] with proper names for some classes; demons usually have not proper names, but may receive such names when they come into specially definite relations with men. The demon Lilit mentioned in the Old Testament,[1405] is probably Babylonian. The two great Hebrew hostile beings, Satan and Azazĕl, are rather gods than demons.[1406] They were both most highly developed under Persian influence, and in the Book of Enoch take on the character and role of Angro Mainyu. Their history exhibits, however, the disposition of the later Jews to organize the realm of supernatural evil; about the first century B.C. the serpent-god of Genesis iii was identified with Satan.[1407]

The Greek malefic beings, Ker, Harpy, Fury, Gorgon, Sphinx, and the like, appear to have been developed out of ghosts[1408]—whether or not this is true of the Babylonian demons the known material does not enable us to say. Organization of such beings was carried out fully by the Persians, but not by any other Indo-European people and not by the Chinese.

814. 4. On abstract gods and phallic cults see the discussions of these points above.[1409]

815. 5. Semitic theistic myths differ from Indo-European in that they are almost wholly without the element of personal adventures of gods.[1410] Since all known genuine Semitic myths seem to have their original home in Babylonia, and Babylonian mythical material bears marks of Sumerian influence, the question has been raised whether we have any genuinely Semitic mythical biographies of gods. However this question may be answered, it remains true that the Semites show little disposition to work out this line of thought.

816. Of the origin of these peculiarities of the Semitic theistic system, as of all such origins, it is impossible to give any satisfactory explanation. Geographical and climatic conditions have been appealed to: the Semitic area was small and isolated—the Semites were shut off by oceans, mountains, and rivers from the rest of the world, were disposed to migrate only within the limits of their area,[1411] and long lived under the monotonous influence of the desert; thus, it is said, their conception of the world became objective and limited—they were clannish, practical, unanalytic, and unimaginative. But the origin of races is obscure, and the genius of every ancient people was formed and developed in remote ages under conditions not known to us. We can do little more than note the characteristics visible in historical times.

817. Paucity of myths and the other features mentioned above accord with the later role of Semitic, especially Hebrew, theism—the tendency to conceive of the deity as on the one hand aloof and transcendent, and on the other hand standing in close social relations with man as his lord and protector. This proved to be socially the most effective idea of God, and has been adopted by all the great nations of the western world.

818. The contributions of the Indo-European religions to the religious thought of the world are indicated in the preceding sketches. What is to be learned from the Chinese the future must show. The general history of civilization leads us to expect a gradual combination and fusion of all lines of religious development, in which every system will contribute its best, and the lower elements will be discarded.[1412]



CHAPTER VII

MYTHS

819. Myths represent the savage and half-civilized science of origins, the imaginary construction of the world. From the earliest times men have shown curiosity respecting the origin of the things that lie about them. In the presence of plains and mountains, trees and rivers, sun, moon, and stars, beasts and human beings, they have felt the necessity of accounting for the beginning of all these objects.[1413] This attempt at giving a natural history of the world is in itself a scientific procedure, but in the earlier periods of humanity it naturally attached itself to the hypothesis of superhuman Powers—the production of this variety of mysterious things appeared to demand capacity above that of man. The science and the fancy of early man combined to produce a great mass of theories and stories which to their inventors seemed to be a satisfactory account of the origin of all things.[1414]

820. Myths thus furnish an important contribution to the history of early opinion, scientific and religious; in the absence of written records they often offer our only means of information concerning early thought. They describe the origin not only of the physical world but also of communities and social organizations and institutions. They have a noteworthy vitality, lasting from the beginning of human communal life into periods of advanced civilization; and, when adopted by great religious organizations and interwoven into their theories of salvation, they perpetuate to civilized times the ideas of the crude period in which they originated. In many cases they stand side by side, and in sharp contrast, with elevated moral conceptions of the deity, and then have to be harmonized, usually with a great expenditure of exegetical ingenuity, with the higher ideas of society.

821. The mythopoeic age, in the widest sense of the term, embraces the whole period in which appeal is made, for the explanation of phenomena, to other than natural agencies; but it is generally understood to extend only up to the time when, though a general divine Power is invoked for creation, this is regarded as working solely through the laws of nature.[1415] And within this period the myth-making impulse lasted longer in some directions than in others. In general, the mythical theories concerning the larger processes, as, for example, the creation of the world, received no addition after the establishment of a settled civilization; but after this time even well-advanced communities continued to invent mythical accounts of the origin of customs, institutions, genealogies, and similar facts. Throughout the whole myth-making period a progression may be recognized in the character of the myths: from the earlier animal and human creators we pass to the higher anthropomorphic forms, the great gods; there is increased literary excellence, a molding and a remolding of the old crude stories, with a combination of them into well-ordered histories; they are constantly modified by the growing acquaintance with the laws of nature and by the higher intellectual conceptions of the deity; and they are more and more infused with ethical significance.

822. An examination of myths all over the world shows that the most of them, especially those relating to creation and to the histories of the gods, originated at a period when men stood intellectually and morally on a very low plane.[1416] The first myth-makers were savages, with all the well-known characteristics of savage life. Having next to no knowledge of natural law, and holding to a practical identity of nature among men, beasts, and physical things, they had no difficulty in imagining all sorts of transformations and creative procedures. No limit was conceived of for the power of beasts and men—there was no object in heaven or earth which, according to the current ideas, could not have been produced by some procedure which was similar to the procedures of ordinary life. The ethical character of the creators and of the introducers of general culture was that of the communities that imagined them; naturally the stories were full of ethical barbarities and violations of all the moral rules recognized at a later period; and, as is remarked above, these stories continued into civilized times, and had to be interpreted by various devices.

823. One of the most noteworthy facts in the history of mythology is the general similarity of the myths that are found all over the world. Allowing for continuous moral and intellectual progress and for local differences of surroundings, it may be said that the theories of the production of the earth and the heavenly bodies, of man and other objects, of customs and institutions, show substantially the same types everywhere. The question has been raised whether this virtual identity is to be explained by the supposition of independent origination at various points, or is to be attributed to a borrowing by one community from another. The question of the migration of myths is a part of the larger question of the migration of culture, and is attended with all the difficulties that attach to this latter. It is not possible at present to give an answer which shall embrace all the phenomena. Obviously any satisfactory solution of the problem must be preceded by a thorough examination of all particular myths, all social characteristics, and all geographical and migratory relations affecting the early communities; and on these points there is yet much to learn.

824. It is well known that customs and beliefs have sometimes passed from one tribe or nation to another, when there has been close social intercourse between the two. It is known also that early men were capable of long journeys by land and by water: the migration legends of various peoples are full of the details of such movements; in comparatively recent times there have been great migrations of large bodies of people, as, for example, from the Arabian desert to the north and northwest, and from the central Asiatic steppes westward and eastward; and the tribes of the Pacific Ocean appear to have traversed long distances in their canoes. And when we consider the great lapse of time, many thousands of years, that preceded the formation of the human society with which we are acquainted, it appears to be impossible to assign any limit to the possibility of tribal movements on the face of the earth. On the other hand, we do not know whether, or how far, such migrations issued in social fusion; and all the well-attested cases of borrowing of customs and ideas have sprung from long-continued social union.

825. Further, a distinction must be made between general resemblances and minute agreement or complete identity; there may be a similarity so great as to force on us the hypothesis of imitation, and there may be general similarities that may be ascribed to ordinary human thought working in different places under similar conditions. In fact, the conditions of existence have not varied very greatly over the globe. There are differences of climate and soil and surface-configuration, but everywhere there have been the sky with the heavenly bodies, the sequence of day and night, sunshine and rain, hunting and fishing, trees, rivers, beasts and birds, and the cultivable soil; and as man's problem was everywhere the same—namely, how to put himself into good relation with his surroundings—and as his intellectual equipment was everywhere substantially the same, it would not be surprising if he should fall on similar methods of thought and procedure independently in various parts of the world. It was natural to early man to think of the sun as a ball of fire which had somehow been thrown up into the sky, and of the moon as associated with the sun as sister or wife or husband, and of the stars as children of these two. For creative agents early man had to look to the beings about him, particularly to beasts, birds, and insects. The process of creation was simple—the story usually amounts merely to saying that such and such a beast or other being made this or that object; and there is very rarely, if ever, a conception of an absolute beginning; almost always a reconstruction of existing material is assumed.

826. Both explanations of the resemblances in myths, it thus appears, are reasonable in themselves, and every case must be considered separately. That a community has borrowed one story does not prove borrowing in the case of any other story; and that a people has been a center of distribution of certain myths does not prove that it was the originator of all myths. These two propositions appear to be self-evident, but they have often been ignored in discussions of the provenance of mythical material.[1417]

827. The similarities in myths all over the world extend over the whole domain of religion. Myths may be divided into those which deal with the creation of the world and of man (cosmogonic), those which deal with the origins of tribes and nations (ethnogonic), those which refer to the origin of customs and institutions (sociogonic), and those which are based on the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies, clouds, winds, and so forth (solar, lunar, procellar, and so forth).

828. Cosmogonic myths.[1418] Among early tribes the creators are very often familiar animals, such as the coyote, the raven, the hare (North America), the wagtail (among the Ainu), the grasshopper (among the Bushmen)—in general, whatever animals appear to the men of a particular tribe to show skill and power. Reference is made above to the reasons which led early men to pay such high regard to the lower animals.[1419] But in more advanced savage communities the creative function is ascribed to a man, as among the Thompson River Indians and in Southeast Australia; in Central Australia the authors of creation or of the arrangement of things are beings who are indifferently men or animals, but are regarded as the ancestors of the tribes. In the higher religions the creators are nature gods and great gods, and finally the one God stands alone as creator.

829. The act of creation is commonly represented as a process. Mud is brought up from a pool, or an island is raised from the sea (the Maoris, the Redmen), and these are stretched out so as to meet the needs of men; or a dragon or a giant is cut to pieces and the various parts of the universe are made from the pieces (Babylonia, India, Scandinavia); or, in still later times, an unformed mass of water is conceived of as the original state out of which all things are fashioned (Babylonians, Hebrews, Hindus, Greeks); or the universe issues from an egg (the origin of the egg being left unexplained),[1420] or the earth is represented as the mother of all things (California). Elaborate cosmogonies are found in New Zealand (the Maoris), in North America (the Pawnees, the Lenape, and so forth), in Australia, and elsewhere. An interesting example is the Californian Achomāwi cosmogony. In the beginning, according to this scheme, were only the sea and the sky, and from the sky came down the Creator; or a cloud, at first tiny, grew large, condensed, and became the Silver-Gray Fox, the Creator, and out of a fog, which in like manner was condensed, came the Coyote, and these two made the earth and man.[1421]