The group of monuments connected with this divinity is of transcendent importance for the history of Greek art and artmythology; they also provide us with interesting illustration, direct or indirect, of most of the cult-ideas that have been examined, although few monuments of the actual templeworship may have survived.

The inquiry into the cult-objects of the earliest period raises at once the archaeological question concerning Ἀγυιεύς. The emblem or ἄγαλμα of this worship was, as we have seen, almost invariably aniconic, the prevalent form being usually the conical pillar, but at Athens apparently a rounded stone of altar-shape. Is this a monumental tradition brought in from the north, or was Apollo on entering the regions of Mycenaean or ‘Minoan’ culture attracted into its circle of pillar-worship? Either view might harmonize with archaeological fact or probability. The very wide prevalence of pillar-cult in the Mediterranean and Anatolian regions in the Mycenaean period has been ably demonstrated by Dr. Arthur Evans; but it belongs also to the early religion of northern and central Europe. Concerning this, as concerning many other problems of prehistoric archaeology, it is difficult to judge with conviction. No doubt all the Hellenic divinities in the pre-Homeric age were likely to be worshipped with this aniconic emblem, whether by original right or by right of annexation; the immigrant Apollo, wherever he settled down, could easily take to himself a Mycenaean or ‘Minoan’ pillar.

The higher cults of Greece, so far as they have been examined, present us with divine personalities too complex and concrete to allow us to regard them merely as the personifications of special departments of nature or of human life. And this will be found true also of the greater number that still remain to be studied. Yet the deities, each and all, are closely concerned with the exercise of certain functions which we may call physical as being those upon which the physical life of man and nature depend. Various practices of primitive vegetation-ritual and a medley of vegetation-myths tend to attach themselves to most of the divinities, whether the goddess or god arose in the first instance from the soil, the sea, or the sky. And we have noticed how vividly the traits of an earth-goddess are apt to appear in the features, as presented in cult and legend, of such personages as Artemis, Aphrodite, and even Athena and Hera. In fact, in regard to the two former, the belief is often borne upon us that we are dealing with highly developed and specialized forms of the primitive earth-goddess. And the worship of the earth is a most important fact to bear in mind as forming a background to much of the bright drama of Greek religion.

The most striking personage of the old Hellenic religion that remains to be studied is Apollo. The investigation is always attractive for the student of pure Hellenism, and is of value also for the general history of European ethic and religious thought. Being certainly the brightest creation of polytheism, he is also the most complex; so many aspects of the people's life and progress being reflected in his cult. It may not, indeed, present us with the highest achievement of the Hellenic spirit in religious speculation: for instance, to trace the gradual evolution of ideas that made for monotheism, we must turn rather to the worship of Zeus. Nor, again, did it attempt to satisfy, as the Dionysiac and Eleusinian worships attempted, the personal craving for a happy immortality which was appealing strongly to the Hellenic world before the diffusion of Christianity. Currents of mystic speculation, coming partly from the East, and bringing new problems concerning the providence of the world and the destiny of the soul, scarcely touched and in no way transformed the personality of Apollo. A Panhellenic god, he survived almost down to the close of paganism as a brilliant and clearly-outlined figure of the genuinely national religion: and in reviewing his cults one is surveying the career of a people in its transition from the lower barbarism into the highest social and intellectual life.

Although this worship is among the minor phenomena of Greek polytheism and never attained any great significance for Hellenic religious history or civilization, yet some questions of interest arise concerning it, and some facts of importance may emerge. The discussion and exposition of them can be brief in the present state of our knowledge. The citations and other kinds of evidence collected below suffice to show that the god of the lower world was worshipped over a wide area of the Hellenic world, appearing under various forms and names, as Plouton or Plouteus, Zeus Chthonios, Zeus Εủβουλεύς, with whom Zeus Meilichios had affinity, as Zeus ∑κοτίτας, Klymenos, Trophonios, and, very rarely, Hades. But it would be going beyond the evidence to maintain at once that his worship was a common inheritance of all the Hellenic stocks. Some of these cults may, for all we know, have been of late origin, and Eleusinian influence may have been responsible for some; for we have seen reason to believe that there was an ancient Plouton-cult and Ploutoneion at Eleusis, and that Eubouleus was one of his synonyms there; and we may suppose that these appellatives were engrafted thence upon the ritual of other Greek states.

The record of the ritual and festivals consecrated to the Apolline worship has more than a merely antiquarian interest, for no part of the history of the god reveals more clearly the intimacy of his association with the primitive and the advanced stages of Hellenic civilization.

We may observe, in the first place, that the ceremonies as far as they are recorded are open and public, nor is there any indication of an Apolline ‘mystery’ with secret rites of initiation, though private guilds mainly in the later period were sometimes instituted in his honour. We have only two examples of a nightly and mystic service, namely the special preparation of the Argive priestess and the Klarian prophet; and here the officiating individuals enter into communion with the deity through sacrament. Otherwise the sacrifices are mainly of the usual Hellenic form, being occasionally bloodless oblations, but far more frequently animal-offerings, among which we must reckon with a survival of human sacrifice. The former are found in the Delian-Hyperborean ritual of the ἀπαρχαί, and belong therefore to the oldest period; and in Delos stood the famous altar of Apollo the Father, known in later times as ‘the holy’ or ‘righteous’ altar, because of the ritual law that forbade the shedding of blood upon it. Clemens speaks of it as most ancient, and Porphyry supposes that the vegetarian-ritual with which it was associated descended from the earliest period of human history when man was innocent of blood.

The primitive earth-goddess has been discovered in various parts of the Hellenic world, under various forms and names; and there still remain certain worships that claim a brief consideration, consecrated to a name of some potency once on Greek soil and of abiding interest in the history of religion, ‘the Mother,’ ‘the Great Mother,’ or ‘the Mother of the Gods.’ We find her cult occurring sporadically about the Greek mainland, and of considerable importance and some antiquity in Boeotia, Athens, and Arcadia, while Akriai in South Laconia boasted to possess her oldest temple. Her divinity was prominent in the Attic state church; for besides an altar dedicated to her in the Agora, she possessed a temple in the Kerameikos near the council-hall, which came to be used as a record office of the state-archives; a festival was held in her honour, in which she received a cereal oblation called ἡ Гαλαξία, a sort of milk-porridge. We have also some traces of her cult outside the ancient limits of the city; at least we hear of a ‘Mother-temple at Agrai,’ and of ‘the Mother in Agrai,’ and her images–not apparently of the earliest period–have been found in the cave of Vari on Hymettus.

In offering to the public two more volumes on the state-religion of the Greek world, I must express my regrets that the interval between their appearance and that of the first two has been so long. I may plead for indulgence on the grounds that multifarious official duties have borne heavily upon me, and that I have devoted what leisure I have had to preparing myself for the completion of my task. I have gained this at least from the long delay, that I have been able to profit by the many works and monographs of Continental and English scholars relating directly or indirectly to the subject, to reconsider many questions and to form more mature opinions on many important points. The results of the researches and discoveries throughout the last decade bearing on the history of religion have given us the opportunity, if we choose to avail ourselves of it, of improving the anthropological method in its application to the problems of comparative religion; and the great discoveries in Crete have thrown new light on certain questions that arise in the study of the classical polytheism. Every year also enriches the record with new material, from newly discovered inscriptions and other monuments.

It was in working upon the form of Apollo that Greek art first reveals the tendency, which afterwards became dominant, to present the divine ideal in youthful aspect. A bearded Apollo appears to us an incongruous type; yet it is found on our earliest Apolline monument, the Melian amphora quoted above, and on the well-known Francois vase. And again on a fragment of a fifth-century vase found on the Acropolis of Athens, containing a representation of the outrage of Tityos on Leto and her deliverance by Apollo and Artemis, the god is undoubtedly bearded, and also—what is the most singular feature in the artist's conception of him—he is armed as a hoplite in cuirass and helm. We may see in this the caprice of the artist rather than the survival of a very early divine type such as that at Amyklai. Usually, in the earliest as well as in the later period, Apollo is represented in peaceful pose or peaceful action such as was consonant with the character of the god of music, and it appears that the aspect of him that was most familiar to the popular imagination was that of the kitharoedos, in which character he would generally appear fully or partly draped. But at some time in the sixth century the fashion began to prevail of depicting Apollo naked as well as beardless.

The ideal of Demeter is presented us in a few monuments only, but is among the most interesting products of Greek art, a late blossom of the soil of Attica; for it was especially the Attic religion and art that spiritualized and purified men's imagination of her. The archaic period was unable to contribute much to its development, and it was long before the mother could be distinguished from the daughter by any organic difference of form or by any expressive trait of countenance. On the more ancient vases and terracottas they appear rather as twin-sisters, almost as if the inarticulate artist were aware of their original identity of substance. And even among the monuments of the transitional period it is difficult to find any representation of the goddesses in characters at once clear and impressive. We miss this even in the beautiful vase of Hieron in the British Museum, where the divine pair are seen with Triptolemos: the style is delicate and stately, and there is a certain impression of inner tranquil life in the group, but without the aid of the inscriptions the mother would not be known from the daughter.