The study of the cults of Zeus is perhaps the most interesting chapter of the history of Greek religion, for it includes the two extremes of religious thought, the most primitive ideas side by side with the most advanced; and nearly all the departments of nature and human life were penetrated with this worship. Although the figures of Apollo, Athene, Dionysos, and Prometheus are of more importance in the history of external civilization and of the special arts of Greece, yet no character in Greek religion has such wealth of ethical content, or counts so much for the development of moral ideas, as the character of Zeus. At times he seems to overshadow the separate growths of polytheism; and at times in expressing the nature of Zeus the religious utterance became monotheistic.

The study of this as of the other Hellenic cults must consist in great part of an examination of the cult-titles, which must be carefully distinguished from mere poetical appellatives, and which on the whole are our most direct evidence of the ideas embodied in the state-religion. And the importance of the title in the worship was of the greatest; for public prayer and sacrifice were never made to God in the abstract, but to a particular divinity usually designated by some term that showed what sort of help the worshipper needed and expected; unless he addressed the deity by the right title, the help might be withheld; and a great part of the function of the oracles in Greece was to instruct the worshipper to what deity under what particular name he should pray.

The present work, however faulty and defective it may be in method or statement, need not be prefaced by any apology for the subject with which it deals. A compendious account of Greek cults, that should analyze and estimate the record left by Greek literature and monuments of the popular and public religion, has long been a desideratum in English and even to a certain extent in German scholarship. Until quite recent years the importance of Greek religion has been contemptuously ignored by English scholars. The cause of this neglect was perhaps the confusion of Greek mythology—that apparently bizarre and hopeless thing—with Greek religion; the effect of it is still apparent in nearly every edition of a Greek play that is put forth. Fortunately, this apathy concerning one of the most interesting parts of ancient life is now passing away; and since this book, the work of many years of broken labour, was begun, a new interest, stimulating to fruitful research, in Greek ritual and myth is being displayed in many quarters, especially at Cambridge.

The comparative study of religion has received signal aid from the science of anthropology, to which England has contributed so much; we have been supplied—not indeed with ‘a key to all the mythologies,’ but with one that unlocks many of the mysteries of myth and reveals some strange secrets of early life and thought.

The Hellenic ideal of the virgin-huntress, the goddess kindly to boys and maidens and to the living things of the wood, as it was perfected in the religious hymn and the Euripidean drama, was not fully embodied in Greek art until the age of Praxiteles and the great painters of Alexander's period. Yet the developed archaic art had done something for the expression of the Artemis-type, and had given it movement and life. The fragment of an Attic vase quoted above a shows a very striking representation of the divinity which we may date about 470 b. c. She is clad in Ionic chiton and mantle with a panther's skin over her shoulders, holding in her left hand the bow and raising in her right hand a flower towards her lips. The golden-coloured drapery and the white flesh suggest a cult-image of chryselephantine technique, and the figure may be a copy of the older image in the Brauronian temple on the Acropolis.

Of considerable importance also for character and style is the Pompeian statuette in the Museum of Naples (Pl. XXXII. b), representing Artemis striding forward, clad in a chiton with sleeves and a finely textured mantle, with a quiver at her back; the fingers are restored, but the one hand must have been holding a bow or torch, the other holding up the skirt of her dress; a diadem adorned with rosettes crowns her head, of which the hair has been given a golden tinge.

The sculptor who surpassed all others in dealing with this type is Pheidias, and the greatest monuments of her worship are associated with his name. To understand these, it is necessary to remember what had been accomplished by the archaic and transitional period. Enough, perhaps, has already been said about her form in the archaic art; her predominant character there is warlike, although the peaceful and even the maternal idea appeared in some of the monuments, such as the seated figures found on the Acropolis: and already the older art had depicted her as the goddess of victorious peace, and the fertility that peace brings, under the type of Nike Apteros. Within its own narrow limits of expression it had sometimes been able to show the maidenly aspect of the war-goddess; but usually the forms and proportions are scarcely distinct from those of other goddesses, and the face has rarely any clear or individual character. Nor does the drapery add much to the ideal; in the later archaic period she wears often an Ionic chiton with sleeves, and over this a mantle which is looped up on one shoulder, and falls down from beneath the aegis in stiff parallel zigzag folds, as we see it on the form of Athena from the western Aeginetan gable, a work that represents the utmost that archaic art could do in rendering this type (PI. XXII. a).

The oldest worship of Zeus, as of all other Greek divinities, was without an image, and remained so on Mount Lycaeum and probably elsewhere for a longer time than the other cults. In Homer we have an explicit reference to an idol of Athene and an allusion to one of Apollo, but no hint that he ever knew of an image of Zeus. And the most archaic statues that have come down to us are representations of Artemis and perhaps Apollo, but not of the Supreme God. The reason why the most primitive religion, both of Greece and Rome, was destitute of images, was, of course, want of imagination and helplessness of hand rather than the piety that Clemens claims for the Pelasgians; but obviously this would not explain why, when the iconic age had begun, the cult of Zeus was later in admitting the iconic form than the other divinities. We may allow that the cause here lay in a certain religious reserve.

For a long period he was worshipped on the mountain tops with altar and sacrifice only; in the next stage, or during the same period, certain aniconic objects were consecrated to him. The strangest of these was the stone which Pausanias saw near Gythium in Laconia, upon which Orestes had sat and had been healed of his madness,‘ and which had been called Zeus the stayer in the Dorian tongue.’