The worship to which this chapter is devoted is one of the most important and fascinating in the whole Hellenic religion. In the study of it we seem to have a picture revealed to us in outline of the early agrarian life, of the social usages on which the family was based, and also of the highest religious aspirations of the people. The folk-lorist and the student of primitive anthropology can gather much from it; and it also contributes largely to our knowledge of the more advanced religious thought in Europe. The primitive element in it is bright and attractive, there is scarcely a touch of savagery, and it is connected at many points with the higher life of the state. The mythology of the cult enthralled the Hellenic imagination and inspired some of the noblest forms of art, and it appeals to the modern spirit with its unique motives of tenderness and pathos, with the very human type of the loving and bereaved mother.

The attempt to explain the name Demeter has been only partly successful: there can be little doubt but that the latter part of the word means ‘mother,’ and this is a fact of some importance, for it shows that the name and the worship is a heritage of the Aryan population, and its universality in Greece gives evidence against the theory that the presence of the female divinity betrays the non-Aryan stock.

The monumental evidence, which always supplements the literary record of the higher Greek cults and often reveals religious facts that might otherwise have escaped our knowledge, is disappointingly meagre as regards Poseidon's worship. But though it may convey to us no new ideas serviceable for the history of this religion, it is useful as illustrating the prevalence of certain cult-concepts which the literature has brought to our notice.

The art-symbolism that attached to him was mainly intended to express the functions and character of the sea-divinity. But the ancient and independent aspect of him as the horse-god is attested by coins and other monuments of some antiquity. Besides those that have been already mentioned we can quote the early coin-device of Potidaia, the fifth-century coins of Rhaukos in Crete, with their fairly prevalent type of Poseidon Hippios, and their combination of the horse's head, trident, and dolphin (Coin Pl. A, 2); also certain sixth-century terracotta pinakes from Corinth in Berlin, on some of which Poseidon appears driving a chariot with Amphitrite, and on one as a horseman of rather diminutive figure (Pl. I a). And the monuments of the later Corinth that arose upon the ruins of the old were full of reminiscences of this traditional cultfigure, which has also inspired several representations of secular art.

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.