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It appears then that notwithstanding the immigration of Slavonic hordes, and notwithstanding also, it may be added, the influences exercised in later periods by ‘Franks,’ Genoese, Venetians, and Turks, the traditions of the inhabitants of Greece still remain singularly pure; and their claim to Hellenic nationality is justified by their language, by their character, and by many secular aspects of their civilisation. But in the domain of religion it might reasonably be expected that a large change would have taken place. There is the obstinate fact, it may be thought, that the Greeks are now and have long been Christian. Did not the new religion dispossess and oust the ancient polytheism? Are we to look for pagan customs in the hallowed usages of the Greek Church? What can the simple Christian peasant of to-day, subject from his youth up to ecclesiastical influence, know of the religion of his distant ancestors,—of those fundamental beliefs which guided their conduct towards gods and men in this life, and inspired their care for the dead?

On the conduct of man towards his fellow-men in this life the influence of Christianity appears to have been as great as that of paganism was small. Duty towards one’s neighbour hardly came within the purview of Hellenic religion. If we look at the supreme acts of worship in ancient times, we cannot fail to be struck by the disunion of the religious and the ethical. A certain purity was no doubt required of those who attended the mysteries of Eleusis; but by that purity was meant physical cleanliness and, strangely enough, a pure use of the Greek language, just as much as any moral temperance or rectitude; and the required condition was largely attained by the use or avoidance of certain foods and by bathing in the sea. Their cleanliness in fact was of the same confused kind, half physical and half moral, as that which the inhabitants of Tenos were formerly wont, and perhaps still continue, to seek on S. John the Baptist’s day (June 24) by leaping thrice through a bonfire and crying ‘Here I leave my sins and my fleas[55]’: and it was acquired by means equally material. There is nothing conspicuously ethical in such a purity as this.

If moreover, as has been well argued[56], a state of ecstasy was the highest manifestation of religious feeling, and this spiritual exaltation was the deliberate aim and end of Bacchic and other orgies, it must be frankly avowed that religion in its highest manifestations was not conducive to what we call morality. The means of inducing the ecstatic condition comprised drunkenness, inhalation of vapours, wild and licentious dancing. With physical surexcitation came, or was intended to come, a spiritual elevation such that the mind could visualise the object of its desire[57] and worship, and enjoy a sense of unity therewith. On the savagery and debauchery which accompanied these religious celebrations there is no need to enlarge. The Bacchae of Euripides, with all its passion for the beauty of holiness, is a standing monument to the excesses of frenzy: and that these were no mere figment of the poet’s imagination nor a transfiguration of rites long obsolete, is proved by a single sentence of a sober enough writer of later times, ‘The things that take place at nocturnal celebrations, however licentious they may be, although known to the company at large, are to some extent condoned by them owing to the drunkenness[58].’

There were of course certain sects, such as the Orphic, who, in strong contrast with the ordinary religion, upheld definite ethical standards, preaching the necessity of purification from sin, and advocating moral and even ascetic rules of life. Yet, in spite of this, we find a certain amalgamation of Orphic and Bacchic mysteries. And why? Simply because both sects alike had a single end in view, a spiritual exaltation in which the soul might transcend the things of ordinary life, and see and commune with its gods. What did it matter if the means to that end differed? The one sect might reduce the passions of the body by rigid abstinence; the other might deaden them with a surfeit of their desire; but, whether by prostration or by surexcitation, the same religious end was sought and gained, and that end justified means which we count immoral.

In effect the morality of a man’s life counted for nothing as compared with his religion. Participation in the mysteries ensured blessings here and hereafter which an evil life would not forfeit nor a good life, without initiation, earn. ‘Thrice blessed they of men, who look upon these rites ere they go to Hades’ home: for them alone is there true life there, and for the others nought but evil[59].’ It was this that made Diogenes scoffingly ask, ‘What, shall the thief Pataecion have a better lot than Epaminondas after death, because he has been initiated[60]?’ Seemingly religion and morality were to the Greek mind divorced, or rather had never been wedded. Religion was concerned only with the intercourse of man and god: the moral character of the man himself and his relations with his fellows were outside the religious sphere.

Indeed it would have been hard for the ancients to regard morality as a religious obligation, when immorality was freely imputed to their gods. This was a real obstacle to the ethical improvement of the people at large, and was recognised as such by many thinkers. Pindar strove to expurgate mythological stories which brought discredit on the morals of Olympus. Plato would have banished the evil records of Homeric theology from his ideal state, and ridicules Musaeus for forming no more lofty conception of future bliss than ‘eternal drunkenness.’ Epicurus defended his own attitude towards the gods on the plea that there was ‘no impiety in doing away with the popular gods, but rather in attaching to the gods the popular ideas of them[61].’ In effect, in order to reconcile religion with the teaching of ethics, the would-be preacher of morality had either openly to discard a large amount of the popular theology or else to have recourse to adaptation and mystical interpretation of so artificial and arbitrary a kind that it could gain no hold upon the simple and spontaneous beliefs of the common-folk. Yet even among the ordinary men of those days there must have been some who, though they did not aspire to instruct their fellow-men, yet in hours of sober reason and cool judgement cannot have viewed unabashed the inconsistencies of a religion whose gods were stained with human vices. But such thoughts, we may suppose, were swept away, as men approached their sanctuaries and their mysteries, by a flood of religious fervour. Passion in such moments defeated reason. Emotion, susceptibility, imagination, impetuosity, powers of visualisation regarded among western nations as the perquisite of the inebriate, powers of ecstasy not easily distinguished from hysteria,—such were the mental conditions essential to the highest acts of worship; by these, and not by sober meditation, the soul attained to the closest communing and fullest union with that god whose glory for the nonce outshone all pale remembrance of mere moral rectitude and alone was able to evoke every supreme emotion of his worshipper.

If then morality was ever to be imposed and sanctioned by religion, a wholly new religion had to be found. This was the opportunity of Christianity. Paganism, in some of its most sacred rites, had availed itself even of immoral means to secure a religious end: Christianity gave to ethics a new and higher status, and was rather in danger of making religion wholly subservient to morality. That it was difficult to bring the first converts to the new point of view, is evident from the rebukes administered by S. Paul to the Corinthians, who seem not only to have indulged in many gross forms of vice in everyday life, but even to have made the most sacred of Christian services an occasion for gluttony and drunkenness[62].

In all then that concerns the ethical standards of the people, our study of modern Greece will contribute little to the understanding of ancient thought or conduct. Christianity has fenced men about with a rigid moral code, and has exerted itself to punish those who break bounds. Duty towards man is now recognised as the complement of duty towards God; and any one who by a notoriously evil life has outraged the moral laws of conduct, is liable to be deprived by excommunication of the established means of worship. The frailties of the Greek character remain indeed such as they always were: but now religion at least enjoins, if it cannot always enforce, the observance of a moral code which includes the eighth commandment, and Pataecion, though he go regularly to church, yet lacks something.

But while the Church had an open field in matters of morality and had no system of ethics based on Hellenic religion to combat in introducing her higher views of man’s duty towards his fellow-men, in the province of pure religion and of all that concerns the relations of man with his God or gods she necessarily encountered competition and opposition. Primarily the contest between paganism and Christianity might have been expected to resolve itself into a struggle between polytheism and monotheism: but as a matter of fact that simple issue became considerably complicated.

The minds of the educated classes had become confused by the subtleties of the Gnostics, who sought to find, in some philosophical basis common to all religions, an intellectual justification for accepting Christianity without wholly discarding earlier religious convictions. This however was a matter of theology rather than of religion, appealing not to the heart but to the head: and so far as the common-folk were concerned we may safely say that such speculations were above their heads.

Yet for them too the issue was confused in two ways. The first disturbing factor was the attitude adopted by each of the two parties, pagan and Christian, towards the object of the other’s worship. The pagans—so catholic are the sympathies of polytheism—were ready enough to welcome Christ into the number of their gods. Tertullian tells us that the emperor Tiberius proposed the apotheosis of Christ[63]. Hadrian is said to have built temples in his honour[64]. Alexander Severus had in his private chapel statues of Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus[65]; and a similar association of Homer, Pythagoras, Christ, and S. Paul is noted by S. Augustine[66]. Since then there is no reason for supposing that the common-folk were more exclusive in their religious sympathies than the upper classes, it may safely be inferred that the average Pagan was willing to admit Christ to a place among the gods of Greece. The Christians on the other hand did not attack paganism by an utter denial of the existence of the old gods. They sought rather to ridicule and discredit them by pointing out the inconsistencies of pagan theology, and by ransacking mythology for every tale of the vices and misdoings of its deities. They even appealed to the testimony of Homer himself to show that the so-called gods (θεοί) of the Greek folk were mere demons (δαίμονες)[67],—for since Homer’s day the latter word had lost caste. Such methods, had they been wholly successful, might have produced similar results to those which followed the conflict of two religions in the early ages of Greece. As the Titanic dynasty of gods had fallen before the Olympian Zeus, and in their defeat had come to be accounted cruel and malicious powers rightly ousted from heaven by a more just and gracious deity, so too in turn might the whole number of the pagan gods have been reduced to the status of devils to act as a foil to the goodness of the Christian God. But this did not happen. One reason perhaps was that Christianity came provided with its own devil or devils, and the pagans were naturally averse from placing the gods whom they had been wont to venerate in the same category with spirits so uncompromisingly evil. The main reason however must be found in the fact that the Church had nothing to offer to the pagans in exchange for the countless gods of the old religion whom she was endeavouring to displace and to degrade. Indeed the real difficulty of the Christian Church was the tolerant spirit of the Greek people. They would not acknowledge that any feud existed. They were ready to worship the Christian God: but they must have felt that it was unreasonable of the Christian missionaries to ask them to give up all their old gods merely because a new god had been introduced. Even if their gods were all that the Christians represented them to be—cruel, licentious, unjust—that was no reason for neglecting them; rather it furnished a stronger motive for propitiating them and averting their wrath by prayer and sacrifice. Tolerant themselves, they must have resented a little the intolerance of the new religion.

Such being the attitude of the two parties, it may be doubted whether the Church would have made much headway in Greece, had it not been for a fresh development in her own conditions. And this development was the second disturbing factor in what should have been the simple struggle between monotheism and polytheism. Christianity, as understood by the masses, became polytheistic on its own account.

It is true that the authorities of the Greek Church have always taught that the angels and saints are not to be worshipped in the same sense as God. Ecclesiastical doctrine concedes to them no power to grant the petitions of men at their own will: they can act as intermediaries only between man and the Almighty; yet while they cannot in their own might fulfil the requests which they hear, their intervention as messengers to the throne of God is deemed to enhance the value of man’s prayers and wellnigh to ensure their acceptance. But such a doctrine is naturally too subtle for the uninstructed common-folk: and just as Christ had been admitted to the ranks of the Greek gods, so were the saints, it would seem, accepted as lesser deities or perhaps heroes. Whatever their precise status may have been, they at any rate became objects of worship; and a religion which admits many objects of worship becomes necessarily a form of polytheism.

Now while the Church did not sanction this state of things by her doctrine, there can be no doubt that she condoned it by the use to which she put it. The attempt to crush paganism had so far failed, and there was no longer any thought of a combat à outrance between the two religions. Violence was to give way to diplomacy; and the chief instrument of the Church’s diplomacy was the worship of the saints. It became her hope to supplant paganism by substituting for the old gods Christian saints of similar names and functions; and the effects of this policy are everywhere in evidence in modern Greece.

Thus Dionysus was displaced by S. Dionysius, as a story still current in Greece testifies. ‘Once upon a time S. Dionysius was on his way to Naxos: and as he went he espied a small plant which excited his wonder. He dug it up, and because the sun was hot sought wherewith to shelter it. As he looked about, he saw the bone of a bird’s leg, and in this he put the plant to keep it safe. To his surprise the plant began to grow, and he sought again a larger covering for it. This time he found the leg-bone of a lion, and as he could not detach the plant from the bird’s leg, he put both together in that of the lion. Yet again it grew and this time he found the leg-bone of an ass and put plant and all into that. And so he came to Naxos. And when he came to plant the vine—for the plant was in fact the first vine—he could not sever it from the bones that sheltered it, but planted them all together. Then the vine grew and bore grapes and men made wine and drank thereof. And first when they drank they sang like birds, and when they drank more they grew strong as lions, and afterwards foolish as asses[68].’

The disguise of the ancient god is thin indeed. His name is changed by an iota, but his character not a jot. S. Dionysius is god of the vine, and even retains his predecessor’s connexion with Naxos. It is perhaps noteworthy too that in Athens the road which skirts the south side of the Acropolis and the theatre of Dionysus is now called the street of S. Dionysius the Areopagite. I was once corrected by a Greek of average education for speaking of the theatre of Dionysus instead of ascribing it to his saintly namesake.

Demeter again, although as we shall see later she still survives as a distinct personality, has been for the most part dispossessed by S. Demetrius. His festival, which falls in October and is therefore remote from harvest-time, is none the less celebrated with special enthusiasm among the agricultural classes; marriages too are especially frequent on that day[69].

Similarly Artemis, though she too is still known to the common-folk in some districts, has in the main handed over her functions to a saint of the other sex, Artemidos. Theodore Bent has recorded a good instance of this from the island of Keos (modern Zea). There is a belief throughout Greece that weakly children who show signs of wasting have been ‘struck by the Nereids,’—by nymphs, that is, of any kind, whether terrestrial or marine. ‘In Keos,’ says Bent, ‘S. Artemidos is the patron of these weaklings, and the church dedicated to him is some little way from the town on the hill-slopes; thither a mother will take a child afflicted by any mysterious wasting, “struck by the Nereids,” as they say. She then strips off its clothes and puts on new ones, blessed by the priest, leaving the old ones as a perquisite to the Church; and then if perchance the child grows strong, she will thank S. Artemidos for the blessing he has vouchsafed, unconscious that by so doing she is perpetuating the archaic worship of Artemis, to whom in classical times were attached the epithets παιδοτρόφος, κουροτρόφος, φιλομείραξ; and now the Ionian idea of the fructifying and nourishing properties of the Ephesian Artemis has been transferred to her Christian namesake[70].’ It might have been added that in this custom are reflected not only those general attributes of the tendance of children which Artemis shared with many other deities, but possibly also her power to undo any mischief wrought by her handmaidens, the nymphs[71].

Again there is every reason to suppose that S. Elias[72] whose chapels crown countless hilltops is merely the Christian successor to Helios, the Sun. The two names, which have only a moderate resemblance in the nominative, coincide for modern pronunciation in the genitive; and the frequency with which that case was needed in speaking of the church or the mountain-peak dedicated to one or the other may have facilitated the transition. Besides inheriting the mountain sanctuaries at which the worship of the Sun may have persisted from a very early age, S. Elias has also taken over the chariot of his predecessor, and thunder is sometimes attributed to the rolling of its wheels.

In other cases, without any resemblance of names, identity of attributes or functions suggested the substitution of saint for pagan deity. Hermes who in old times was the chief ‘angel’ or messenger of the immortals (ἄγγελος ἀθανάτων) was naturally succeeded by the archangel Michael, upon whom therefore devolves the duty of escorting men’s souls to Hades; and to this day the men of Maina tell how the archangel, with drawn sword in his hand instead of the wand of his prototype, may be seen passing to and fro at the mouth of the caves of Taenarus through which Heracles made his ascent with Cerberus from the lower world, and which is still the best-known descent thereto. The supplanting of Hermes by Michael is well illustrated in the sphere of art also by a curious gem. The design is an ordinary type of Hermes with his traditional cap, and at his side a cock, the symbol of vigilance and of gymnastic sport; by a later hand has been engraved the name ‘Michael’; the cock remained to be interpreted doubtless as the Christian symbol of the awakening at the last day of them that sleep[73].

The conversion of pagan temples or of their sites to the purposes of Christianity tells the same tale. The virgin goddess of Athens ceded the Parthenon to the Blessed Virgin of the Christians. The so-called Theseum, whether Theseus or Heracles was its original occupant, was fitly made over to the warrior S. George: but none the less what seems to have been an old pagan festival, known as the ρουσάλια (Latin rosalia)[74], continues to this day to be celebrated with dancing and feasting in its precincts. The Church of the Annunciation at Tenos, so famous throughout the Greek world for its miracles of healing, stands on the foundations of Poseidon’s ancient sanctuary, and includes in its precincts a holy spring (ἅγι̯ασμα) whose healing virtues, we can hardly doubt, were first discovered by the pagans: for Poseidon was worshipped in Tenos under the title of the ‘healer’ (ἰατρός)[75]. Indeed throughout the length and breadth of the land the traveller will find churches built with the material of the old temples or superimposed upon their foundation, and cannot fail to detect therein evidence of a deliberate policy on the part of the Church.

But in her attempts to be conciliatory she became in fact compromised. It was politic no doubt to encourage the weaker brethren by building churches on sites where they had long been wont to worship: it was politic to smooth the path of the common-folk by substituting for the god whom they had worshipped a patron-saint of like name or attributes. But in so doing the Church practically condoned polytheism. She drove out the old gods from their temples made with hands, but did not ensure the obliteration of them from men’s hearts. The saints whom she set up in the place of the old deities were certain to acquire the rank of gods in the estimation of the people and, despite the niceties of ecclesiastical doctrine, to become in fact objects of frank and open worship. The adoption of the old places of worship made it inevitable that the old associations of the pagan cults should survive and blend themselves with the new ideas, and that the churches should more often acquire prestige from their heathen sites than themselves shed a new lustre of sanctity upon them. In effect, paganism was not uprooted to make room for the planting of Christianity, but served rather as an old stock on which a new and vigorous branch, capable indeed of fairer fruit but owing its very vitality to alien sap, might be engrafted.

Bitterly and despondently did the early Fathers of the Church, and above all S. John Chrysostom, complain of the inveteracy of pagan customs within the pale of the Church, while a kind of official recognition was given to many superstitions which were clearly outside that pale, if only by the many forms of exorcism directed against the evil eye or prescribed for the cure of those possessed by pagan powers of evil[76]. For illustration we need not fall back upon the past history of the Greek Church; even to-day she has not succeeded in living down the consequences of her whilom policy of conciliation. The common-folk indeed profess and call themselves Christian; their priesthood is a Christian priesthood; their places of worship are Christian churches; they make the sign of the cross at every turn; and the names of God and Christ and the Virgin are their commonest ejaculations. But with all this external Christianity they are as pagan and as polytheistic in their hearts as were ever their ancestors. By their acceptance of Christianity they have increased rather than diminished their number of gods: in their conception of them and attitude towards them they have made little advance since the Homeric Age: and practically all the religious customs most characteristic of ancient paganism, such as sacrifice, the taking of auspices, and the consultation of oracles, continue with or without the sanction of the Church down to the present day.

These are strong statements to make concerning even the humblest and most ignorant members of the Holy Orthodox Church: but I shall show, I think, that they do not exceed the warranty of facts.

First of all then the peasant believes himself to be ever compassed about by a host of supernatural beings, who have no relation with his Christian faith, and some of whom he unconsciously acknowledges, by the very names that he applies to them, as ‘pagan’ beings and ‘outside’ the Christian fold[77]. To all of these—and they are a motley crew, gods and demons, fairies and dragons—he assigns severally and distinctly their looks, their dispositions, their habitations, and their works. To some of them he prays and makes offerings; against others he arms and fortifies himself in the season of their maleficence; but all of them, whether for good or ill, are to him real existent beings; no phantoms conjured up by trepidation of mind, but persons whose substance is proved by sight and hearing and touch.

Nothing is more amazing in the peasantry of modern Greece than their familiarity with these various beings. More than once I have overheard two peasants comparing notes on the ghostly fauna of their respective districts; and the intimate and detailed character of their knowledge was a revelation in regard to their powers of visualisation. It is the mountaineers and the mariners who excel in this; but even the duller folk of the lowlands see much that is hidden from foreign eyes. Once however I did see a nymph—or what my guide took for one—moving about in an olive-grove near Sparta; and I must confess that had I possessed an initial faith in the existence of nymphs and in the danger of looking upon them, so lifelike was the apparition that I might have sworn as firmly as did my guide that it was a nymph that we had seen, and might have required as strong a dose as he at the next inn to restore my nerves. The initial faith in such things, which the child acquires from its mother, is no doubt an important factor in the visualisation; but it is certainly strange that often in Greece not one man only but several together will see an apparition at the same moment, and even agree afterwards as to what they saw.

These beings then are not the mere fanciful figures of old wives’ fables, but have a real hold upon the peasant’s belief and a firm place in his religion. To the objects of Christian worship or veneration—God and Christ and the Virgin together with the archangels and all the host of saints—have been accorded the highest places and chiefest honours: but beside them, or rather below them, yet feared and honoured too, stand many of the divine personalities of the old faith, recognised and distinguished still. Artemis, Demeter, and Charon, as well as Nymphs and Gorgons, Lamiae and Centaurs, have to be reckoned with in the conduct of life; while in folk-stories the memory at least of other deities still survives. To these remnants of ancient mythology the next chapter will be devoted; the purely pagan element in the modern polytheism may be sufficiently illustrated here by a few curious cases of the use even of the word ‘god’ (θεός) in reference to other than the God of Christendom.

In Athens, down to recent times, there was a fine old formula of blessing in vogue—and who shall say but that among the simpler people it may still be heard?—which combined impartially the one God and the many:—νὰ ς’ ἀξιῶσῃ ὁ Θεὸς νὰ εὐχαριστήσῃς θεοὺς καὶ ἀνθρώπους[78], ‘God fit thee to find favour with gods and men!’ In the island of Syra, according to Bent[79], it was ‘a common belief amongst the peasants that the ghosts of the ancient Greeks come once a year from all parts of Greece to worship at Delos, ... and even to-day they will reverently speak of the “god in Delos.”’ Another writer mentions a similar expression as used in several parts of the mainland, though only it would seem as an ejaculation, θεὲ τῆς Κρήτης or γιὰ τὸ θεὸ τῆς Κρήτης ‘by the god of Crete[80]!’ In the island of Santorini (the ancient Thera) I personally encountered a still more striking case of out-spoken polytheism. I chanced one day upon a very old woman squatting on the extreme edge of the cliff above the great flooded crater which, though too deep for anchorage, serves the main town of the island as harbour—a place more fascinating in its hideousness than any I have seen. Wondering at her dangerous position, I asked her what she was doing; and she replied simply enough that she was making rain. It was two years since any had fallen, and as she had the reputation of being a witch of unusual powers and had procured rain in previous droughts, she had been approached by several of the islanders who were anxious for their vineyards. Moreover she had been prepaid for her work—a fact which spoke most eloquently for the general belief in her; for the Greek is slow enough (as doubtless she knew) to pay for what he has got, and never prepays what he is not sure of getting. True, her profession had its risks, she said; for on one occasion, the only time that her spells had failed, some of her disappointed clients whose money she had not returned tried to burn her house over her one night while she slept. But business was business. Did I want some rain too? To ensure her good will and further conversation, I invested a trifle, and tried to catch the mumbled incantations which followed on my behalf. Of these however beyond a frequent invocation of the Virgin (Παναγία μου) and a few words about water and rain I could catch nothing; but I must acknowledge that her charms were effectual, for before we parted the thunder was already rolling in the distance, and the rain which I had bought spoilt largely the rest of my stay in the island. The incantations being finished, she became more confidential. She would not of course let a stranger know the exact formula which she employed; that would mar its efficacy: she vouchsafed to me however with all humility the information that it was not by her own virtue that she caused the rain, but through knowing ‘the god above and the god below’ (τὸν ἄνω θεὸ καὶ τὸν κάτω θεό). The latter indeed had long since given up watering the land; he had caused shakings of the earth and turned even the sea-water red. The god above also had once rained ashes when she asked for water, but generally he gave her rain, sometimes even in summer-time. One thing she could not make out—who was the god that caused the thunder; did I know? I evaded the question, and our theological discussion went no further, for the god of thunder was making his voice heard more threateningly, and the old witch would not stay to make his acquaintance at closer quarters.

The physical interpretation of these references to the god above and the god below is not difficult. At the present day there are said to be three springs, and three only, in the whole island; nor are they of much use to the inhabitants; indeed the only one which I saw was dry save for a scanty moisture barely sufficient to keep the rock about it green and mossy: and in fact the population depends entirely upon rain-water stored up in large underground cisterns or reservoirs. Clearly the god below no longer gives water; but that there may have been more spring-water prior to the great eruptions of 1866 is very probable; for the people still call certain dry old torrent-beds by which the island is intersected ‘rivers’ (ποταμοί), and real rivers with water in them figure also in several of the local folk-stories. The perversity of the god above in sending ashes on one occasion instead of rain may also be understood in reference to the same eruptions, of which the old woman gave me a vivid description.

But the theology itself is more interesting than its material basis. This witch—a good Christian, they told me, but a little mad, with a madness however of which sane vine-growers were eager enough to avail themselves—acknowledged certainly three gods: the unknown thunder-god was clearly distinct from the god of the rain who was known to her: and there was also the god of the waters under the earth, in whose service she had perhaps followed the calling of a water-finder, and to whom she ascribed, as did the ancients to Poseidon, the shaking of the earth.

Polytheism then even in its purely pagan form is not yet extinct in Greece. In the disguise of Christianity, we shall see, it is everywhere triumphant.

Among the Christian objects of worship—for I have already explained that by the common-folk the saints are worshipped as deities—the Trinity and the Virgin occupy the highest places, rivalled perhaps here and there by some local saint of great repute for miracles, but nowhere surpassed. It is the Virgin indeed who, in Pashley’s opinion, ‘is throughout Greece the chief object of the Christian peasant’s worship[81]’; and certainly, I think, more numerous and more various petitions are addressed to her than to any person of the Trinity or to any saint. But the Trinity, or at any rate God (ὁ Θεός) and Christ (ὁ Χριστός), as the peasants say,—for the Holy Ghost is hardly a personality to them and is rarely named except in doxologies and formal invocations—are of almost equal importance, and are so closely allied with the Virgin that it is difficult to draw distinctions.

But while the Church has thus secured the first place for her most venerated figures, the influence of pagan feeling is clearly seen in the popular conception of this ‘God.’ His position is just such as that of Zeus in the old régime. He is little more than the unnamed ruler among many other divinities. His sway is indeed supreme and he exercises a general control; but his functions are in a certain sense limited none the less, and his special province is the weather only. Ζεὺς ὕει, said the ancients, and the moderns re-echo their thought in words of the same import, βρέχει ὁ Θεός, ‘God is raining,’ or ὁ Θεὸς ῥίχνει νερό, ‘God is throwing water[82].’ So too the coming and going of the daylight is described as an act of God; ἔφεξε, or ἐβράδει̯ασε, ὁ Θεός, say the peasants, ‘God has dawned’ or ‘has darkened.’ When it hails, it is God who ‘is plying his sieve,’ ῥεμμονίζει[83] ὁ Θεός. When it thunders, ‘God is shoeing his horse,’ καλιγώνει τ’ ἄλογό του, or, according to another version[84], ‘the hoofs of God’s horse are ringing,’ βροντοῦν τὰ πέταλα ἀπὸ τ’ ἄλογο τοῦ Θεοῦ. Or again the roll of the thunder sometimes suggests quite another idea; ‘God is rolling his wine-casks,’ ὁ Θεὸς κυλάει τ’ ἀσκιά του[85], or τὰ πιθάρι̯α του. And once again, because a Greek wedding cannot be celebrated without a large expenditure of gunpowder, the booming of the thunder suggests to some that ‘God is marrying his son’ or ‘God is marrying his daughters,’ ὁ Θεὸς παντρεύει τὸν ὑγιό του[86], or ταὶς θυγατέραις του[87].

Such expressions as these[88] are in daily use among the Greek peasantry: and nothing could reveal more frankly the purely pagan and anthropomorphic conception of God which everywhere prevails. The God of Christendom is indistinguishable from the Zeus of Homer. A line from a Cretan distich, in which God is described as ἐκεῖνος ἀποῦ συννεφιᾷ κι’ ἀποβροντᾷ καὶ βρέχει[89], ‘He that gathereth the clouds and thundereth and raineth,’ exhibits a popular conception of the chief deity unchanged since Zeus first received the epithets νεφεληγερέτης and ὑψιβρεμέτης, ‘cloud-gatherer,’ ‘thunderer on high.’

But even in the province of the weather God has not undivided control. The winds are often regarded as persons acting at their own will; and of the north wind in particular men speak with respect as Sir Boreas (ὁ κὺρ Βορε̯άς), for as in Pindar’s time he is still ‘king of the winds[90].’ So too the whirlwind is the passing of the Nereids, and the water-spout marks the path of the Lamia of the sea. Even the thunder is not always the work of God, but some say that the prophet Elias is ‘driving his chariot,’ or ‘pursuing the dragon.’ The more striking and irregular phenomena in short are governed by the caprice of lesser deities—Christian saints or pagan powers—while God directs the more orderly march of nature.

When however we turn from the external world to the life of man, we find the functions of the supreme God even more closely circumscribed or—to put it in another way—more generally delegated to others. The daily course of human life with all its pursuits and passions is under the joint control of the saints and some of the old Hellenic deities. Of the latter, as I have said, another chapter must treat: but it should be remembered that the peasant does not draw a hard and fast line of distinction between the two classes with whom for clearness’ sake I am bound to deal separately. Thus Charon in many of the folk-songs which celebrate his doings is made to represent himself as a messenger of God, charged with the duty of carrying off some man’s soul and unable to grant a respite[91]. He is occasionally addressed even as Saint Charon[92]; and his name constantly occurs in the epitaphs of country churchyards. A story too in Bernhard Schmidt’s collection[93] illustrates well the way in which pagan and Christian elements are thus interwoven:—

‘There was once an old man who had been good his whole life through. In his old age therefore he had the fortune to see his good angel (ὁ καλὸς ἄγγελός του); who said to him—for he loved him well—“I will tell thee how thou mayest be fortunate. In such and such a hill is a cave; go thou in there and ever onward till thou comest to a great castle. Knock at the gate, and when it is opened to thee thou wilt see a tall woman before thee, who will straightway welcome thee and ask thee of thine age and business and estate. Answer only that thou art sent by me: then will she know the rest.” Even so did the old man: and the woman within the earth gave unto him a tablecloth and bade him but spread it out and say “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” and lo! everything that he wished would be found thereon. And thus it came to pass.

‘Now when the old man had oft made use of it, it came into his heart to bid the king unto his house: who, when he saw the wonder-working cloth, took it from the old man. But because he was no virtuous man, the cloth did not its task in his hands; wherefore he threw it out of the window and straightway it turned to dust. So the old man went again to the woman in the hill, and she gave him this time a hen that laid a golden egg every day. When the king heard thereof, he had the hen too taken away from the old man. Howbeit in his keeping she laid not, and so he threw the hen also out of window, and she likewise turned to dust. So in his anger he bade seize the old man forthwith and cut off his head.

‘But scarce was this done when there appeared before the king the Mistress of the Earth and of the Sea—for she was the woman in the hill—and when she had told him in brief words what awaited him after this life in requital for his wickedness, she stamped with her foot upon the ground, which swallowed up the castle with the king and all that was therein. But the old man that was slain had entered into Paradise.’

In this story the Mistress of the Earth and of the Sea (ἡ κυρὰ τσῆ γῆς καὶ τσῆ θαλάσσης) is, as we shall see later[94], none other than Demeter: but pagan as she is, she works in accord with the good angel (who is evidently her inferior), and orders the old man to invoke the Trinity.

Thus the peasant does not conceive of any antagonism between his pagan and his Christian objects of worship; and both classes are equally deserving of study by those interested in ancient Greek religion. For while every minutest trait or detail of the modern peasant’s conception of those ancient deities, who, though despoiled of temples and organised worship, still survive, may throw some new ray of light on the divine personalities and the myths of old time, yet a more broad and comprehensive view of the outlines of ancient religion may be obtained by contemplating the worship of Christian saints who, though deficient often in personal significance, nevertheless by their possession of dedicated shrines and of all the apparatus of a formal cult occupy more exactly the position of the old gods and heroes.

The saints then, as I have remarked above, have a large share in the control of man’s daily life. The whole religious sense of the people seems to demand a delegation of the powers of one supreme God to many lesser deities, who, for the very reason perhaps that they are lower in the scale of godhead, are more accessible to man. Under the name of saints lies, hardly concealed, the notion of gods. In mere nomenclature Christianity has had its way; but none of the old tendencies of paganism have been checked. The current of worship has been turned towards many new personalities; but the essence of that worship is the same. The Church would have its saints be merely mediators with the one God; but popular feeling has made of them many gods; their locality and scope of action are defined in exactly the old way; vows are made to the patron-saint of such and such a place; invocations are addressed to him in virtue of a designated power or function.

Local titles are often derived merely from the town or district in which the church stands, as Our Lady of Tenos, or S. Gerasimos of Cephalonia. In other cases they have reference to the surroundings of the sanctuary. The chapel of the Virgin in the monastery of Megaspelaeon consists of a large cave at the foot of some towering cliffs, and the dedication is to our Lady of the Golden Cave (Παναγία χρυσοσπηλαιώτισσα). In this case the word ‘golden’ is an imaginative addition, for the interior is peculiarly dark: but the dedication has been borrowed, owing to the repute of the original shrine, by churches which have not even a cave to show. In Amorgos S. George has the title of Balsamites, derived from the balsam which covers the hill-side on which stands his church. In Paros several curious dedications are mentioned by Bent, which he renders as Our Lady of the Lake, Our Lady of the Unwholesome Place, and S. George of the Gooseberry[95]. In Athens there is a church of which the present dedication is said to be due to a fire which blackened the icon of the Virgin, who is known on this account as Our smoke-blackened Lady (Παναγία καπνικαρέα), or, it may be, Our Lady of the smoky head, according as the second half of the compound is connected with the Turkish word for ‘black’ or the now obsolete Greek word κάρα, ‘head[96].’

Titles denoting functions are equally numerous and quaint. In Rhodes the Archangel Michael is invoked as πατητηριώτης, patron of the wine-press[97]. S. Nicolas, who has supplanted Poseidon, often assumes the simple title of ‘sailor’ (ναύτης). S. John the Hunter (κυνηγός) owns a monastery on Mt Hymettus. In Cimolus there is a church of Our Guiding Lady (Παναγία ὁδηγήτρια)[98]. SS. Costas and Damien, the physicians, are known as the Moneyless (ἀνάργυροι), because their services are given gratis. S. George at Argostóli has been dubbed the Drunkard (μεθυστής)[99]—thus furnishing a notable parallel to the hero celebrated in old time at Munychia as ἀκρατοπότης[100]—because on his day, Nov. 3rd, the new wine is commonly tapped and there is much drinking in his honour.

In other cases the actual name of the saint has determined his powers or character without further epithet. S. Therapon is invoked for all kinds of healing (θεραπεύειν): S. Eleutherios (with an echo possibly of Eilythuia) to give deliverance (ἐλευθερία) to women in childbirth: S. James, in Melos, owing to a phonetic corruption of Ἰάκωβος into Ἄκουφος, to cure deafness[101]. S. Elias, the successor of the sun-god (ἥλιος), has power over drought and rain. S. Andrew (Ἀνδρέας) is implored to make weakly children ‘strong’ (ἀνδρειωμένος). S. Maura, in Athens, requires that no sewing be done on her day under pain of warts (locally known as μαύραις), which if incurred can only be cured by an application of oil from her lamp[102]. S. Tryphon resents any twisting (στρήφω) of thread, as in spinning, on his day; and on the festival of S. Symeon expectant mothers must touch no utensil of daily toil, above all nothing black; for S. Symeon ‘makes marks’ (ὁ Ἄϊ Συμεὼν σημειόνει), and a birth-mark would inevitably appear on the child. If however a woman offend unwittingly, she must lay her hands at once on that part of the body where the birth-mark will be least disfiguring to the child.

These are only a small selection of the saints whom the peasant seeks to propitiate, and it may be noted in passing that among them there are some characters, as among the ancient deities, either immoral as S. George the Drunkard, or unamiable as S. Maura, S. Tryphon, and S. Symeon. But a better idea of the multitude of the popular deities may perhaps be conveyed by giving a list of those worshipped in a single island with the functions there ascribed to them. Here is the catalogue given by a native of Cythnos[103]. The Virgin (Παναγία) is invoked on any and every occasion, and the SS. Anargyri (Costas and Damien) in all cases of illness. S. Panteleëmon is a specialist in eye-diseases, S. Eleutherios in obstetrics, S. Modestes in veterinary work, S. Vlasios in ulcers etc. S. Charalampes and S. Varvara (Βαρβάρα) deliver from pestilences, and S. Elias from drought. The power of protecting children from ailments is ascribed to S. Stylianos, and that of saving sailors from the perils of the sea to S. Nicolas, S. Sostes, and the SS. Akindyni (ἀκίνδυνοι). S. Tryphon deals with noxious insects, S. John the Baptist with ague, S. Menas with loss of goods, S. Paraskeve (Friday) with headache: while S. Aekaterine (Catherine) and S. Athanasios assist anxious mothers to marry off their daughters.

As in the multiplicity of the objects of worship, so too in the mental attitude of the worshipper, there is little change since first were written the words δῶρα θεοὺς πείθει, ‘Gifts win the gods.’ There are certain great occasions, it is true, now as in old days, on which religious feeling attains a higher level, and the mercenary expectation of blessings is forgotten in whole-hearted adoration of the blesser. But in general a spirit of bargaining tempers the peasant’s prayer, and a return is required for services rendered. A sketch of the religious sentiments of the Sphakiotes given by the head of a Cretan monastery is worth reproducing, for it is typical of the whole Greek folk. ‘The faith,’ he writes, ‘of these highlanders in Jesus Christ is sincere in every way, reverent, deep-seated, and unshaken, but unfortunately it is not free from superstitious fancies which mar this otherwise great merit. Many of them are fully persuaded that God, Our Lady, and the Saints go to and fro unseen above their heads, watch each man’s actions, and take part in his quarrels, like the gods of Homer. They are under an obligation to work constant miracles, to vindicate and avenge, to listen readily to each man’s requests and petitions, whether they be just or no. Many of the people go off cattle-lifting or on other wrongful enterprises, and at the same time call upon Our Lady, or any other saints of repute as wonder-workers, to assist them, and as payment for success promise them gifts! To some of the Saints they attribute greater power and grace than to the God who glorified them. In the same way they show greater reverence for this or that church or icon, and bring presents from great distances, in the belief that it has miraculous powers, without understanding that Faith works miracles equally in all places[104].’

Such is the verdict of an educated priest of the Greek Church who deplores the polytheism and idolatry of the common-folk among whom he lives, and who in so doing speaks with the authority of intimate knowledge. Nor can the justice of the verdict be questioned by any one who has entered one of the more highly reputed churches of Greece and observed the votive offerings which adorn or disfigure it. For these offerings are of two qualities just as the motives which inspire them are twofold. There are the genuine thank-offerings, selected for their beauty or worth, which commemorate gratefully some blessing received; of such the treasury of the Church of the Annunciation in Tenos is full—gold and silver plate, bibles and service-books in rich bindings studded with jewels, embroideries of Oriental silk unmatched in skill and splendour. But there is another class, the propitiatory offerings designed to place the offerer in a special way under the protection of the saint. Most characteristic among these are the shreds of infected clothing sent by some sick person to the church of the particular saint whose healing power he invokes. Just as in the province of magic the possession of a strip of a man’s clothing gives to the witch a control over his whole person, so in the religious sphere the dedication of some disease-laden rag from the body of the sufferer places him under the special care of the saint. In the church of ‘S. John of the Column’ at Athens the ancient pillar round which the edifice has been built is always garnished with dirty rags affixed by a daub of candle-grease; and if the saint cures those who send these samples of their fevers, he must certainly kill some of those who visit his sanctuary in person. To this class of offerings belong also the bulk of the silver-foil trinkets which are so cheap that the poorest peasant can afford one for his tribute, and so abundant that at Tenos out of this supply of metal alone have been fashioned the massive silver candelabra which light the whole church. These trinkets are models of any object which the worshipper wishes to commend to the special attention of the saint. At Tenos they most frequently represent parts of the human body, for there the Virgin is above all a goddess of healing; but a vast assortment of models of other objects committed to her care may also be seen—horses and mules, agricultural implements, boats, sheaves of corn to represent the harvest, bunches of grapes in emblem of the vintage; there is no limit to the variety; anything for which a man craves the saint’s blessing is thus symbolically confided to her keeping. Doubtless among them there are a number of thank-offerings for mercies already received; I remember in particular a realistic model of a Greek coasting steamer with a list attached giving the names of the captain and crew who dedicated it in gratitude for deliverance from shipwreck. It may even be that some few of the models of eyes and limbs are thank-offerings for cures effected, and in beauty or worth are all that the peasant’s artistic sense desires or his purse affords. But the majority of them, as I have said, are the gifts of those whose prayers are not yet answered and who thus keep before the eyes of the saint the maladies which crave her healing care.

Other offerings again may be dedicated with either motive. Candles and incense are equally suited to win a favour or to repay one. But whether the motive be propitiation or gratitude, the whole system is a legacy of the pagan world and permeated with the spirit of paganism. Everywhere the Christian disguise of the old religion is easily penetrable; the Church for instance has forbidden the use of graven images, and only in one or two places do statues or even reliefs survive: but the painted icons which are provided in their stead satisfy equally well the common-folk’s instinct for idolatry.

Vows conditional upon the answering of some prayer usually conform outwardly at least to Christian requirements. Scores of the small chapels with which the whole country is dotted have been built in payment of such a vow; and often a boy may be seen dressed in a miniature priest’s costume, because in some illness his mother devoted him to the service of God or of some saint for a number of years if only he should recover. But the idea of bargaining by vows is more pagan than Christian, and sometimes indeed an even clearer echo of ancient thought is heard, as when a girl vows to the Virgin a silver girdle if she will lay her in her lover’s arms[105].

Miracles again are expected of the higher powers in return for man’s services to them; for as the proverb runs, ἅγιος ποῦ δὲν θαυματουργεῖ, δὲν δοξάζεται, ‘it is a sorry saint who works no wonders.’ And wonders are worked as the people expect—some in appearance, some in fact.

A sham miracle is annually worked by the priests of a church near Volo in Thessaly. Within the walls, still easily traced, of the old town of Demetrias on a spur of Mount Pelion stands an unfinished church dedicated to the Virgin. Here on the Friday after Easter there is a concourse from all Thessaly to see the miracle. At the east end of the church, on the outside, a square tank has been sunk ten or twelve feet below the level of the church floor, exposing, on the side formed by the church wall, ancient foundations—perhaps of some temple where the same miracle was worked two thousand years ago. The miracle consists in the filling of this tank with water; but seeing that under the floor of the church itself there are cisterns to which a shaft in each aisle descends, and that the tank outside, sunk, as has been said, to a lower level, undisguisedly derives its water from a hole in the foundations of the church, there is less of the marvellous in the fact that the priests by opening some sluice fill the tank than in the simple faith with which the throng from all parts presses to obtain a cupful of the miraculously fertilizing but withal muddy liquid. The women drink it, the men carry it home to sprinkle a few drops on cornfield or vineyard.

Genuine miracles, at any rate of healing, seem to be well established. After personal investigation and enquiry at the great festival of Tenos I concluded that some faith-cures had actually occurred. Some travellers[106] indeed have been inclined to scoff at these miracles and to write them down mere fabrications of interested priests. But in an official ‘Description of some of the miracles of the wonder-working icon of the Annunciation in Tenos’ the total number claimed down to the year 1898 is only forty-four, that is to say not an average even of one a year; and a large majority of the cases detailed—including twelve cases of mental derangement, eleven of blindness, and ten of paralysis, none of them congenital,—might I suppose come under the category of nervous diseases for which a faith-cure is possible; while several of the remainder, such as the case of a man who at first sight of the icon coughed up a fish bone which had stuck in his throat for two years, do not pass the bounds of belief; and even if the priests do sometimes set false or exaggerated rumours afloat, it must be conceded that the peasant, who has faith enough to believe their stories, has also faith enough, if faith-cures ever occur, to render such a cure possible in his case. Indeed no one who has been to the great centres of miraculous healing can fail to be impressed by the unquailing faith of the pilgrims. Year by year they come in their thousands, bringing the maimed and the halt and the blind, and, more pitiful still, the hopelessly deformed, for whose healing a miracle indeed were needed. Year by year these are laid to sleep in the church or in its precincts on the eve of the festival. Year by year they are carried where the shadow of the icon as it passes in procession may perchance fall on them. Year by year they are sprinkled with water from the holy spring. And year by year most of them depart as they came, maimed and halt and blind and horribly misshapen. Yet faith abides undimmed; hope still blossoms; and they go again and again until they earn another release than that which they crave. The very dead, it is said, have ere now been brought from neighbouring islands, but the icon has not raised them up. There are but few indeed whose faith has made them whole; but for my part I do not doubt that a boy’s sight was restored at Tenos in the year that I was there (1899), or that similar occurrences are well established at such shrines as that of the Virgin at Megaspelaeon, of S. George in Scyros, or of S. Gerasimos in Cephalonia.

Closely bound up with these miraculous cures is the old pagan practice of ἐγκοίμησις, sleeping in the sanctuary of the god whose healing touch is sought. At Tenos the majority of the pilgrims who come for the festival of Lady-day can only afford to stop for the one night which precedes it. The sight then is strange indeed. The whole floor of the church and a great part of the courtyard outside is covered with recumbent worshippers. With them they have brought mattresses and blankets for those of the sick for whom a stone floor is too hard; by their side is piled baggage of all descriptions, cooking utensils, loaves of bread, jars of wine or water, everything in fact necessary for a long night’s watch or slumber. And on this mass of close-packed suffering worshippers the doors of the church are locked from nine in the evening till early next morning. Shortly before the closing-hour I picked my way with difficulty in the dim light over prostrate forms from the south to the north door. The atmosphere was suffocating and reeked with the smoke of wax tapers which all day long the pilgrims had been burning before the icon. Every malady and affliction seemed to be represented; the moaning and coughing never stopped: and I wondered, not whether there would be any miraculous cures, but how many deaths there would be in the six or seven hours of confinement before even the doors were again opened.

But this is the practice at its worst. Where there is more time available, there is nothing insanitary in it. In the list of cures at Tenos, to which I have alluded, there are many cases in which the patient spent not one night only but several months in the church. As a typical case I may take that of a sailor who while keeping look-out on a steamer in the harbour of Patras had some kind of paralytic seizure. He was taken to Tenos and for four months suffered terribly. Then about midday at Easter he had fallen asleep and heard a voice bidding him rise. He woke up and asked those about him who had called him; they said no one; so he slept again. This happened twice. The third time on hearing the voice he opened his eyes and saw entering the church a woman of unspeakable beauty and brilliance, and at the shock he rose to his feet and began to walk; and the same day accompanied the festival procession round the town to the astonishment of all the people.

When I was in Scyros I heard of an equally curious case of a long-deferred cure which had recently taken place and was the talk of the town. For seven consecutive years a man from Euboea had brought his wife, who was mad, to the church of S. George to ‘sleep in’ for forty days. Shortly before I arrived the last of these periods was just drawing to a close, when one night both the man and his wife saw a vision of S. George who came and laid his hand on her head; and in the morning she woke sane. Of her sanity when I saw her—for they were still in the island, paying, I think, some vow which the man had made—I had no doubt; and the evidence of the people of the place who for seven years previously had seen her mad seemed irrefragable.

The instances which I have cited are from the records of churches which have succeeded to the reputation possessed by Epidaurus in antiquity. These owing to the enthusiasm which their fame inspires are probably the scenes of more faith-cures than humbler and less known sanctuaries. But in every church throughout the land the observance of the custom may occasionally be seen; for in the less civilised districts at any rate it is among the commonest remedies for childish ailments for a mother to pass the night with her child in the village church.

We shall notice in later chapters the remnants of other pagan institutions which the Greek Church has harboured—an oracle established in a Christian chapel and served by a priest—a church-festival at which sacrifice is done and omens are read—the survival of ancient ‘mysteries’ in the dramatic celebration of Good Friday and Easter. For the present enough has been said to show that, even within the domain of what is nominally Christian worship, the peasant of to-day in his conception of the higher powers and in his whole attitude towards them remains a polytheist and a pagan. And as in this aspect of religion, so in that other which concerns men’s care for the dead and their conception of the future life, the persistence of pagan beliefs and customs is constantly manifest. The ancient funeral usages are undisturbed; and in the dirges which form part of them the heaven and the hell of Christianity seem almost unknown: ‘the lower world’ (ὁ κάτω κόσμος), over which rules neither God nor the Devil but Charon, is the land to which all men alike are sped.

But there is no need to dilate upon these matters yet. It is clear enough already, I hope, that the fact of Greece being nominally a Christian country should not preclude the hope of finding there instructive survivals of paganism. The Church did not oust her predecessor. By a policy of conciliation and compromise she succeeded indeed in imposing upon Hellenic religion the name of Christianity and the Christian code of morality and all the external appanages of Christian worship: but in the essentials of religion proper she deferred largely to the traditional sentiments of the race. She utilised the sanctuaries which other associations had rendered holy; she permitted or adopted as her own the methods by which men had approached and entreated other gods than hers; she condoned polytheism by appropriating the shrines of gods whom men had been wont to worship to the service of saints whom they inevitably would worship as gods instead; and even so she failed to suppress altogether the ejected deities. The result is that for the peasant Christianity is only a part of a larger scheme of religion. To the outside observer it may appear that there are two distinct departments of popular religion, the one nominally Christian, devoted to the service of God and the Saints, provided with sanctuaries and all the apparatus of worship, served by a regular priesthood, limited by dogma and system; the other concerned with those surviving deities of pre-Christian Greece to whom we must next turn, free in respect of its worship alike from the intervention of persons and the limitations of place, obedient only to a traditional lore which each may interpret by his own feelings and augment by his own experience. But the peasant seems hardly sensible of any such contrast. His Christian and his pagan deities consort amicably together; prayer and vow and offering are made to both, now to avert their wrath, now to cajole them into kindness; the professed prophets of either sort, the priests and the witches, are endowed with kindred powers; everywhere there is overlapping and intertwining. And when the very authorities of the Greek Church have adopted or connived at so much of pagan belief and custom, how should the common-folk distinguish any longer the twin elements in their blended faith? Their Christianity has become homogeneous with their paganism, and it is the religious spirit inherited from their pagan ancestors by which both alike are animated.