[16] Catalogue, Book ii. 844-850.
[17] Iliad, x. 434-441.
[18] Strabo, x. 3. 470; fragment 25. Miss Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 375.
[19] Iliad, xx. 21.
[20] The distinction here made between "religion" and "mythology" is made merely for the sake of convenience. We may readily be told that the belief in a good God is as mythical as the tales about bad gods. But the belief in a just, wise, and loving heavenly Father, the source and sanction of ethics, represents one mood, and leads to one set of results in conduct; while the belief in wicked and buffooning gods represents another aspect of human thought, and leads to very different results, mainly to the bewilderment of late historic Greek thinkers.
[21] Iliad, iii. 279, 280.
[22] xix. 259, 260.
[23] Iliad, ix. 502-512.
[24] For a variety of theories, see Leaf, Notes to Iliad, iii. 278, xix. 262. Quite possibly the formula of the oath is a survival from a stage of belief more archaic than the ordinary Homeric conception of Hades.
[25] Odyssey, i. 263.