The Gods, who can with ease all shapes assume,
Repair to populous cities.'
And let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, or introduce in tragedies, or any other poems, Hera transformed into the guise of a princess collecting
'Alms for the life-giving children of Inachus, river of Argos,'
not to mention many other falsehoods which we must interdict. [147]
"When a poet holds such language concerning the gods, we shall be angry with him, and refuse him a chorus. Neither shall we allow our teachers to use his writings for the instruction of the young, if we would have our guards grow up to be as god-like and god-fearing as it is possible for men to be." [148]
We are thus constrained by the statements of the heathens themselves, as well as by the dictates of common sense, to look beyond the external drapery and the material forms of Polytheism for some deeper and truer meaning that shall be more in harmony with the facts of the universal religious consciousness of our race. The religion of ancient Greece consisted in something more than the fables of Jupiter and Juno, of Apollo and Minerva, of Venus and Bacchus. "Through the rank and poisonous vegetation of mythic phraseology, we may always catch a glimpse of an original stem round which it creeps and winds itself, and without which it can not enjoy that parasitical existence which has been mistaken for independent vitality." [149]
[Footnote 146: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xix.
[Footnote 147: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xx. Much more to the same effect may be seen in ch. ii.
[Footnote 148: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xxi.