[790]. The relation between Artemis and Hekate is an illustration of the process of coördination and harmonization that went on continually among the Greeks. Hekate does not appear in Homer, but in Hesiod she has the full form of a great deity—she exercises control over heaven, earth, and sea;[1360] and at a later period she becomes similarly connected with the Underworld. This variety of functions can be explained only by the supposition that she also was a local deity, who, like all local deities, was regarded as universal.[1361] As the meaning of her name is uncertain and her original region unknown, it can be only surmised that her cult spread gradually in Greece through the growing unification of the Hellenic states. Like Artemis she presided over human birth. The functions of the two goddesses being so nearly the same (they appear to represent similar conceptions arising at different centers), it was natural that in the later times they should be identified or closely associated.
[791]. Athene is said in a late myth (not in the Iliad) to have been born from the head of Zeus, a representation that has led many recent scholars to regard her as the goddess of the thunderstorm, the lightning that cleaves the clouds, the divine warrior that slays the dragon. But ingenious and attractive as this interpretation is, to determine the origin of the goddess it is safer to go to the earlier forms of her cult. At a very early period she is connected with ordinary social occupations.[1362] She is the patroness of the cultivation of the land; in Athens, where the olive was important, it was she who bestowed this tree on the city; here she is the maiden, the genius, the divine patron of vegetation. She presided over the domestic employments of women, spinning and weaving—that is, she is the goddess of household work.[1363] As is the case with so many divine patrons of men's early simple employments, she grew with the community and became gradually a great goddess, and necessarily a patroness of cities. In her character of general patroness she became a goddess of war—a necessity for all ancient states. On the other hand, in a community (like Athens, for example) where intellectual insight was highly esteemed she would naturally become the representative of cleverness and wisdom.
[792]. The peculiar nature of the wisdom that is prized by men depends on time and place. In the earliest periods what Athene bestows is a high degree of common sense and skill in devising ways and means, such as Odysseus shows. In later times of larger cultivation she bestows wisdom in the higher sense, intellectual breadth. Exactly how it came to pass that the two figures Artemis and Athene developed on such different lines we are unable to say—the beginning of the divergence goes back to times of which we have no records; but, as gods represent the elements of human life, it was natural that a gradual differentiation should take place; the same general conception would be particularized in different ways in different places, just as divergent forms of the same original word acquire different significations in speech.[1364] As for the later combination of these deities with heavenly bodies and many other things, these are to be regarded as the product of later poetical imagination and the tendency to universalize all great deities.
[793]. Aphrodite exhibits more clearly than any other deity the process or the direction of the Hellenization of a foreign god. Her titles Cypris, Paphia, Cytherea, as well as her connection with Adonis, point, as is generally held, to a Semitic origin[1365]; she seems to have been identical with the great Babylonian, Assyrian, and Syrian goddess Ishtar (Astarte)[1366]. Received into the Greek pantheon at a very early time (already in the Iliad she is one of the Olympians), she yet shows the main characteristics of the Semitic deity[1367]—she is especially the representative of fertility and sexual passion, and also has relation to war. The lines of development, however, were different in different communities. In Babylonia and Assyria Ishtar became a great universal national deity, charged particularly with the care of all the interests of the state, while in Syria and Canaan the corresponding figures (Attar, Ashtart) remained to a great extent local, and were especially prominent in festivals.
[794]. In Greece the conception of Aphrodite was worked out in a non-Semitic way in two directions. By poets and philosophers she was made the beneficent producer of all things, shedding her charm over animate and inanimate nature;[1368] and the sentiment of love, for which she stood, was exalted into a pure affection, the basis of married life. The baser side of her cult, with its sexual license (Asiatic of origin), remained along with the higher conception of her,[1369] but the latter was the special contribution that the Greeks made to her development.
[795]. The theistic scheme of the old Greek polytheistic period is the broadest and finest that the ancient polytheism produced. It recognized a divine element in all sides of human life, from the lowest to the highest; it marked out the various directions of human feeling and effort, and in its final outcome it reached the conception of a unity in the divine government of the world, and gave expression to man's best aspirations for the present and for the future. True, it gave way at last to philosophy; but it had recognized those elements of thought on which philosophy was based. The Persian and Hebrew systems expressed more definitely the idea of a divine monocracy, and lent themselves easily to the formation of a religious society, a church, but they did not escape the limitations of mere national feeling. The Greeks founded no church—they formulated universal ethical and religious conceptions, and left the development to the individual. All the great ancient religions reached a high ethical plane and a practical monotheism, but the Greek was the richest of all in the recognition of the needs of humanity.
[796]. Rome. The Roman pantheon (if the Italian divine community can properly be called a pantheon) had not the fullness and fineness of the Greek—in accordance with the Roman genius it included only deities having special relations with the family and its work and with the state.[1370] The rich Roman development of specific gods of the home is referred to above.[1371] The old nature gods long retained their place, doubtless, in popular worship, but were gradually subordinated to and absorbed in the larger divine figures. And the great gods themselves began at an early time to be assimilated to Greek deities and to assume their functions and even their names.[1372]
[797]. The most important of the nature gods are Sol, Luna, and Tellus (primitive figures that soon gave way to deities divorced from the physical sun, moon, and earth), and the patrons of agricultural work, Consus and Ops, Liber and Libera, Silvanus and Faunus. The natural features represented by these deities did not disappear entirely from the greater deities, but were purified and elevated. Anna Perenna, for example, as representative of the round of years, remained by the side of Janus, but he embodied this conception in a larger civic way.
[798]. The greatest of the Roman gods, Juppiter[1373] or Jupiter, is identical in name with Zeus, but differs from him in mythological development and in the final form of his character. As sky-god he was connected with atmospheric phenomena (rain and lightning) and so naturally with wine and other crops. But as chief god of the state he speedily rose above these connections, and as Optimus Maximus became the representative of all Roman virtues. Along with this native development he was in later times more or less identified with Zeus. By his side stood the national deity Quirinus, who remained a local patron and never rose to large proportions. Related to him are Sancus and Dius Fidius, who represented some primitive conceptions similar to those belonging to his early form, but they did not develop into great gods. These three were practically absorbed by him, but the history of this process is obscure.
[799]. Janus, the guardian of the entrance to the house (janua)—a function of prime importance in early times, had a prominent place in the cult. He was invoked at the beginning of the day, the month, and the year; in the Salian hymn he is called "god of gods" and "good creator"; he was served by the rex sacrorum, who was the first in priestly dignity. He may thus have been a chief god in the oldest Latin scheme.[1374] Yet he seems never to have come to stand for anything intellectually or morally high except in late philosophical thought. Though the guardian of public as well as private houses, he was not the patron of the city. He remained in the cult a sort of family and clan god, and represented only the ideas of a primitive mode of life, the great rôle being assigned to the sky-god.[1375]