[6]. Cf. Dionysus in the “Frogs” of Aristophanes, Heracles and Poseidon in the “Birds.” The other comic poets, even Epicharmus, the oldest, dealt with even greater freedom with the gods. Even the scanty fragments of Cratinus and Amphis indicate that fact. In Sicily, an entire dramatic genre, that of the Φλύακες, contained practically nothing but situations in which the divine personages of the myths were the subjects of the coarsest fun.
[7]. Such heroic friendships as that of Achilles and Patroclus were perverted early in the imagination of Greeks. Cf. Aeschylus, in Athen. xiii. 601 A, and Aeschines, i. 142. So also the story of Apollo and Admetus became a love story for Alexandria; Callimachus H. ii. 49.
[8]. The subject has been discussed in full by de Visser, De Graecorum deis non referentibus speciem humanam (Leyden, 1900;) 2d ed. in German, 1903. So at Phigaleia, in Arcadia, Demeter had the form of a horse; the Brauronian Artemis was a bear; Apollo Lykeios was sometimes adored in the form of a wolf.
[9]. Aegean and Mycenean are both used to designate the civilization that preceded that of historical Greece. Aegean, however, has, to a large extent, superseded the older term. For the specifically Cretan form of it, Minoan is generally employed.
[10]. In spite of the apparently well-defined personalities of the Homeric gods and a poetic tradition of many centuries, the sculptors of later times found it necessary to indicate the subject of their labors, either by some well-known attribute, such as the caduceus, or a sacred animal, or a symplegma representing a scene of a known legend. Without these accessories, archeologists often find themselves at a loss when they are required to name the god intended. Cf. Koepp, Archäologie ii. 88 seq.
[11]. It is not suggested that prayer could not exist without sacrifice. But where sacrifice did take place, the act of worship did not lie in the sacrifice alone, or in the propitiatory allocution that accompanied it, but in the two together.
[12]. Cf. Apollo Soter, Soph. O. T. 149, Dionysus Soter, Lycophr. 206, Zeus Soter, Aristoph. Plut. 1186, etc.
[13]. Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, passim. The term is rarely used by recent investigators.
[14]. For the sacrificial act when addressed to gods, the word was θύειν; addressed to heroes, ἐναγίζειν. Herod, ii. 44. The color of the sacrificial animal for heroes was usually black, and no part of the flesh was eaten. Cf. Sch. Hom. Il. i. 459.
[15]. For heroes whose position in the state was as high as that of gods, we have only to refer to the eponyms of the Cleisthenic tribes at Athens, Theseus, Cecrops, Erechtheus, etc.