[24]. The merchants of Citium formally introduced into Athens the worship of their local Aphrodite; Dittenberger, Syll. no. 551. Sarapis, Isis, and Sabazios also early found their way into Athens.
[25]. The statement that ἀσέβεια was a negative offense, that its gravamen consisted not in introducing new divinities, but in neglecting the established ones, is made by Wilamowitz (Antigonus von Karyst, p. 277). It is, however, only qualifiedly true. The Greeks found purely negative conceptions difficult. Impiety, or ἀσέβεια, was not the mere neglect, but such a concrete act as would tend to cause the neglect of the established gods. The indictment against Socrates charged the introduction of καινὰ δαιμόνια, but only because that introduction threatened the established form. The merchants of Citium (cf. previous note) might introduce their foreign deity with safety. No such danger was deemed to lie.
[26]. The stories of Lycurgus (Il. vi. 130) and of Pentheus (Euripides, Bacchae) are a constant reminder of the difficulties encountered by Dionysus in his march through Greece. Then, as has always been the case in religious opposition, the opponents of the new forms advanced social reasons for their hostility (Eurip. Bacchae, 220-225).
[27]. The Egyptian origin of the Eleusinian mysteries is maintained especially by Foucart, Les grands mystères d’Eleusis.
[28]. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter dates from the close of the seventh century B.C.E., perhaps earlier. In it we find the Eleusinian mysteries fully developed, and their appeal is Panhellenic.
[29]. Homer certainly knows of no general worship of the dead. But the accessibility of the dead by means of certain rites is attested not only by the Νέκυια (Od. x. 517-520), but by the slaughter of the Trojan captives at the funeral of Patroclus (Il. xxiii. 174). The poet’s own attitude to the latter is not so important as his evidence of the custom’s existence.
[30]. In later times any dead man was ἥρος, and his tomb a ἡρῷον; C. I. G. 1723, 1781-1783.
[31]. The kinship of gods and men was an Orphic dogma, quickly and widely accepted. Pindar formulated it in the words ἕν ἀνδρῶν, ἕν θεῶν γένος; Nem. vi. i. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 41 C.
[32]. Od. iv. 561.
[33]. Hesychius, s. v. Ἁρμοδίου μέλος.