[472] For the Greek view of the underworld, and the incoming of the idea of rewards and punishments in the after life, see Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. i, S. 97 ff., and Rhode, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeits Glaube der Griechen, 4te Auflage, Bd. i, S. 301–319.
[473] This moralization of Hades is carried still further by Vergil. It is instructive to compare his vision of Hades with Homer’s.
[474] Republic, x. 614–616; see also Gorgias, 523–527.
[475] Herod. i. 30–32. But Nemesis appears later in the story, and Crœsus is represented as being punished for the crime of an ancestor.
[476] Ibid. vii. 10. The views which the historian here attributes to the Persian Artabanus were of course a reflection of Greek belief. For further instances in Greek literature of the conception of the envy of the gods, consult Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen (1882), Bd. i, S. 78–84.
[477] Thucyd. vii. 77.
[478] Pericles (1890), p. 312.
[479] “The very event [the Persian war] which determined the sudden splendor of the drama gave a sublime and terrific sanction to the already existing morality.”—Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets (1880), vol. ii, p. 17.
[480] Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (1896), vol. i, p. 129. After the tale had been moralized by Æschylus, Phidias carved the story on the great Zeus throne at Olympia, using it to give emphasis to the conception of the god as the guardian of the moral order of the world.
[481] Thucyd. v. 84–116.