Homer and
Hesiod. There it has been so thorough that the only trace of
superposition which we can find is the succession of the dynasties of
Chronos and Jupiter. The result is the most appalling conception of the
morality of celestial society. No earthly state could hope to continue
for a decade upon the principles which governed the life of heaven; and
man, if he were to escape the sudden retributions which must inevitably
follow anything like an imitation of his gods, must live more decently
than they.

Now Homer was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as society
improved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlessly
towards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of the
gods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of the
sixth century B.C. led to various ways of explaining the old stories.
Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving religion in a sunny good temper
which will make the best of the situation whatever it is. AEschylus is
sombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side of
the gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name of
humanity his scepticism rises in protest.

It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at the
various theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths.
The commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalities
stand for the individual powers of nature. Most especially, the gods and
goddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning, summer
and winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny that the
personification of Nature had a large share in all mythology. The
Oriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The Baals
of Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the manifestations of
the fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese dragon is the symbol
of the spiritual mystery of life suggested by the mysterious and protean
characteristics of water. It is very natural that this should be so, and
every one who has ever felt the power of the sun in the East will
sympathise with Turner's dying words, "The sun, he is God."

As a key to mythology this theory was especially associated with the
name of Plutarch among ancient writers, and it has been accepted more or
less completely by a vast number of moderns. In the late Sir George
Cox's fascinating stories it was run to utter absurdity. The story is
beautifully told