nogamic marriage and the
exclusive home life prevailed at an early time. The patriarchal
family, in which the oldest male member was chief and ruler, was the
unit of society. Within this group were the house families, formed
whenever a separate marriage took place and a separate altar was
erected. The house religion was one of the characteristic features of
Greek life. Each family had its own household gods, its own worship,
its private shrine. This tended to unify the family and promote a
sacred family life. A special form of ancestral worship, from the
early Aryan house-spirit worship, prevailed to a certain extent. The
worship of the family expanded with the expansion of social life. Thus
the gens, and the tribe, and the city when founded, had each its
separate worship. Religion formed a strong cement to bind the
different social units of a tribe together. The worship of the Greeks
was associated with the common meal and the pouring of libations to the
gods.

As religion became more general, it united to make a more common social
practice, and in the later period of Greek life was made the basis of
the games and general social gatherings. Religion brought the Greeks
together in a social way, and finally led to the mutual advantage of
members of society. {213} Later, mutual advantage superseded religion
in its practice. The Greeks, at an early period, attempted to explain
the origin of the earth and unknown phenomena by referring it to the
supernatural powers. Every island had its myth, every phenomenon its
god, and every mountain was the residence of some deity. They sought
to find out the causes of the creation of the universe, and developed a
theogony. There was the origin of the Greeks to be accounted for, and
then the origin of the earth, and the relation of man to the deities.
Everything must be explained, but as the imagination was especially
strong, it was easier to create a god as a first cause than to
ascertain the development of the earth by scientific study.

_Influence of Old Greek Life_.--In all of the traditions and writings
descriptive of the old Greek social life, with the exception of the
_Works and Days_ of Hesiod, the aristocratic class appears uppermost.
Hesiod "pictures a hopeless and miserable existence, in which care and
the despair of better things tended to make men hard and selfish and to
blot out those fairer features which cannot be denied to the courts and
palaces of the