f the Thessalian Olympus Zeus sat, surrounded by the
inferior gods; here he held councils and announced his decrees.[570] The
two conceptions of the home of the gods--on mountains and in the
sky--existed for a time side by side, having in common the feature of
remoteness and secrecy; gradually the earthly abode was ignored, and the
gods were assigned to the more dignified heavenly home.

WATERS

+306+. To early man waters, fire, winds, are interesting because of
their relation to his life, and sacred because of their power and
mysteriousness.[571] They are regarded by him not as "elements" of the
world, but as individual phenomena that affect well-being. His
conception of them is not cosmogonic or analytic, but personal; they are
entities with which he has to deal.

+307+. The mobility of masses of water, seeming to be a sign of life,
naturally procured them a definite place among sacred things. Any
spring, pond, lake, or river with which a tribe was brought into
intimate relations was regarded as a source of life or of healing, and
of divination. Dwellers by the sea regarded it with awe; its depths were
mysterious and its storms terrible.

+308+. As in the case of animals, plants, and stones, so here: the
earliest conception of water masses is that they are divine in
themselves (every one, of course, having its own soul), and are potent
for bodily help or harm, and for divination. The waters of the Nile,
the Ganges, the Jordan, were held to heal the diseased and purify the
unclean; and a similar power is now ascribed to the water of the well
Zamzam in the Kaaba at Mecca. Hannibal swore, among other things, by the
waters,[572] and the oath by the river Styx was the most binding of
oaths, having power to control even the gods; the thing by which an oath
is taken is always originally divine. In the Hebrew ordeal of jealousy
the sacred water decides whether the accused woman is guilty or
not.[573] The sea is treated as a living thing, whose anger may be
appeased by gifts; it is a monster, a dragon.[574] The Spartan
Cleomenes, about to start on a voyage, sacrifices a bull to the
sea.[575] Offerings to the sea are made in the Maldive Islands.[576]

+309+. Water is abundantly employed in religious ritual as a means of
purification from ceremonial defilement, and in services of initiation.
A bathing-place often stood by a shrine (as in pre-Islamic Arabia and in
Islam now), and immersions came to play a prominent part in