s and become
only a spirit; the Latin Jupiter approaches Zeus most nearly in name and
character. A sky-god is naturally conceived of as universal ruler,[1321]
but in any particular region he assumes the characteristics of the
ruling human personages of the place and time. Zeus appears first as a
barbarian chieftain with the ordinary qualities of such persons. Stories
that have come down about him reflect a period of what now seems
immorality, though it was the recognized morality of the time; he is
deceitful and changeable and completely unregardful of any definite
marriage laws. His cult in some places (for example, in Arcadia) had
savage features. Whether he had originally in the Hellenic world a
special home, and if so what it was, cannot now be determined.[1322]

+769+. In the historical period he appears as a chief god in many places
in Greece, gradually absorbs the functions of other gods, and receives
numerous titles derived from places and functions. He is the father of
gods and men, but not the sole creator of the world. His gradual rise in
moral character may be traced in the literature. In Homer he is a
universalized Agamemnon, with very much the intellectual and moral
qualities of Agamemnon; a process of growth in the conception of him in
the Homeric poems is indicated by the incongruities in his
portraiture--at one time he is a creature of impulse and passion, at
another time a dignified and thoughtful ruler. In Pindar and the
tragedians of the fifth century he has become the representative of
justice and order in the world, and in later writers he comes to be more
specifically the embodiment of everything that is good in the universe.
He represents the Greek conception of civic authority, and thus the
nearest approach to monotheism discoverable in the Greek mythological
system; and as embodying the finer side of religious feeling he both
punishes and forgives sin.

+770+. Next in importance to Zeus as representative of Greek religious
thought stands Apollo. The meaning of the name and the original seat of
the god are obscure; he appears to have been a Pan-Hellenic deity; he
was definitely shaped by the whole mass of Hellenic thought. Originally,
perhaps, the local deity of some hunting and pastoral region, and
possessing the quasi-universal attributes of such deities, the wide
diffusion of his cult (through conditions not known to us) brought him
into relation with many sides of life. While he shares this