such as
Odysseus shows. In later times of larger cultivation she bestows wisdom
in the higher sense, intellectual breadth. Exactly how it came to pass
that the two figures Artemis and Athene developed on such different
lines we are unable to say--the beginning of the divergence goes back to
times of which we have no records; but, as gods represent the elements
of human life, it was natural that a gradual differentiation should take
place; the same general conception would be particularized in different
ways in different places, just as divergent forms of the same original
word acquire different significations in speech.[1364] As for the later
combination of these deities with heavenly bodies and many other things,
these are to be regarded as the product of later poetical imagination
and the tendency to universalize all great deities.

+793+. Aphrodite exhibits more clearly than any other deity the process
or the direction of the Hellenization of a foreign god. Her titles
Cypris, Paphia, Cytherea, as well as her connection with Adonis, point,
as is generally held, to a Semitic origin[1365]; she seems to have been
identical with the great Babylonian, Assyrian, and Syrian goddess Ishtar
(Astarte)[1366]. Received into the Greek pantheon at a very early time
(already in the Iliad she is one of the Olympians), she yet shows the
main characteristics of the Semitic deity[1367]--she is especially the
representative of fertility and sexual passion, and also has relation to
war. The lines of development, however, were different in different
communities. In Babylonia and Assyria Ishtar became a great universal
national deity, charged particularly with the care of all the interests
of the state, while in Syria and Canaan the corresponding figures
(Attar, Ashtart) remained to a great extent local, and were especially
prominent in festivals.

+794+. In Greece the conception of Aphrodite was worked out in a
non-Semitic way in two directions. By poets and philosophers she was
made the beneficent producer of all things, shedding her charm over
animate and inanimate nature;[1368] and the sentiment of love, for which
she stood, was exalted into a pure affection, the basis of married life.
The baser side of her cult, with its sexual license (Asiatic of origin),
remained along with the higher conception of her,[1369] but the latter
was the special contribution that the Greeks made to her development.

+795+. The theistic scheme of the old