Many harsh and cruel
rites were no doubt practised; human sacrifice, heard of even in
later times in remote parts of the country, was not unknown, and
practices were connected with the service of stern gods and goddesses
which, though literature is silent about them, left their mark on
custom. Zeus and one or two other gods are essentially moral, and
some duties were strongly encouraged by religion, such as those of
hospitality and strict regard for boundaries, of faithfulness to
pledge, of respect for strangers. But many of the gods are too
closely interwoven with external nature to be very decidedly moral
powers; they are like the plants and animals, neither good nor bad
but natural.

Greek Religion is Local.--What strikes us most strongly about this
early Greek religion is its entire want of system and its local and
disintegrated character. Every town, every family, has its own
religion. There is no central authority. New gods are constantly
springing up; the old ones are constantly receiving new titles and
forming new unions with each other or with newer gods. The god of one
place is in another only a hero; the same god is represented in
different places in entirely different ways, and entirely different
legends are attached to his name. Thus the Greeks have from the first
a mythology singularly extensive and inconsistent, and their worship
also varies in each place. There is no general religion, but only a
multitude of local ones. In story and in rite old and new are mixed
up together,--what is local and what is imported, what is savage in
its nature and origin, and what is on the side of progress. This is a
state of matters which lies in every land before the beginning of
organised religion. Rites and legends are everywhere of local growth,
and the attempt to frame the various rites and legends into a
consistent ritual and a systematic account of the gods, comes later.
In Greece, as Mr. Robertson Smith observes, the earlier state of
matters continued longer and influenced the national faith more
deeply than elsewhere. As the Greeks never succeeded in forming a
central political system, so they never attained to unity in worship.
No national temple arose, the priesthood of which had power to frame
the national religion, to lay down rules for sacrifice, or to edit
sacred texts. The Greeks were less than any other people under the
sway of religious authority. While local practice was fixed, and
custom and tradition