ere in accord for the administration of the
world, and that they, like men, had laws and government among them.

In the north of Greece there was a mountain to whose snowy summit no
man had ever climbed. This was Olympus. On this summit, which was
hidden by clouds from the eyes of men, it was imagined the gods
assembled. Meeting under the light of heaven, they conferred on the
affairs of the world. Zeus, the mightiest of them, presided over the
gathering: he was god of the heavens and of the light, the god "who
masses the clouds," who launches the thunderbolt--an old man of
majestic mien, with long beard, sitting on a throne of gold. It is he
who commands and the other gods bow before him. Should they essay to
resist, Zeus menaces them; Homer makes him say,[54] "Bind to heaven a
chain of gold, and all of you, gods or goddesses, throw your weight
upon it; all your united efforts cannot draw Zeus, the sovereign
ordainer, to the earth. On the contrary, if I wished to draw the chain
to myself, I should bring with it the earth and the very sea. Then I
would attach it to the summit of Olympus and all the universe would be
suspended. By so much am I superior to gods and men."

=Morality of the Greek Mythology.=--The greater part of their gods
were conceived by the Greeks as violent, sanguinary, deceitful,
dissolute. They ascribed to them scandalous adventures or dishonest
acts. Hermes was notorious for his thieving, Aphrodite for her
coquetry, Ares for his ferocity. All were so vain as to persecute
those who neglected to offer sacrifices to them. Niobe had seen all
her children pierced with arrows by Apollo because she herself had
boasted of her numerous family. The gods were so jealous that they
could not endure seeing a man thoroughly happy; prosperity for the
Greeks was the greatest of dangers, for it never failed to draw the
anger of the gods, and this anger became a goddess (Nemesis) about
whom were told such anecdotes as the following: Once Polycrates of
Samos, become very powerful, feared the jealousy of the gods; and so a
ring of gold which he still retained was cast into the sea that his
good fortune might not be unmixed with evil. Some time after, a
fisherman brought to Polycrates an enormous fish and in its belly was
found the ring. This was a certain presage of evil. Polycrates was
besieged in his city, taken, and crucified. The gods punished him for
his good fortune.

Greek mythology was immoral in that the god