In political history this
self-realization of the Greek tribes as Hellenes against barbarians
seems to have been first felt in the Ionian settlements on the coast of
Asia Minor, where the 'sons of Javan' (Yawan = +Iaon+) clashed as
invaders against the native Hittite and Semite. It was emphasized by a
similar clash in the further colonies in Pontus and in the West. If we
wish for a central moment as representing this self-realization of
Greece, I should be inclined to find it in the reign of Pisistratus
(560-527 B. C.) when that monarch made, as it were, the first sketch of
an Athenian empire based on alliances and took over to Athens the
leadership of the Ionian race.

In literature the decisive moment is clear. It came when, in Mr.
Mackail's phrase, 'Homer came to Hellas'.[42:3] The date is apparently
the same, and the influences at work are the same. It seems to have
been under Pisistratus that the Homeric Poems, in some form or other,
came from Ionia to be recited in a fixed order at the Panathenaic
Festival, and to find a canonical form and a central home in Athens till
the end of the classical period. Athens is the centre from which Homeric
influence radiates over the mainland of Greece. Its effect upon
literature was of course enormous. It can be traced in various ways. By
the content of the literature, which now begins to be filled with the
heroic saga. By a change of style which emerges in, say, Pindar and
Aeschylus when compared with what we know of Corinna or Thespis. More
objectively and definitely it can be traced in a remarkable change of
dialect. The old Attic poets, like Solon, were comparatively little
affected by the epic influence; the later elegists, like Ion, Euenus,
and Plato, were steeped in it.[43:1]

In religion the cardinal moment is the same. It consists in the coming
of Homer's 'Olympian Gods', and that is to be the subject of the present
essay. I am not, of course, going to describe the cults and characters
of the various Olympians. For that inquiry the reader will naturally go
to the five learned volumes of my colleague, Dr. Farnell. I wish merely
to face certain difficult and, I think, hitherto unsolved problems
affecting the meaning and origin and history of the Olympians as a
whole.

Herodotus in a famous passage tells us that Homer and Hesiod 'made the
generations of the Gods for the Greeks and gave them their names and
distinguished their offices and crafts and portrayed their shape