to the gods became in process of time impossible to be believed. Intellect expanded; moral sense grew more vigorous, and with it the conviction that if the national traditions were true man must be more just than his Maker. In Æschylus and Sophocles, in Pindar and Plato, you see conscience asserting its sovereignty over the most sacred beliefs—instinctive reverence and piety struggling sometimes to express themselves under the names and forms of the past, sometimes bursting out uncontrollably into indignant abhorrence:
Ἐμοι δ' ἄπορα γαστρίμαργον
Μακάρω τιν' εἰπεῖν.
Ἀφίσταμαι…
καὶ πού τι καὶ βροτῶν φρένας
ὑπὲρ τὸν ἀλαθῆ λόγον
δεδαιδάλμενοι ψεύδεσι ποικίλοις
ἐξατατῶντι μύθοι.
Χάρισδ' ἅπερ ἅπαντα τεύχει
τὰ μείλιχα θνατοῖς
ἐπιφέροιςα τιμὰν
καὶ ἄπιστον ἐμήσατο πίστον
ἔμμεναι τὸ πόλλακις.
To me 'twere strange indeed
To charge the blessed gods with greed.
I dare not do it …
Myths too oft,
With quaintly coloured lies enwrought,
To stray from truth have mortals brought.
And Art, which round all things below
A charm of loveliness can throw,
Has robed the false in honour's hue,
And made the unbelievable seem true.
'All religions,' says Gibbon, 'are to the vulgar equally true, to the philosopher equally false, and to
