the same source[1]. In fact the co-existence, or even the conflict, of the old Pelasgian and the newer Achaean religions is constantly recognised in ancient literature, and to the Pelasgian is ascribed all that most touched men's hearts, be it with awe or with pity—with awe as in the conflict between the Erinyes and the new dynasty of gods whom Apollo and Athene represent, with pity in the dolorous struggle of Prometheus against the tyrant Zeus. The Pelasgian religion, with all its horrors, drew the real sympathies of the mystic Aeschylus; he could worship in deepest reverence Demeter and her mysteries[2]; he could worship perhaps even the 'reverend goddesses,' horrible though they were in their displeasure; but his heart must have been cold towards the usurping Olympian gods. There is true insight in that passage of Aristophanes[3] where Aeschylus summarises the benefits conferred by great poets on the Greek race, and praises Homer, the Achaean poet, for his lessons in discipline and valour and warfare, but Orpheus, sometimes reputed the founder of the Pelasgian mysteries, for instituting religious rites and teaching men to abstain from bloodshed. And the feelings of Aeschylus were the feelings of his countrymen. The Athenians boasted of a great Achaean goddess as the foundress and patroness of their city, but their personal hopes of future happiness centred in the Pelasgian Demeter. The same generation of Athenians listened with delight to Aristophanes' ridicule of those gods whom Homer accounted greatest, and were aghast at the thought that the mysteries had been profaned. The Achaean gods, it would seem, made good figure-heads for the official religion of the state; they served as majestic patrons of a city, or of a great national festival where religion was of less real account than horse-racing, athletics, and commerce; but the hearts of the people clave to the older, more awful, more mysterious deities of the Pelasgians, and the holiest sanctuaries[4] were those which had been holy long before the intrusion of the Achaean gods.
It was to this Pelasgian element in Hellenic religion that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments belonged; for, as we shall see more fully in the next chapter, participation in the
- ↑ Herod. II. 171.
- ↑ Aristoph. Frogs, 884.
- ↑ Op. cit. 1032 ff.
- ↑ A conspicuous example is Delphi, where the Achaean god Apollo had usurped the place of some oracular deity of the Pelasgians, cf. Plutarch, de defect. orac. cap. 15 p. 418. See Miss Harrison, Proleg. to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 113 f.
