We consider it best to omit making any remarks respecting the ideas entertained about angels by the Phoenicians, for we have scarcely any information about their mythology beyond the names of certain gods and goddesses. It will be more profitable to pass on to the Greeks, and inquire into the general system of their theological belief. This is, we think, a matter of some importance, for this people, as victors and masters, came into contact with the Jews in the time of Joel, about b.c. 800; and if any captive Hebrews came back from Grecia (see Joel iii. 6), we believe that they would naturally bring back with them much of the Hellenic lore of their conquerors. The reader must not be carried away here with the once popular notion that everything which was found in heathendom, which resembled something biblical or Jewish, came of necessity from scriptural or Israelitish sources. The reverse is much more likely, for the Hebrews in old times are described by their historians and preachers as hankering after novelty--"going whoring after other gods," as the Bible has it. They, on the other hand, were encouraged to keep themselves aloof from others, and were never a missionary nation; nor, had they been so, were they sufficiently honourable or wealthy, as a race, ever to command respect. They were, indeed, generally despised by the people round about them, who would no more think of adopting Jewish fables than we should care to learn theology and cosmogony from African negroes. If we endeavour to reduce Grecian mythology to its simplest expression, we find that it consisted of a belief in a creator--grand beyond conception, and one whom the mind could not conceive, nor pencil nor the chisel depict. Under him there was thought to be a host of minor deities, who agreed, more or less, amongst themselves, each having a particular department of creation to preside over, or a definite function to perform. Jupiter, for example, had the air and the heavens generally under his management; Neptune superintended the sea; Rhea, or Gaia, or Gee, was the goddess of the surface of the earth; and Pluto had the management of the interior of the globe and of those who were buried therein. If corpses were unburied, they did not come under his immediate cognizance. Then, as it was quite possible that one deity might be counteracting another, as, indeed, they are represented to have done during the Trojan war, another god was necessary to be a medium of communication between the others, and Mercury became the messenger, or go-between.