Theriolatry suggests totemism; and though we now know that the former can arise and exist quite independently of the latter, recent anthropologists have interpreted the apparent sanctity or prestige of certain animals in parts of Greek mythology and religion as the deposit of an earlier totemistic system. But this interpretation, originated and maintained with great acumen by Andrew Lang and W. Robertson Smith, appears now somewhat hazardous; and as a scientific hypothesis there are many flaws in it. The more observant study of existing totem-tribes has weakened our impression of the importance of totemism as a primitive religious phenomenon. It is in reality more important as a social than as a religious factor. If indeed we choose to regard totemism as a mere system of nomenclature, by which a tribe names itself after some animal or plant, then we might quote a few examples of Hellenic tribes totemistic in this sense. But totemism is a fact of importance only when it affects the tribal marriage laws or the tribal religion. And the tribal marriage laws of ancient Greece, so far as they are known, betray no clear mark of totemistic arrangements; nor does the totemism of contemporary savages appear to affect their religion in any such way as to suggest a natural explanation for any of the peculiar phenomena of early Hellenic polytheism. Here and there we have traces of a snake-tribe in Greece, the [Greek: Ophieis] in Aetolia, the [Greek: Ophiogeneis] in Cyprus and Parium, but we are not told that these worshipped the snake, though the latter clan were on terms of intimacy with it. Where the snake was actually worshipped in Hellenic cult--the cases are few and doubtful--it may have been regarded as the incarnation of the ancestor or as the _avatar_ of the under-world divinity. Human sacrifice. Finally, among the primitive or savage phenomena the practice of human sacrifice looms large. Encouraged at one time by the Delphic oracle, it was becoming rare and repellent to the conscience by the 6th century B.C.; but it was not wholly extinct in the Greek world even by the time of Porphyry. The facts are very complex and need critical handling, and a satisfying scientific explanation of them all is still to be sought.