on the whole genial and social; the deity sits unseen at the good man's festal sacrifice, and there is a simple apprehension of the idea of divine communion. There is also indeed a glimmering of the dark background of the nether world, and the chthonian powers that might send up the Erinys to fulfil the curse of the wronged. Yet on the whole the religious atmosphere is generally cheerful and bright; freer than that of the later ages from the taint of magic and superstition; nor is Homer troubled much about the life after death; he scarcely recognizes the cult of the dead,[3] and is not oppressed by fear of the ghost-world. The post-Homeric period. If we look now broadly over the salient facts of the Greek public and private worship of the historic period we find much in it that agrees with Homeric theology. His "Olympian" system retains a certain life almost to the end of Paganism, and it is a serious mistake to suppose that it had lost its hold upon the people of the 5th and 4th century B.C. We find it, indeed, enriched in the post-Homeric period with new figures of prestige and power; Dionysus, of whom Homer had only faintly heard, becomes a high god with a worship full of promise for the future. Demeter and Kore, the mother and the girl, whom Homer knew well enough but could not use for his epic purposes, attract the ardent affections and hopes of the people; and Asclepius, whom the old poet did not recognize as a god, wins a conspicuous place in the later shrines. But much that has been said of the Homeric may be said of the later classical theology. The deities remain anthropomorphic, and appear as clearly defined individuals. A certain hierarchy is recognized; Zeus is supreme, even in the city of Athena, but each of the higher divinities played many parts, and local enthusiasm could frustrate the departmental system of divine functions; certain members of the pantheon had a preference for the life of the fields, but as the _polis_ emerged from the village communities, Demeter, Hermes, Artemis and others, the gods and goddesses of the husbandmen and shepherds, become powers of the council-chamber and the market-place. The moral ideas that we find in the Homeric religion are amply attested by cult-records of the later period. The deities are regarded on the whole as beneficent, though revengeful if wronged or neglected; the cult-titles used in prayer, which more than any other witnesses reveal the thought and wish of the worshipper, are nearly always euphemistic, the doubtful title of Demeter Erinys being possibly an exception. The important cults of Zeus [Greek: Hikesios] and [Greek: Prostropaios], the suppliant's protecting deity, embody the ideas of pity and mercy that mark advanced religion; and many momentous steps in the development of morality and law were either suggested or assisted by the state-religion. For example, the sanctity of the oath, the main source of the secular virtue of truthfulness, was