reminds us somewhat of the later mural or turreted crown borne by Cybele and Astarte. May we suppose that this was the origin of those, and had the same political significance? Again, it may be noted that in Phrygia itself, the land of the goddess, we have vague evidence in the legend of Midas that the early kings called by that name were regarded as the sons of Kybele.[125.3] As regards the Minoan-Mycenaean religion and its relation to the State, the excavations on the site of Knossos suggest that there at least the whole of the state-cult was in the hands of the kings; for no public temples have been found, but only shrines in the palaces. This is the strongest proof of the sacral power of the Minoan ruler, and we can well believe that he was deified after his death; nor need we wholly discredit that vague statement of Tzetzes that the old kings of Crete were given the divine name of Zeus [Δίες].[125.4] {126} There is value, then, in Homer’s picture of Minos as the friend of God who holds converse with him. The political significance of Greek religion impresses itself upon us at a thousand points and under endless aspects. The deity belongs not to the individual but to the tribe; and as in the earliest Hellenic period the tribes were conscious of a certain community of blood, their earliest religion appears at many points to have transcended the tribal limits, and certain deities have developed a national character. Now evidence--vague and legendary, it is true, but valuable when compared with the facts of other communities--compels us to conceive of the early Hellenic kings having the same character as those that we have observed in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Crete; Homer regards them as the god-born, who can exercise religious functions, whose decrees have the force of θέμις. The fire that burnt on their hearth was sacred and embodied the life of the community; and in the later period the perpetual fire that was maintained in the Prytaneum of the πόλις represented the ancient sacred hearth-fire of the king.[126.1] Also, when the monarchy was generally abolished, many of the cities felt compelled to retain the title of βασιλεύς for the priest who carried on the religious functions as the shadow of the ancient priest-king. But these similar phenomena are of little ethnographic value. Primitive Hellenism was in these respects only maintaining its own inherited traditions, and following the same lines of early social evolution as those of other communities. On the other hand, the distinctness of developed Hellenism is the secular independence of its intellect; and even in its earliest {127} mythic period we can believe that the divine character of the Basileus was less impressively felt, his association with the divinity less intimate, than was the case in Mesopotamia. Neither Agamemnon nor his predecessors would speak, we may be sure, with the same astonishing self-consciousness of their divine inspiration as the earliest and