And the myth of Apollo is remarkable for its ancient and elaborate worship. Already when the Homeric poems were made, the shrine of Apollo at Delphos was the scene of an old and complicated ritual. There was even then a temple rich with the accumulated treasure of the votive offerings of generations of worshipers. Priests and prophets, the mystic offices of the Pythia, poets and musicians, stately processions of kings and warriors seeking oracles, combined to maintain the dignity and sanctity of this most impressive worship. From the very earliest times of which we have record of this myth, Apollo was known to be a spiritual and ethical force at work in man's soul. He was named when men tried to speak of those experiences which wrought expiation and purification. He stood for milder law, for beneficent and benevolent social order, for art, for the songs of the sacred bard, the dirge of grief, the paean of victory, the games--all the gentler things of social culture and personal experience. In these and in many other ways did the myth of Apollo express the human soul and act upon it. It was a religion--as every developed myth is--to be handled reverently. We might have chosen other examples quite as elaborate and as full of mystic significance--the myth of Dionysus, or the more widespread and deeply devotional myth of Demeter. Art, too, concerned as it is with everything that promotes or reflects man's spirit, has uses for the elements of myth, and has its own way of handling them. On two of the four steps of myth art, especially literature, finds acceptable material. On the stage named second--the stage in which the influence or power becomes personified, takes on relations to other personified influences, and calls into being other divine persons, his children, his helpers and subordinates, takes his place in a society of divinities, and exercises his more or less specialized function in this society, and also in human life and activity--have the poets and romancers found many opportunities. Adventures and romantic experiences of all sorts easily attached themselves to the person of some divinity, especially as the character of the personal divinities became more and more humanized by the accretion of such tales. And while we find echoes of myth in _Märchen_ and romance, we quite as constantly find apotheosis of merely human romance and adventure in myth. Among the literary peoples, poets and dramatists found it often desirable to use the foundation of this group of divine personalities as the starting-point for a performance purely artistic; it gave them the immense advantage of starting without explanation and preparation, since their audiences could be counted upon to know the divine personages and circumstances; and the further advantage of adding dignity and size to their inventions by accrediting them to superhuman agents. These literary additions, these variations upon the religious meanings, invented for artistic purposes, often