‘Thus,’ we read, ‘did they labour, even the long-haired Achaeans; but the gods sitting beside Zeus that wieldeth the lightning gazed in wonder on the mighty work of the bronze-clad Achaeans. And to them did Poseidon the earth-shaker open speech: “Father Zeus, is there now one mortal on the boundless earth, that will henceforth declare unto immortals his mind and purpose? Seest thou not that contrariwise the long-haired Achaeans have built a wall to guard their ships and driven a trench about it, and have not offered unto the gods fair sacrifice? Verily their wall shall be famed far as Dawn spreads her light; and that which I with Phoebus Apollo toiled to build for the hero Laomedon will men forget.” And unto him spake Zeus that gathereth the clouds, sore-vexed: “Fie on thee, thou earth-shaker whose sway is wide, for this thy word. Well might this device of men dismay some other god lesser than thou by far in work and will; but thou verily shalt be famed far as Dawn spreads her light. Go to; when the long-haired Achaeans be gone again with their ships unto their own native land, break thou down their wall and cast it all into the sea and cover again the vast shore with sand, that so the Achaeans’ great wall may be wiped out from thy sight[711].”’ And later in the _Iliad_ we read of the fulfilment; how that the rivers of the Trojan land were marshalled and led by Poseidon, his trident in his hands, to the assault of the wall that ‘had been fashioned without the will of the gods and could no long time endure[712].’ The whole passage finds its best commentary in modern superstition. Poseidon, though a great god, is the local _genius_; to him belongs the shore where the Greek ships are assembled, to him too the land where he had built the town of Ilium; to him therefore were due sacrifices for the building of the wall. But the god whose fame is known far as Dawn spreads her light deserves the rebuke administered by Zeus for his pettiness of spirit. An ordinary local _genius_, ‘some god far lesser than he in work and will,’ might justly wax wrathful at the neglect of his more limited prerogatives. Yet even so the wall was doomed to endure no long time. Then as now the divine law ran, ‘An ye devote not hecatombs, no wall hath sure foundation.’ In this passage there is of course no suggestion of a local _genius_ in animal shape; the anthropomorphic tendency of Homeric religion was too strong to admit of that. But since we know from Theophrastus’ sketch of the superstitious man and from other sources that in the classical age _genii_ of houses and temples were believed to appear in the form of snakes, we may without hesitation assign the same belief to earlier ages. Such a superstition could not in the nature of things have sprung up after an anthropomorphic conception of the gods dominated all religion, but must necessarily have been a survival from pre-classical and pre-Homeric folklore.