_Chthonian worship_.--The important distinction which is well attested of the later ages between the ‘chthonian’ and the ‘Olympian’ ritual--to use these two conventional terms for convenience--may already have been in vogue in the earliest period of the polytheism. In the first type of sacrifice, where the offering was made to the nether divinities, the victim’s head was held down above a hole in the ground--a βόθρος--and the blood from the severed throat was shed into it. In the second, where the upper powers, whose region was the air or {35} the sky, were the recipients, the victim was held up erect off the ground, his face lifted towards the sky, and in this attitude his throat was cut. Homer shows himself aware of this form of sacrifice; and that the other, the chthonian, was also in vogue in his time is to be inferred from his account of the ritual performed by Odysseus in honour of the shades, where he mentions the βόθρος, the sacrifice of black sheep, with their heads turned downwards towards the lower world, and the triple libation of honey, wine and water.[35.1] For the ritual of the dead in the Greek religious tradition was closely modelled on the service of the nether divinities. The triple libation is known to have been part of Minoan-Cretan cult, as the altar table found in the cave of Mount Dikte attests.[35.2] And a shrine with a βόθρος in the middle of the cella has been found at Priniá in Crete, consecrated to a chthonian goddess, of which the foundation is ascribed to the ninth century.[35.3] From these indications and from the prevalence of chthonian cults attested by later records, in which we can discern features of great antiquity, we can gather that the earliest period of Greek religion was not wholly characterised by the brightness of ritual and the geniality of religious feeling that appear on the surface of Homeric poetry. The Homeric sacrifice was often accompanied by a sense of sin,[35.4] though the poet shows no cognisance of any peculiar ritual of a specially piacular type. Also he was aware of the dark world of powers who avenged {36} the broken oath and punished sinners even after death. Long before his time, we may suppose, gloomy worship, such as that of the Θεοὶ Μειλίχιοι described by Pausanias at Myonia in Lokris,[36.1] of which the rites were performed by night, was in vogue in parts of Greece. Mother-Earth, prophesying through phantom-dreams, had held rule at Delphi before Apollo came, and that was long before Homer’s work began.[36.2]