curious and unscientific distinction that Aristophanes makes between the religions of the Hellenes and the Barbarians[64.2] has its justification from this point of view. _Influence of the Polis on religion_.--The spirit of the Polis, the dominant influence in Greek religion throughout this second period, worked in the same direction as the anthropomorphic instinct; giving complexity, varied individuality and an ever-growing social value to the idea of Godhead. The deities of the wild enter the ring-wall of the city and shed much of their wild character. Apollo Lykeios the Wolf-God, enters Argos and becomes the political leader of the State, in whose temple a perpetual fire was maintained, symbol of the perpetual life of the community.[64.3] And the advanced civic imagination tended to transform the primitive theriolatry or theriomorphic ideas that still survived. Proofs of direct animal worship in the later period are very rare and generally doubtful; for the ancient writers apply the term ‘worship’ carelessly, applying it to any trivial act of reverential treatment.[64.4] In the few cases where we can still discern the animal receiving cult, we find the anomaly explained away by some association established between the animal and the anthropomorphic deity or hero. Thus the wolf became no longer sacred in {65} its own right--if indeed it ever was--but might be reverenced here and there as the occasional incarnation of Apollo or as his guide or companion. The primitive population of the Troad may once have ‘worshipped’ the field-mouse, though the authority that attests it is a late and doubtful one; but when Apollo becomes in this region the civic guardian of the Æolians and the protector of their crops, he takes a title from the mouse (Σμινθεύς from σμινθός), and the mouse is carved at the side of the anthropomorphic image as a propitiatory hint to the rest of the species not to injure the corn, or as a hint to the God that mice needed regulating.[65.1]