of Sophocles suggested to him that there might be forgiveness of sins and reconciliation after death.[105.1] Nor do we find anywhere in the works of the two dramatists any hint of that pregnant Orphic doctrine to which Pindar gives voice, that humanity is of divine origin--ἓν ἀνδρῶν ἓν Θεῶν γένος--a doctrine which passed into the higher thought of later Greece. {106} Leaving aside this special question, we find a certain general resemblance in the religious view of these earlier poets of the fifth century. All three preach the supremacy of Zeus, his omnipotence and perfect justice, while Sophocles lays stress on his mercy. The effect of this poetic message was probably great and certainly timely; for the growing power and frequency of hero-cult, which Pindar himself and the dramatists indirectly encouraged, was a danger to the higher religion; and the backward and less cultured Hellenes were doubtless liable to the propensity of the savage mind to prefer the worship of the local daimon to that of the high God. Against such degeneracy the works of the greatest fifth-century poets, like the masterpiece of the greatest fifth-century sculptor, served at least as an enduring protest in Hellas. And it would be of interest to consider how far the sculptor, in regard to the general conception of his mighty theme and in the choice of mystic bywork whereby he made it articulate, drew certain suggestions from the poetry of Æschylus. These poets also deal with the question of Fate and Destiny. The personal, or half-personal, Μοῖρα was an old but insignificant figure of the popular religion and mythology, and Homer is aware of her and has to reckon with her. She might become more formidable under the philosophic conception of τὸ εἱμαρμένον which appeared in the philosophy of Herakleitos; and we know that later philosophy and cultivated thought was much perplexed over the problem of the reconciliation of Fate with the idea of a free divine Providence. The great Attic poets, taking their cue from Homer, “follow a short {107} cut,” interpreting Moira as the voice or agent or emanation of the power of Zeus.[107.1] And the pupil of Pheidias, Theokosmos of Megara, was working out the same idea when he carved the Fates with the Hours as subordinate adjuncts to the great form of Zeus.[107.1] We may say, then, that both the poetry and the art of this period worked for the deliverance of the polytheism from the burden of fatalism, which tends to lower the value and sap the force of all personal religion.