developed,[28] were dressed, to some extent, as goats. The goat and the snake, as well as the bull and the ram, seem to have been worshipped in early times as symbols at once of the fertility of the soil and of the fertility of the race. The serpents which gaze at us so terribly from the heads of the Aeschylean Erinnys are probably, in origin,[29] derived from the belief that the souls of the dead are connected with the fertility of the earth.[30] Herodotus tells us that offerings were regularly made to an imaginary serpent which was supposed to reside in the temple of Athene Polias at Athens.[31] This serpent symbolised, like the undying fire of the Roman Vesta,[32] the immortal progenitor of the race. ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND THE OLYMPIANS In regard to the origin of anthropomorphic religion in Greece, we can only say that we prefer the opinion of F. de Coulanges,[33] which derives it from the ancestor worship of the early Pelasgian peoples, to that of Miss Harrison which, in its latest form, attributes it to a political anti-Persian reaction of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.[34] Coulanges believes that when once the idea of human gods took shape, it tended at once to personify and humanise all the various objects of worship.[35] It is significant that the Persians, who had no ancestor worship, did not conceive their gods in human form.[36] Amongst the Greeks, however, who worshipped dead ancestors from the dawn of their history, the ‘ghost’ gave its form to the god. Assuming, then, Coulanges’ theory of the evolution of anthropomorphism, we must regard as absurd the opinion of some ancient writers who maintained that Homer and Hesiod not only told false stories about the gods but gave them, moreover, the manners and shapes of men.[37] The precise contribution of such poets as Homer to ancient religion is difficult to define, but we believe that it was not so much constructive as destructive. The poet gave a certain immortality to the conceptions which he expressed: the effect of a Bible in religious evolution is essentially conservative. It tends to stereotype for all men and for all time the religious opinions of its day. Now Homer was the poet of the Achaeans, and the Achaeans, as Leaf says,[38] conceived the gods as typical Achaeans of the other world. Whether they brought new human gods[39] to Greece or merely gave a personal interpretation to the Pelasgian gods, we need not at the moment decide. The gods of the Achaeans were conceived as kings and rulers like themselves. If they do not create the universe, they at least divide it into realms or dominions.[40] Moreover, they are presented as related to one another by blood, or connected by intermarriage, as the Achaeans were. They naturally have their quarrels, their disputes, their rivalries and their jealousies, as the Achaeans had. The stamp of the Achaean caste marks the Homeric pantheon. But apart from the great Olympian gods, there are