out of pre-existing Pelasgian materials. We do not agree with Leaf and Chadwick in the view that the Achaeans were the _creators_ of Greek anthropomorphic religion.[46] ACHAEAN-PELASGIAN RELIGIOUS FUSIONS Many of the difficulties presented by Homeric religion are to be attributed to the fact that that religion was an eclectic product. If we compare the beliefs and customs of the Achaeans and the Pelasgians, it will be obvious that despite the circumstance of their social coexistence, a complete blending or fusion in dogma or in ritual would have been impossible. Yet it is equally impossible to suppose that both Pelasgians and Achaeans preserved their religious rites and conceptions unadulterated and pure. Miss Harrison is, we think, mistaken—she seems to admit it in a later work[47]—in assuming that the Achaeans are to be associated with Olympian ritual, and the Pelasgians with Chthonian ritual, and that there is a rigid line of distinction between the two castes. Just as the Olympian rites which are so common amongst Homeric Achaeans were, we think, practised also by Minoan kings and Pelasgian nobles, so the Chthonian rites of the tillers of soil were practised, on occasions, by the Achaeans, and would perhaps have been more frequently practised if there had not existed within the two castes differences of dogma, such as we shall presently indicate. In our analysis of the social and judicial aspect of Homeric homicide we were enabled to differentiate clearly between the Achaeans and Pelasgians, for their social organisations were different and distinct. In a religious analysis, however, the gulf cannot with equal clearness be indicated, if we suspect that the practice of common rites and the eclectic conception of common gods may have modified the differences which are otherwise maintained. Leaf is aware of the complexity of the problem, which he aptly describes as a ‘tangled skein.’[48] We do not, however, agree with Leaf’s opinion[49] that ‘there is no trace in Homer of any Chthonian religion,’ if the word ‘Chthonian’ carries its usual significance. Leaf implies that the Achaeans, before they came to Greece, were worshippers of the dead. The absence of such worship in Homer is, he says,[50] due to the severance of the military adventurer from the tombs of his fathers. ‘It is impossible to pay due rites to the departed when their tombs have been left far behind in the course of long migrations.’ We have seen[51] that the Achaeans were long enough settled in Greece, at the time of the Trojan war, to have produced relations extending to second and third cousins once removed. Surely the habit of ancestor-worship could easily have been renewed in the course of so many generations. We believe that the Achaean conception of a spirit land and their practice of cremation are a clear indication of the absence of the primitive ideas of ghost-raising, ghost-laying and fertility worship, which are the regular[52] concomitants of the cult of the dead.