In this connection it is of cardinal importance that, though we are apt to speak of them as the Semnae, the Venerable Ones, this is not their cultus title, not the fashion in which they were actually addressed at Athens. They are uniformly spoken of, not as the Venerable Ones, but as the Venerable Goddesses[615] (αἱ σεμναὶ θεαί). The distinction is important. It marks the fact that the Semnae from the first moment they come into our view have attained a complete anthropomorphism, have passed from ghosts to goddesses[616]; they are clearly defined personalities with a definite cultus; they are primitive forms, in fact _the_ primitive forms, of earth goddesses, of such conceptions as culminated finally in the great figures of Demeter and Kore. Other such figures are, for Athens the two Thesmophoroi, who are indeed but developments, other aspects, of the Semnae; for Eleusis the ‘two goddesses,’ τὼ θεώ, known to us by inscriptions and reliefs; for Aegina Damia and Auxesia; and for the rest of Greece many another local form, dual or triune, which need not now be enumerated. The process of this gradual anthropomorphism, this passage from sprite and ghost and demon to full-fledged divinity will be fully traced when we come to the ‘making of a goddess’ (p. 257). For the present it can only be noted that the term ‘goddesses’ sharply differentiates the Semnae from the Erinyes, who, save for sporadic literary mention, never attained any such rank. Euripides[617] does indeed make Orestes call the Erinyes ‘dread goddesses,’ but Aeschylus[618] is explicit: ‘their adornment (κόσμος) was neither human nor divine.’ It must be distinctly understood that, as the Semnae are goddesses, they are dealt with at this point only by anticipation, to elucidate the transformation effected by Aeschylus. What we certainly know of the Semnae, as distinct from kindred figures such as the Eumenides, is not very much, but such as it is, is significant. We know the site of their sanctuary, something of the aspect of their images, something also of their functions and of the nature of their ritual. We know in fact enough, as will be shown, to feel sure that like the Erinyes they were underworld potencies, ghosts who had become goddesses. The origin of the two conceptions is the same, but their development widely different, and moreover we catch it arrested at a different stage.