the cyclic poem of the Thebaïs, that we have a proof that already in the days when the quasi-Homeric poetry was still popular, people believed in deathless dwellers below the earth and in their active potency in the mantic art. It is clear, then, that the worship of Amphiaraos and the belief in his subterranean existence was not due to the influence of the Epic. Rather the reverse was the case; the cult already existed and provided the idea of the daimon and this gave rise to the Epic narrative. The Epic found an existing cult of an oracular daimon who dwelt beneath the earth near Thebes ready to its hand. It reduced this fact to a form which it could understand in a manner typical of the relation which frequently existed between the facts of religious life and Epic poetry. The cult was connected with an event in legendary history, and so brought into harmony with the Epic outlook. The Epic knew nothing of gods attached in this way to a **particular earthly spot, and so the spirit worshipped in the cult became in the epic imagination a chieftain and Seer who had not always lived beneath the earth in that place, but had only been transported there subsequently by a miraculous fiat of the supreme god, who had also accorded an eternal life in the depths to the translated hero.[15\3] We may perhaps find a parallel in more recent Saga story that will throw light on the question. German mythology is perfectly familiar with such figures for ever, or until the day of judgment, alive in caverns of the mountains or subterranean chambers. Thus, Charlemagne, or it may be Charles the Fifth, still has his abode in Odenberg or in Unterberg, near Salzburg, Frederick II (or, in more recent versions of the legend, Frederick I Barbarossa in Kyffhäuser, Henry the Fowler in Sudemerberg, near Goslar. Thus, too, King Arthur, Holger Danske, and many other favourite characters of popular tradition dwell in subterranean caverns.[16\3] Occasionally, we can still plainly see how these were originally ancient _gods_ who according to pagan belief dwelt in hollow mountains and whose place has been taken by these heroes and holy men "translated" beneath the earth.[17\3] So, too, Greek tradition allows us to see even now that those ancient {94} translated mortals, Amphiaraos and Trophonios, are only Epic substitutes for ancient deities who did not owe their everlasting life and subterranean abode to the favour of heaven, but had possessed these from the beginning. At least, at the site of his worship men knew that the prophetic dweller in the cave was a _god_; one of them is called Zeus Trophonios or Trephonios, not only by learned authorities, but in inscriptions from Lebadeia;[18\3] Amphiaraos, too, is once called Zeus Amphiaraos and more often a god.[19\3] In the Translation legends of Christianized people the kings have usurped the place of the ancient gods because the gods themselves, fallen into neglect, have been dethroned.