With the diffusion of a popularised philosophy religious feeling became fainter among the educated classes, and correspondingly more uncontrolled in the lower orders. The immense mass of dedicatory epigrams written in the Alexandrian and Roman periods are in the main literary exercises, though they were also the supply of a real and living demand. The fashion outlived the belief; even after the suppression of pagan worship scholars continued to turn out imitations of the old models. One book of the Anthology of Agathias[4] consisted entirely of contemporary epigrams of this sort, "as though dedicated to former gods." But of epigrams dealing with religion in its more intimate sense there are, as one would expect, very few in the Anthology until we come to collections of Christian poetry. This light form of verse was not suited to the treatment of the deepest subjects. For the religious poetry of Greece one must go to Pindar and Sophocles. But the small selection given here throws some interesting light on Greek thought with regard to sacred matters. Each business of life, each change of circumstance, calls for worship and offering. The sailor, putting to sea with spring, is to pay his sacrifice to the harbour-god, a simple offering of cakes or fish.[5] The seafarer should not pass near a great shine without turning aside to pay it reverence.[6] The traveller, as he crosses a hill-pass or rests by the wayside fountain, is to give the accustomed honour to the god of the ground, Pan or Hermes, or whoever holds the spot in special protection.[7] Each shaded well in the forest, each jut of cliff on the shore, has its tutelar deity, if only under the form of the rudely-carved stake set in a garden or on a lonely beach where the sea-gulls hover; and with their more sumptuous worship the houses of great gods, all marble and gold, stand overlooking the broad valley or the shining spaces of sea.[8] Even the wild thicket has its rustic Pan, to whom the hunter and fowler pray for success in their day's work, and the image of Demeter stands by the farmer's threshing- floor.[9] And yet close as the gods come in their daily dealings with men, scorning no offering, however small, that is made with clean hands, finding no occasion too trifling for their aid, there is a yet more homely worship of "little gods"[10] who take the most insignificant matters in their charge. These are not mere abstractions, like the lesser deities of the Latin religion, Bonus Eventus, Tutilina, Iterduca and Domiduca, but they occupy much the same place in worship. By their side are the heroes, the saints of the ancient world, who from their graves have some power of hearing and answering. Like the saints, they belong to all times, from the most remote to the most recent. The mythical Philopregmon, a shadowy being dating back to times of primitive worship, gives luck from his monument on the roadside by the gate of Potidaea.[11] But the