Amongst the gods Pausanias assigns the first place to Zeus. He alone is superior to Destiny, to which all the other gods must submit; he is the ruler and guide of the Fates, and knows all that they have in store for man. Of the Fates themselves Fortune is, in our author’s opinion, the most powerful; she it is whose resistless might sweeps all things along at her will, determining the growth and decay of cities, the revolutions of nature, and the destiny of man. Yet Pausanias’s own devotions seem to have been paid rather to Demeter than to Zeus or the Fates. He visited Phigalia chiefly for the sake of the Black Demeter to whom he sacrificed at the mouth of the cave; he relates at length the history of her image; and he describes in unusual detail the sanctuary and images of Demeter and Proserpine at Lycosura. Again, he had been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries; he loves to trace their diffusion from Eleusis over the rest of Greece; he speaks of the Andanian mysteries as second in point of sanctity to the Eleusinian alone; he tells us that the Greeks of an earlier age esteemed the latter as far above all other religious exercises as the gods were above heroes; and he expresses his own conviction that there was nothing on which the blessing of God rested in so full a measure as on the rites of Eleusis and the Olympic games. His religious awe of the mysteries, silencing his antiquarian garrulity, forbade him to describe not only the rites but the sacred precincts in which they were celebrated. Once more, on Mount Panhellenius in Aegina he sacrificed to the images of the kindred deities Damia and Auxesia according to the ritual observed in sacrificing at Eleusis. Another deity in whom Pausanias seems to have been especially interested was Aesculapius. He examines the legends of the god’s parentage, discusses his nature, and traces the spread of his worship from Epidaurus. Along with his belief in the gods and in the resistless power of Fate our author apparently cherished a dim faith in a divine providence which watches over the affairs of man. In speaking of the exploits of Theseus in Crete he remarks that “nothing less than the hand of Providence could reasonably be supposed to have brought him and his comrades safe back, guiding him through all the mazy intricacies of the labyrinth, and leading him unseen, when his work was done, through the midst of his enemies.” [Sidenote: His belief in the active interference of the gods in human affairs.]