"Zeus the high God! Whate'er be dim in doubt, This can our thought track out-- The blow that fells the sinner is of God, And as he wills, the rod Of vengeance smiteth sore. One said of old 'The Gods list not to hold A reckoning with him whose feet oppress The grace of holiness'-- An impious word! for whensoe'er the sire Breathed forth rebellious fire-- What time his household overflows the measure Of bliss and health and treasure-- His children's children read the reckoning plain, At last, in tears and pain. * * * * * Who spurns the shrine of Right, nor wealth nor power Shall be to him a tower, To guard him from the gulf: there lies his lot, Where all things are forgot. Lust drives him on--lust, desperate and wild Fate's sin-contriving child-- And cure is none; beyond concealment clear Kindles sin's baleful glare. As an ill coin beneath the wearing touch Betrays by stain and smutch Its metal false--such is the sinful wight. Before, on pinions light, Fair pleasure flits, and lures him childlike on, While home and kin make moan Beneath the grinding burden of his crime; Till, in the end of time, Cast down of heaven, he pours forth fruitless prayer To powers that will not hear." [Footnote: Aesch. Agamem. 367.--Translated by E. D. A. Morshead ("The House of Atreus").] And Sophocles follows in the same path. For him too Zeus is no longer the god of physical strength; he is the creator and sustainer of the moral law--of "those laws of range sublime, called into life throughout the high clear heaven, whose father is Olympus alone; their parent was no race of mortal men, no, nor shall oblivion ever lay them to sleep; a mighty god is in them, and he grows not old." [Footnote: Soph. O.T. 865.--Translated by Dr. Jebb.] Such words imply a complete transformation of the Homeric conception of Divinity; a transformation made indeed in the interests of religion, but involving nevertheless, and contrary, no doubt, to the intention of its authors, a complete subversion of the popular creed. Once grant the idea of God as an eternal and moral Power and the whole fabric of polytheism falls away. The religion of the Greeks, as interpreted by their best minds, annihilates itself. Zeus indeed is saved, but only at the cost of all Olympus. Section 15. Metaphysical Criticism.