Religion and politics were closely connected; but there was no trace of a priesthood with predominant influence. The king was the director of sacrifices, the presence of a priest not being required. There already existed, to be sure, besides the ancient oracle of Dodona, the oracle of Delphi in Phocis, which became so celebrated at a later period; but neither had any great influence in the heroic age. On the other hand, there were so-called soothsayers, who were supposed to possess much wisdom and at the same time a kind of association with the gods. For this reason they were consulted, so as to foretell the results of important undertakings, and to discover the cause of general misfortunes as well as a means of removing them. The most renowned of these men were Orpheus, who played the part of prophet in the expedition of the Argonauts; Amphiaraus, who joined the expedition of the Seven against Thebes in the same character; Tiresias, who was the prophet of the Thebans both at that time and in the war of the Epigoni; and lastly Calchas, the soothsayer of the Greeks in the Trojan war. Even these men had no influence to be compared with the oriental priesthood. They were really only looked upon as pacifiers of the outraged godhead and as advisers; their soothsayings were not always respected, and when their prophecies were unsatisfactory they had to face the anger of those in power. [Illustration: ZEUS (From a Greek Statue)] The religious belief of the heroic age was the origin of the later national religion. It sprang probably from various sources. Therefore it cannot be distinguished by any special belief like that of the Indians and Egyptians. The religion of the Greeks was never a perfected system and therefore not free from contradictions, especially as oriental conceptions were introduced into it from ancient times. The Grecians of this time believed heaven, or rather the summit of the towering Mount Olympus, to be inhabited by beings, like the earth; they imagined that these beings resembled human beings in appearance and inner nature, but with the difference that they ascribed to them invisibility, greater strength, freedom from the barriers of mortality, and a powerful influence over earthly things. The life of the gods, according to the representation of the heroic age, only differed from that of men in the fact that it had a more beautiful colouring and higher pleasures. They therefore looked upon the gods as personal beings and had that form of religion known as anthropomorphism, the essential characteristic of which is the belief that the gods resemble men. But joined in an inexplicable manner with this view, was the idea that the gods were at the same time natural phenomena and powers of nature. For instance Zeus, the king and ruler in the kingdom of the gods, was also regarded as the god of the atmosphere; Apollo of the sun; Poseidon the god of the sea; and the