Even before the time of Homer, Greek religion had undergone development. Modern scholarship, at least, is no longer inclined to find in Homer the artless simplicity of a primitive age. On the contrary, the Homeric poems, it is now supposed, were the product of a highly developed, aristocratic society, which must be thought of as standing at the apex of a social order. Thus it is not to be supposed that the religion of Homer was the only Hellenic religion of Homer's day. On the contrary, even in the Homeric poems, it is said, there appear here and there remnants of a popular primitive religion--human sacrifice and the like--and many of the rough, primitive conceptions which crop out in Greek life in the later centuries were really present long before the Homeric age, and had been preserved beneath the surface in the depths of a non-literary popular religion. However much of truth there may be in these contentions, it is at any rate clear that the Homeric poems exerted an enormous influence upon subsequent generations. Even if they were the product of a limited circle, even if they never succeeded in eradicating the primitive conceptions, at least they did gain enormous prestige and did become the most important single factor in molding the religion of the golden age of Greece. As determined by the Homeric poems, the religion of Greece was a highly developed polytheism of a thoroughly anthropomorphic kind. The Greek gods were simply men and women, with human passions and human sins--more powerful, indeed, but not more righteous than those who worshiped them. Such a religion was stimulating to the highest art. Anthropomorphism gave free course to the imagination of poets and sculptors. There is nothing lifeless about the gods of Greece; whether portrayed by the chisel of sculptors or the pen of poets, they are warm, living, breathing, human figures. But however stimulating to the sense of beauty, the anthropomorphic religion of Greece was singularly unsatisfying in the moral sphere. If the gods were no better than men, the worship of them was not necessarily ennobling. No doubt there was a certain moral quality in the very act of worship. For worship was not always conceived of as mere prudent propitiation of dangerous tyrants. Sometimes it was conceived of as a duty, like the pious reverence which a child should exhibit toward his parent. In the case of filial piety, as in the case of piety toward the gods, the duty of reverence is independent of the moral quality of the revered object. But in both cases the very act of reverence may possess a certain moral value. This admission, however, does not change the essential fact. It remains true that the anthropomorphic character of the gods of Greece, just because it stimulated the fancy of poets by attributing human passions to the gods and so provided the materials of dramatic art, at the same time prevented religion from lifting society above the prevailing standards.