“In Greece the mortal element, inherent in all gods, was eliminated to a great extent by the conception of heroes. Whatever was too human in the ancient legends told of Zeus and Apollo was transferred to so-called half gods or heroes, who were represented as the sons or favourites of the gods. The two-fold character of Herakles as a god and as a hero is acknowledged even by Herodotus, and some of his epithets would have been sufficient to indicate his solar and originally divine character. But in order to make some of the legends told of the solar deity possible or conceivable, it was necessary to represent Herakles as a more human being, and to make him rise to the seat of the immortals only after he had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an Olympian god.”[50] The divinities of a second and third order, who were sometimes solicited for special favours, were perhaps placed in the same category as some provincial or local saints, who were considered more accessible and more pitiful in certain places, just as some physicians make a practice of curing those ills only of which they had made a speciality. There were also abstract divinities, representing certain virtues in the eyes of the people, which were highly esteemed and useful to possess; each of these qualities which were conceived separately, and considered in the superlative degree, were from that time raised to the rank of a divine person, thus altars and temples were dedicated to Courage, Strength, and Piety; Fame was likewise thus honoured. “Great Fame is never lost though scattered abroad,” said Hesiod, “it is in itself a divinity.” The language of mythology was in use at a late period. History tells us that the Greek town of Cyrene in Libya was founded about the thirty-seventh Olympiad, the ruling race came from Thessaly; the foundation of the colony was due to the oracle of Apollo at Pytho. This simple historical fact has been thus rendered, from the habit of not recounting events as they happened. “The heroic maid Cyrene, who lived in Thessaly, was loved by Apollo, and carried off to Libya.”