The relationship between these boisterous paladins and their Gods was as direct and as simple as their attitude towards the serious problems of every-day existence. For the inhabitants of high Olympus, who ruled the world of the Hellenes in the tenth century before our era, were of this earth earthy, and not very far removed from ordinary mortals. Exactly where and when and how man and his Gods had parted company was a more or less hazy point, never clearly established. Even then the friendship which those who lived beyond the clouds had always felt towards their subjects who crawled across the face of the earth had in no way been interrupted and it had remained flavored with those personal and intimate touches which gave the religion of the Greeks its own peculiar charm. Of course, all good little Greek boys were duly taught that Zeus was a very powerful and mighty potentate with a long beard who upon occasion would juggle so violently with his flashes of lightning and his thunderbolts that it seemed that the world was coming to an end. But as soon as they were a little older and were able to read the ancient sagas for themselves, they began to appreciate the limitations of those terrible personages of whom they had heard so much in their nursery and who now appeared in the light of a merry family-party—everlastingly playing practical jokes upon each other and taking such bitter sides in the political disputes of their mortal friends that every quarrel in Greece was immediately followed by a corresponding row among the denizens of the aether. Of course in spite of all these very human short-comings, Zeus remained a very great God, the mightiest of all rulers and a personage whom it was not safe to displease. But he was “reasonable” in that sense of the word which is so well understood among the lobbyists of Washington. He was reasonable. He could be approached if one knew the proper way. And best of all, he had a sense of humor and did not take either himself or his world too seriously. This was, perhaps, not the most sublime conception of a divine figure, but it offered certain very distinct advantages. Among the ancient Greeks there never was a hard and fast rule as to what people must hold true and what they must disregard as false. And because there was no “creed” in the modern sense of the word, with adamantine dogmas and a class of professional priests, ready to enforce them with the help of the secular gallows, the people in different parts of the country were able to reshape their religious ideas and ethical conceptions as best suited their own individual tastes.