The Thessalians, who lived within hailing distance of Mount Olympus, showed of course much less respect for their august neighbors than did the Asopians who dwelled in a distant village on the Laconian Gulf. The Athenians, feeling themselves under the direct protection of their own patron saint, Pallas Athene, felt that they could take great liberties with the lady’s father, while the Arcadians, whose valleys were far removed from the main trade routes, clung tenaciously to a simpler faith and frowned upon all levity in the serious matter of religion, and as for the inhabitants of Phocis, who made a living from the pilgrims bound for the village of Delphi, they were firmly convinced that Apollo (who was worshiped at that profitable shrine) was the greatest of all divine spirits and deserved the special homage of those who came from afar and still had a couple of drachmas in their pocket. The belief in only one God which soon afterwards was to set the Jews apart from all other nations, would never have been possible if the life of Judaea had not centered around a single city which was strong enough to destroy all rival places of pilgrimage and was able to maintain an exclusive religious monopoly for almost ten consecutive centuries. In Greece such a condition did not prevail. Neither Athens nor Sparta ever succeeded in establishing itself as the recognized capital of a united Greek fatherland. Their efforts in this direction only led to long years of unprofitable civil war. No wonder that a race composed of such sublime individualists offered great scope for the development of a very independent spirit of thought. The Iliad and the Odyssey have sometimes been called the Bible of the Greeks. They were nothing of the sort. They were just books. They were never united into “The Book.” They told the adventures of certain wonderful heroes who were fondly believed to be the direct ancestors of the generation then living. Incidentally they contained a certain amount of religious information because the Gods, without exception, had taken sides in the quarrel and had neglected all other business for the joy of watching the rarest prize-fight that had ever been staged within their domain. The idea, however, that the works of Homer might either directly or indirectly have been inspired by Zeus or Minerva or Apollo never even dawned upon the Greek mind. These were a fine piece of literature and made excellent reading during the long winter evenings. Furthermore they caused children to feel proud of their own race. And that was all.