In Greece, there was no hereditary priesthood, as in Egypt. The right of presiding at public sacrifices pertained to the highest civil office, and probably the head of each family was also its ecclesiastic; but there was no priestly combination with secular power, and no national creed. Nestor, at home, conducts religious service, aided by his sons, and Achilles offers sacrifice to the manes of Patroclus. Pausanias informs us that early in Arcadia, the twelve gods were worshiped under the forms of rude stones; and before Dædalus, the statues had eyes nearly shut, legs close together, and the arms scarcely detached from the body; but as the correlative arts and sciences improved, sculpture, like the civilization it expressed, acquired freedom, proportion, and natural action. Altars were commonly erected in the open air, and propitiatory offerings most frequently smoked before Zeus, Poseidon, Athene, and Apollo. The first three of these are better known under their Latin designations of Jupiter, Neptune, and Minerva. The supremacy of the first over all inferior deities is decisively marked. His own declaration, according to Homer, is at the same time the most affirmative on this point, and a curious indication of the social condition of the gods. Says the supreme, "If I catch any one of you helping the Trojans or the Greeks, he shall either make his escape to Olympus disgraced and bruised, or else I will seize him, and throw him into Tartarus. Then you shall know my supremacy in power. Come, now, make the trial; hang a gold chain from heaven, and fasten yourselves at the end of it, all of you, gods and goddesses; you can not pull Zeus down, but, whenever I please, I can pull you up with the earth and the sea, wind the chain round Olympus, and there you would all dangle in the air."