In a similar way we may, to linger once more for a moment by the illustrations we adduced on a former page, recall again to our readers the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The conflict between Apollo and the Eumenides is to be settled by the intervention of the Areopagus. In other words, a human tribunal, as a whole, at whose head stands Athene, stands forth as the concrete spirit of the folk, and is as such to terminate the collision. The judges, however, give an equal number of votes for condemnation and acquittal, having an equal reverence both for the Eumenides and Apollo; the white pebble of Athene, however, decides the conflict in favour of Apollo. The Eumenides break out in indignation against this decision of Athene; she, however, allays their wrath by promising them worship and altars in the famous grove of Colonos. What the Eumenides have to give in return to her people is a protection against the evils[176] which result from the elements of _Nature_, the earth, the heavens, the sea, and the winds; they have further to ward off unfruitfulness in the fields, the failure of living seed, and misbirths in all else that is procreated. Pallas, on her part, takes beneath her protection the strife of wars and sacred contests. Ina similar way Sophocles[177], in his "Antigone," not only makes Antigone suffer and die, but to a like extent we find that Kreon is punished by the loss of his wife and the death of Haemon, both of whom perish through the death of Antigone. (_c_) _Thirdly_, the ancient gods do not merely preserve their place in juxtaposition to the new, but, what is of more importance, the natural basis itself is maintained by the new gods, and receives, continuing to made its echo sound in them, if in conformity with the spiritual individuality of classical art, a reverential acceptance. (_α_) And for this reason people are not unfrequently led into the error of conceiving the Greek gods, in respect to their human character and form, as mere _allegories_ of such natural elements. This is not so. In this sense we frequently hear it stated that Helios is the god of the sun, Diana the goddess of the moon, or Neptune the god of the sea. Such a separation, however, between the natural element, as content, and the humanly shaped personification, as form, no less than the external association of both, regarded merely as the masterdom of the god over the natural fact, as we are accustomed to it in the Old Testament, is quite inapplicable to Greek conceptions. We never find among the Greeks such an expression as ὁ θεὸς τoῦ ἡλίoυ, τῆς θαλάσσης, and so forth, though it is quite certain they would have used with others such an expression for the relation in question, had it been compatible with their point of view. Helios is the sun as god.