To us, as to Herodotus, in his day, the philosophical speculation of the Greeks begins with the theology and cosmology of Homer and Hesiod. The series of divine persons and attributes, and generations presented by these poets, and especially the Theogony of Hesiod, supplied at one time full satisfaction to the curiosity of the Greeks respecting the past history and present agencies of the world around them. In the emphatic censure bestowed by Herakleitus on the poets and philosophers who preceded him, as having much knowledge but no sense--he includes Hesiod, as well as Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hekatæus: upon Homer and Archilochus he is still more severe, declaring that they ought to be banished from the public festivals and scourged.[1] The sentiment of curiosity as it then existed was only secondary and derivative, arising out of some of the strong primary or personal sentiments--fear or hope, antipathy or sympathy,--impression of present weakness,--unsatisfied appetites and longings,--wonder and awe under the presence of the terror-striking phenomena of nature, &c. Under this state of the mind, when problems suggested themselves for solution, the answers afforded by Polytheism gave more satisfaction than could have been afforded by any other hypothesis. Among the indefinite multitude of invisible, personal, quasi-human agents, with different attributes and dispositions, some one could be found to account for every perplexing phenomenon. The question asked was, not What are the antecedent conditions or causes of rain, thunder, or earthquakes, but Who rains and thunders? Who produces earthquakes?[2] The Hesiodic Greek was satisfied when informed that it was Zeus or Poseidon. To be told of physical agencies would have appeared to him not merely unsatisfactory, but absurd, ridiculous, and impious. It was the task of a poet like Hesiod to clothe this general polytheistic sentiment in suitable details: to describe the various Gods, Goddesses, Demigods, and other quasi-human agents, with their characteristic attributes, with illustrative adventures, and with sufficient relations of sympathy and subordination among each other, to connect them in men's imaginations as members of the same brotherhood. Okeanus, Gæa, Uranus, Helios, Selênê,--Zeus, Poseidon, Hades--Apollo and Artemis, Dionysus and Aphroditê--these and many other divine personal agents, were invoked as the producing and sustaining forces in nature, the past history of which was contained in their filiations or contests. Anterior to all of them, the primordial matter or person, was Chaos. [Footnote 1: Diogen. Laert. ix. 1. [Greek: Polumathi/ê no/on ou) dida/skei;] ([Greek: ou) phu/ei,] ap. Proclum in Platon. Timæ. p. 31 F., p. 72, ed. Schneider), [Greek: Ê(si/odon ga\r a)\n e)di/daxe kai\ Puthago/rên, auti/s te Xenopha/nea/ te kai\ E(katai=on; to/n th' O(/mêron e)/phasken a)/xion ei)=nai e)k tô=n agô/nôn e)kba/llesthai kai\ rhapi/zesthai, kai\ A)rchi/lochon o(moi/ôs.]