Importance of Religion in Hellenic Civilization. --
Everybody knows what constant and profound influence
religion exerted among the Greeks. We find it associated
with almost every phase of their public and private life.
Many important events of their history were either in-
spired or sanctioned by it; many of their artistic
creations were religious either in origin or in purpose.
Even the great movements of Hellenic thought were
closely bound up with the national religion, since nearly
all of these movements were either impelled by it or,
on the other band, opposed and retarded by it.

Primitive Religions. --An analytical study of the his-
torical religions of Greece, as well as the knowledge which
we have today acquired concerning still earlier religious,
enables us to recognize as the primitive basis of their be-
liefs the deification of the phenomena of nature or of the
unknown forces which were supposed to produce them.
Since the life of man was essentially bound up with these
phenomena, it was a question either of conjuring them
when they were feared, or of befriending them or even con-
straining them to appear if they were needed. Hence the
more or less magic rites designed to avert evils and to
multiply blessings. For a long time the popular imagi-

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