One God there is, greatest of gods and mortals,
Not like to man is he in mind or in body. 
All of him sees, all of him thinks, and all of him harkens.

This, of course, is obvious pantheism, but it is easy to cover up all kinds of pale monotheism or pantheism under vague reference to the omnipotence of “Zeus.”

183.  The Average Athenian’s Idea of the Gods.—­The average intelligent citizen probably has views midway between the stupid rabble and the daring philosophers.  To him the gods of Greece stand out in full divinity, honored and worshipped because they are protectors of the good, avengers of the evil, and guardians of the moral law.  They punish crime and reward virtue, though the punishment may tarry long.  They demand a pure heart and a holy mind of all that approach them, and woe to him who wantonly defies their eternal laws.  This is the morality taught by the master tragedians, Aeschylus and Sophocles, and accepted by the best public opinion at Athens; for the insidious doubts cast by Euripides upon the reality of any divine scheme of governance have never struck home.  The scandalous stories about the domestic broils on Olympus, in which Homer indulges, only awaken good-natured banter.  It is no longer proper—­as in Homeric days—­to pride oneself on one’s cleverness in perjury and common falsehood.  Athenians do not have twentieth century notions about the wickedness of lying, but certain it is the gods do not approve thereof.  In short, most of the better class of Athenians are genuinely “religious”; nevertheless they have too many things in this human world to interest them to spend overmuch time in adjusting their personal concepts of the deity to any system of theology.

184.  Most Greeks without belief in Immortality.—­Yet one thing we must add.  This Greek religious morality is built up without any clear belief in a future life.  Never has the average Hellene been able to form a satisfactory conception of the soul’s existence, save dwelling within a mortal body and under the glorious light of beloved Helios.  To Homer the after life in Hades was merely the perpetuation of the shadows of departed humanity, “strengthless shades” who live on the gloomy plains of asphodel, feeding upon dear memories, and incapable of keen emotions or any real mental or physical progress or action.  Only a few great sinners like Tantalus, doomed to eternal torture, or favored being like Menelaus, predestined to the “Blessed Isles,” are ordained to any real immortality.  As the centuries advanced, and the possibilities of this terrestrial world grew ever keener, the hope of any future state became ever more vague.  The fear of a gloomy shadow life in Hades for the most part disappeared, but that was only to confirm the belief that death ends all things.

Where’er his course man tends,
Inevitable death impends,
And for the worst and for the best,
Is strewn the same dark couch of rest.[*]