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ORIGINAL SOURCES OF CULTURE. 35possessions, should have at first imagined. If it was notdeclared a duty to become like the gods, no excuse for theimitation could be drawn from the faults and crimes attributed to them. Besides, these stories were esteemed, evenby the vulgar, only as poetic inventions, and there was littleconcern about their truth, or their want of truth. Thereexisted, independent of those tales, the fear of tlie gods ashigher beings, who on the whole desired excellence, andabhorred and sometimes punished crime. This punishmentwas inflicted in this world ;for the poets and the peopleof Greece for a long time adopted a belief in no punishmentbeyond the grave, except of those who had been guilty ofdirect blasphemy against the gods. 1 The system of moralswas on the whole deduced from that fear of the gods, butthat fear especially produced the observance of certainduties, which were of great practical importance, as,for example, the inviolable character of suppliants, (supplices,)who stood under the particular protection of the gods ;thesanctity of oaths, and the like ;of which the violation wasalso considered as a direct crime against the gods. Thusthe popular religion of the Greeks was no doubt a supportof morality ; though never in the same degree as with us.That its importance was felt as a means of bridling thelicentiousness of the people, is sufficientlyclear from thecare which the state took during its better days to preservethe popular religion, and from the punishments inflicted onthose who corruptedit or denied its gods. When we mayname the popular religionof the Greeks in one sense a religion of the poets, we by no means indulge merely in aplay of fancy. But if the influence of the popular religionon the moral character of the nation should be differentlyestimated, there is less room to doubt as to its influence ontaste ;for that was formed entirely by the popular religion,and continued indissolublyunited with it.the transformation of the Grecian divinities into moByral agents, an infinite field was openedfor poetic invention.By becoming human, the gods became peculiarly beings forthe poets.The muse of the moderns has attempted to re-The reader may here compare an essay of Heeren on the notions enter1tained by the Greeks of rewards and punishments after death. Beereij ; HistorischeWerke, Th. iii. s. 214.D 2