LATTER PART OF SIXTH CENTURY,

Figure from the corner of the East Pediment of the Temple at Aegina. Now in Munich. Illustrating early Greek Art.

GREEK RELIGIOUS IDEAS

THE BIBLES OF THE GREEKS were the works of Homer and Hesiod. We have shown the Greek ideas concerning the origin of the gods and the world in Hesiod's Theogony and his Works and Days. These contain, also, the stories of the wars of the gods, the bringing of fire to man and the consequent punishment of Prometheus, of Pandora and the beginning of evil, and of the five ages of the world. The Greek ideas of the future life in Hades and Elysium are best represented in the descriptions of Homer and Pindar, while we have given a glimpse of the Mysteries, and the hopes of immortality which they gave to the initiated, in those few paragraphs of Isocrates which stand practically alone in all Greek literature in explaining these influential but reverently unspoken-of rites.