No earthly state could hope to continue
for a decade upon the principles which governed the life of heaven; and
man, if he were to escape the sudden retributions which must inevitably
follow anything like an imitation of his gods, must live more decently
than they.
Now Homer was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as society
improved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlessly
towards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of the
gods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of the
sixth century B.C. led to various ways of explaining the old stories.
Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving religion in a sunny good temper
which will make the best of the situation whatever it is. AEschylus is
sombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side of
the gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name of
humanity his scepticism rises in protest.
It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at the
various theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths.
The commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalities
stand for the individual powers of nature.
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