Note 68 — Chapter V · FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE

Cp. K. O. MÜller, Introd. to Mythol. p. 195; Curtius, i, 387, 389, 392; Duncker, iii, 519–21, 563; Thirlwall, i, 204; Barthélemy St. Hilaire, préf. to tr. of Metaphys. of Aristotle, p. 14. Professor Gilbert Murray, noting that Homer and Hesiod treated the Gods as elements of romance, or as facts to be catalogued, asks: “Where is the literature of religion: the literature which treated the Gods as Gods? It must,” he adds, “have existed”; and he holds that we “can see that the religious writings were both early and multitudinous” (Hist. of Anc. Greek Lit. p. 62; cp. Meyer and Mahaffy as cited above, pp. 125–26. “Writings” is not here to be taken literally; the early hymns were unwritten). The priestly hymns and oracles and mystery-rituals in question were never collected; but perhaps we may form some idea of their nature from the “Homeridian” and Orphic hymns to the Gods, and those of the Alexandrian antiquary Callimachus. It is further to be inferred that they enter into the Hesiodic Theogony. (Decharme, p. 3, citing Bergk.) ↑