Note 175.1 — Chapter IX · Purity a Divine Attribute.

How the other religions of polytheistic Asia Minor dealt with these matters is not revealed; and the comparison here, as in many other points, must be immediate between Mesopotamia and Hellas. Much that has just been said of the former may be affirmed of the latter in this respect. In Homer the pre-eminence, even the omnipotence, of Zeus is occasionally expressed as a dogma, and we must believe that this deity had risen to this commanding position before the Homeric period, at least among the progressive tribes;175.1 and throughout the systematised theology of Greece his sovereignty was maintained more consistently than, owing to the shifting of the powers of the cities, was that of Marduk or Bel or Enlil in the Sumerian-Babylonian system. Probably the high idea of divine omnipotence was as vaguely and feebly realised by the average primitive Hellene as we have reason to suspect that it was by the average Babylonian. Also, as Hellas was far less centralised than Babylonia, the efficacy of the local or village god or goddess or daimon might often transcend the influence of Zeus. But at least we have no Hellenic evidence of so narrow a theory, as that the deity’s power depended upon his temple or his image, or even upon his sacrifice.