Note 36.3 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

There are strong reasons also for believing that the cult of hero-ancestors was already a part of the pre-Homeric religion, as it was a prominent part of the post-Homeric. The elaborate tendance of the dead attested of the Mycenæan period by the graves discovered at Tiryns and Mycenæ, could easily develop into actual worship if it was maintained through many generations, as it was at Menidi in Attica. Doubtless, the common and promiscuous worship of the dead was a morbid development of the later polytheism. But Homer, who is generally silent about such cults, and in a well-known passage about the Twin-Brethren36.3 seems to ignore deliberately their divine or semi-divine character, almost reveals his knowledge of the worship of Herakles,36.4 and certainly was aware of the Attic cult of Erechtheus, unless the passage that refers to it was the work of the interpolator.36.5