Note 37.1 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

It is important to emphasise this gloomier side of Greek religion; but it is detrimental to exaggerate it, as has been the tendency of some modern writers in a pardonable revolt from the old shallow theories of orthodox classicism. We ought to recognise that at no period of his history was the ordinary Hellene ghost-ridden, worried and dismayed by demoniac terrors, or by morbid anxiety about the other world or his destiny after death; at least he will not appear so, when we compare his religious and mythologic records with those of Babylon, Egypt, and Christendom.37.1 Nor dare we affirm that the prehistoric Hellene was weaker-minded and more timorous in respect of such matters than the later. He may even have been stronger-minded, and at least as willing to eat a sacramental meal in company with the ‘Theoi Meilichioi’ (shadowy powers of the lower world), or with the Nether-Zeus, or the Nether Earth-Mother, and with his departed family-spirits, as were his later descendants at Lokris, Mykonos and other places.37.2 The earliest myths have little of the goblin element. Homer indeed himself was cognisant of such forms of terror as a black ‘Ker’—Penelope likens Antinoos to one;37.3 the ancient folklore of Argolis was aware of a bad spirit that once ravaged its homes.37.4 The early popular imagination was sure to have inherited or to have evolved such creations of fear; and a black Earth-Goddess with a horse’s head and snake-locks, who lived in a dark cave at Phigaleia, almost certainly in the pre-Homeric period, was a sufficiently terrifying personality.38.1