Note 31.1 — Chapter II · THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

The sacred place of worship might be a natural cave, or a ‘temenos,’ a fenced clearing in a grove, containing as the ἄγαλμα of the deity a tree-trunk or holy pillar or heap of stones, whence gradually an artificial altar might be evolved; the latter had become, some time before Homer, the usual receptacle of sacrifice and was a prominent figure in the Minoan-Mycenæan religion, which usually associated it with a sacred tree or pillar, the token of the deity’s presence or a magnet for attracting it, but not with any iconic statue or idol. Personal religion could content itself with such equipment, but, if the anthropomorphic instinct is strong in it, it prompts the construction of the temple or the house of God. And temples must have been found in the land in the pre-Homeric period; the few that have as yet been revealed in the area of Minoan-Mycenæan culture were built, with one exception,31.1 within the royal palaces, and must be regarded as domestic chapels of the king, marking his sacred character as head of the religion of the State, the character with which the legends invest King Minos and King Aiakos. The earliest that have been excavated on free sites are the temples of Hera at Argos and Olympia, and these are now dated not earlier than the ninth century B.C. But the traditions of the earliest temple at Delphi, and of that of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, suggest a greater antiquity than this.