Note 67.1 — Chapter III · THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.

The picture that these facts present of a State-religion based on the idea of the family and of kinship is mainly drawn from Athens, of which the religious record is always the richest; but it reflects undoubtedly the system of the other Hellenic states as well. Many of their records attest the belief that some one of the high divinities was the ancestor or ancestress of the whole people, and this ancestry was understood in the physical and literal sense. Thus Apollo ‘Patroös’ was the divine ancestor, being the father of Ion, of the Ionic population of Attica, and even the non-Ionic stock of that community, desired for political purposes to affiliate themselves to this God.67.1 In the same sense he was called Γενέτωρ, ‘the Father’ in Delos.67.2 Zeus was the father of Arkas, the eponymous hero of the Arcadians, and was worshipped as Πατρῶος at Tegea67.3; Hermes also was ancestral God of part of the Arcadian land and identified with the ancestor Aipytos.68.1 These religious fictions came to exert an important influence on morality and also to develop a certain spiritual significance which will be considered later.