Note 103.3 — Chapter IV · THE THIRD PERIOD, 500-338 B.C.

It is impossible, then, that this beautiful idolatry, against which the philosophers might occasionally protest,103.3 could have weakened the popular faith in the native deities. Introduced suddenly into Rome it helped to destroy the old Roman animistic religion. But the religious instinct and history of Greece was wholly different from that of Rome. Greek polytheism would probably have perished or been transformed by alien systems of cult far sooner than it was, if Greek art had not fortified and ennobled it, rooting it deeply in the æsthetic-religious emotions and perceptions of the people. By establishing so convincingly the individuality of the Greek divinities, it preserved them from a too rapid absorption into the personalities of Oriental religions, when the fusion of west and east had been achieved by Alexander and his successors.