Note 107.1 — Chapter IV · THE THIRD PERIOD, 500-338 B.C.

These poets also deal with the question of Fate and Destiny. The personal, or half-personal, Μοῖρα was an old but insignificant figure of the popular religion and mythology, and Homer is aware of her and has to reckon with her. She might become more formidable under the philosophic conception of τὸ εἱμαρμένον which appeared in the philosophy of Herakleitos; and we know that later philosophy and cultivated thought was much perplexed over the problem of the reconciliation of Fate with the idea of a free divine Providence. The great Attic poets, taking their cue from Homer, “follow a short cut,” interpreting Moira as the voice or agent or emanation of the power of Zeus.107.1 And the pupil of Pheidias, Theokosmos of Megara, was working out the same idea when he carved the Fates with the Hours as subordinate adjuncts to the great form of Zeus.107.1 We may say, then, that both the poetry and the art of this period worked for the deliverance of the polytheism from the burden of fatalism, which tends to lower the value and sap the force of all personal religion.