Note 137.1 — Chapter V · THE PERIOD AFTER ALEXANDER

Certainly in the first centuries of the Hellenistic age there were few external signs of decay; we do not yet hear of ruined shrines or the decline of great festivals such as the Delia; Athena, though no longer the goddess of a civic Empire, was still and for ages yet remained the benign Madonna for the Athenian, to whose care the boy-athlete and the marriageable girl were dedicated; we have record from the island of Tenos137.1 of the abiding hold that even such a deity as Poseidon still exercised on the affections of his people, as late as the second and first centuries B.C.; and if we had continuous chronicles of each cult-centre we should probably find similar evidence showing that the dominant figures of the old polytheism were still able to fulfil in some degree the religious wants of the individual worshipper. And scholars who have been tempted to ante-date the decay of Hellenic polytheism have ignored, among other evidence, this important historic fact that in the fourth century it was still vital enough to make foreign conquests, to penetrate and take possession of Carthage, for instance, and that in the third century it began to secure for itself a new lease of life within the city and the growing Empire of Rome; in fact, the last chapter of Greek religion falls within the Roman imperial period.