and occupied an important position in the Eleusinian mysteries.

These were the twelve Olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they
represent only a small part of the Grecian Pantheon. There was Dionysus
(Roman Bacchus), the god of drunkenness. This deity presided over
vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with
wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations.

Leto (Roman Latona), another wife of Zeus, and mother of Apollo and
Diana, was a very different personage from Hera, being the impersonation
of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent,
unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and
subordinating herself to her children.

Persephone (Roman Proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the
infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband Pluto, severely
pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to
her, as the Greeks did not trouble themselves much about the
future state.

The minor deities of the Greeks were innumerable, and were identified
with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with
mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic
animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes,
with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and
attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife
and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with
night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the
wonders of Nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities
of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about,