It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been
kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. This wise
provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also
availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part
of most well-organized religious systems. The festivals were celebrated
in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons
of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in
the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.
They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front
of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently
assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever
could animate the soul with festivity and joy. Hence the religious
worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and
pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and
sometimes degrading. It was similar in its effects to the rural sports
of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical
representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the
processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the
amusement of the people. Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon,
that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to
philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. The State encouraged and
paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same
principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in
their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular
religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the
ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.

Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or
Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious