One obvious method of reconciling various tribal Gods in a syncretic
Olympus, is the genealogical. All are children of Zeus, for example, or
grandchildren, or brothers and sisters. Fancy then provides an amour to
account for each relationship. Zeus loved Leto, Leda, Europa, and so
forth. Thus a God, originally innocent and even moral, becomes a perfect
pattern of vice; and the eternal contradiction vexes the souls of
Xenophanes, Plato, and St. Augustine. Sacrifices, even human sacrifices,
wholly unknown to the most archaic faiths, were made to ghosts of men:
and especially of kings, in the case of human sacrifice. Thence they
were transferred to Gods, and behold a new scandal, when men began to
reflect under more civilised conditions. Thus all these legends of
divine amours and sins, or most of them, including the wanton legend of
Aphrodite, and all the human sacrifices which survived to the disgrace of
Greek religion, are really degrading accessories to the most archaic
beliefs. They are products, not of the most rudimentary savage
existence, but of the evolution through the lower and higher barbarism.
The worst features of savage ritual are different--taking the lines of
sorcery, of cruel initiations, and, perhaps, of revival of the licence of
promiscuity, or of Group Marriage. Of these things the traces are not
absent from Greek faith, but they are comparatively inconspicuous.

Buffoonery, as we have seen, exists in all grades of civilised or savage
rites, and was not absent from the popular festivals of the mediaeval
Church: religion throwing her mantle over every human field of action, as
over Folk Medicine. On these lines I venture to explain what seem to me
the strange and repugnant elements of the religion of a people so
refined, and so capable of high moral ideas, as the Greeks. Aphrodite is
personified desire, but religion did not throw her mantle over desire
alone; the cloistered life, the frank charm of maidenhood, were as dear
to the Greek genius, and were consecrated by the examples of Athene,