Artemis, and Hestia. She presides over the pure element of the fire of
the hearth, just as in the household did the daughter of the king or
chief. Hers are the first libations at feasts (xxviii. 5), though in
Homer they are poured forth to Hermes.

We may explain the Gods of the minor hymns in the same way. Pan, for
instance, as the son of Hermes, inherits the wild, frolicsome, rural
aspect of his character. The Dioscuri answer to the Vedic Asvins, twin
rescuers of men in danger on land or sea: perhaps the Evening and Morning
Star. Dionysus is another aspect of the joy of life and of the world and
the vintaging. Moon and Sun, Selene and Helios, appear as quite distinct
from Artemis and Apollo; Gaea, the Earth, is equally distinct from
Demeter. The Hymn to Ares is quite un-Homeric in character, and is oddly
conceived in the spirit of the Scottish poltroon, who cries to his
friend, "Haud me, haud me, or I'll fecht!" The war-god is implored to
moderate the martial eagerness of the poet. The original collector here
showed lack of discrimination. At no time, however, was Ares a popular
God in Greece; in Homer he is a braggart and coward.




THE HYMN TO DEMETER


The beautiful Hymn to Demeter, an example of Greek religious faith in its
most pensive and most romantic aspects, was found in the last century
(1780), in Moscow. _Inter pullos et porcos latitabat_: the song of the
rural deity had found its way into the haunts of the humble creatures
whom she protected. A discovery even more fortunate, in 1857, led Sir