fought out some centuries later, in the days of the Roman Empire, for
all the world to see. The two things which give their character to the
centuries from Augustus to Constantine are the persistent cry of man for
immortality, and the strong lusts of the flesh which silenced it. On the
smaller scale of each individual life, men and women will understand to
the end of time, from their own experience, the story of Orpheus.

It is peculiarly interesting to remember that the figure of the sweet
singer grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult of
Orphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis or
Dionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B.C., and reaches its
greatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaim
the high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least for
the hopes of men, the gates of immortality. The secret societies which
professed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thought
of early Athens, but their most prominent effect is seen in Plato, who
derived from them his main doctrines of pre-existence, penance,
reincarnation and the final purification of the soul. Even the early
Christians, who hated so bitterly many of the myths of paganism, and
found in them nothing but doctrines of devils, treated this story
tenderly, blended the picture of Orpheus with that of their own Good
Shepherd, and found it edifying to Christian faith.

One more instance may be given in the story of Apollo, in which, more
perhaps than in any other, there is an amazing combination of bad and
good elements. On the one hand there are the innumerable immoralities
and savageries that are found in all the records of mythology. On the
other hand, he who flays Marsias alive and visits the earth with plagues
is also the healer of men. He is the cosmopolitan god of the brotherhood
of mankind, the spirit of wisdom whose oracle acknowledged and inspired