Socrates, and, generally, the incarnation of the "glory of the Lord."

We cannot here touch upon the marvellous tales of Delos and of Delphi,
nor repeat the strains that Pindar sang, sitting in his iron chair
beside the shrine. This much at least we may say, that both the Apollo
of Delos and the Apollo of Delphi are foreign gods, each of whom
appropriated to his own use a sacred place where the ancient earth-bound
religion had already established its rites. The Greeks brought with them
a splendid god from their former home, but in his new shrine he was
identified with a local god, very far from splendid; and this seems to
be the most reasonable explanation of the inconsistency between the
revolting and the beautiful elements in his worship. Pindar at least
repudiated the relics of the poorer cult, and cried concerning such
stories as were current then, "Oh, my tongue, fling this tale from thee;
it is a hateful cleverness that slanders gods." No one who has realised
the power and glory of the Eastern sun, can wonder at the identification
both of the good and bad symbolism with the orb of day. Sun-worship is
indeed a form of nature-worship, and there are physical reasons obvious
enough for its being able to incorporate both the clean and unclean,
both the deadly and the benign legends. Yet there is a splendour in it
which is seen in its attraction for such minds as those of Aurelian and
Julian, and which is capable of refinement in the delicate spirituality
of Mithra, that worship of the essential principle of light, the soul of
sunshine. In the worship of Apollo we have a combination, than which
none on record is more striking, of the finest spirituality with the
crudest paganism.

Here then, in the magical arena of the early world of Greece, we see in
one of its most romantic forms the age-long strife between paganism and
spirituality. We have taken at random four of the most popular stories