form of verse was not suited to the treatment of the deepest subjects.
For the religious poetry of Greece one must go to Pindar and
Sophocles.

But the small selection given here throws some interesting light on
Greek thought with regard to sacred matters. Each business of life,
each change of circumstance, calls for worship and offering. The
sailor, putting to sea with spring, is to pay his sacrifice to the
harbour-god, a simple offering of cakes or fish.[5] The seafarer
should not pass near a great shine without turning aside to pay it
reverence.[6] The traveller, as he crosses a hill-pass or rests by the
wayside fountain, is to give the accustomed honour to the god of the
ground, Pan or Hermes, or whoever holds the spot in special
protection.[7] Each shaded well in the forest, each jut of cliff on
the shore, has its tutelar deity, if only under the form of the
rudely-carved stake set in a garden or on a lonely beach where the
sea-gulls hover; and with their more sumptuous worship the houses of
great gods, all marble and gold, stand overlooking the broad valley or
the shining spaces of sea.[8] Even the wild thicket has its rustic
Pan, to whom the hunter and fowler pray for success in their day's
work, and the image of Demeter stands by the farmer's threshing-
floor.[9] And yet close as the gods come in their daily dealings with
men, scorning no offering, however small, that is made with clean
hands, finding no occasion too trifling for their aid, there is a yet
more homely worship of "little gods"[10] who take the most
insignificant matters in their charge. These are not mere
abstractions, like the lesser deities of the Latin religion, Bonus
Eventus, Tutilina, Iterduca and Domiduca, but they occupy much the
same place in worship. By their side are the heroes, the saints of the
ancient world, who from their graves have some power of hearing and