In approaching the subject of the religion of the Greeks it is necessary
to dismiss at the outset many of the associations which we are naturally
inclined to connect with that word. What we commonly have in our mind
when we speak of religion is a definite set of doctrines, of a more or
less metaphysical character, formulated in a creed and supported by an
organisation distinct from the state. And the first thing we have to
learn about the religion of the Greeks is that it included nothing of
the kind. There was no church, there was no creed, there were no
articles; there was no doctrine even, unless we are so to call a chaos
of legends orally handed down and in continual process of transformation
by the poets. Priests there were, but they were merely public officials,
appointed to perform certain religious rites. The distinction between
cleric and layman, as we know it, did not exist; the distinction between
poetry and dogma did not exist; and whatever the religion of the Greeks
may have been, one thing at any rate is clear, that it was something
very different from all that we are in the habit of associating with the
word.

What then was it? It is easy to reply that it was the worship of those
gods--of Zeus, Apollo, Athene, and the rest--with whose names and
histories every one is familiar. But the difficulty is to realise what
was implied in the worship of these gods; to understand that the
mythology which we regard merely as a collection of fables was to the
Greeks actually true; or at least that to nine Greeks out of ten it
would never occur that it might be false, might be, as we say, mere
stories. So that though no doubt the histories of the gods were in part
the inventions of the poets, yet the poets would conceive themselves to
be merely putting into form what they and every one believed to be
essentially true.