The record of the ritual and festivals consecrated to the Apolline worship has more than a merely antiquarian interest, for no part of the history of the god reveals more clearly the intimacy of his association with the primitive and the advanced stages of Hellenic civilization.

We may observe, in the first place, that the ceremonies as far as they are recorded are open and public, nor is there any indication of an Apolline ‘mystery’ with secret rites of initiation, though private guilds mainly in the later period were sometimes instituted in his honour. We have only two examples of a nightly and mystic service, namely the special preparation of the Argive priestess and the Klarian prophet; and here the officiating individuals enter into communion with the deity through sacrament. Otherwise the sacrifices are mainly of the usual Hellenic form, being occasionally bloodless oblations, but far more frequently animal-offerings, among which we must reckon with a survival of human sacrifice. The former are found in the Delian-Hyperborean ritual of the ἀπαρχαί, and belong therefore to the oldest period; and in Delos stood the famous altar of Apollo the Father, known in later times as ‘the holy’ or ‘righteous’ altar, because of the ritual law that forbade the shedding of blood upon it. Clemens speaks of it as most ancient, and Porphyry supposes that the vegetarian-ritual with which it was associated descended from the earliest period of human history when man was innocent of blood.

The primitive earth-goddess has been discovered in various parts of the Hellenic world, under various forms and names; and there still remain certain worships that claim a brief consideration, consecrated to a name of some potency once on Greek soil and of abiding interest in the history of religion, ‘the Mother,’ ‘the Great Mother,’ or ‘the Mother of the Gods.’ We find her cult occurring sporadically about the Greek mainland, and of considerable importance and some antiquity in Boeotia, Athens, and Arcadia, while Akriai in South Laconia boasted to possess her oldest temple. Her divinity was prominent in the Attic state church; for besides an altar dedicated to her in the Agora, she possessed a temple in the Kerameikos near the council-hall, which came to be used as a record office of the state-archives; a festival was held in her honour, in which she received a cereal oblation called ἡ Гαλαξία, a sort of milk-porridge. We have also some traces of her cult outside the ancient limits of the city; at least we hear of a ‘Mother-temple at Agrai,’ and of ‘the Mother in Agrai,’ and her images–not apparently of the earliest period–have been found in the cave of Vari on Hymettus.

In offering to the public two more volumes on the state-religion of the Greek world, I must express my regrets that the interval between their appearance and that of the first two has been so long. I may plead for indulgence on the grounds that multifarious official duties have borne heavily upon me, and that I have devoted what leisure I have had to preparing myself for the completion of my task. I have gained this at least from the long delay, that I have been able to profit by the many works and monographs of Continental and English scholars relating directly or indirectly to the subject, to reconsider many questions and to form more mature opinions on many important points. The results of the researches and discoveries throughout the last decade bearing on the history of religion have given us the opportunity, if we choose to avail ourselves of it, of improving the anthropological method in its application to the problems of comparative religion; and the great discoveries in Crete have thrown new light on certain questions that arise in the study of the classical polytheism. Every year also enriches the record with new material, from newly discovered inscriptions and other monuments.

It was in working upon the form of Apollo that Greek art first reveals the tendency, which afterwards became dominant, to present the divine ideal in youthful aspect. A bearded Apollo appears to us an incongruous type; yet it is found on our earliest Apolline monument, the Melian amphora quoted above, and on the well-known Francois vase. And again on a fragment of a fifth-century vase found on the Acropolis of Athens, containing a representation of the outrage of Tityos on Leto and her deliverance by Apollo and Artemis, the god is undoubtedly bearded, and also—what is the most singular feature in the artist's conception of him—he is armed as a hoplite in cuirass and helm. We may see in this the caprice of the artist rather than the survival of a very early divine type such as that at Amyklai. Usually, in the earliest as well as in the later period, Apollo is represented in peaceful pose or peaceful action such as was consonant with the character of the god of music, and it appears that the aspect of him that was most familiar to the popular imagination was that of the kitharoedos, in which character he would generally appear fully or partly draped. But at some time in the sixth century the fashion began to prevail of depicting Apollo naked as well as beardless.

The ideal of Demeter is presented us in a few monuments only, but is among the most interesting products of Greek art, a late blossom of the soil of Attica; for it was especially the Attic religion and art that spiritualized and purified men's imagination of her. The archaic period was unable to contribute much to its development, and it was long before the mother could be distinguished from the daughter by any organic difference of form or by any expressive trait of countenance. On the more ancient vases and terracottas they appear rather as twin-sisters, almost as if the inarticulate artist were aware of their original identity of substance. And even among the monuments of the transitional period it is difficult to find any representation of the goddesses in characters at once clear and impressive. We miss this even in the beautiful vase of Hieron in the British Museum, where the divine pair are seen with Triptolemos: the style is delicate and stately, and there is a certain impression of inner tranquil life in the group, but without the aid of the inscriptions the mother would not be known from the daughter.