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Their gods were very near to those whom they favoured; no communion or intercourse was beyond hope of attainment; gods fought in men’s battles, guided men’s wanderings, dined at men’s boards, and took to themselves mortal consorts; and when men grew degenerate and the race of heroes was no more, gods still held speech with them in oracles. Religious hopes, religious fears, were the dominant motive of the people’s whole life. It was in religion that sculpture found its inspiration, and its highest achievements were in pourtraying deities. The theatre was a religious institution, and on the stage, without detriment to reverence, figured the Eumenides themselves. Religious duties were excuse enough for Sparta to hang back from defending the freedom of Greece. Religious scruples set enlightened Athens in an uproar, because a number of idols were decently mutilated. Religious fears cost her the loss of the proudest armament that ever sailed from her shores. A charge of irreligion was pretext enough for condemning to death her noblest philosopher. In everything, great and small, the pouring of libations at the feast, the taking of omens before battle, the consulting of the Delphic oracle upon the most important or most trivial of occasions, the same spirit is manifest. Religion used or abused, piety or superstition, was to the Greeks an abiding motive and influence in all the affairs of life.