Читать книгу Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals онлайн

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Art, by its very nature, serves rather as illustration than as proof of any theory of ancient religion. Sculpture has preserved to us the old conceptions of the divine personalities. Vase-paintings record many acts of ritual and scenes of worship. Architectural remains allow us to restore in imagination the grandeur of holy places. But these things are only the externals of religion: they need an interpreter, if we would understand the spirit which informed them: and however able the interpreter, the material with which he deals is so small a remnant of the treasures of ancient art, that from day to day some fresh discovery may subvert his precariously founded theories. Though all would acknowledge how fruitful in religious suggestion the evidence of art has proved when handled by competent critics, none would claim that that evidence either in its scope, which the losses of time have limited, or in its accuracy, which depends upon conjectural interpretation, is a complete or infallible guide to the knowledge of ancient religion.