Читать книгу The Story of Greece: Told to Boys and Girls онлайн

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And when this same Jesus had grown to be a Man, and ‘hung for love’s sake on a Cross,’ one of our own women poets sings that all the old gods of Greece

‘fell down moaning,

Each from off his golden seat;

All the false gods with a cry,

Rendered up their deity,

Pan, Pan was dead.’

And the reason that the old gods fell was that the strange Man upon the Cross was mightier than they. But in the days of ancient Greece the gods were alive and strong; of that the Hellenes were very sure.

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Demeter, the goddess of the earth, was often to be seen in the fields in springtime. As the Greek peasants sowed their seed they caught glimpses of her long yellow hair while she moved now here, now there, among them. It almost seemed to these simple folk as though already the bare fields were golden with the glory of harvest, so bright shone the yellow hair of the goddess. Then they smiled hopefully one to the other, knowing well that Demeter would give them a bounteous reaping-time.