It is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals.  This wise provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also availed of by the Mosaic ritual among the Hebrews, and has been a part of most well-organized religious systems.  The festivals were celebrated in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons of the year, of great national victories,—­all which were religious in the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of Grecian life.  They were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever could animate the soul with festivity and joy.  Hence the religious worship of the Greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and sometimes degrading.  It was similar in its effects to the rural sports of the yeomanry of the Middle Ages, and to the theatrical representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,—­certainly to the processions and pomps which the Catholic clergy instituted for the amusement of the people.  Hence the sneering but acute remark of Gibbon, that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to philosophers, and equally useful to rulers.  The State encouraged and paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the ridicule of the same performances in the theatres.

Among the Greeks there were no sacred books like the Hindu Vedas or Hebrew Scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious truths.  The priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and ceremonies.  It is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience.  Duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion.  From what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents, of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty?  It is difficult to tell.  The poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of grace, of strength; and Nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the same things.  Hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life.  It was the rule to be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the severity of art.  The comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance, quackery, and lies.  Patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of the State, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice.