It would seem probable, from an investigation of this subject, that two elements of worship are to be found in the Greek religion, which were never quite harmonized.  One is the worship of the Olympian deities, gods of light and day, gods of this world, and interested in our present human life.  This worship tended to promote a free development of character; it was self-possessed, cheerful, and public; it left the worshipper unalarmed by any dread of the future, or any anxiety about his soul.  For the Olympic gods cared little about the moral character of their worshippers; and the dark Fate which lay behind gods and men could not be propitiated by any rites, and must be encountered manfully, as one meets the inevitable.

The other worship, running parallel with this, was of the Cthonic gods, deities of earth and the under-world, rulers of the night-side of nature, and monarchs of the world to come.  Their worship was solemn, mysterious, secret, and concerned expiation of sin, and the salvation of the soul hereafter.

Now, when we consider that the Egyptian popular worship delighted in just such mysteries as these; that it related to the judgment of the soul hereafter; that its solemnities were secret and wrapped in dark symbols; and that the same awful Cthonic deities were the objects of its reverence;—­when we also remember that Herodotus and the other Greek writers state that the early religion of the Pelasgi was derived from Egypt, and that Orpheus, the Thracian, brought thence his doctrine,—­there seems no good reason for denying such a source.  On the other hand, nothing can be more probable than an immense influence on Pelasgic worship, derived through Thrace, from Egypt.  This view is full of explanations, and makes much in the Greek mythology clear which would otherwise be obscure.

The Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, for example, seems to be an adaptation to the Hellenic mind and land of the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Isis.  Both are symbols, first, of natural phenomena; and, secondly, of the progress of the human soul.  The sad Isis seeking Osiris, and the sad Demeter seeking Persephone constitute evidently the same legend; only Osiris is the Nile, evaporated into scattered pools by the burning heat, while Persephone is the seed, the treasure of the plant, which sinks into the earth, but is allowed to come up again as the stalk, and pass a part of its life in the upper air.  But both these nature-myths were spiritualized in the Mysteries, and made to denote the wanderings of the soul in its search for truth.  Similar to these legends was that of Dionysos Zagreus, belonging to Crete, according to Euripides and other writers.  Zagreus was the son of the Cretan Zeus and Persephone, and was hewn in pieces by the Titans, his heart alone being preserved by Athene, who gave it to Zeus.  Zeus killed the Titans, and enclosed the heart in a plaster image of his child.  According to another form of the story, Zeus swallowed the heart, and from it reproduced another Dionysos.  Apollo collected the rest of the members, and they were reunited, and restored to life.