We assume—­so modern he seems—­Aristophanes’ attitude towards his immortals to be ours; that when, for example, Prometheus walks on to the stage under an umbrella, to hide himself from the gaze of all-seeing Zeus, the Athenian audience laughed just as we laugh who have read Voltaire.  Believe me, they laughed quite differently; believe me, Aristophanes and Voltaire had remarkably different minds and worked on utterly different backgrounds.  Believe me, you will understand Aristophanes only less than you will understand AEschylus himself if you confuse Aristophanes’ mockery of Olympus with modern mockery.  But, if you will not take my word for it, let me quote what Professor Gilbert Murray said, the other day, speaking before the English Association on Greek poetry, how constantly connected it is with religion: 

‘All thoughts, all passions, all desires’ ...  In our Art it is true, no doubt, that they are ‘the ministers of love’; in Greek they are as a whole the ministers of religion, and this is what in a curious degree makes Greek poetry matter, makes it relevant.  There is a sense in each song of a relation to the whole of things, and it was apt to be expressed with the whole body, or, one may say, the whole being.[1]

To a Greek, in short, his gods mattered enormously; and to a Roman.  To a Roman they continued to matter enormously, down to the end.  Do you remember that tessellated pavement with its emblems and images of the younger gods? and how I told you that a Roman general on foreign service would carry the little cubes in panniers on mule-back, to be laid down for his feet at the next camping place?  Will you suggest that he did this because they were pretty?  You know that practical men—­conquering generals—­don’t behave in that way.  He did it because they were sacred; because, like most practical men, he was religious, and his gods must go with him.  They filled his literature:  for why?  He believed himself to be sprung from their loins.  Where would Latin literature be, for example, if you could cut Venus out of it?  Consider Lucretius’ grand invocation: 

     AEneadum genetrix, hominum divumque voluptas,
     Alma Venus!

Consider the part Virgil makes her play as moving spirit of his whole great poem.  So follow her down to the days of the later Empire and open the “Pervigilium Veneris” and discover her, under the name of Dione, still the eternal Aphrodite sprung from the foam amid the churning hooves of the sea-horses—­inter et bipedes equos:—­

  Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep,
  ’Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stampeding the dolphins as
      sheep. 
  Lo! arose of that bridal Dione, rainbow’d and besprent of its dew!
  Now learn ye to love who loved never—­now ye who have loved, love
      anew!
  Her favour it was fill’d the sails of the Trojan for Latium bound,
  Her favour that won her AEneas a bride