131

The pan-Hellenic Homer finds his delight in the frivolity of the gods; but it is astounding how he can also give them dignity again.  This amazing ability to raise one’s self again, however, is Greek.

132

What, then, is the origin of the envy of the gods? people did not believe in a calm, quiet happiness, but only in an exuberant one.  This must have caused some displeasure to the Greeks; for their soul was only too easily wounded:  it embittered them to see a happy man.  That is Greek.  If a man of distinguished talent appeared, the flock of envious people must have become astonishingly large.  If any one met with a misfortune, they would say of him:  “Ah! no wonder! he was too frivolous and too well off.”  And every one of them would have behaved exuberantly if he had possessed the requisite talent, and would willingly have played the role of the god who sent the unhappiness to men.

133

The Greek gods did not demand any complete changes of character, and were, generally speaking, by no means burdensome or importunate . it was thus possible to take them seriously and to believe in them.  At the time of Homer, indeed, the nature of the Greek was formed . flippancy of images and imagination was necessary to lighten the weight of its passionate disposition and to set it free.

134

Every religion has for its highest images an analogon in the spiritual condition of those who profess it.  The God of Mohammed . the solitariness of the desert, the distant roar of the lion, the vision of a formidable warrior.  The God of the Christians . everything that men and women think of when they hear the word “love”.  The God of the Greeks:  a beautiful apparition in a dream.

135

A great deal of intelligence must have gone to the making up of a Greek polytheism . the expenditure of intelligence is much less lavish when people have only one God.

136

Greek morality is not based on religion, but on the polis.

There were only priests of the individual gods; not representatives of the whole religion . i.e., no guild of priests.  Likewise no Holy Writ.

137

The “lighthearted” gods . this is the highest adornment which has ever been bestowed upon the world—­with the feeling, How difficult it is to live!

138

If the Greeks let their “reason” speak, their life seems to them bitter and terrible.  They are not deceived.  But they play round life with lies:  Simonides advises them to treat life as they would a play; earnestness was only too well known to them in the form of pain.  The misery of men is a pleasure to the gods when they hear the poets singing of it.  Well did the Greeks know that only through art could even misery itself become a source of pleasure, vide tragoediam.

139

It is quite untrue to say that the Greeks only took this life into their consideration—­they suffered also from thoughts of death and Hell.  But no “repentance” or contrition.