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Even in his Epistles, where the conventionalities of mythology are never employed, Horace compares him with the greatest deities, and declares that altars are raised to his name, while all confess him to be the greatest person that has been or will be among mankind.

The composite deities thus formed were officially worshipped. Their primeval forms lived on, however, especially in the villages, many centuries longer than the Shang dynasty. The sacrifices associated with them became popular festivals, and so these gods or their successors were saved from oblivion; some of them have lived on in popular religion to the present day.

They maintained religious rites and ceremonies in honor of their imaginary deities, just as most modern "secret societies" make a profane use of the word and worship of God in their parades and initiations.

Not Paris alone, but all of Gaul felt the awakening touch of a great civilization, and with improved ideals in living there came another great advance. The human sacrifices and abhorrent practices of the Druidical faith were abandoned, and Jupiter and Minerva and the gods of Parnassus supplanted the grim deities of a more ancient mythology.

It is in favor of this identification that the qualities of the two deities are the same, and there is also the noteworthy fact that Ahura Mazda is coupled with Mithra as Varuna is coupled with Mitra; according to this view the Mazdean deity was originally the god of the sky, by whose side naturally stands the sun.

As for the charms and incantations which many used, we can scarcely imagine that they saved any lives. Some said that their enemies had poisoned the water-cisterns, others that the gods were angry, and vain processions were made to the temples, to implore the mercy of the deities. When nothing availed to stay the pestilence, Athens fell into deep despondency and despair.

He recalled the legends of temptations to which the Evil One used to subject the anchorites of old, by causing to appear before them the attractive but illusive forms of the heathen deities.

Unto him the deities give every kind of happiness here and a high end hereafter. Ganga is regarded as competent to rescue every creature from sin and lead him to the felicity of Heaven. She is held to be identical with Prisni, the mother of Vishnu. She is identical with the Word or Speech. She is very remote, being incapable of easy attainment.

The female deities both native and foreign come to be regarded as so many forms of Ishtar. In a certain sense Ishtar is the only real goddess of the later Assyrian pantheon, the only one taking an active part in the religious and political life of the people.

I desire to hear in detail of the religion of Emancipation in its entirety. Do thou discourse to me then of the existence and Oneness of Purusha, of his separateness from Prakriti, of the deities which attach to the body of the place to which embodied creatures repair when they die, and that place to which they may ultimately, in course of time, be able to go.