+357+. Still later arose the worship of these ancestral founders. In Greece shrines were erected by various cities to their supposed founders, and where, as in Athens, the tribes had their eponyms, these received divine worship, though they never attained equal rank with the gods proper. From Greece this cult was brought into Italy. It was probably under Greek influence, and at a relatively late time, that Romulus was created, made the immediate founder of Rome, and took his place among the objects of worship;[660] on the other hand, Æneas (a Greek importation), though he was accepted as original founder, never received divine worship, doubtless because Romulus (nearer in name to the city Roma) already held the position of divine patron. The cult of eponyms tended naturally to coalesce with that of divine 'heroes'[661]--the two figures were alike in character, differing mainly in function, and eponyms were styled 'heroes.'[662]
+358+. The inverse process, the reduction of divine beings to simple human proportions, has gone on in early cults and in early attempts at historical construction to a not inconsiderable degree. Thus, to take a relatively late example, by Saxo Grammaticus and in the Heimskringla (both of the thirteenth century) the god Odin is made into a human king and the history of his exploits is given in detail.[663] It is, however, especially in the treatment of the old divine heroes, originally true gods, that the process of dedivinization appears. These figures, because of their local character and for other reasons, entered into peculiarly close relations with human societies, of which they thus tended to become constituent parts, and the same feeling that gave the gods human shapes converted the heroes into mere men, who are generally reconstructers of society. Examples of this sort of anthropomorphizing are found in myths all over the world: the Babylonian Gilgamesh; the "mighty men" of Genesis vi, 4, originally demigods, the progeny of human mothers and of the Elohim-beings (the Benë Elohim, 'sons of the gods,' members, that is, of the divine circle); Heracles and Hercules; the Scandinavian (apparently general Teutonic) Valkyrs, Nornas, and Swan-maidens.[664]