But, quite apart from the evidence of custom and language, the occasional perpetuation of the ancient Greek physical type and the general survival of the ancient Greek character plainly forbid so extreme a supposition as that of Fallmerayer: no traveller familiar with the modern Greek peasantry could entertain for a moment the idea that at any period the whole of Greece became Slavonicized, but, whatever might be the historical arguments for such a theory, would reject it, on the evidence of his own eyes, as ludicrously exaggerated. Fusion of race, no doubt, there has been; but in that fusion the Hellenic element must have been the most vital and persistent; for if the present population of Greece is of mixed descent, in its traditions at least it is almost purely Hellenic.
It appears then that notwithstanding the immigration of Slavonic hordes, and notwithstanding also, it may be added, the influences exercised in later periods by ‘Franks,’ Genoese, Venetians, and Turks, the traditions of the inhabitants of Greece still remain singularly pure; and their claim to Hellenic nationality is justified by their language, by their character, and by many secular aspects of their civilisation. But in the domain of religion it might reasonably be expected that a large change would have taken place. There is the obstinate fact, it may be thought, that the Greeks are now and have long been Christian. Did not the new religion dispossess and oust the ancient polytheism? Are we to look for pagan customs in the hallowed usages of the Greek Church? What can the simple Christian peasant of to-day, subject from his youth up to ecclesiastical influence, know of the religion of his distant ancestors,--of those fundamental beliefs which guided their conduct towards gods and men in this life, and inspired their care for the dead?
On the conduct of man towards his fellow-men in this life the influence of Christianity appears to have been as great as that of paganism was small. Duty towards one’s neighbour hardly came within the purview of Hellenic religion. If we look at the supreme acts of worship in ancient times, we cannot fail to be struck by the disunion of the religious and the ethical. A certain purity was no doubt required of those who attended the mysteries of Eleusis; but by that purity was meant physical cleanliness and, strangely enough, a pure use of the Greek language, just as much as any moral temperance or rectitude; and the required condition was largely attained by the use or avoidance of certain foods and by bathing in the sea. Their cleanliness in fact was of the same confused kind, half physical and half moral, as that which the inhabitants of Tenos were formerly wont, and perhaps still continue, to seek on S. John the Baptist’s day (June 24) by leaping thrice through a bonfire and crying ‘Here I leave my sins and my fleas[55]’: and it was acquired by means equally material. There is nothing conspicuously ethical in such a purity as this.