(_β_) Local conditions supply a further source for the positive particularities of individual divinities, no less by presenting us with the origin of the conceptions of godhead, than by pointing to the modes under which their services were originally obtained and secured, and the particular places which were in a special sense devoted to their worship.
(_αα_) Although, however, the demonstration of the Ideal and its universal beauty is exalted over the particular locality and its unique claims for recognition, and, moreover, has drawn together the specific external aspects in the more general range of the artistic imagination into one comprehensive picture which is throughout adequate to the substantive significance, yet for all that, when the art of sculpture associates the gods, regarded as individuals, with isolated relations and conditions, these particular traits and local colours come frequently also to the fore, in order to reproduce something of that individuality, although it is only thus more defined in its external aspect. An illustration of this is the way Pausanias adduces a mass of ideas, images, pictures, and myths, which he met with in temples, public places, temple treasuries, in any place where anything of importance was to be found or otherwise was in the range of his experience. In the same way and on the same lines the ancient traditions and local suggestions which have been borrowed from foreign sources run along with the home ones in Greek myth; and to all of them more or less a relation has been attached which unites them to the history, creation, and foundations of States, more particularly by means of colonization. Forasmuch, however, as this many-sided and specific material in the universality of the gods has lost its original significance, we necessarily come across stories, which in their motley and intricate character fail to convey any meaning whatever. As an example we may instance the case where Aeschylus in his "Prometheus" presents to us the wanderings of Io in all their severity and external garb without admitting the least suggestion of an ethical or traditional story, or a natural significance. We find just the same difficulty when we approach the stories of Perseus, Dionysos, and others. The most varied and confused kind of material is also run into the tales about Hercules, which forthwith, in such tales, assume an entirely human aspect under the guise of chance events, exploits, passions, misfortunes, and other untoward occurrences.