The worship of Apollo was not the only worship of Greece, but it was the only national worship of the Dorians; and the predominance of the Dorians in Greece, and their influence over all the other tribes, direct or indirect, placed it in the forefront; and at last the shrine of Delphi seems to have concentrated all religious feeling into itself.
Let us compare this Dorian religion with the other Grecian religions.
Each tribe seems to have had its peculiar god. This god, when examined and analyzed, gives us the genius of the people. They are instincts, which characterized the different tribes, personified. The names only came from foreign lands. Thus Pan, in Egypt, signifies the Supreme God,—nature personified. In Arcadia, the Pelasgic genius worshipped the beauty and music of the surface of nature; and therefore their Pan, whose name they took from the Egyptians that early settled in Peloponnesus, together with the association of God of nature, became a perfect expression of Pelasgic genius,—
"Who, frisking it, ran
O'er woody cragg'd Pisa, in fun
And frolic and laughter,
With skipping nymphs after,
Shouting out, 'Pan, Pan.'
Pan, merry musical Pan,
Piping o'er mountain-tops,
Rough-headed, shaggy, and rusty like tan;
Dancing, where'er the goats crop,
The precipice round,
And his hoofs strike the ground
With their musical clop-clop.
Pan is the lord of the hills,
With their summits all covered with snow;
Pan is lord of the brooks, of the rivers, and rills,
That murmur in thickets below;
There he saunters along,
And listens their song,
And bends his shagg'd ears as they flow.
