as sprung from the gods; thus, in Mr Grote's phrase, the ideas of ancestry and worship coalesced. It was only about a century before the Persian wars that this primitive Hellenic tone of mind began to be troubled by the new scepticism which had its birth in Ionia. The Ionian thinkers, in their attempts to solve the problem of the universe, gave the first shock to the old uncritical acceptance of the popular theology. People began to ask whether gods could do such things as they were said to do; whether these gods were more than symbols or fictions. Athens does not seem to have been much affected by Ionian philosophy before the Persian wars; though, in that earlier time, the social life of Athens was externally more Ionian than it afterwards became. And the effect of the Persian wars on Athens was, in one way, such as to confirm Athenian adherence to traditional modes of thought. Those wars had brought the sturdy Attic husbandmen to the front,—the men in whom the old Attic beliefs were strongest; while at the same time Athenians had become conscious of their superiority to the Ionians, the vassals of Xerxes, whom they had routed at Salamis. A feeling was thus generated strongly antagonistic to innovation, especially when it appeared irreligious, and when it came from Ionia. This, however, was not the only effect which the Persian wars left behind them. In those struggles, the Athenian powers of mind and body had been strained to the uttermost. When the effort was over, the sense of stimulated activities remained;
