Every virtue, and even vice, acquired its divine representative; every art and profession its patron, whose attributes, in the most distant ages and countries, were uniformly derived from the character of their peculiar votaries.

A republic of gods of such opposite tempers and interests required, in every system, the moderating hand of a supreme magistrate, who, by the progress of knowledge and flattery, was gradually invested with the sublime perfections of an Eternal Parent, and an Omnipotent Monarch.

[4] Such was the mild spirit of antiquity, that the nations were less attentive to the difference, than to the resemblance, of their religious worship.

The Greek, the Roman, and the Barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves, that under various names, and with various ceremonies, they adored the same deities.

[5] The elegant mythology of Homer gave a beautiful, and almost a regular form, to the polytheism of the ancient world.
[Footnote 3: There is not any writer who describes in so lively a manner as Herodotus the true genius of polytheism.