The whole passage finds its best commentary in modern superstition. Poseidon, though a great god, is the local _genius_; to him belongs the shore where the Greek ships are assembled, to him too the land where he had built the town of Ilium; to him therefore were due sacrifices for the building of the wall. But the god whose fame is known far as Dawn spreads her light deserves the rebuke administered by Zeus for his pettiness of spirit. An ordinary local _genius_, ‘some god far lesser than he in work and will,’ might justly wax wrathful at the neglect of his more limited prerogatives. Yet even so the wall was doomed to endure no long time. Then as now the divine law ran, ‘An ye devote not hecatombs, no wall hath sure foundation.’
In this passage there is of course no suggestion of a local _genius_ in animal shape; the anthropomorphic tendency of Homeric religion was too strong to admit of that. But since we know from Theophrastus’ sketch of the superstitious man and from other sources that in the classical age _genii_ of houses and temples were believed to appear in the form of snakes, we may without hesitation assign the same belief to earlier ages. Such a superstition could not in the nature of things have sprung up after an anthropomorphic conception of the gods dominated all religion, but must necessarily have been a survival from pre-classical and pre-Homeric folklore.
But, though Homer speaks of the _genius_ only as a ‘lesser god’ without further description, he implies clearly that the present custom of doing sacrifice to such a being for the foundation of any building was then in existence. Did the sacrifice ever involve human victims? A positive and certain answer cannot, I suppose, be made; but bearing in mind the many ancient traditions of human sacrifice in Greece and even the occasional continuance of the practice in the most civilised and enlightened age[713] I cannot doubt it. I suspect that, if we could obtain an earlier version of the story of Iphigenia than has come down to us, we should find that the wrath of Artemis had no part in it, but that human sacrifice was offered to the Winds or other _genii_ of the air--that the ‘maiden’s blood’ was, in the words of Aeschylus, ‘a sacrifice to stay the winds[714],’ ‘a charm to lull the Thracian blasts[715],’ that and nothing more. But a story still more strongly evidential of the custom is told by Pausanias[716]. In the war between Messenia and Sparta, when the Messenians had been reduced to extremities, ‘they decided to evacuate all their many towns in the open country and to establish themselves on Mount Ithome. Now there was there a town of no great size, which Homer, they say, includes in the Catalogue--“Ithome steep as a ladder.” In this town they established themselves, extending its ancient circuit so as to provide a stronghold large enough for all. And apart even from the fortifications the place was strong; for Ithome is as high as any mountain in the Peloponnese and, where the town lay, was particularly inaccessible. They determined also to send an envoy to Delphi,’ who brought them back the following oracle: