Lord Lytton's Miscellaneous Works - 1874 Author:Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: chosen from every state, who had a much greater interest in the welfare of their own state than in the increased authority of the Amphictyonic council. They were... more » priests but for an occasion—they were citizens by profession. The jealousies of the various states, the constant change in the delegates, prevented that energy and oneness necessary to any settled design of ecclesiastical ambition. Hence, the real influence of the Amphictyonic council was by no means commensurate with its grave renown ; and when, in the time of Philip, it became an important political agent, it was only as the corrupt and servile tool of that able monarch. Still, it long continued, under the panoply of a great religious name, to preserve the aspect of dignity and power, until, in the time of Constantino, it fell amidst the ruins of the faith it had aspired to protect. The creed that became the successor of the religion of Delphi found a mightier Amphictyonic assembly in the conclaves of Bome. The Papal institution possessed precisely those qualities for directing the energies of states, for dictating to the ambition of kings, for obtaining temporal authority under spiritual pretexts—which were wanting to the Pagan. CHAPTER III. The Heroic Age—Theseus—His legislative influence upon Athens—Qualities of the Greek Heroes—Effect of a traditional age upon the character of a people. I. As one who has been journeying through the dark f begins at length to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so that the forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume an exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amidst the clouds,—so now, through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline of the Heroic Age. The careful and sceptical Thucydides has left us, in the commencement of hi...« less