10　Fairy-Tale Gods

There was once a man named Hellen—strange-sounding name for a man,isn't it?He had a great many children and children's children,and they called themselves Hellenes. They lived in a little scrap of a country that juts into the Mediterranean Sea,and they called their land Hellas.I once upset a bottle of ink on my desk,and the ink ran out into a wriggly spot that looked exactly as Hellas does on the map.Though Hellas is hardly any bigger than one of our states,its history is more famous than that of any other country of its size in the world.We call Hellas Greece and the people who lived there Greeks.

About the same time,the Jews were leaving Egypt,about the time when people were beginning to use iron instead of bronze,that is,about 1300 B. C.，we first begin to hear of Hellas and the Hellenes,of Greece and the Greeks.

The Greeks believed in many gods,not in one God,as we do and as the Jews do,and their gods were more like people in fairy tales than like divine beings. Many beautiful statues have been made of their different gods,and poems and stories have been written about them.

There were twelve—just a dozen—chief gods.Six of these were female gods,known