For it is noticeable that neither the moon nor the stars--favourite divinities with those who enjoyed the serene nights, or inhabited the broad plains of the East--were (though probably admitted among the Pelasgic deities) honoured with that intense and reverent worship which attended them in Asia and in Egypt.

To the Pelasgi, not yet arrived at the intellectual stage of philosophical contemplation, the most sensible objects of influence would be the most earnestly adored.

What the stars were to the East, their own beautiful Aurora, awaking them to the delight of their genial and temperate climate, was to the early Greeks.
Of deities, thus created from external objects, some will rise out (if I may use the expression) of natural accident and local circumstance.
An earthquake will connect a deity with the earth--an inundation with the river or the sea.

The Grecian soil bears the marks of maritime revolution; many of the tribes were settled along the coast, and perhaps had already adventured their rafts upon the main.

A deity of the sea (without any necessary revelation from Africa) is, therefore, among the earliest of the Grecian gods.